Karl

I'm not an anarchist, but a rational radical. I understand the requirement for a Government that deals with justice, force and prisons. I also accept that we would need to finance it. We don't need a Government healthcare system, education, welfare or all the other things in which the state has now inserted itself. They shouldn't be involved in commerce, marriage, births, banks, roads or any other kind of thing that isn't strictly to do with the objective rule of law and its enforcement. Payment would be a voluntary affair much like taking out insurance. Each person would pay a different contract rate determined by their particular requirements. Just as in the course of normal life, if you have nothing then your costs would be commensurate. If you were wealthy and had businesses then your costs woukd automatically be higher. Unlike some who want to lay out the exact system, I think it's better to begin the radical action prior to figuring out every detail. As things change and Government shrinks, there will no longer be a dependence on the state to provide services beyond justice and force. It isn't just a case of changing the political framework, but the entire philosophy must change. There will still be criminality, but not the legally protected large scale criminality we see operating openly today.

Which is why I no longer vote in elections. I support specific aims but not political parties. The less the Government does the better. I want them out of everything except in so far as maintaining an objective justice system with the force to back it up.

Those that share the same values and principles I do: Accepting the responsibility to form ones own judgement and to live by the work of ones own mind. Permitting no breach between between body and mind, between action and thought, between their lives and their convictions. To recognise that the unreal is unreal and has no value, that neither love, nor fame, nor money is a value if obtained by fraud. Who judges other men and is prepared to be judged in turn. A producer of material value be it goods, or services and one who is committed to achieving their own moral perfection.

I have no time for any of them. Left and Right it's all the same to me. They all want to control men by imposing their idealism.

Perfect. The undeserved rich get richer because the poor are voting to enable them. Unfortunately crime does pay when everyone has abandoned their moral codes.

If you insist :-/ "I am and therefore I ouch" is the correct orientation. Existence prior to consciousness.

Each individual on our Island. It generally splits into 3 active groups. Those who are looking for socialist utopia (communists) those wanting big business crony capitalism(Facists) and those wanting Liberty. As for the rest they really don't care one way or another, they will cry when someone takes away their biscuits and smile when they get them. The Liberty side of the Labour and Conservative parties realised the horrible compromise they were getting within the EU. They realised that freedom of mind (labour) and freedom of body (conservatives) could never occur under technocratic bureaucracy. That being in the EU was akin to living life under the auspices of an inhuman machine which didn't care about Liberty, only process, order and organisation. Unfortunately it falls down because men are not machines and those that run the vast bureaucracy are fallible men. Under any crisis the EU will prove aimless and incompetent, it is not unlike a giant county council of middling bureaucrats who can cope with a bit of road design or a town statue-not very well, but passably-told they must fight a war, or produce a space ship to cross the Galaxy. The reason the EU will never reform is that it is the home of the useless, the incompetent, the average. Those people have found a niche, as do those in Whitehall, in which they can hide their mediocrity and lack of independent productivity whilst being handsomely rewarded. They won't change because it doesn't serve them to change. Thus, over time, stagnation and corruption set in and eventually grind every bit of independence action out of the population through institutionalised hopelessness. You might rout an army, or overcome every problem in order to fly to Mars, but a bureaucracy will resist change far beyond the capacity of any one person or group has to enact it.

The biggest threat is the current philosophy which has taken us down the path to apathetic degenerative self destruction.

As reforming it would only be to make the way we wanted rather than every other country, I suggest that you are living on fantasy island. It isn't ever going to be reformed in the way we want it and 50 years of trying has resulted in nothing but some agreements that we don't have to follow every rule.

We haven't had free market economics since the beginning of the 20th century, it's close to being a complete Government/corporate hybrid (fascistic economics) amongst all the major players including the banks and monetary system. The right/left paradigm has long been a myth, it's really just degrees of serfdom. I'm cautious of calling 'libertarian' the opposite to serfdom because it has become infected with collectivist rot. There are two elites in Britain. One sees its future inside the EU, the other has become disenchanted with the progress been made and wants to leave. Most of us voting out know and recognise the realities, but, like Scotland, if we vote to leave my guess is that the current welfare system will come under increasing pressure and begin to break down. The Government will then be forced to cut spending and try to increase taxation. When that fails-as it will-they will have to begin looking at loosening the- in your words neo-liberal shackles- or risk collapse.

Facts ? Facts ? No one cares about those. It's safer to stay in and we have Daves 'cast iron guarantee' that we won't be going to get any closer to Europe (probably because moving a 1200 mile Long Island is an engineering nightmare). Anyway, if we leave, then non of us will ever be able to get into Europe again because it would be like a really, really bad kind of thing with a French Berlin Wall/maginot line, missile complexes and Europeans staring at us from the slits of concrete watch towers.

