[nucklepunche]

I am interested to know where you all see my ideology as being at this point, after my recent ideological transition. This will be sort of both an ideological "manifesto" and a description of my ideal state.

PHILOSOPHICAL VOLUNTARYISM

I consider myself to be a "philosophical voluntaryist." I dislike the term "anarchism" because to me it has become a loaded term with historical context. It is not inherently bad, but it is hard to discuss it without conjuring up images of bomb throwing extremists who favor violence for political change, which I do not. It is simply a statement that individuals have no inherent moral right to initiate force against any person. and that people have no inherent moral responsibility to obey. This does not mean that they should disobey unjust laws as a practical matter, because it could lead to violence and repression in society, it simply means as a moral proposition I believe an unjust law is morally nothing more than words on a piece of paper. Let me say I think it is good idea to obey most laws, even unjust ones, while hoping for their abolition. The only exception to this is where basic rights that could be used to advocate against unjust laws, such as freedom of speech, were violated.

MONARCHY

In my ideal state there would be a constitutional monarchy with strictly limited powers, primarily delegated to defense and maintainance of social order. It would not be a "constitutional monarchy" In the UK sense where the monarchy is merely symbolic, nor would it be like Saudi Arabia, but something similar to Lichtenstein. The monarch would have veto power over the legislature, although the legislature could punish the monarch if it he went outside his strictly prescribed bounds, a sort of check and balance.

To me the theoretical ideal of the hereditary state is that the monarch has an incentive to uphold the state for future generations and avoid looting the public treasury. Also it prevents the rise of demagogues and other "men on a white horse." A monarchy can indeed be authoritarian, however I think authoritarian populist movements like national socialism and authoritarian communism have done the most damage over the years in terms of body count, which rank in the tens of millions over the 20th century.

TAXATION

My ideal taxation would all be voluntary or based on user fees. Examples include voluntary contributions to government, lotteries, tolls, service fees for government services, etc. In theory I believe it is possible to sustain a state with limited powers (but not a welfare state) based entirely on voluntary taxation. I also theoretically support a Georgist "Land Value Tax" because I do not view it as a tax per se, but a rent on land use. I believe philosophically that land is fundamentally something we occupy, but ultimately it should be seen as an intergenerational resource, the common inheritance of man. This is why I don't think an LVT necessarily violates my principles.

In the meantime I generally believe the simplest, flattest taxes possible are ideal.

MILITARY

I like the Swiss approach best, which says that they will basically destroy their entire infrastructure if attacked and pretty much eliminate any reason anybody would even want to occupy Switzerland. The one bad feature of the Swiss system is involuntary militia service for males, which although I view it as less of a burden than traditional conscription into the total institution of the military, is still a form of light involuntary servitude. I believe reducing militarism and the number of military personnel via technology is key, and I am interested in civil defense as an alternative to militaristic posturing. I favor strategic missile defense as a precaution against nuclear attack.

ECONOMY

I'm not sure what I think. I generally oppose most government intervention in the economy in forms of confiscatory taxation and regulation. That being said I believe crony capitalism is a major problem, and we should attack it first, before we try to cut welfare. I believe that if corporations were forced to follow the same rules as everybody else and not grant priviliges from government, and avoid rent seeking etc. we would still have some large corporations, but they would not be as powerful as they are now.

Ideally, I support voluntary forms of distributism and cooperativism, however I reject any government use of force to achieve these ends unless it is found that the original property was aquired unjustly. This would obviously be more of a factor in a third world society than a first world.

BANKING

I tend to support free banking. I am not a supporter of the gold standard per se, but I generally like the idea of "competing standards" for currency, which would I think lead to people eventually settling on the best one.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

I generally support limits to excessive crime and punishment. I oppose all laws pertaining to victimless crimes such as drugs by definition, in fact I believe in a future society where such laws are abolished those convicted of victimless crimes in the past could justly claim monetary compensation from the state.

