Canada points out the accuracy of the "Golden Rule"

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Just another example showing who really decides the state policy

Oil sands mine or circuit board?
Image by mrjorgen via Flickr

“He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

I just read this article about how Canada is not only destroying its own environment and the health of its citizens but sacrificing its international goodwill by actively sabotaging all global environmental initiatives. Why would a first world and rich nation ever have to do something like that? Because of corporate power of course.

Once oil companies discovered that there’s money to be made in the tar sands of alberta, they flexed their political muscles and whatdayaknow, Canada was more than happy to not only help but actively oppose the rest of the world in their interests. Let me say that again just in case it wasn’t clear:

Canada decided to give the finger to the rest of the world in the name of corporate profits.

If that doesn’t clarify for whom governments are working for and which interests the state puts above their own citizens then there’s no hope. Again and again we see this happening and yet deluded Social Democrats and Liberals somehow think that the state is there to protect them and that the “rule of law” treats all interests equally. Well, I’m certain that all those people getting ill from poisoned air and water are accurately compensated. I’m certain that all those future generations who will have to live in a wasteland will not mind it at all.

But go on, just vote another president in 4 years. I’m sure he’ll be able to reverse all the damage done easily. Constitutional  “Democracy” will triumph again.

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Oh look, once again science confirms Anarchism

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As Anthropologists study emergent human behaviour, they discover what Anarchists have been saying for the last 100 years.

Who would have thunk it eh? Once again, actual empirical research points out that humans are primarily co-operative rather than competitive and the hard primitivism assumptions of Hobbes (and favourite excuse of Clergy and Statists for their authority)  get even less realistic.

Ah, if only we had a society that was organized with such knowledge in mind rather than the harmful assumption that humans need to be protected from each other. If only…

How I ended up calling myself an Anarchist

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I put down the process through which I ended up calling myself an Anarchist.

Broadsnark recently posted an interesting piece into how she became an Anarchist which is the kind of thing that I always find interesting to read, both from a political perspective but also from a religious (i.e. I like to read interesting deconversions). So since I found this interesting, I’ve decided to write my own story.

As far back as I remember myself, I have always been reactionary. People used to call me “the voice of opposition” just because I used to argue the opposing case, whether I espoused it or not, just so that my opponent would be forced to argue his position solidly instead of relying on the agreement of the “choir”.  I was also inherently anti-authoritarian. I refused to recognize and respect authority just in order to achieve peace. Needless to say this brought me in a lot of friction with my peers (other students mostly) who wished the “alpha-male” position and demanded appropriate respect.

As a result I ended up getting into various fist-fights every few weeks or so, although I never initiated aggression. This didn’t make me a lot of friends as one would expect which further fed my introverted and apolitical personality.

As weird as it is, I never had big problems with institutional authority like my school teachers or my army officials (while in national service) for while I didn’t like it, I also knew I couldn’t change it or fight it and thus simply put my head down and went along with it for its limited time. I don’t know why this is so. I simply always considered myself to be very adaptable. Sure I had the occasional shouting matches with school teachers (one time getting expelled for it and getting the whole school taking one day of absistence from class in my defense) but all-in-all, I was on generally good terms with officials. I mostly had issues with peer authority.

My political views in those teen and post-teen years were non-existent. I didn’t care about any political party or affiliation. Even though much of my family was mostly on the communist side (Marxist-Leninist generally) and even though my mother was a generally a socialist, I never much cared for such stuff as long as I could get my gaming fix. This continued in my early adulthood at the time where most people start solidifying their views. Much like the current youth, I couldn’t care less.

When time came to vote, I generally voted white or black (i.e. canceled vote) because I considered all political parties the same corrupt shit. At 23 I started becoming much more social and much more interested in social issues. This was incidentally the time I started getting interested in GNU/Linux and the Free Software movement and when I discovered that Epicurism was the philosophy that most closely resembled my mindframe.  Still, my political views remained agnostic as I simply supported measures that would increase freedom.

