Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Today we’re joined by Gary Chartier of GaryChartier.net for a discussion about the life and work of Lysander Spooner. We talk about Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company, his abolitionist activism, and the development of his anarchist philosophy and his arguments against the state.
Watch this video on BitChute / LBRY / Minds.com / YouTube or Download the mp4
SHOW NOTES:
GaryChartier.net
Center for a Stateless Society
Is this where spoonerisms come from ?
“The human race is very clearly being domesticated by a vastly more intelligent species. ”
Can you say something more in support of this brainchild.
You mean like aliens? Vastly more intelligent?
Once upon a time people said: paper can withstand anything.
They didn’t know what is coming: WWW
AI today is very powerful tool, still far far away from being general and autonomous (AGI) like you are portraying. It’s a tool, still needs masterminds behind. Masterminds most probably are not one overarching cabal. At the end, AGI is just an idea, we don’t know is it possible to materialize.
Man, go fact-check yourself, you are full of bullshit.
” Your professed certainty is belied by your profane hostility.”
Is this the peak of your mental capacity??
Are you incapable of engaging in discussion and autistic scribbling is your max??
In previous commentary you said:
“The singularity is now in the past,…” now you said “We are at the inflection point of the Fourth Industrial Revolution …”.
This is contradictory.
Your scribbling reminds on politicians talk, many characters, low information, deception and lies.
“Millenia of cumulative human history, wisdom, culture and custom have been erased from human consciousness in a matter of weeks.”
People have been massaged for decades, Barneys has started new epoch, but looks you missed this part of history.
I’ve long appreciated this guy’s take on things:
Let’s take a moment to think about something fundamental. That is, what are we fundamentally admitting when we cry foul at draconian government intrusion upon the rights of life, liberty, association, and property in response to a virus that only has a 1-2% mortality rate, and poses no statistically significant risk to anyone under 21, and only a very minor risk to those between the ages of 21 – 65? What are we conceding when we declare that face masks do not actually work in preventing the spread of coronavirus and more than likely pose a substantial health risk for long term users due to cumulative oxygen deprivation, and the persistent taxing of the body’s cardiopulmonary functions?
Go ahead and take a moment to think about it. I’m sure you will get it, if you haven’t already…
Got it?
Of course you do.
What we are conceding, when we discuss the implied relationship between the numbers and the state’s response, is that the government has the fundamental right to use its coercive violent power to compel individual behavior in order to manage an individual’s risk. We are admitting that the individual does not have a natural right to decide for him or herself what risk to take or not take, or what levels of risk they have deemed acceptable for themselves in service to their own lives, but that, to some degree, inexorably, immutably, everyone must and shall be managed by state force.
“Mortality Rate or Tyranny Rate? Why All Covid-19 Numbers Favor State Power”
https://unreformingtheology.com/2020/08/02/mortality-rate-or-tyranny-rate-why-all-the-covid-19-numbers-virus-numbers-favor-state-power/
BUMP
That is a good read!
Explosion in Beirut
Various videos and reports
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-nuke-just-go-beirut-terrifying-mystery-blast-shockwave-filmed-over-lebanon
Big explosions often produce mushroom cloud, I don’t think it was nuke. But official narrative is very fishy.
What a moron would put 2700 tons, 1600 m3, of very dangerous stuff in the middle of the city and hold them there for several years. Things don’t add up in my opinion.
This one is crucial, ammonium nitrate is just oxidizer, in most cases it needs some sort of fuel for something destructive to happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters
This wikipedia article has already been edited and Beirut is added to the list. That’s really fast.
Past the 15 minute mark of Interview 589 – Gary Chartier on Lysander Spooner –
“The Life and Thought of Lysander Spooner”…
…there is the line…
“Political Authority doesn’t turn out to be valid on a Spoonerian view, unless people actually consent to it.”
There is a lot of “take-home” to that concept, which is certainly relevant in the Covid era of 2020.
Thanks, James. The body of work of all anarchists needs to be made public.
Because Spooner was against slavery on moral grounds, one can see he saw that we are not simply ‘little rational profit makers’ but human beings.
Spooner really was a social libertarian. Few libertarians can say this.
Where Spooner, Kropotsky, Bukharin and other anarchists fail is that they have no strategy, no program to get us to a higher stage of history and thus consciousness.
There are no strategies but strategies of interest.
This is unlike the anarcho syndicatists like the IWW who understood the severity of the struggle.
The first thing we all have to agree on is that state sponsored corporate capitalism is wrong. Morally and economically and socially.
Until we can overthrow the ruling global elite, if this is possible, then libertarianism of any sort will remain an illusion.
Spooner proved this.
He also proved that what the reactionaries call ‘activist judges’, those who wish to interpret the Constitution have little hope.
Marx too wanted the withering of the state. But Marx, unlike Spooner, understood that we live in a class society that cannot be overthrown until we organize and do it.
And thus he understood without an organized, in itself and for itself working coalition of anti-corporatists and workers, we will continue to experience the barbarism we see today.
Some thought about Spooner’s postal service.
The service is supposed to be seen as Spooner’s success, providing better service at lower cost that was at the end stifled by state power.
Well, depends how you look at it. Spooner provided limited service for few cities. Looking at the nature of business he had lower costs by definition, it’s way easier to operate postal service on short distances in populated areas by default. State postal service provided universal service, they delivered anywhere, therefore they had loses somewhere that were covered by profits from elsewhere. Yes, they overcharged their services, but that’s a different story, the one of abusing monopoly.
What I want to say is, here is a case of mixing apples and bananas, universal service and limited service.
Fundamental question is: What do we want?
I think universal postal service is necessary, although today with e-mail it doesn’t look like that. Free market cannot provide it without very high prices for remote areas in countryside.
The problem with monopoly is abuse of power, but dissolving it in some instances won’t solve the problem. Problem has to be solved by better control, funny, that goes for all crucial problems of today.
Trust is ok, but control is better.(Stalin) 😉
Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason” essays were the most instrumental readings in my transition from Constitutional conservative to anarchist.
His arguments against implied consent are flawless, as are his arguments against the legality and morality of the Constitution.
I think many of his writings should be required reading for anybody who wants to understand the illogic of Statism.