As a general rule I believe the focus of criminal justice ought to be to keep people held until they are no longer threats to society. I oppose capital punishment for the reason that it cannot be reversed as is too easy to make a mistake. In fact I even oppose life imprisonment without parole. As a general rule I believe that the maximum punishment in a legal system ought to be 20 years to life for murder, meaning they serve minimum 20 years and then come up for parole, so in theory the most dangerous could be held for life. My rationale behind this is I believe some people get caught up in a bad crowd at a young age and genuinely become rehabilitated, but are prevented from ever being released due to the laws of the land. Obviously hardcore mass murderers would never be rehabilitated.

When it comes to things like theft I think I favor something like a form of restitution where you have to pay back a certain multiplier how how much you stole, for instance if you steal 100 dollars you have to pay back the owner 500 dollars. I am not sure what a fair multiplier is, but I think it could prevent theft as easily as prison.

As a general rule I am also open to things like ostracism and banishments as alternatives to traditional prison or capital punishment.

IMMIGRATION

I am generally opposed to most excessive immigration controls, or criminalizing immigration. I think something like allowing communities an immigration tariff is a better way of preventing excessive population growth than is putting people in detention centers.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL STATES

As a general rule I think the smaller the geographic area an individual government controls the better. I would much rather live in a world with a patchwork of small governments than one with a few big, or even one big one. I think that this allows people to more freely move around and try different forms of government and to avoid warfare. In theory smaller regions could band together if a remaining large state somehow declared war on them.

As a general rule I believe in voluntary secession, in other words people could legitimately secede from larger states without any recourse to violent revolution of any sort if they elected to do so. I am not sure what the smallest level of government possible is, but I think as a general rule if you receive services from the community you are under its domain. In theory a small compound of people or one individual person living off grid could compose an entire state, but my ideal form of government is probably one that would govern a small region, maybe a cluster of communities or a single one.

My ideal world would be one where there were thousands of states like Monaco, Lichtenstein, and others like it. In theory I view monarchy as a sort of "privatized state" that could also be extra-territorial, and purchase land outside of its domain. In theory the citizens of it could pay a rent to be defended by the king, like a form of libertarian feudalism.

[Rei Murasame]

I know I'm not going to be the only person to point this out to you, but you are now moving into reactionary and regressive territory so austere that you and Daniel Hannan might be the only people in the world holding those positions. But you are actually more regressive than even he is, since he's still a modern person!

You've slid a long way, any further and you might be going back in time, and end up looking like Lord Wemyss or Lord Russell circa 1880s. This is not a good thing, by the way. People like Wemyss and Russell brought massive suffering to millions of working people.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

In the meantime I generally believe the simplest, flattest taxes possible are ideal.

How is regressive taxation ideal for a society? Any form of taxation which is flat is disproportionate against the working class. How is that ideal?

The one bad feature of the Swiss system is involuntary militia service for males, which although I view it as less of a burden than traditional conscription into the total institution of the military, is still a form of light involuntary servitude.

This is due to Switzerland's size and population by comparison to its central location in the midst of traditionally great European powers. A land locked nation like Switzerland which uses a siege doctrine of warfare and was traditionally surrounded by France, Germany, Austria/Austro-Hungary, Italy, and so forth would need a system in place to allow for rapid mobilization. This may come as a surprise to you, but war isn't pleasant and sometimes a nation needs to mobilize as many of its military-eligible population as it can. All members of a military, whether they were volunteers or not, are required to follow orders, live where the military says they can live, and so on. You might also be surprised to know that the US has an "involuntary service" system in place. Since you say you are American, and list yourself as a "student", then undoubtedly you are within the draft system and could be conscripted into service if the need arose, just like the Swiss draft system would do.

I generally oppose most government intervention in the economy in forms of confiscatory taxation and regulation. That being said I believe crony capitalism is a major problem, and we should attack it first, before we try to cut welfare. I believe that if corporations were forced to follow the same rules as everybody else and not grant priviliges from government, and avoid rent seeking etc. we would still have some large corporations, but they would not be as powerful as they are now.

