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Anarchrepublimacracy (new government)

hey everyone. my name is mac and i am new to the site and i just wanted to jump right in the discussions and to make friends. anyways this discussion is about government. its in my experience and the government classes i have taken that all forms of government have their own problems. we all know the general reasons why an oligarchy and autocracy don't work, because of the loss of freedom given up to a dictator or small group of superior rulers making our decisions. communism and socialism don't work because we would give up all our freedom and choices just for the job and money security, which isnt what most people want. i also see problems with democracy because it allows people to control who wins and loses, and not be caught so easily. its very easy to not be a success in democracy, and nobody will help you out. its seems like one of the factors is the population. you cant expect people to agree with anything when the population is to high. the more people, the more unrest and disagreement between them. anarchy wouldnt work either because it leads right back to government, when someone says they can help you in a ruthless world, people will listen to them, without the thought that they are being used even though the person they put in control is trying to make a dictatorship. another thing is, we form our thoughts towards government around tradition and fear. (example) we see communism as the worst form of government ever, just because our grandparents didnt like it, which was a result from the fear that they will make technological advances faster than us, when communism is actually as effective as democracy, its just an acquired taste. i think one of the ways to improve our world will be to find a working government. what do you think?

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LJPermalink Reply by LJ on November 16, 2009 at 5:49pm
I think all governments work but for small groups of people. Now a days we have to many people under one form of government and they all have separate ideas and beliefs that would work with a different government.
Cody PasseyPermalink Reply by Cody Passey on January 19, 2010 at 9:21pm
Do you then believe that states should have more power or a federal force should have more sway?
lowkeyPermalink Reply by lowkey on November 16, 2009 at 6:27pm
You've stumbled onto a very important truth. All governments are bad.

Communism, socialism, & fascism are bad because they start from and maintain a high level of power & control over their people and never relinquish it.

Democracy, while it starts fairly benign, goes where the people take it. In the case of the US that meant away from strong states after the civil war and then progressively in a more fascist (not nazi) direction since about 1920. This has manifested itself in the desire for greater protections that the state offers the people but is most clearly seen in the freedoms & possessions taken (for example: the government is supposed to be there to protect the people from thieves and ends up taking 30% of every paycheck to do so).

So what we need to do is learn how to work & live together without using the GUN of the state to force others to live as we see fit. We need to learn to live without government.
Traveling ZachPermalink Reply by Traveling Zach on December 14, 2009 at 11:58am
its been a while since i've been on here, but you know i have to comment on this. both Communism and socialism don't start from a high level of power, and the main goal is to not have that power, you know that. Such is a grave misrepresentation of history...
lowkeyPermalink Reply by lowkey on December 14, 2009 at 8:04pm
It is not a misrepresentation but rather the stark truth about what the ideologies are in practice.

Socialism is government control of the resources and of the means of production. By definition it is about high levels of control which results in high levels of power for those that hold the reins.

Communism on the other hand claims to be about freeing man from the control of his fellow man but in reality is about the same type of power structure as Socialism. After all when you goal is to "take from those who can and give to those who need", someone or some group needs to decide who needs what and who can produce what. With the exception of the smallest communes, communism does not work without a vast power structure in place to dictate it's will to the people.

Now at least socialism is capable of being honest about it's methods & goals. On the other hand communism lies to the people that the current power structures are only their because the people fall short of the ideal required and it's the people's fault that they need to be held in check and disciplined.

