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Today on The Corbett Report, Lionel of LionelMedia.com is put on trial for his blasphemy against the statist sacrament of voting. We also discuss a recent video in which Lionel embraces the idea of anarchism.
I don’t know about your town, but in my town the roads are built by a contracting company. I never see cranes being rigged or asphalt being poured by state workers. So we already know “who will build the roads” – it will be the companies who always built the roads, under contract to the local municipalities.
Since government has seen fit to outsource more and more of the services we imagine to be their domain (including the military, in many cases), what purpose, then, does the government serve, except as an expensive middle manager? If this were a corporation and I were hired to cut costs, this is the layer I’d be looking to cut first; the bloated intermediate layer between the identification of needs and the execution of solutions.
The identification of needs – that’s what we have to figure out how to do differently. How does a diverse population get things done that benefit the largest number with available resources? You and I by ourselves can’t afford to hire a paving company to resurface our street, and there are many streets in town that need to be resurfaced – maybe ours isn’t as bad as some, maybe other streets get more traffic and deserve attention first. How do we pool resources to hire the work done, and decide which projects have priority? Assuming some state of anarchy, we still have to come up with systems to achieve these goals.
Many of you have read more than I about alternative methods – maybe some can weigh in with suggestions? Maybe my thinking is still inside the box…
I guess my main point wasn’t about roads, specifically – more about how we proceed to meet the needs of the people in a re-imagined future without the present structures. If we live in a voluntary society, how do we generate a pool of funds to accomplish any public works projects? Some folks will donate to help fix a road, others might not care. If only 30% of the people on my block contribute to the project, will that be enough? If so, do we allow the 70% who didn’t contribute to drive on our nicely-paved street? I’m stuck in the compulsory-tax box, and can’t see how voluntary society can get anything significant done. Help me out, please (remember, I’m using the street as a metaphor for ANY public-works project).
Name anytime since the colonization of America when it supposedly wasn’t corrupt…and you will be sadly disappointed.
Good point on the boorish loud and insensitive neighbor. Although it’s a violation of the spirit of voluntaryism to “regulate, educate, or eradicate” such a person against his will, his violation is similar, in that his choice is negating the needs of others in his vicinity, against their will, for peace and quiet.
Normally we deal with this sort of intrusion by shutting the windows or some other passive mode of avoidance until the perp relents, but in some cases, the perp will continue behaving this way on a regular basis to the extent that we have to deal with him face-on and formally request his respect. When he is unreasonable and/or unrepentant and continues past this point, our last refuge is calling the “authorities” out to enforce some consideration upon him.
In a society without such authorities, what is our mode of defense against people of little or no conscience? Note that, as a reasonable person with loads of conscience, I have no problem with showing my neighbors consideration – as a lifelong drummer and guitarist, I have let my neighbors know wherever I lived that they can request peace from me whenever they need it, and I will always postpone my practice when such a request is made. But there are people out there much less reasonable than I, who will persist in behavior which negatively impacts people around them for a variety of internal justifications. How does voluntaryism deal with these conflicts?
I’m just 18 minutes in, but James made me thought of something here as a fellow Canadian (and dear god did you see that, the PCP was thrown of power in Alberta after 43 years..I’mma gonna say in my still nihilist/hedonist self that still would like to see real, real social-democracy implemented. It couldn’t in Europe after WW2. just like it couldn’t during Hitler’s Reign…all from the will of our one and only Queen Elizabeth who I think I’m going to die before she’s taken off “our” 20 dollar bills (always the heir of the throne on those. In truth the center of all that’s totally backwards in thinking, rejection of love for hate for an unknown foreign other…(although, in our microcosms, one can have been rejected so much etc. we know the drill..
I’m gonna finish my segue here, if Alberta is now an Orange Party, Camada ,might as well have their first NDP government ever (we always 3 to 5 parties, an interesting one died in the 70’s, but anyway, Alberta, the wall (wotj Manitoba and electronic voting fraud proven in Ontario where counties that never voted conservative, since the country was “born” in 1867. The robocall scandals and the Labdrador guy too, and in Quebec, they try to destroy Quebec seperatism (they being the corporo-military-mercantile complex, buying radio stations in droves in the Quebec City region to turn everyone into a self-hating Québécois who always talks shit against their neighbors etc., you know the drill here too.
In October, Canada might have an actual meaningful election, NDP is still strong, Liberals have climbed the worst pits of anglo-saxon “noblesse” dictated democracy and with the son of Trudeau coming of age…although, Mulcair will destroy him during question time, like he does with Harper every single time Harper bother to shows up to work (not often). Even the BQ is gaining back some ground in surveys, but you know how our kind of “democracy is”, last time BQ got 23% of votes and went from 54 to 4 voted. So, I imagine either Harper in a very thin minority rule where he can’t do anything, like for most of his first 5 years, thanks Gaia. Now my main point regarding that, the NDP higher ups convened, most likely something Jack Layton if alive would have never agreed to, being from Montreal, he just could not remove all references to “socialism” from the party’s Constitution.
