dyslexia and anarchism

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While it's true that over the years on my involvement on a2k I have become the village anarchist, originally as a derogatory label by several wingnuts from the right but also encouraged by meself. On another thread today I posted "all forms of government are pernicious" to which I got back responses re the folly of anarchism from both Asherman and Setanta. I offer herein my defense. I do believe that all forms of government are pernicious, it's the nature of the beast. Do I believe that chaos is the answer? no. What I believe is the answer is for the populace of a society exhibit extreme diligence in the preservation of individual liberty. That each and every law passed (and currently on the books) be evaluated as to their merit towards the common good, that the primary job of any legislative body from the village mayor to the national president be to prevent laws from being enacted that don't demonstate intrinsic values that enhance the common good over their limiting of personal freedoms. I support government regulation and enforcement of clean water laws while I abhore laws (for instance in Colorado) where it is illegal to buy or sell a boat on sundays. If my view is seen as anarchism so be it.

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Spawned a humungous lecture, didja?

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bm

Now that is a verycommon sense attitude, in my book! No complaints here! Some folk have a problem with your views, dys? Confused

I'm hoping for some interesting discussion on this thread.

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There is a guy by the name of Dave Neal that, I think, would say that your views make you a "small 'a' anarchist". aka a "methodological anarchist".

http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/practice/sp001689.html

Not sure that it'd be an exact fit though...

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yes fishin', frankly I prefer the term "philosophical anarchist"

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Re: dyslexia and anarchism

dyslexia wrote:

While it's true that over the years on my involvement on a2k I have become the village anarchist, originally as a derogatory label by several wingnuts from the right but also encouraged by meself. On another thread today I posted "all forms of government are pernicious" to which I got back responses re the folly of anarchism from both Asherman and Setanta. I offer herein my defense. I do believe that all forms of government are pernicious, it's the nature of the beast. Do I believe that chaos is the answer? no.

There's no reason to assume that chaos would exist in the absence of government. This is a false dilemma fallacy.

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What I believe is the answer is for the populace of a society exhibit extreme diligence in the preservation of individual liberty. That each and every law passed (and currently on the books) be evaluated as to their merit towards the common good, that the primary job of any legislative body from the village mayor to the national president be to prevent laws from being enacted that don't demonstate intrinsic values that enhance the common good over their limiting of personal freedoms. I support government regulation and enforcement of clean water laws while I abhore laws (for instance in Colorado) where it is illegal to buy or sell a boat on sundays. If my view is seen as anarchism so be it.

Congratulaions - you're a liberal. Not only is all of the above completely at odds with anarchism, it's also completely at odds with even the most tepid forms of libertarianism.

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How do the good things that government does, especially the things for which a large organization with power is needed to accomplish things that are worthy of accomplishment, fit in with this form of anarchism?

A couple of examples include the genome project, space exploration, public health and the Interstate system.

I agree with your idea of laws only for the common good. But I don't know if any laws -- even for the common good can be called anarchism.

I prefer the term progressive to that of anarchist.

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Here is what I said on the other thread today; very crisply too

Chumly wrote:

I always considered that the (perhaps naively & idealized) proper intent of government was to maximize the freedom of the individual through the maintenance of social order.

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Government discourages freethinking making us all teeth in gears of a machine going off a cliff. Large scale evil can only be accomplished government no matter what the ideology. Whenever you mention Anarchism. The well conditioned citizen will have the same response. Here is something I found on another website.

"Mass murder is not a natural state of affairs but rather one that must be organized and engineered by a central authority. From Mao Tse Tung to Pol Pot, only government powered by wayward ideology can compel it's citizens to obey such destructive dictates.

It takes a government to create mass starvation; look at Zimbabwe today under the guidance of the racist Marxist Robert Mugabe. Why do North Koreans eat grass and sell human flesh for food? It's not because they don't know how to farm, it's because food production is controlled by the central authority."

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Sad but true, although you can certainly have mass starvation without government, the point is made.

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ebrown_p wrote:

How do the good things that government does, especially the things for which a large organization with power is needed to accomplish things that are worthy of accomplishment, fit in with this form of anarchism?A couple of examples include the genome project, space exploration, public health and the Interstate system.