Note: It's also bad form to accuse someone of misrepresentation (lying) and not provide any factual basis for that claim. If you truly believe I'm lying, then please prove me wrong, but I believe you'll find that history is on my side.
lincoln dyerPermalink Reply by lincoln dyer on February 12, 2010 at 11:59am
one may take this idea of the inherent evil of government still even further. i would argue that civilization is also inherently evil and the antithesis to the true natural order among our species. without civilization, there would be no need for government. the main functions of government is to allocate, preserve and protect resources and rights for its population, without large masses of people living in cities and in close proximity to each other there would be no government. further, it is unnatural for our species to be piled upon one another within small land bases. but, when we are piled upon one another, things tend to get confusing, so we need a third party (government) to delegate and dictate what we may and may not do. many of the issues surrounding urban areas, overcrowding, unemployment and crime are usually exponentially less in rural or unindustrialized areas. there are many examples to justify the validity of my argument, take for example any society of hunter gathers, native American or modern indigenous culture that haven't been touched by industrialism. they will always meet certain requirements, 1) they have no centralized government (normally a group of elders who are one with the tribe, not above the tribe) 2) all members are considered equal 3) the tend to smaller groupings, tribes normally consisting of no more than 50 or a hundred members 4) the are nomadic, never staying in one place for long periods 5) they have few laws, and since they have few laws or private property (food and shelter are equally shared, tribal communism), they really don't experience what we refer to as crime 6) since they have no crime, they have no need for courts, jails, or prisons (in fact early colonialists were astonished at the fact that native Americans didn't have prisons! and yet, they were still deemed "uncivilized savages").
so if today, we were nomadic, and lived in small groups, there would be absolutely no need for government. to require government you need large groups of people staying in one place, working, living and paying taxes. without those fundamental elements, government could not exist. furthermore, if we are to get at the root of the issue, we will need to identify the forces that organize people into large groups. one of these forces is religion. another is a centralized economy and the last is war. these are the 3 pillars that must be smashed if we are ever going to be free in the strictest sense of the word. so until we are able to honestly recognize the cause of our plight, identify the cause and eradicate it, we will be stuck in this perilous cycle of master and slave.

suggestions for reading:
the ascent of humanity by:Charles Eisenstein
end game by:derrick jensen
bury my heart at wounded knee by: dee brown
the philosophies of green anarchism and primitive anarchism
the unabomber manifesto by: ted kaczynski (alot of people don't know how intelligent this man was. his actions for fighting back were not the most honorable but his cause was completely just)
lincoln dyerPermalink Reply by lincoln dyer on February 12, 2010 at 12:33pm
have you ever wondered why no population has ever been happy with its government? there has not been one. why? because it is unnatural, illegitimate and nonsensical to believe that we can ever relinquish our individual sovereignty to a non physical and indiscriminate entity which is called "government" and be happy with it. we will never be content with any government. a government can never fulfill the human desires of peace, equality and balance, balance with ourselves and nature. by erecting government you automatically divide people, pitting them against one another, which is good for government and wealth creation, but not for those who desire peace, equality and balance. think about it. the native Americans lived on this continent for nearly 12000 years (or even longer) and they had the same social structure and purpose for that whole time. why? because it worked, they didn't wipe out entire races of people, as we do, they didn't deplete the earths resources as we have, they didn't pollute as we do. 12, 000 years they lived in relative peace and balance. think about it, we can learn much from the peoples that have come before us. they knew much more about peace, love and understanding than we do today. it saddens me greatly to think 80 million of these beautiful, loving people were slaughtered because of there simple ways. and this process continues today, the indigenous peoples of Palestine are being systematically exterminated, the piraha of south America are being slaughtered for their land as we speak, the simple indigenous people of Afghanistan are suffering horrible atrocities in the name of civilizing them just as the native Americans were. i believe if we truly want to live in peace, we need to question the very foundation on which we have built ourselves upon. this will take great effort and patience, but in time, it will have to be done or our race will cease to continue.
lowkeyPermalink Reply by lowkey on February 12, 2010 at 3:49pm
think about it. the native Americans lived on this continent for nearly 12000 years (or even longer) and they had the same social structure and purpose for that whole time. why? because it worked, they didn't wipe out entire races of people, as we do, they didn't deplete the earths resources as we have, they didn't pollute as we do. 12, 000 years they lived in relative peace and balance. think about it, we can learn much from the peoples that have come before us. they knew much more about peace, love and understanding than we do today. it saddens me greatly to think 80 million of these beautiful, loving people were slaughtered because of there simple ways.

While this is what has been traditionally taught in school, it is highly contested and many scholars no longer consider it to be correct.

Additionally it always seemed rather insulting and racist to me. It implies that there was no technological or societal development for the vast majority of the native history. Given that every other race has regular developments, it seems to say "primitive and stupid" Indians.