How the heck of a stupid is that?! Now they’re just left-light, like when the very long reign of Trudeau (2 of em) and Chrétien, which means to me, what is the relevance of the Liberal Party of Canada anymore, Trudeau cannot even explain a cogent explanation of what Liberalism is, other than it is not a “Negative” and “under the belt” way of doing politics. So basically it can be any ideology as long as you don’t use the tactics the Conservative Party paid Karl Rove circle types to help them in their third election in 3 years in 2011, he was so sick of elections, he did try to break their rule, and actually render Elections Canada powerless against fraud in the future.
The NDP or the Liberals, or a coalition of both (a first in Canada, never did we have a coaliation, but its in the talks) will have to use political calomony of the same kind of the conservatives while doing whats right and reversing C-51 and other antconstitutional laws in the back, if we were to see a real beneficial party it would act this way, keep the charade in the media, but actually keep busy repairing countries that are not so hard to repair as it comes to Canada…..the Charter of Rights And Freedoms which is Amended to the Constitution in Permanence rules over all other law, no matter what, Harper, Mckay, Baird, Blaney and these frightening just by their appearance people, the kind i knew as a kid were bad people and did not want to talk to at school for fuck’s sake.
In another order of manner, Michael Cherftoff (Russian for the “of the devil) is certainly powerful and wealthy.
Brilliant stuff!
It would be fascinating to hear from Corbett Report fans what their epiphanies were – how, where, why, when…
My epiphany was buying the Canadian(from Winnipeg) Anarchist Vegan Punk band Propagandhi’s second album, which was ironically named “Less Talk, More Rock”, to make fun of people who were yelling to them to “fucking play” when Chris (singer) was explaining was this song was about at great length from their earlier albums. Well the albums has 14 songs and lasts 21 minutes, the insert with the lyrics contained way much more than lyrics and was full of info regarding politics, animal rights, economics and how each dollar you use is a vote, atheism, gay rights, racism being a dominant factor in local and foreign policy etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekPMjumGU8g Here’s a not very aggressive song from theirs (included are lyrics)
It’s interesting since Chris Hannah is a military child, his dad being a very high level Canadian Army Officer (don’t know his rank, it’s Air Force anyway). I wish I could find a lyrical video of every song in this album and link them here but that’d be overkill, but it touches so many things close to my heart. Still follow them a good…wow 19 years later..gonna wait for the 20th anniversary edition, heh, that was before they left an indie label that was still working in a classic capitalist way while their own label worked out of the wonderful canadian idea straight out of Winnipeg, Old Market Autonomous Zone, which is unique in North America afaik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Market_Autonomous_Zone.
From then on, the bad moments outpaced the good ones, but I still cherish every good moment I have down here.
I had to drop this one more, no publicity or anything, but this song still gives me shudders down the spine (the good kind), the music is perfect, for me, and all of you and hopefully James will check it out, the lyrics are so urgently true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oW3xeZHiAU
I hear tax rates in Quebec and California are the same…around 52% in income tax if you make more than the poverty line of…58 000 dollars, a number carefully chosen back in the 90’s because so many families got by (with one parent working) with around 60k a year.
I actually do get many services though, but there’s still ridiculous taxes like the school tax, when I don’t have any kids, gotta pay it anyway, every semester to keep those hmm…hard to translate in english “Commission Scolaires”, basically a government body (elected but with pitiful rates of 10% of people participating) that is the boss of a group of school in a selected region. I remember that I had regular exams, “comissions scolaires exams” and Ministry exams, those were always at the end of the year.
Anyways, right now i’m on partial disability, the psychiatrist just refuses to sign me a 1 year disability where I’d get something that makes sense (1200 a month…let me tell ya that cost of living is extremely low here, we got that at least). Nope I get 6 months reassessments of my physical condition which took so many doctors to visit, specialists too, neurologists, that it brought in me an anxiety issue because I kept thinking nobody would help me, they all thought I was crazy etc.
Well, now with 2 severe diagnosis, plus the money I accumulated while I worked on my “health insurance” (more an insurance in case of disease like I got, also pays for the few pills im willing to take, which took more time to finish up than the government bureaucracy strangely, maybe because it’s from a credit union’s insurance dept, they don’t have the funds of big banks but are much more friendly (in many senses). How can you not have trash pick ups? Our austeriy loving mayor already moved them to just every 2 weeks, same with recycling trucks, so of course, it was good for the rubber industry, had to buy more of those large green garbage bins with wheels.