I don't see why fundamental research requires a government. People like to figure out things even if they are not employed to do it. In fact, early scientific research was often criminalized. For example, Rennaicance anatomists commited a crime every time they performed an autopsy. They still performed them, to the benefit of everyone who came after them. More recently, in 1905, Albert Einstein published three papers worthy of a Nobel Prize in 1905, while working in a day job unrelated to either. Even today, people pay to have tough problems invented for them to solve -- as just one example, consider the New York Times crossword puzzle. With all that in mind, I believe the Human Genome project could have been completed on private initiative -- possibly a few years later than it actually was.

Space exploration? Ditto. Galileo did not only discover the moons of Jupiter without research grants from the government -- he got into a shitload of trouble with the government when he published his discovery. This didn't deter him, nor did it deter his followers. Admittedly, private agents may not find space exploration worth the trouble at the level that NASA conducts it on. But neither do I as a citizen. I like NASA, but I don't see it as a compelling argument for having a government.

Public health system? Would be completely privatized in an anarchy. It would work for most, but people with serious chronical illnesses could not get insurance in an anarchy. I admit this is a good argument against my position (but of course there are good argument against any kind of government too.)

The interstate system? Could be built privately. Historically, several large road projects, such as the original Pennsylvania turnpike, actuylly were built privately. So were transcontinental railroads, where the main contribution of government was to donate land of little market value. (We are talking about feasibility, not morality, but I'll just note in passing that the land often wasn't the government's to donate in the first place because it belonged to Native Americans.

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For large collaborative projects that don't have the necessary economic incentive of short-term financial gain-- governments are very useful. Of course there are great accomplishments that have taken place that don't require this. But for certain projects government is indispensible.

The only way that projects like basic cancer research to take place is with public money. The reason for this is private money needs to have a reasonable amount of confidence of financial return on the investment within a definite period of time. Projects like basic cancer research, although unquestionably important, simply don't provide the economic incentive for private investment.

I would argue the Interstate highway system would be much worse if it were developed privately. The advantage of using public money (and government) is that this large project is then built without a financial return as the primary factor. Private highways could be built, but much less efficiently since presumably many private parties would be involved. Each would have her own financial interests at stake rather than building the most efficient system possible.

I am a software engineer;. Until recently I was working on a government grant to produce educational software.

In the private sector, education material is made by big textbook companies who have an incentive to produce stuff with less quality and effectiveness quickly. The result is lots of slick stuff that is easy to market but have no real effectiveness in the classroom (as shown by scientific studies)

Under a government grant, the pressure on us was to produce material based on research that would be proven effective by an independent study using real students. We were able to show quantitative gains in the classroom.

The research done by government grants does make it way into the public sector. But there is simply no incentive for this valuable research in the marketplace.

There is a clear, demonstrable benefit to this type of government program.

Of course, government has its costs. The question is whether the ability to do large collaborative work.is worth them.

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So, I said "all forms are government are pernicious" resulted in a dialogue of the merits of anarchism. My complaint is valid.

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As I understand the subject (and that can sometimes be doubtful) Dys believes all government is pernicious, but that doesn't mean he would have all government programs abolished. Government should be for the people and its focus should be limited to health, education and welfare. If that means large programs to help those with mental retardation, those living in poverty, children who deserve the best possible education (with more people doing the work E_BrownP is doing), for example, then government is doing its job.

To me, the pernicious part comes in when government starts to add laws that are not limited to the good of society in general. Pork barrel add-ons seem to be an inevitable part of government that take away from the general welfare. We have all seen idealistic politicians move to Washington and become entangled in those little extras that lead to corruption. It is inevitable and it is pernicious.

Although Dys didn't mean for this to become a thread on the definition of anarchy and the inevitable ensuing argument about which dictionary is technically corrct, it might be helpful to look at Noam Chomsky's definiton, taken from the link provided by fishin,' which points out that anarchy isn't meant to rise up against all forms of government, but to keep it from becoming so powerful that our freedoms are eroded.

Quote:

Noam Chomsky put the methodological view of anarchism best when he said that he saw anarchism as the historical tendency of people to rise up against illegitimate authority.

To me, it comes down to the reality that government, while needed for the welfare of society, is pernicious and it needs constant oversight.

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I did not make any claim that anarchy is folly, nor did i respond to Dys with any "humungous lecture." I simply commented that anarchy would be the most pernicious of all, and then referred to Hobbes' description of a "war of all against all."