Plus it's fairly simple to show that the natives that we encountered when Europeans first colonized the Americas were not the entirety of what had existed.

When the Europeans first started colonizing and exploring, the distribution of the Native tribes can be divided like so:


However if you look at the distribution of language families, you get a distribution like this:


If the first map was an accurate portrait of the tribal distribution for 12,000 years then we would expect the language family map to pretty much overlay it with few discrepancies. However, that isn't what we see. What we is from the language roots is a very diverse picture.

So we have to ask ourselves, why did the distribution look like it did when we started exploring. The answer is disease. When Columbus and the first explorers just barely touched down on the continent, they left behind diseases that the natives had no defense against. These diseases spread like wildfire and killed off huge numbers of the native population. Far more that we ever realized.

For example, we can look at the city of Cahokia in the Mississippi valley (Source: Salon). It had a population of over 20 thousand people in the 12th century. For comparison, at the time London was about 15 thousand people.

And it's not just North America. Recent discoveries in the Amazon basin are showing that large cities and roads existed that we never realized were there (Source: MSNBC - 2003). They've found 19 cities, some connected by roads 165 ft wide (as large as a modern 4 lane highway), with settlements every 2-3 miles in a large grid.

So it appears that the truth is that native Americans were every bit as active developing & shaping their resources & environment to their desires & needs as the Europeans were. It's time to stop thinking of history through the rose-colored-glasses of European racial and cultural superiority.

Book: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus: Highly recommended.
lincoln dyerPermalink Reply by lincoln dyer on February 13, 2010 at 1:41pm
the origins of civilization are a mystery. it used to be a common belief that man existed in a nomadic state simply because no other reasonable opportunity presented itself. yet today many state "if we only would have kept moving, how much more simple life would be." still, we are lacking any solid scientific data as to why we settled, and ultimately all arguments as to its manifestation is doomed to end up in the realms of theory and speculation. let us observe one possibility, such a drastic change in environment. the eventual settling of native tribes could be explained within a theoretical framework put forth by lewis binford, professor of anthropology at the university of new mexico, he states, " evidence shows that there may have been melting of mile high glaciers around 15,000 years ago, which released enough water to raise the coastal plains 250-500 ft, resulting in vast numbers of fish and foul making use of the new environment." this theory could very well explain why some nomadic populations settled and others didn't. an abundance of food being available without seasonal migration is the most probable explanation for this phenomena. at any rate, the tribes that remained nomadic maintained stable populations, and this is an empirical fact, proven and validated by modern anthropological studies. studies of the bushmen of the african kalahari desert show that women living in nomadic bands move at least 6 times per year and have no more than 1 child every 4 to 5 years. comparing this against studies of settled bushmen show that rates of child birth are double that of nomadic women, averaging 8 children per woman.
(apparently the nomadic lifestyle has inherent mechanisms of controlling populations.)
similar results were found when the pariah indians of brazil were extensively studied.
upon close and careful examination, one will find, that the rise of population directly coincides with the rise of agriculture, and later the antecedent to civilization, the city.
the elements just given are no doubt related elements, and apparently show causal reciprocity. hopefully we can agree that there are two main arguments as to how and why this phenomena we call civilization manifested. the first being "voluntaristic" and the second "coercive". it is highly possible that both have validity to the topic of our discourse. i have more to add to this discussion, but i am on break and must return to selling a few hours of my life......
lincoln dyerPermalink Reply by lincoln dyer on February 14, 2010 at 9:13am
"native Americans were every bit as active developing & shaping their resources & environment to their desires & needs as the Europeans were"

first, there is a big difference between shaping your environment and exploiting it to the extent of degradation. most native American tribes were nomadic, meaning they moved at least 4 times per year. most native tribes numbered no more than 100 people, on average. technologically, they were in the stone age. knowing these facts, how could they possibly pollute their environment as the first industrialized nation? nomadic cultures must migrate with food, they keep moving, their numbers are thin, and their tools simple. they don't meet any requirements for creating lasting environmental degradation as Europe does. native Americans were deeply connected with the earth, they were of it, and they truly did their best to treat it well and give back to it. did you know, that if a tribe needed say a log, they would carry out a whole ritual to thank the log for helping them, and would do a symbolic offering to nature, thanking her for the log. this is the basic difference in world view between modern and ancient mind. the modern mind believes in the things you see, it is rational, logical and materialistic, the ancient mind is imaginative, magical, mystical and very spiritual.
the modern mind will exploit to no end, the ancient wishes to preserve.