Did I say we shouldn't give the slightest fuck. No. I most specifically said the best way to correctly allocate resources-avoiding waste and unnecessary environmental damage-is by laissez faire capitalism and by a strong, objective law that prevents the initiation of violence (including the pollution, damage to persons and property). That means that we can continually innovate and compete, pricing in pollution damage where it is avoidable through the mechanism of law and removing waste/ damage created by Government policies that subsidise industries and agricultural activities of a type/geography where they should not be. To understand where I'm coming from requires an enormous amount of knowledge. Where you see things in silos I do not. I'm not a pragmatist and you are- most people are-they think they can manipulate a certain thing, tweak something, add a policy and it all turns out fine, and if it doesn't quite work out then tweak it again. People buy junk, but that's not a crime, they are told to buy junk 'cos the aim of life is hedonistic pleasure and junk promises hedonistic pleasure. Of course because 'we are all pragmatists now' and reason has been buried somewhere, then the pragmatic approach is to keep on buying junk until it gets the desired result. No need to worry about the cost of junk either because the government runs its printing presses overtime making credit so insanely cheap and easy that ectasy comes with a swipe of some plastic. It's not worth saving because there isn't any interest on savings and we are told saving is evil according to Keynesian doctrine, the good spend there way to heaven. Similarly businesses get cheap credit and use it to make the junk everyone is supposed to buy. You say there is a lot that we absolutely do not need to do. Yet you fail to say what that is or how you would achieve it. It's just pie in the sky dude. Nice words but sod all practical value. There are people the world over telling us what we should and shouldn't do and attempting to get Governments to force us into doing it. Well we tried that and it doesn't work. So let's have a go at liberty and Law. Let's get Governments out of the manipulation/subsidy business for good. Let's accept we won't get perfection, but that what we will achieve will be far better than our current failings. No doubt I haven't answered any of what you asked. :-/

The damage to what ? In order to survive we have to reap from the land, the sea and the sky. We cannot sustain our life by sitting on our backsides and refusing to damage anything. Nature is out to kill us, the planet is a ball of rock like a stone on which moss grows. The stone does not know or care about the moss, the planet is the same, it has no consciousness, it doesn't require any kind of any action but is it isn't alive. It's impossible to know whether we It is harmful in some way to kill a wasp, dig a hole to extract copper, drive a car, or explode atomic bombs. There is no way of knowing if we are harming our long term future or not. When you get up in the morning you perhaps switch on a kettle, or make some toast, the spread one some butter from the refrigerator. Do you need to weigh up every single item you have in terms of the harm it might have done to make it or use it ? How could several billion people decide what is in their long term interests of the the future of humanity when they live a maximum of 100 years and even successive generation only take them to 300 years. All we can care about is the present time, not some scary future of several millennia. Would you take all the cars off the roads, ban all ships and aircraft, stop power generation, ore extraction, oil extraction and refining, chemical use, fertiliser manufacture, close all hospitals, switch off the internet, stop sewage and water purification ? Everything is connected to everything else, it doesn't exist in a bubble. Every item in a hospital, or on a drug store shelf is the result of drilling, mining, blasting, pollution, energy generation, manufacture, oil, chemical production. Every industry that supplies the raw and finished materials has millions of employees and loads of plant. All the plant and equipment is interconnected with more people and more manufacturing and, everyone of those people require the products in that hospital and on the drug store shelf. All we can do is to allocate resources rationally to limit waste and unnecessary environmental damage. Only one option is available to do that and that is laissez faire capitalism and strong laws to discourage the initiation of force (which includes theft, pollution damage to property/health). Only the market can calculate what is needed, what is valuable and how to allocate those resources. No single man, no group of men, no committee of geniuses can do it, only the entire market working through price discovery has that ability.

Evolution happens regardless of there being a thinking mind. Plants have happily evolved as have viruses. There is evidence that trees did not begin shedding their leaves until the ice age. Some grasses have developed to take advantage of mans requirements for them.

Water is most definitely involved. Whether it was an ocean, locked in ice, or in the soil/rock. The true origin is the universe and the forces/material from which it is composed. The beginnings of life might have been floating around the universe for billions of years before taking root on our planet and developing to suit the continually changing conditions. There might even be a connection to that evolution predicated on the natural frequencies of the Earths electro magnetic fields.

I like to grant them their wish by becoming part of me. Can't beat a crispy sea bass or Turbot.

A mix of many I would think. We are born in water.

Not exactly. You are right about the period in which it began, but have omitted philosophy which dramatically changed with Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Dewey. It is the philosophy that has been neglected, it's like the hard code in a computer in the way everything else is processed. Everything has changed education, aesthetics, science, ethics, economics, politics all revolve around the central philosophic core of pragmatic subjectivism which stemmed from the factory system and the application of science to everything. This is where Marx appeared in a huge change from individualist subjectivism, to collective subjectivism. Since then we have been mired in the irrational.

We used to go to a dentist like that in Britain. He didn't deliberately cause pain, but was doing unnecessary work to claim the NHS fee for children's fillings.

I submit the Green Party manifesto as evidence https://www.greenparty.org.uk/policies-2010/2010manifesto-environment.html Rich people need to consume less (than poor people) ostensibly to reduce their 'carbon footprint' because we all know that carbon is evil because climate priests have been telling us it is. They used to tell us sex was unnatural thoughts too. Walking and cycling prioritised. Small, local farms, allotment schemes and coops encouraged. We have to do all this because it is 'destroying the environment'. Well, what precisely is the environment ? Isn't it all the features that are part of our environment ? Is it not the Rocky/metallic bulk of the planet, its constituent make up, atmosphere, oceans and life. Is not destroying our environment analogous to destroying the planet ? Greens do not make the distinction when the planet unwittingly pollutes itself. They talk big on protecting life, but they aren't too concerned about bugs, mosquitos, germs, virus, volcanoes, tidal waves, earthquakes, wild animals. These things are fine because they are 'natural' where as man is not. Man therefore must minimise his impact to that of an earthworm in order to save himself and his environment.

'nuff said :-)

Along with their thumbs.

Fascinating. It gives a sense of the chemistry which is part of the biological process.

I have a hankering for a fine, mellow, hand rolled cigar. It's a pity I can't afford one :-) Im shocked at the price of cigars these says . Almost £20 for a decent one :-0

I wondered why the Peruvian shaman was blowing cigarette smoke all over me.