My political views started forming soon after I left Greece and ended up outside of my comfort zone of gaming friends and usual company. This and my increasing interest in blogging made me cut back on games and start reading more and more about social and economical issues. For some reason this in turn led me around that time to throw my support behind the a new Greek libertarian party, mainly because of its manifesto promoting various measures I supported such as drug legalization and anti-copyright measures. Back then I had a very limited understanding of economics so all their free market policies just went over my head. I saw someone supporting “Freedom” and I stood with them. Eventually of course, once I realized what kind of “libertarians” they are, I withdrew my support.

As lame as it may sound, I first started describing myself as LibSoc after taking the political compass test and then somehow ending in the Libertarian Socialism article of Wikipedia. I simply took on the name that described my current social views. I wasn’t however yet an anti-statist nor a revolutionary explicitly. I still believed in some of the common nonsense about human nature and how communism was not yet possible because of it and so on.  So I was still as I was a few years ago, mostly apolitical but simply with a new label and a interest in learning more. And I did.

Believe it or not, what ended up radicalizing me more was when I started participating in Reddit. I first went to it as part of my interaction in the Atheosphere and as an experiment in increasing my readership. While there, I discovered the possibility of subreddits and on an impulse, I joined /r/Socialism. You see, I never really bought into any propaganda, anti-socialist or not. I always considered that Communism was like a perfect society, simply impossible, but I had never really bothered to learn about it and always wanted to, in order to know what I’m talking about. /r/Socialism gave me that chance. Due to the constant arguments in the comments there, I ended up being linked to various articles on the subject of which I can safely say that the two most inspiring where The Origins of the Family by Engels and The Two Souls of Socialism by Draper. These two texts served to both dispel much of the preconceptions of human history that school propaganda had forced into my head and also to clarify for me that Socialism does not have to equal Stalinism or Social Democracies. I had now become a revolutionary.

Unfortunately eventually I got turned off by some of the authoritarian bullies in there. Fortunately by this time I had already discovered /r/Anarchism and realized that this was about Socialism as well! It’s funny to think of this really but I still remember when I first got linked to /r/Anarchism that I felt kind of scared. I had the kind of mentality of “What am I doing here with these elements?”. If I remember, I had to will myself to subscribe to /r/Anarchism the first time.

Fortunately, as I started interacting with the crowd there, all such feeling dispelled very quickly. And this was in fact quite a strong event. I knew before that, that Anarchists were not necessarily violent but I still considered them immature based on personal experience with some Greek ones (as well as the persistent Greek anti-anarchist propaganda of course). This subreddit totally changed my impression of what Anarchism is, which in turn made it easier and in fact imperative for me to delve into Anarchist texts for a change.

And that was it. It didn’t take longer than an Anarchist FAQ and some Kropotkin to make me realize that this is where I belong. This is in fact where I’ve always belonged without knowing it. Once this dawned on me, the rest of the pieces fell in place. All my philosophical base, my distaste for authority, my materialism and my rationalism made finally sense as a complete whole rather than disconnected parts of my personality. I knew I was an Anarchist.

tl;dr: I was always an Anarchist but it took reddit to help me realize it and finally willingly call myself as one.

And now I’m done. I’m actually quite curious to hear how others ended up under the same label so I’m going to make this a meme just to get others to write about it. So the rules are simple. Write how you became an Anarchist and optionally link/notify 5 other Anarchist bloggers to do the same.

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User called from 0060237288
I checked myself on the test laptop (on the DSL connection) and got the same thing. “Unable to connect to the Citrix XenApp server. Protocol Driver Error”. I can open DSS applications from my ECB PC though.
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On using questionable tactics in struggle

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Anarchists used some objectionable tactics in their fight against Fascism. I explain why this is counter-productive.

deadfascists
Image by protokol via Flickr

I was reading what happened to a holocaust denier on Friday and while I couldn’t avoid getting a bit of schadenfreude out of it, it did create a feeling of discomfort on account of the actions used by the antifa in this case. This is in fact something that has been bothering me about the actions of the more active elements of the Anarchist movement but in a way that I was not certain what to make of it.