In Leviathan, and extended thought experiment on the rise of government from the natural condition, Thomas Hobbes wrote of bellum omnium contra omnes, a war of all against all. In this thought experiment, Hobbes is attempting to get at what it is in the natural condition of man which leads to a social contract. Regarding "life in a state of nature," he states:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Hobbes is surmising that social contracts arise from the need to arm oneself to resist the more powerful other, and the greed to take from the individually prosperous what the group can obtain by force majeure.

Therefore, i simply refer to anarchy as that state of nature, that state of perpetual individual war to which Hobbes refers. I did not refer to it as folly, and Dys willfully mischaracterizes what i did write. I believe, more or less for the reasons which Hobbes examines in Leviathan, that anarchy is a social vacuum, as much abhorred by nature as is a physical vacuum. In a true and completely anarchical condition, those who can by force or the threat of force, take what they want from others, will likely do so or attempt to do so. In very short order, at the very least, vigilante government will arise as groups band together to resist force majeure, or to employ it to their own ends. I do not consider that anarchy can long endure.

I also don't for a moment consider Dys to be truly an anarchist, and especially not in light of the silly basis which he elucidated in his opening post.

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Thomas wrote:

Space exploration? Ditto. Galileo did not only discover the moons of Jupiter without research grants from the government -- he got into a shitload of trouble with the government when he published his discovery.

This is an utterly false statement--and it is very much to the point of this discussion in the context of Thomas' remarks that i point that out.

Galileo was in the employ of the Venetian Republic to study optics for the specific purpose of developing more powerful telescopes with the best possible resolution, their intent being to use them for commercial purposes. Anyone who could determine the identity of ships on the Adriatic Sea at a distance was in a position to quickly exploit market conditions before said ships arrived with a cargo. The Doges of the Venetian Republic quite intelligently recognized that allowing Galileo lattitude in his studies, beyond simply specifying optics and telescopes, worked to their advantage, without regard for what interest motivated Galileo--he was supported in very grand style, living the life of a member of the nobility at the expense of the Republic. It is completely false to suggest that his research was a private venture, which was not subscribed by a government.

Galileo fell afoul of the Papacy when he entered the territory which the Papacy then controlled in Italy, in the Tuscan region. Many people in Venetian territory had warned him that he must not venture into reach of Papal authority, and he ignored them. Knowing their bird well, the Papal authorities did not simply require that he "recant" his heretical statements, they kept him in close arrest, in a house in Tuscany, to assure that he would not fly again to Venetian territory and repudiate his recantation.

Don't make sh!t up, Thomas.

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The following is from an online biography of Galileo Galilei, which can be found here (and which lists the author's sources):

In 1591 Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo's father, died and since Galileo was the eldest son he had to provide financial support for the rest of the family and in particular have the necessary financial means to provide dowries for his two younger sisters. Being professor of mathematics at Pisa was not well paid, so Galileo looked for a more lucrative post. With strong recommendations from Guidobaldo del Monte, Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Padua (the university of the Republic of Venice) in 1592 at a salary of three times what he had received at Pisa. On 7 December 1592 he gave his inaugural lecture and began a period of eighteen years at the university, years which he later described as the happiest of his life. At Padua his duties were mainly to teach Euclid's geometry and standard (geocentric) astronomy to medical students, who would need to know some astronomy in order to make use of astrology in their medical practice. However, Galileo argued against Aristotle's view of astronomy and natural philosophy in three public lectures he gave in connection with the appearance of a New Star (now known as 'Kepler's supernova') in 1604. The belief at this time was that of Aristotle, namely that all changes in the heavens had to occur in the lunar region close to the Earth, the realm of the fixed stars being permanent. Galileo used parallax arguments to prove that the New Star could not be close to the Earth. In a personal letter written to Kepler in 1598, Galileo had stated that he was a Copernican (believer in the theories of Copernicus). However, no public sign of this belief was to appear until many years later.

At Padua, Galileo began a long term relationship with Maria Gamba, who was from Venice, but they did not marry perhaps because Galileo felt his financial situation was not good enough. In 1600 their first child Virginia was born, followed by a second daughter Livia in the following year. In 1606 their son Vincenzo was born.

