What can we do to survive in the current foul year of 2013? What are the realistic possibilities that we can explore in this current, foul year? What are our options? What is the best form of government, democracy, anarchy, or monarchy?
00:00:00.000You know, one question that keeps coming up in the comments section is, what exactly are your political beliefs?
00:00:13.000Are you anarcho-capitalist? Are you a monarchist? Are you libertarian? Are you Republican? Are you a neocon? Are you anti-natalist? Are you...
00:01:35.000And the important thing about the right is, unlike the left, the left has something they agree upon.
00:01:45.000They have the end of history in their minds.
00:01:48.000They have this mechanical god that they worship that is, oh, there's a little bit of debate over what portion of feminism, and which portion of GLBT, and which portion of multinationalism, and so on and so forth.
00:03:32.000And on some level, every society has had democratic organizations.
00:03:37.000Democracy, in the functional level, is absolutely self-evident.
00:03:42.000That if you have a group of individuals, and you all want to figure out what you're doing that night, you vote on what you're going to do that night.
00:03:51.000That form of democracy has been omnipresent in every society.
00:03:58.000Even monarchy, even theocracy has democratic aspects to it.
00:04:05.000But what happens when you raise that functional mechanism of governance to the point of governance?
00:04:22.000And in fact, every libertarian and every fascist reformation to democracy has involved taking the absolute franchise and restricting it.
00:04:37.000The best example of this is probably Heinlein.
00:04:40.000In Starship Troopers, he wants to select for social responsibility.
00:04:47.000In his science fiction novel, the book, not the movie, the selective pressure is that you have to have served the state in a particular type of function before you get to vote.
00:05:03.000Now, the most obvious form is the infantry, is the military.
00:05:07.000But in the book, he also opens it up to a variety of other forms of service.
00:05:12.000He even mentions that if a retarded man wants to get the vote, wants to serve the country, they'll have him go test spacesuits on Pluto.
00:05:22.000With the implication that, in reality, they're going to be a little bit nicer to the retarded man.
00:05:27.000That's just the scary, dangerous risk thing that they try and keep him away with.
00:05:33.000You know, you don't want the right to vote.
00:05:35.000You don't want the franchise a bit too scary for you.
00:05:38.000Just be a good, little, obedient citizen.
00:05:40.000But those that actually want the franchise, those that want to participate, get to be involved.
00:05:46.000That was his solution for limiting the franchise.
00:05:51.000The old American solution was property.
00:06:21.000There's always going to be that voice on the margin.
00:06:23.000That voice that has $500 less property than is needed to vote.
00:06:29.000There's going to be that person doing a public service that is dangerous, but isn't recognized as worthy of the vote.
00:06:36.000That's going to be lobbying for their right to vote.
00:06:40.000That limited franchise is inevitably going to expand and expand and expand until it encompasses everybody in the society.
00:06:52.000Currently in the United States, we're watching the last expansion where it goes not just to every citizen, but even to every non-citizen where they're legally allowed to vote.
00:07:05.000And you wind up with the horrors of democracy, which I've discussed at length and I'm sure you're all well aware of.
00:09:34.000And some of them have quite a bit of wealth and a large number of firearms.
00:09:36.000And some of them have quite a bit of wealth and a large number of firearms.
00:09:47.000Anarcho-capitalism is a beautiful concept that would possibly work quite well with a whole bunch of educated, literate scholars upon Mars.
00:09:59.900But in the world we find ourselves in is a pipe dream.
00:10:08.500It's a pipe dream worth studying, worth understanding, worth figuring out why this is such a great system and why we'd all love living in it.