[Lnc-business] Food for Thought

David Demarest dpdemarest at centurylink.net
Sun Sep 4 19:15:07 EDT 2016


Starchild, I agree. My dissertation below is a long-winded version of
exactly what you just said below - the smaller the better for all involved
directly or indirectly.

 

Thoughts?

 

Celebrate Life, Set the Bar High and LIVE FREE!

 

The Invisible Hand of Self-Interest is Mightier Than the Sword of
Government!

 

~David Pratt Demarest

http://www.lpne.org 

secretary at lpne.org <mailto:secretary at lpne.org> 

dpdemarest at centurylink.net <mailto:dpdemarest at centurylink.net>  

david.demarest at firstdata.com <mailto:david.demarest at firstdata.com>  

Cell: 402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

Office: 402-222-7207

 

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of
Starchild
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2016 5:34 PM
To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org
Cc: 'Kimberly Ruff' <kim.ruff2016 at gmail.com>; 'Michael Pickens'
<michaelpickens at lpwa.org>; 'Leigh LaChine' <Leigh.LaChine at LPAlabama.org>
Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] Food for Thought

 

            Thanks, David! Don't get me wrong, I still think Uber and other
large peer-to-peer technology firms are on balance a good thing. I just
think Lyft and other smaller ride-share companies are probably an even
better thing. The competition from smaller players also makes the bigger
players better.

 

            From a political perspective, I believe Libertarians benefit
from being seen as championing the underdogs, the little guy. But that's not
the reason we should be their champion. We should do it because it's the
right thing to do, because it's philosophically in accord with the
libertarian decentralist approach. Large concentrations of power tend to be
antithetical to the goal of empowering individuals, and it's hard to
maintain a society based on individual rights if individuals are not
empowered.

 

Love & Liberty,

                                  ((( starchild )))

At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee

                                (415) 625-FREE

 

 

On Sep 4, 2016, at 8:46 AM, David Demarest wrote:





Starchild,

 

I fully agree with your concerns about the size of large corporations
including Uber, although the "cut out the middleman" virtue of Uber
ameliorates some of my concerns about large peer-to-peer technology firms.

 

Thank you for planting the seed for the following article regarding the
virtues of voluntaryism and the evils of authoritarianism and
institutionalism.

 

Thoughts?

 

*******************************

 

Voluntaryism is a philosophical and political movement that seeks to counter
the evils of authoritarianism and institutionalism by bringing authority
down to the level of the individual. This article explores the relationship
between authoritarianism, institutionalism and voluntaryism.

 

Institutions represent an easy way out for those who surrender to the
temptation to abdicate personal responsibility for competitive productivity
in the free market in order to protect themselves and provide for their own
welfare. This temptation is exemplified by two types, those who escape the
responsibility for personal productivity by accepting the authority of
others over them and those who replace the responsibility for personal
productivity by assuming the mantle of authority over others.

 

Institutions come in all sizes and purported purposes. The major
institutions include governments, religions, criminal cartels, corporations
and labor unions. However, any joint action by more than one person can be
considered an institution. Institutions can have a number of morally
justifiable reasons to exist. Predictably, however, as the size of
institutions grow, they become increasingly vulnerable to the evils of
authoritarianism and self-subjugation that this article seeks to connect the
dots on.

 

The positive aspects of institutionalism are many. Institutions are an
extension of family values where a limited amount of authority is
appropriate to protect and nurture children as they learn and gradually
assume personal responsibility. Institutionalism also opens opportunities
for collaboration that can multiply productivity and leverage the potential
to build on the shoulders of others as we learn, increase institutional
knowledge and accomplish mutual goals. The virtues of institutions as the
size of institutions grow, however, diminish rapidly and are offset by
glaring failures that have tragic consequences for society.

Individual entrepreneurs are the antithesis of institutionalism and
authoritarianism. The fallout from individual entrepreneurs abdicating their
responsibilities is swift and certain - personal failure of their
entrepreneurial effort. Institutionalism and authoritarianism, however,
offer a tempting escape from the personal responsibilities and risks of
entrepreneurism. Unfortunately, that escape comes at a price. The downside
consequences of institutionalism and authoritarianism are numerous and
predictably result in less productivity, less personal satisfaction, less
self-esteem and the temptation to collude with other institutions to use
cronyism to offset competition from more productive smaller institutions and
individual entrepreneurs.

 

Institutional reliance on cronyism, exacerbated by our compulsory majority
rule made possible by our permission for government's coercive
aggressive-force monopoly, is destroying our way of life, and if unchecked
will lead to a predictable and tragic cyclic collapse of society. How can we
leverage the advantages but avoid the pitfalls of institutionalism and
authoritarianism?

 

The challenge we face is how to optimize the balance between size, personal
responsibility and the nature of the contract between institutional
partners. "Partners" is the key word. Institutions that rely on
authority-subjugation relationships are at a competitive disadvantage
compared to more productive flat hierarchy collaborative partnerships. In
terms of societal governance, voluntaryism is the epitome of broad-scale
relationships appropriate to those who choose to limit institutionalism and
authoritarianism to collaborative partnerships between individual private
contractor partners working together for mutual benefit.

 

************************************

 

Politicians are for TODAY - Entrepreneurs are for TOMORROW - Libertarian
Philosophers are for the AGES!