I understand and wholly agree with the sentiment to counter fascist, racist, sexist and all other similar mentalities but I also understand that the means we use to do so will colour the ends we achieve and will affect our chances to achieve them in the first place. So while such ideologies must be eventually extinguished, there’s many ways to go about doing it. Just because any way promises to achieve the same result does not mean its ethically equal to all the others.

For example, defeating the anti-semite movement could be attempted in one of these ways or any combination of them: Legally banning all anti-semite expression and ideas, assaulting and/or killing all anti-semites, ridiculing and  refuting anti-semite arguments, fixing the root causes of anti-semite sentiments (needs for external scapegoats to hide the results of capitalist exploitation), mutual aid to prevent any direct acts by anti-semites etc. While the effectiveness of any of those tactics is debatable, it is far more important to ponder on the ethical aspect of choosing any particular one for anarchists.

You see, even if a legal ban or assaulting anti-semites was more effective, it would still not be a good choice of means due to the way it colours the ends. By being open to assaulting and/or killing anti-semites, you implicitly support such an act as valid response to ideas you disagree with. Even if such an act was successful, you would still end up in a future society where assaulting and killing the people’s who’s ideas you find abhorrent is a morally permissible act. Such an idea would quickly devolve in a “might makes right” situation where the most powerful party would simply extinguish opposing ideas by force. This is certainly not what we wish to live under. Not only because the anarchists might not be the “winning side” but whatever the result might be, it will certainly not be Anarchy.

In a similar vein we can evaluate almost any other means we might think of using to defeat such ideologies. Legal banning? It would certainly lead to a society which would require a top down enforcement agency (i.e. a police force) and a centralized law making party which decided on the laws for everyone else. In other words, it would lead to supporting a centralized and powerful state, something which I’m certain is something not many of us wish for.  What about ridiculing and refuting? Well at worst this would lead to a society where ridicule of absurd ideas is widespread (making at least for a funnier society) while refutations (and the critical thinking they require) would be valued. Certainly this result sounds better. Mutual Aid to oppose and stop abhorrent acts (say harassment of semites by anti-semites)? Then that would lead to a future society where mutual aid is more widespread and people rely on each other to lend assistance against acts they commonly oppose. A very good approach towards Anarchy don’t you think?

So taking a look at the article above we see that the Antifa used two tactics in this case. One was to figure out where David Irving was planning to give speeches and then call those establishments and warn them that they are hosting holocaust deniers and neo-nazis. Unless lying was used to get them to cancel the events (eg. claiming that Irving was planning something violent) this is a pretty good tactic by itself as it promotes direct action. The second one however was more ambiguous. Antifa hackers cracked into his web servers and managed to compromise his website, emails and other information. Then they proceeded to destroy his website and spread the info everywhere. I think that was wrong.  Like before, this promotes the idea that hacking and destroying someone’s server/website because you disagree with them is a morally acceptable and this is certainly something I do not wish to see becoming widespread.

And if we do not wish any of those acts to be done against us, we cannot go ahead and do it ourselves to others. I certainly would not like to see the Division by Zer0 brought down by some fascist hackers as an Anarchist target and I would then rightly condemn such an attack and all those who did it or cheered for it and I would hope that many others (Anarchist or not) would do the same. However were the Antifa who did those attacks or the One People’s Project who supported them to be hacked then any such condemnation coming from them would be seen as hypocritical. “Why do you complain?” would the fascists ask “Did you not do the same not a long time ago? Did you not support such means as an acceptable way to fight back?” and they would be right (to say that, not to hack). The Antifa can’t then claim that they are allowed to do so because their opponent is anti-semite scum. This will only make sense to those who already accept that against and only against anti-semite scum everything goes, in other words, it would be preaching to the choir.