We mentioned above an error in Galileo's theory of motion as he set it out in De Motu around 1590. He was quite mistaken in his belief that the force acting on a body was the relative difference between its specific gravity and that of the substance through which it moved. Galileo wrote to his friend Paolo Sarpi, a fine mathematician who was consultor to the Venetian government, in 1604 and it is clear from his letter that by this time he had realised his mistake. In fact he had returned to work on the theory of motion in 1602 and over the following two years, through his study of inclined planes and the pendulum, he had formulated the correct law of falling bodies and had worked out that a projectile follows a parabolic path. However, these famous results would not be published for another 35 years.

In May 1609, Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius) in April 1610:-

About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while other denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction.

From these reports, and using his own technical skills as a mathematician and as a craftsman, Galileo began to make a series of telescopes whose optical performance was much better than that of the Dutch instrument. His first telescope was made from available lenses and gave a magnification of about four times. To improve on this Galileo learned how to grind and polish his own lenses and by August 1609 he had an instrument with a magnification of around eight or nine. Galileo immediately saw the commercial and military applications of his telescope (which he called a perspicillum) for ships at sea. He kept Sarpi informed of his progress and Sarpi arranged a demonstration for the Venetian Senate. They were very impressed and, in return for a large increase in his salary, Galileo gave the sole rights for the manufacture of telescopes to the Venetian Senate. It seems a particularly good move on his part since he must have known that such rights were meaningless, particularly since he always acknowledged that the telescope was not his invention!

By the end of 1609 Galileo had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries.

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ebrown_p wrote:

I am a software engineer;. Until recently I was working on a government grant to produce educational software.

In the private sector, education material is made by big textbook companies who have an incentive to produce stuff with less quality and effectiveness quickly. The result is lots of slick stuff that is easy to market but have no real effectiveness in the classroom (as shown by scientific studies)

Is this how you'd describe Kernighan-Richie, or Knuth's TeX-Book, or his Art of Computer Programming? Brooks's Mythical Man Month ? If so, you must be a very unusual Software Engineer,

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Setanta wrote:

Thomas wrote:
Space exploration? Ditto. Galileo did not only discover the moons of Jupiter without research grants from the government -- he got into a shitload of trouble with the government when he published his discovery.

This is an utterly false statement--and it is very much to the point of this discussion in the context of Thomas' remarks that i point that out.

While the source you cite is as inconsistent with your account of the relevant history as it is with mine, and while it clearly states that the "specific purpose" of Galileo's job was teaching Euclidean geometry and Ptolemaic astronomy, but not developing telescopes, I admit I was wrong to say Galileo got into a shitload of trouble with the government for publishing his results and his interpretation of them. The trouble he got in was with the Catholic church. (And with the Aristoteleians at his university, which your source doesn't mention but Stillman Drake's biography does.)

Mea culpa.

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Sorry I wasn't clear Thomas. There is an economic incentive educational material for software Engineers (who are quite profitable now with disposible income on their own).

I was working on educational material for K-12 public schools. Kids in general, and their parents don't have the resources to develop the material that is needed. In the private market you get textbooks, which are out of date and research shows they are ineffective. The money for slick expensive new textbooks are made for specific markets-- like "Of People and Pandas" for the Creationists.

Government isn't needed in every area... there are many areas that the private sector can handle quite well.

But there are other areas where the private sector will fail miserably. In these areas government is indispensible.
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Public education is a great example. Providing a public education to children in your society is a clear benefit for all involved.

The private sector is not a very good model to provide education at a national level as there is no short-term individual market for it. Private solutions tend to provide education that benefits a small proportion of society in a focussed limited way.

The benefit of public, government sponsored education is clear... both from a theoretical and a practical level. The success of public education is indisputable-- societies that have a good public education system thrive, those that don't flounder.

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Another need for government is civil rights (you got to at least give me credit for having the balls to go here).

Of course, governments have often encouraged and facilitated civil rights abuses.... but anarchy would be at least as bad.

The structure of Government is necessary to have the chance for civil rights.

Take slavery for example.

Slavery can, and has, thrived in any form of government. Overcoming slavery took government action (with the prodding of individual citizens). Civil rights wasn't possible with individual action or even local government. It took federal troops.

How do you end slavery in an anarchy?

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dyslexia and anarchism

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