 

~David Pratt Demarest

Secretary, Nebraska Libertarian State Central Committee

Region 6 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (IA, IL, MN, MO, ND,
NE, WI)

Nebraska State Coordinator, LP Radical Caucus

DPDemarest at centurylink.net <mailto:DPDemarest at centurylink.net> 

David.Demarest at firstdata.com <mailto:David.Demarest at firstdata.com> 

Cell:      402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

Office: 402-222-7207

 

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of
Starchild
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2016 10:13 AM
To:  <mailto:lnc-business at hq.lp.org> lnc-business at hq.lp.org; Michael Pickens
< <mailto:michaelpickens at lpwa.org> michaelpickens at lpwa.org>; Patrick
McKnight < <mailto:patrick.joseph.mcknight at gmail.com>
patrick.joseph.mcknight at gmail.com>; Leigh LaChine <
<mailto:Leigh.LaChine at LPAlabama.org> Leigh.LaChine at LPAlabama.org>; Kimberly
Ruff < <mailto:kim.ruff2016 at gmail.com> kim.ruff2016 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] Food for Thought

 

            Great stuff David, thanks for sharing! Love the Arundhati Roy
quote - that is going into my quote file. And I'm with you on basically
everything else you say here.

 

            One piece of additional food for thought, though - and to the
extent it's a criticism, it's of myself as well, because I have often done
the same thing - It's generally to hold up the Ubers, the Airbnbs, and the
Googles of the world as our examples, because they are the big companies
with which we and others are most familiar.

 

            But we should consider that lots of voters focus on Clinton and
Trump for similar reasons! And the effect of doing so is similar in both
cases: It reinforces the dominance of the big players at the expense of the
little guys who are often more libertarian.

 

            The larger and more established a company is, the more likely on
average it is to be in collusion with the State and to exhibit other
un-libertarian characteristics. Of course there are exceptions, but as a
rule I think it's safe to say that smaller businesses tend to be more
pro-freedom in their business practices.

 

            How many small businesses, to use one example that's a pet peeve
of mine, make a practice of automatically recording your phone calls without
your consent when you call them up, and not even giving you direct access to
those recordings should you want to listen to them later? I have yet to
encounter a small, local business that does this. Conversely, it seems rare
these days to find a big corporation that doesn't violate your privacy in
this manner.

 

            Thus when talking about the sharing economy, I might try to cite
Lyft instead of Uber, Misterbnb instead of Airbnb, etc. There are likely
other even smaller competitors that would be even better to cite, if we take
the time to learn their names.

 

            Anyway, the idea of undercutting government with bottom-up,
voluntary, and peer-to-peer type solutions is definitely one we should keep
in mind as we develop goals and strategy.

 

Love & Liberty,

                                 ((( starchild )))

At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee

                              (415) 625-FREE

 

 

On Sep 3, 2016, at 6:13 AM, David Demarest wrote:






Food for thought:





"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music,
our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer
relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories." - Arundhati Roy

 

To paraphrase Arundhati Roy's inspiring quote: "Our strategy should be not
only to confront empire", we need to understand that when we limit ourselves
to a top-down legislative election strategy, the empire has the decided
advantage. A top-down strategy confines us to playing on their turf and the
empire is too good at it. Do we really want to become ruling authorities
too? No, that is what we are fighting against. But you say, how can we
defeat the evil empire if we do not get candidates elected?

 

Our best strategy to level the playing field and overcome the empire is to
undercut it. To bypass it. To circumvent it. To do an end run around it. To
delegitimize it. To make it irrelevant by taking back our empowering
responsibilities. We need to outperform the empire, not by relying solely on
a top-down election tactic, but by pursuing an even more powerful strategy,
the bottom-up approach. We must throw our moral support behind a voluntary
bottom-up grassroots entrepreneurial peaceful freedom revolution fueled by
peer-to-peer technology and peer-to-peer voluntary-society concepts.

 

Our bottom-up strategy starts with social media that cuts out the empire
middleman in the communication of ideas. Social media gives all of us the
freedom to digest unfiltered information and especially our young that will
become our future leaders. As we leverage social media, our peaceful
revolution will catch fire with peer-to-peer mobile apps like Uber that
thrive, no surprise, by also cutting out the empire middleman. The
peer-to-peer genie is already out of the bottle and the evil empire cannot
put it back in without the risk of strangling their ill-gotten source of
revenue. The authorities know they are damned if they do and damned if they
don't. The only strategy left to them is to ignore it and hope that it will
go away. We must not and will not let that happen.

 

We need to celebrate the "Uber-ites" among us, employ their powerful and
empowering keys to freedom and become independent peer-to-peer entrepreneurs
in our own right. Then and only then will we open the top-down door to elect
Libertarians at all levels of government that will quickly put themselves
out of business as they dismantle the empire.

 

As we hammer the empire with our bottom-up peer-to-peer fist, the specter of
authoritarianism will fade away into history with our shout of freedom
ringing in their ears: "May the peer-to-peer force be with you!" - David
Pratt Demarest, September 3, 2016

 

 

The War on Majority Rule Cronyism Begins NOW

 

~David Pratt Demarest

Secretary, Nebraska Libertarian State Central Committee

Region 6 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (IA, IL, MN, MO, ND,
NE, WI)

Nebraska State Coordinator, LP Radical Caucus

Cell:      402-981-6469

Home: 402-493-0873

Office: 402-222-7207

 

 

 

 

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