however, the empires from the south (Aztec and Inca) we full fledged nations, in fact the incan empire was considered to be the most modern in function, having courts, aqueducts, centralized economy, a social security system etc....so it is very possible that native American culture would have been swallowed up eventually, if not by the early settlers than it would have been later, by the incan empire.

as for the discrepancies relating to tribal territories and the languages spoken in those territories, i think a multi origin framework may explain the manifestation of said phenomena. but, with any scientific investigation, one will experience unexplainable data and variables. hell, we don't even know how language in itself came into being. anyway, when trying to retrace the steps of those who came thousands of years before us, we are bound to end up in speculation and theory.

(note: there's a difference between complexity and specialization. nomadic cultures are highly complex in organization and structure but not specialized in any technical sense.)
lincoln dyerPermalink Reply by lincoln dyer on February 14, 2010 at 4:11pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact
here is a link to "pre Columbian trans Atlantic contacts", or expeditions to the north American continent that occurred before Columbus in 1492. when separate cultures come into contact, one of the first things to happen is the trading of technologies, art, and language. it is a popular belief among many native tribes and nations that people had been visiting this land for hundreds of years before 1492. but since the natives of this land kept no written records, only oral traditions, the western mind is inclined to write it off as myth or folklore. it seems logical to me, that if these encounters actually had taken place, there would be some sort of impression left upon the natives here. it is a natural tendency in human nature, to assimilate beliefs, ideas and cultural aspects onto ones own culture after being in contact with an outside culture. indeed this is how humans learn and create, always building off of the old to create something new. and this is what i am trying to achieve. what i desire is a new, sophisticated synthesis of ancient mind and modern mind, of nomadic tribalism (anarcho-primitivism) with the highly technical way of life (futurist). what this philosophy aims to do, is implement all of the beneficial aspects modern life such as, communication, automation, and some modes of transportation, and mesh them within a balanced, peaceful, and semi nomadic anarchistic framework. this is basically what jacques fresco is doing with the Venus project, and i think it is very intriguing. at any rate, these are very exciting times, we have many possibilities before us, we are growing everyday.
lowkeyPermalink Reply by lowkey on February 16, 2010 at 9:53am
Please read the book I suggested. If not it, then read up on current discoveries. (Perhaps the Salon article because it refutes many of your claims).

You are trying to push the old understanding of how life was in the Americans before European colonization.

first, there is a big difference between shaping your environment and exploiting it to the extent of degradation. most native American tribes were nomadic, meaning they moved at least 4 times per year. most native tribes numbered no more than 100 people, on average. technologically, they were in the stone age.

This is NOT true and it is not supported by the historical record.

Please read up on Cahokia. It was a city of over 20 thousand people. You cannot support a population that large with hunter-gather methods. It requires large scale farming. Which requires large scale control and shaping of your environment.

however, the empires from the south (Aztec and Inca) we full fledged nations, in fact the incan empire was considered to be the most modern in function, having courts, aqueducts, centralized economy, a social security system etc....so it is very possible that native American culture would have been swallowed up eventually, if not by the early settlers than it would have been later, by the incan empire.

OK, this understanding of Central and South America is flawed as well. 1) It doesn't mention any of the other competing cultures to the Incans & Aztecs. 2). It doesn't explain why the natural boundries that held them in check would suddenly be overcome. 3) It doesn't mention any of the previous cultures in either region that developed many of the technologies the Aztecs & Incas relied upon.

Please go read 1491, and the articles. There are amazing discoveries being made about the Americas. Our assumptions of a simple hunter-gather existence were for the most part wrong.

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