To all this I expect some to say that the Fascists do this or that all the time. Doesn’t that then justify us fighting back with a similar intensity? Can’t we fight fire with fire if we’re justified? The answer again is to realize that we do not have the same ends as the fascists and thus utilizing the same means makes no sense and most likely be counter-productive. You see, the fascists use violence, harassment, suppression of free speech and bullying tactics because they do really aim for a society which would be characterized by such behaviour. Of course they cannot realize what they will achieve if they are successful but we should. It’s thus imperative to not do what the fascists do, no matter how effective it seems in the short term.

Not only can we not judge the effectiveness of any such act accurately but we can immediately see that such acts go against all that we’re trying to achieve anyway. Not only is it likely that anarchist ways (e.g. mutual aid) will be far more effective in the long term by making non-anarchist more positive to our cause but it will also mean that any success we have will not have unintended consequences causing far greater harm (such as legitimizing violence or hacking against people we disagree with).

“But Db0” I imagine some saying “Anarchist tactics are not as effective as fascist (or state, capitalist, etc) tactics. We’ll never achieve anything”. As I explained above, the “effectiveness” of an act is quite difficult to judge and certainly the dominance of an idea or tactic is not enough to judge it as a success. What we can easily figure out however (and history is ample proof of that) is that you cannot discard a social rule by using said social rule to do it. You cannot use the state to dismantle the state. You cannot dismantle capitalism by becoming a capitalist. You cannot abolish slavery by becoming a slaver and you cannot stop bullying by being a bully. This is why reformist and state socialism fails so abjectly. And this is why any such tactic, no matter how “effective” is doomed to failure. Even if against all odds it manages to achieve its short term results, the long term consequences will be far more harmful and more than likely perpetuate rather than abolish what it’s trying to destroy.

The general rule of thumb then not more complex than the Golden Rule: Do not do what you wouldn’t like others to do to you. It is not difficult to understand why this works when you realize that whatever you do serves as an approval for others to do the same. It thus makes no sense to aim for Anarchy and on the other hand promote acts which would go counter to the workings of such a society.

To put it more simply: If you don’t think any particular act should be commonplace, don’t do it.

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How I spent my afternoon yesterday.

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Reddit convinced me to get Dragon Age legally rather than Pirating it. This is the true story of what followed.

So I get home from work yesterday and get on Reddit…

.

.

Dragon Age FFFUUU

Yes, this really happened to me yesterday exactly as you see it.

Other fun facts

  • I got the VPN yesterday in an attempt to allow myself to buy the goddamn game. Legally. That was a wasted 40 Euros of course but hopefully I’ll be able to use it to watch restricted content. Or you know, maybe not.
  • I didn’t download the whole game at 300Kb/s fortunately. I watched a movie for the first 2 hours which allowed the 1.2 Mb/s to continue. However when the movie finished I tried to surf the net while the last 5% where downloading. Then my speed dropped to 300Kb/s and never got over it, thus making the last 8 minutes into 30.
  • Yes, my PC did really die within 5 minutes of downloading the game. It was the PSU which gave up the ghost. Hopefully nothing else has been affected from it.
  • Of course EA screwed me over by charging the same amount in Euros as they charge in Dollars. Exchange rates be damned.
  • I’ve only managed to see the intro screen of Dragon Age and the first few stages of character creation.

And then people ask why Piracy is the better choice…

The Barefoot Bum strikes back and the ethics of blogging.

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The Barefoot Bum finally reacts to my condemnation of his actions. His response unfortunately falls short of the point.

8 12 09 Bearman Cartoon Freedom of Speech
Image by Bearman2007 via Flickr

…Sort of. In response to my internet drama post about banning me from his blog and my thoughts about it and his past actions he’s come out to clarify his position and why nobody deserves to call him an enemy of free speech or whatever. Of course that would actually be a valid defense if I had claimed that he was an enemy of free speech and open debate. Which, you know, I haven’t.