This doesn't make sense. You say you want to cut corporate taxes and reduce business regulations, and yet you think corporations would then become less powerful and less influential in government?

before we try to cut welfare

What does this mean? Are you talking about social security, medicare, food stamps, supplemental income, unemployment insurance? Have you thought about the social unrest and mass riots that would ensue as a result?

I am interested to know where you all see my ideology as being at this point, after my recent ideological transition.

Hopefully, as you continue to grow and mature as a young adult you continue to develop your viewpoints and try to take the perspectives and experiences of others, including the downtrodden, the poor, the working class, the homeless, and people with less opportunities into account.

As Rei has pointed out, your views are extremely reactionary.

[Rei Murasame]

In fact, now that I think about it more, isn't it ironic in an 'imagery' way, that American libertarians and their fellow travellers end up looking so much like the more whiggish members of the British aristocracy looked in the late 1800s? I mean, you would think that would be the precise thing that they would not want to look like, but they seem happy to emulate it completely. I must ask whether it comes complete with the Irish famine, Indian famine, and the destruction of parts of Scotland all over again. Does it come with the package?

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

In fact, now that I think about it more, isn't it ironic in an 'imagery' way, that American libertarians and their fellow travellers end up looking so much like the more whiggish members of the British aristocracy looked in the late 1800s? I mean, you would think that would be the precise thing that they would not want to look like, but they seem happy to emulate it completely. I must ask whether it comes complete with the Irish famine, Indian famine, and the destruction of parts of Scotland all over again. Does it come with the package?

Of course. It also comes with a complementary copy of The Jungle.

[Rei Murasame]

Yeah. It's very uncool.

Long story short, we are advising you to strongly reconsider everything, Nucklepunche, because this place that you are in, is a place that everyone has just spent about 250 years trying desperately by every method to escape from. And now you are re-offering it as a salvation package.

[nucklepunche]

I don't see how my views are necessarily reactionary, is it now reactionary to oppose laws against victimless crimes and favor abolition of the death penalty, and indeed, even life imprisonment?

Is it reactionary to advocate for market socialism and voluntary communalism?

Is it reactionary to support redistribution of unjustly acquired property, in other words property acquired via cronyism and theft? Is it reactionary to support massive land reform in the third world?

As a matter of fact, I consider my ideology to be libertarian collectivism, I seek to strengthen community bonds via radical localism. I reject Ayn Rand style objectivism, corporate privilege, intellectual property laws etc. I believe that a massive state leads to a reduction in community and to an atomization, wherein people rely on the state rather than each other. I believe this is part of the problem of western society, in that humans are naturally tribal but we have become atomized by modern society.

[Rich]

MONARCHY

In my ideal state there would be a constitutional monarchy with strictly limited powers, primarily delegated to defense and maintainance of social order. It would not be a "constitutional monarchy" In the UK sense where the monarchy is merely symbolic, nor would it be like Saudi Arabia, but something similar to Lichtenstein. The monarch would have veto power over the legislature, although the legislature could punish the monarch if it he went outside his strictly prescribed bounds, a sort of check and balance.

To me the theoretical ideal of the hereditary state is that the monarch has an incentive to uphold the state for future generations and avoid looting the public treasury. Also it prevents the rise of demagogues and other "men on a white horse." A monarchy can indeed be authoritarian, however I think authoritarian populist movements like national socialism and authoritarian communism have done the most damage over the years in terms of body count, which rank in the tens of millions over the 20th century.

Ah sort of like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings?

Your ideology is classic Tolkienist. Tolkien's works are the Conservative's third Testament. What's so great about Tolkien is that there's something for every Conservative and for a Conservative's every mood. There's the Libertarian Republican Anarchic Shire and Aragorn's noblesse oblige feudal, monarchy. Sam's Rustic provincialism, but Frodo's Cosmopolitanism. Hobbitish materialism, Elven mysticism. There's racism against Blacks's and Slavs (Easterners), but also a critique of prejudice and small mindedness. There's the genocidal extermination and clearly implied final solution of the orcs, but the idea that all people can naturally live in peaceful harmony. The Hobbits represent empiriacist English "decency" while Anduin, an upside down Rhine and Gondor represent idealist Germancist supremacism. Tolkien the most brazen of liars essentially admits that he's lifted it from Wagner and at other times completely denies it. The Ringwraiths, Saruman and Sauron represent paranoid anti Semitism, while the Schizophrenic Tolkien loved to parade his semitophilism. Tolkien was a Nordist and a rejecter our Jewish heritage but at the same time a loyal and orthodox Catholic.