Right now the government though still helps me. I guess richer people would say they are taxed with a gun to their head, but there’s plenty of easy ways to avoid paying income tax, a famous psychiatrist who’s also a media personality does it this way, nothing is in his name, it’s like if he owned nothing, everything he owns is really owned by his family, so if I get back to working my rather well paid job (paint factory chemist), I’ll be thinking about that one hah. I’m aware its very different in other countries or even canadian provinces, since provinces have way more rights than american states, especially my own, for historical reasons, James would know why.
But when I paid taxes, where I knew maybe only 20% at that would go at helping out my fellow citizen and not the full 52%, due to all the obvious ones, like you know, fraud, people who send their taxable revenues to tax havens that loan money to terrorists of all kinds…and I don’t pay them, here only the US, if you have the money, they will take it automatically from the account you have associated with them, and if you cheat them using other banks, well the other banks themselves will give you up. And then there’s prison time for sure. Not directly at the barrel of a gun. But if we go back to municipal services, where corruption is at its lesser levels (proven here anyway), I don’t feel raped out of my yearly municipal taxes, of course right now I don’t pay any taxes, but for that to happen you have to be a shadow of your former self and even then..seeing the right doctors can be a challenge, since the governments we had since 2003 most priority is fighting that fallacious impossible to repay at all “public debt”. It’s impossible to repay, so don’t pay back at all, but then the penalties we’d be subject to..just as a province, because each province here has a revenue ministry so…a province can be toyed with, like we are now….you’re the most social-democrat entity in North America with maybe a few new england states (funny how its contagious to the south), you’re gonna have to replicate europe with that austerity shit (nowhere near european levels, but the new PM we got since last year likes to think so.
And to think the guy is a neurosurgeon, he’s surely extremely intelligent, surely enough to know this debt game is a joke and we should not even bother with our so-called “creditors” who really take US the people at the barrel of a gun to pay taxes for NOTHING (in part).
Very interesting and entertaining interview. Thank you both!
BTW I’d also IMHO recommend watching the Étienne Chouard’s conference Is Democracy a bait? about the core historical and systemic frauds that are elections, representative governments, etc. And other interesting alternative systems and solutions.
Hi James,
What do you think of the fact Jeff Berwick is running as a libertarian in Vancouver. He calls himself a anarcho-capitalist, which is in my opinion a contradiction because Anarchy means that everybody’s equal and capitalism is the exploitation of others.
You know, there was a time when people did not assume it’s incumbent on them to fix the whole world. For example, 19th century American settlers in wagon trains heading west: I’d wager they weren’t much worried about who would build the roads, pay for policing, so forth. They were doing what seemed best for them and family, day to day, helping each other out of necessity. They had to be “help-full” to expect to receive help when the shoe was on the other foot, as it was sure to be.
If I materialized from 2015 and asked them, “What about all the people who don’t have the level of skills or self sufficiency you might have? What about those who aren’t capable of traveling by wagon and will have to wait for the railroad? How are you going to construct a distribution of services to make sure they have their needs satisfied? Surely you have all this worked out to every jot and tittle before embarking on this venture…right?” They would assume I’m “teched in th’ haid”. Many of them weren’t even going to survive the trip West, and they knew it.
I’m PREPARING to take care of myself and those I’m responsible for in case government ceases to function for whatever reason. To live without a grid and food and water distribution, at least for several months. If during that period it becomes apparent that food and water distribution isn’t coming back, I have land and access to resources sufficient to raise enough food for survival. For ME and those I’m responsible for, no one else.
If my neighbors have also prepared, and they want to cooperate and mutually contribute for the benefit of all, I’ll be there with bells on and bend over backwards to help. Do more than my share, gladly.
If not, I’ll still be OK.
Just as it’s not my responsibility to “fix” the current system by political activism and voting, it’s also not my responsibility to fix the future for everyone other than me.
If everyone were to get it through their head no ultimately no one is responsible for their future but they themselves, then the future fixes itself almost regardless of the contingency. If not, consequences for the willfully unprepared and non-contributing are unavoidable. (you won’t be in a position to contribute very much if you’re not prepared and/or have a much-needed skill, is how it will work)
You say you live in urbania, have never planted a seed or held a gun, you have a tiny efficiency kitchen with never more than a two-day supply of food on hand, so forth? If societal gears grind to a halt, you’re screwed and there’s NOTHING I or anyone can do about it. Learn basic skills and at least have a rural place to bug out to, and be quick on the trigger about bugging out. Really want to beat the rush in that kind of situation. You can always bug back in if it’s a false alarm.
Yes, living prepared is a disturbing, expensive, pain in the ass. Tell me about it.
As far as how would things eventually be worked out in terms of a functioning anarchy – the lead-in I’ve described will have harshly selected out those who won’t or can’t contribute. It will be a much smaller population, and those remaining will be highly motivated, or else they wouldn’t be at all.
Life. It’s hard.