The Barefoot Bum thus, unwittingly, provides us with a perfect example to talk about blogger ethics and go further on why his actions were objectionable. ((Really, It’s not worth wasting any more bytes explaining how he didn’t understand why I was annoyed at him. My post is quite clear on this even though Larry picked the parts which were the easiest to misrepresent and proceeded to do so.))

He claims that he has no obligation to publish comments or be as nice to commentators and thus implies that shouldn’t be criticized for not doing that. He also claims that he doesn’t object to others criticizing them at their own locations…within a blogpost whining about me criticizing him at my own blog. The Irony is delicious once more.

But what he has failed to grasp is that I’m not criticizing him for being a hypocrite or an enemy of free speech. I’m criticizing him for being an arrogant elitist, for being a dick to people who don’t deserve it and for being hypocritical about being a “a honest seeker of truth” when he dismisses arguments which do not fit into his preconceptions.

His comment policy fits nicely into this picture since it’s a policy which works quite different from the examples he mentions about “no comments”, “no replies from the office”, and “open to all but trolls”. Putting aside the fact that any and all those comment policies can and should be discussed and criticized just as well, his own policy of “comments are heavily moderated and discouraged” is very vague on its guidelines and judging from the examples of what he ends up banning can thus be condemned for the thin excuse for intolerance of different opinions it is. Just because it’s his  policy in his own blog does not allow him to escape this, and this is precisely what I did.

One might ask, as he proceeds to do, why didn’t I do this before? Why I didn’t criticize his comment practices (or his Maoist tendencies) before this drama occurred. The answer is quite simply because I used to consider him an online friend at some point in the past and thus was trying to tactfully point out the errors of his positions without putting it bluntly and thus forcing him on the defensive which would have simply ended up with us speaking past each other. This is only common (n)etiquette between friends and acquaintances really as you’re trying to change the other’s position without breaking up all relations in the meantime. My attempts were especially cautious furthermore as I knew firsthand his intolerance and thus slow. But it was there, in the various counter-arguments I made in his comments and in this blog as well.

Of course, what ended up happening is that the more clearly I started opposing his position, the more annoyed he became at me and the more cold and stressed our interactions became. Still I kept hope that he would be willing to listen to opposing opinions  from someone who’s opinion he used to respect and thus I decided not to come out and condemn him openly until he took the first step to force my hand as I expected him to do, and as he proceeded to do. Instead of thinking why someone he used to read and agree with started arguing against his positions, he took the easier solution to consider that I must have somehow become stupid in the meantime and therefore not worth listening to.

In fact, this etiquette is what Larry seems to be severely lacking and something that he also deserves to be condemned for just as well. His reaction to people who express a different opinion is horrendous. He will accuse them of stupidity or “fucktardery” (to use his own words) at the drop of a hat and thus only manages to discourage and avoid dialogue. Is it no wonder why I consider such knee-jerk reactions counter-productive and do not follow them? And this is precisely the reason I now openly take the time and condemn Larry’s intolerant behavior. Because I wish to discourage it.

I don’t have any illusions that Larry will learn from this of course but he does serve as a great example of how not to act if you’re really looking for truth. Shutting down dialogue, especially when the other side is not being deliberately trollish or aggressive, is not in your interests as a freethinker. Larry may be too far gone with far too thin a skin to save but hopefully the rest of you aren’t.

For closing I am going to address Larry’s contention that he’s not a Maoist because he’s not explicitly said so. A claim so ridiculous on its face that I shouldn’t have to address anyway but I’ll do this just in case one can’t see it. Very much like Socialism or most other political theories do not apply via self-description, so does the opposite hold true as well: The lack of a self-described label does not automatically exclude one from the theory. Larry makes the fallacious reasoning that people are not a “Hitlerites” either simply for being vegetarians nonsmokers, missing the point that those factors do not a Nazi make. However someone who was intolerant to non-Aryan races and homosexuals and also an anti-semite would probably strongly point to Nazi-tendencies. Similarly, the Barefoot Bum’s promotion of governmental communism, his support and apologetics for various Maoist policies, his fawning over Bob Avakian and the RPCUSA and finally his intolerance for opposing opinion in a true Marxist-Leninist fashion, do point out that strong Maoist-tendencies certainly exist in his political orientation, even though he has not explicitly endorsed the whole theory.

