[Lnc-business] Food for Thought

Sun Sep 4 11:53:32 EDT 2016

David you should submit that to the LPRC for publication

On Sunday, September 4, 2016, David Demarest <dpdemarest at centurylink.net>
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
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','DPDemarest at centurylink.net');>
>
> David.Demarest at firstdata.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','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
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org');>] *On
> Behalf Of *Starchild
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 03, 2016 10:13 AM
> *To:* lnc-business at hq.lp.org
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lnc-business at hq.lp.org');>; Michael Pickens
> <michaelpickens at lpwa.org
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','michaelpickens at lpwa.org');>>; Patrick
> McKnight <patrick.joseph.mcknight at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','patrick.joseph.mcknight at gmail.com');>>;
> Leigh LaChine <Leigh.LaChine at LPAlabama.org>; Kimberly Ruff <
> kim.ruff2016 at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
*In Liberty,*
*Caryn Ann Harlos*
Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona,
Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
<http://www.lpcolorado.org>
Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
<http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
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