I love the way that Conservatives expect us to take their idyll fantasies seriously. Really you're ideas about Monarchy are absurd. I don't just mean they are wrong. King Charles' Royalists may have been wrong, but at least they were relevant and credible for their time. I'd like to be world dictator, I'd like a state funded Hareem. I'd like guaranteed sunshine on bank Holidays but I have the curtsey not to put my idle whims forward as a serious ideology.

Politics high or low, everyday or epochal, in peacetime or in war is a nasty, petty, hypocritical, dishonourable and corrupt game and will remain so.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I don't see how my views are necessarily reactionary

Not all of your views are reactionary. These ones you've expressed here, however, are:

- Introduction of a monarchy with powers of authority
- Regressive taxation
- Abolition of welfare
- Opposition to corporate taxation/corporate regulations
- Neo-Feudalism

The last one is a quote from you about your ideal of city states being a form of feudalism. However, surely, if you sit down to think about it, limiting government regulation on corporations and allowing communities and entities to break away and form their own laws and fiefdoms would lead to the kind of insane neo-feudalist society libertarians want to bring back into existence.

The other thing that struck me was your desire to harm the working class and the poor. Not only do you want a form of taxation that would place the burden of taxation on the poor and the working class, you think it's actually ideal. Your own wording: ideal. You don't appear to have considered the social ramifications of getting rid of welfare programs, among the ones I listed in a previous post, nor the reasons why those programs exist in the first place.

You have asked what anyone thinks about your views:

I am interested to know where you all see my ideology as being

You are clearly a neo-feudalist with no compassion or humanity for people who are not wealthy and well-off.

[fuser]

Sometimes I think a socialist revolution in US will materialize because of libertarian reaction. A proletarian US state rising up on the corpse of failed and horrifying libertarian experiment.

[Heisenberg]

I know what you mean, fuser. I've often thought that far-leftists would be better off voting for libertarian candidates as a result.

[Beren]

Sometimes I think a socialist revolution in US will materialize because of libertarian reaction. A proletarian US state rising up on the corpse of failed and horrifying libertarian experiment.

It will rather happen due to ongoing Latin Americanisation of the country.

I know what you mean, fuser. I've often thought that far-leftists would be better off voting for libertarian candidates as a result.

You should have rather voted for Romney then, as he could have been a right-wing presidential candidate in any Latin American country too and could lead the country to the limits of still bearable social tensions. Voting for libertarians or Tea Party candidates could be a good choice, if you wanted to help the Democrats.

[Heisenberg]

You should have rather voted for Romney then, as he could have been a right-wing presidential candidate in any Latin American country too and could lead the country to the limits of still bearable social tensions. Voting for libertarians or Tea Party candidates could be a good choice, if you wanted to help the Democrats.

Oh, all of this silly American stuff is none of my business, and I'm not really much of a leftist, in all honesty. I just think that nothing would ignite "class consciousness" like a particularly insane Tea Party government putting the boot in.

[Rich]

I'd like to know whether people agree with this but I feel ancient Rome is the best example we have of Libertarianism. Given the size and wealth of the Roman polity in the late Republic, I think it can be considered fairly Minarchist. Private fire services and the like. And Republican Rome led inexorably to the Empire though Marius, Julius Caesar, Augustus and others.

Big Corporations like Microsoft, Apple Google and big oil need a legitimate government to resolve their disputes. And at least in the West modern adult suffrage Democracy is really the only system that can give that legitimacy as far as I can see.