If it walks like a duck and it looks like a duck but it hasn’t actually quacked yet to confirm it, you are still warranted to have a very strong suspicion that it is, in fact, a duck.

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The Propertarian Double Standard

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Kevin Carson in one quote expresses the reason why arguing with propertarians can be so frustrating, so often.

Bradoon
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From a reddit discussion I ended up discovering a post from Kevin Carson who expresses amazingly well the reason why I keep getting annoyed when discussing with propertarians of various forms. It’s the implicit double standard that is implied every time I’m accused of wanting to steal stuff, of having no respect for the capitalist’s “labour”, of being authoritarian. I’ll let Carson put it best.

Here’s an opposing case for you: Imagine I’m renting a house under a Lockean property system, and get permission to plant a garden on it. I invest a lot of effort in composting and green manuring, and even spend money on granite dust, greensand, rock phosphate and the like to improve the soil. When I get done with it, what was hardpan clay has been transformed into rich, black, friable soil. And when I cease renting, I lose the value of all the improvements I made. That’s the sort of thing that happens all the time under Lockeanism. But I suspect that Reisman would say that I made the improvements with my eyes open, and am entitled to no sympathy because I knew what the rules were. I certainly doubt that he’s shedding any tears over the invested labor that the South Central Farmers are in danger of losing.

The difference is, when it happens under the system he’s defending, it’s just life; when it happens under the system he’s demonizing, it’s an outrage.

And this here above is exactly the thing you get to hear all the goddamn time!

The wage-worker not keeping the full value of his labour or his labour not being enough to ensure his subsistence? That’s just life. A wannabe-capitalist not being able to extract a profit from his workers? Outrage!

A tenant-farmer’s labour not being enough to homestead the land he’s working on because a landlord has already a claim to it? That’s just life. Someone not being able to claim ownership on more land than he can possibly use himself? Outrage!

Capitalists requiring a special class of wealthy judges to interpret the “libertarian law” and a private defense complex to enforce them? That’s not a state, just life. Workers banding together and using means such as peer pressure and ostracism to enforce that nobody exploits and dominates anyone else? Outrage! Statism!

I could go on and on but you get the idea. It would be funny if it wasn’t depressing to have to argue against this so often.

This whole thing starts from the classic error of the propertarians taking their chosen system of ownership as given and a “natural law”. Once you start by assuming that Private Property is an objective rule set then it’s not difficult to jump to the conclusion that act that violates those rights is an outrage. The fact that it is not a violation when the whole system has been rejected simply does not cross one’s mind. It reminds me of some Liberal lawyers arguing that a violation of copyrights was wrong because it’s the law and not being able to grasp that we challenged the validity of the law in the first place.

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Mushrooms

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Photos from my mushrooms

One and a half month ago I went to my girlfriend’s village for a visit to her mother. A trip to the nearby forest alerted us to the existence of an insane amount of Mushrooms. These are the pictures we took.

We weren’t looking for just anything of course. Mostly we were looking for Steinpilze and their family. We ended up with a huge haul.

We’ve got enough of them to last us till spring at least 😀

This is certainly going to become a yearly event.

On First Principles

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“Anarcho”-Capitalist request LibSocs to state their first principles in order to understand their worldview. I explain why this is entirely to wrong question to ask.

Abstract Principles Taken to Their Logical Ext...
Image via Wikipedia

In a recent conversation with Facebook ” Anarcho”-Capitalists I’ve been asked to provide an explanation of my beliefs starting from “First Principles”. As my initial answer didn’t seem to be enough, the same question was later posted, once more, in a location I couldn’t access ((h/t @Noor for letting me know and posting the discussion somewhere public)). I think this deserves an explanation on why it is entirely the wrong kind of question to ask when trying to understand Libertarian Socialism.

The confusion I believe starts from the way the Propertarians start to build their worldview. From what I understand about this point (and of course, I may be wrong – but concise information on this is not easy to find online) they declare a few particular normative propositions as inviolable or “true”, call them axioms or “first principles” and then build their ethical system from there. There’s no clear agreement on this but the axiom of Self-Onwership seems to be the primary basis on which the ideology is built. There are others like the Non-Aggression principle (Also called Zero-Aggression principle. NAP or ZAP) which may follow from Self-Ownership or may be asserted standalone.

I won’t go into details on why those “first principles” are flawed at the moment (soon though). The point is to explain why such propertarians expect someone to state their first principles initially so that they may grasp the concept. They just can’t contemplate a different way to reach a social framework than by starting from such “axioms” and when Anarchists point out that we don’t have any, they are unable to compute, as can be seen from the quote (from the discussion I linked above)

The implication is that logic is optional. She’ll deny it, of course, and say that she’s just not doing logic in the way that the oppressive capitalists demand, but it still amounts the the notion that logic itself is seen as a kind of oppression. It’s a religion.

The obvious flaw in this reasoning is that it is asserted that those first principles are the result of pure logic and therefore impossible to be flawed (thus the label of “axiom”). Of course if one starts from this assumption it is understandable that when someone else denies the necessity of “axioms” to base a socioeconomic theory on, they can be seen as denying logic itself.  But this is merely begging the question.

And this is where the biggest problem lies in this perspective. Using scholasticism (i.e. pure logic) to understand reality has been discredited for a while now and empiricism and inductive reasoning took its place. No matter how perfect one’s logic can seem, it’s very likely that some small errors or wrong assumptions have entered into it at some point, therefore leading to the wholly wrong results. Without empiricism thus, it impossible to find logical errors as there is nothing to compare the results with.

Thus (many? most? Well me at least.) Libertarian Socialists reject this perspective in favour of what has been shown to actually work in understanding and predicting reality. Science and Materialism. Talking for myself here, I find no reason to start from a principle of self-ownership (even if it wasn’t inconsistent) when I have the far better option to start from a (meta?)ethical question: “What bring the best results for the maximum amount of people?”. Starting from this question and then using scientific knowledge (on how humans behave and how human societies tend to work) we can try to compile a socioeconomic system which will achieve this result.

Adding a “first principle” such as the NAP or self-ownership would thus only come into the picture if it followed from the original question. Looking at it this way, one could call the Anarchist opposition to hierarchy and authority as a sort of “first principle” but not in the same absolute way as the AnCap ones are asserted but simply as means to an end.

And this is in the end why it’s completely misguided to ask an Anarchist what their “first principles” are. The most likely answer would be “Why do I need them?” and this is a perfectly valid response. To preempt those who would express the sentiment that having “First Principles” is obvious: It is not. The burden of proof is on people who assert that such principles are necessary to prove why this is so. An argument from obviousness just does not cut it as it’s far from obvious to me and many others.

I get the impression that people who assert that such first principles are necessary, are those who saw them expressed somewhere and immediately latched onto them as something that made obvious sense. Yes, it may make obvious sense but this does not make it an absolute or an objective fact of reality. There’s always the chance that there’s holes in the reasoning, or it does not make sense in some contexts. What I’m trying to say that even if something is making sense, it still does not validate the concept of “first principle”. This is akin to saying that because the golden rule makes sense, the Christian god exists.  It simply does not follow.

It is similarly  flawed thus to accept only a different set of first principles in order to counter your own ideology. It’s like a Christian asking someone trying to explain evolution to him, to first state which other deity they assert instead of the Christian god. A perfectly valid answer to both questions is still “None.”

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The Barefoot Bum is just not interested

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The Barefoot Bum decided the best tactic to counter my criticisms would be to ban me from his blog. This is my parting shot.

And for your daily dose of internet drama…

I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while and finally now, after the Barefoot Bum re-re-re-…-re-opened his blog I’ve finally been banned from commenting on it in no uncertain terms. He’s “just not interested” in what I have to say. This is after I simply pointed out that his speculations on the historical rise of capitalism are off-base as he misrepresents a lot of historical factors such as subsistence farming or the causation for wage-labour and thus may/will reach the wrong conclusions.

I was implicitly threatened with a ban if I did not “provide evidence” to counter his lack of evidence and then my subsequent comments providing some sources and explaining in direct terms that he cannot assert something and then demand evidence to disprove it, were deleted (or left unapproved more likely). Shortly after, I was informed via email that my input was not appreciated.

And this pissed me off.

Why did the random email from some random blogger piss me off? Because for good or bad I’ve had a friendly history with this particular blogger and in my dismay I’ve watched him descent more and more into intolerance and elitism as time went on. I’ve seen him ban friends, foes or simply well-meaning people for uttering words of criticism with the laughable excuse that they’re not “a honest seeker of truth”. I’ve seen him deliberately crap on my efforts to help him and did not even get as much back as a consistent apology (only some half-arsed mumblings about “Technical issues”). Back then I did not express publicly my annoyance at the way he treated me as I was willing to give him the benefit of a doubt on behalf of our friendly history, but enough is enough.

The Barefoot Bum has become the example of a blogger you want to avoid.

And it’s sad, you know? He was the type of blogger that I enjoyed linking people to and asking for his input for my own ideas. He has the type of sharp thinking that can accurately criticize socioeconomic issues such as the capitalist mode of production and reach some interesting and digestible conclusions. But his growing intolerance to simply being wrong is just off the fucking scale. Oh he’s just wonderful when he’s arguing against theism where he knows he’s right. I’ve seen him accept the most rampart hostility from theists with a chuckle, but don’t you dare challenge his nascent political beliefs and especially don’t you dare challenge them from a socialist perspective. Or he’ll shut down his blog!..Again.

Did I mention I’m pissed? Just in case you forgot.

For someone who prides in his “honest search for truth”, TBB is ridiculously closed to listening to constructive criticism or facts which go against his ideology. And don’t you dare do so in his blog without evidence he’ll agree on. His comments are just for praises after all. And you have something critical to say, you’d better post it where he can safely ignore it (i.e. your own blog) and continue as if no objections have been made to his errors and distortions.

And you know what the funny thing is? This change of character happens to correlate very nicely with his turn towards Maoism of all things! It’s like a perfect example of how flawed ideologies lead to flawed results, not only in practice but apparently in character as well. The more he started getting turning towards authoritarianism and “glorious leadership” as valid sociopolitical concepts, the more his own character started representing the nasty effects these concepts breed. It’s like a practical example of how character corrupting these ideologies are.

In any case, there’s nothing left to salvage here. This bridge is well and truly burnt and not worth rebuilding without some big changes. I do hope to be proven wrong and see Larry rethink his position and actually start hunting for truth with an open mind once more, but I don’t bet on it at this point. It is also probably time to also unsubscribe from his blog as there’s no point in reading analysis starting from flawed premises from an author who stubbornly refuses to consider this possibility.

Goodbye Barefoot Bum. I’m certain you’ll sleep better with the knowledge that your ban earned you a prominent place along with Objectivists and liars. I wash my hands of you.

UPDATE: Hey look, he’s just noticed this post and his response was his usual arrogant bullshit avoiding any substance. No, much easier to call me unintelligent and declare I’m not worth arguing with. I guess only stupid people can possibly disagree with the Barefoot Bum since everyone who does is labelled as such. As for Maoism, well, read his latest posts and make your own conclusions.