The Political Thread

[TordelBack]

If you fell out of the sky, naked and injured, in any part of the world, I think that there's a much higher chance of the local people helping you rather than eating or just arbitrarily murdering you. If you fell out of the sky, naked and injured, into the hands of a government or authority, the chances of you being hurt rise dramatically.

Very interesting thought experiment that.  I can't quite weigh all the variables here, and while my instincts are to agree with you I do wonder.

And apologies to NapalmKev for my snitty remarks re: cannabilism.  It's one of my (many) hobby-horses, and I was in a belligerent mood. A quick episode of The Thick of It soon sorted me the f**k out.

[The Legendary Shark]

Well, I'm a human and I know lots of other humans and so I have a pretty good idea how humans think. If I, or the majority of people I know, happened upon somebody naked and injured then chances are that we'd help. And in the end it really isn't a question of what other people do (thinking that way is one of the reasons we're in this mess) but a question of what You do.
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I am a firm believer in individual people and their ability to make rational and compassionate choices for themselves. This is not to say that individual people don't make mistakes or perform selfish and destructive acts, some people always will, but the damage a single person's mistakes or crimes can do are insignificant next to the damage done by the crimes and mistakes of authority.
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On the other hand, the good done by individual people vastly outweighs any good done by authority. When was the last time authority helped someone change a flat tyre in the midnight rain? When was the last time authority gave someone who needed it a hug? When was the last time authority held a shop door open for someone? When was the last time authority set a broken bone?
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Authority is like God - some mystical thing that lives above us in an invisible, unassailable realm of magic, whose Will is Law and whose Power is Absolute. The high priests of Authority live in the Great Temple at Westminster and decipher and enact the Will of Authority on our behalf because the rest of us peasants couldn't possibly understand the will and wisdom of the Great Authority God, nor are any of us permitted to wield its power. If we want something (to drive, to live in a house, to travel abroad, to work, to not work, to marry, to fish, to open a business, etc., etc., etc.) then we must pray to the Authority God, and sacrifice a portion of our wealth to its priests, and hope that our prayers are answered.
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Anyway, back to our naked injured guy. Let's make the morality of it a little more clear cut: The naked injured guy has been found at the side of a remote road near a remote village at night in a blizzard by a local farmer who bundled him into the back of his tractor and took him to the local nurse's house because the 'phones are all out. When the guy comes around he's perfectly pleasant, thankful and no trouble at all. At some point you'll ask him who he is and what happened to him and he says, "I don't want to tell you that. I don't want to talk about it." You might think that's odd or frustrating or just rude but, so long as he acts in a decent manner, you don't mind helping him out for a couple of days until he gets back on his feet and moves on, never to be seen or heard from again.
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Imagine, now, the same injured naked guy picked up by Authority. He'd probably still be rescued from the snow, put into an ambulance and whisked off to hospital. When he recovers he's the same decent guy but, when the police ask the same questions and receive the same reply, the wheels come off. This is because Authority does not ask questions, Authority demands answers. If those answers are not forthcoming, Authority will try to trick, bully or torture them out. Our mystery injured guy, if he wishes to maintain his right to personal privacy, is apt to find himself forcibly incarcerated for "obstructing a police investigation" or some other such nonsense.
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People good, authority bad. Just ask E.T.

[TordelBack]

I'm definitely not denying the altruism of the average person, and I think we've all experienced (milder) examples of the scenarios you describe and can attest to their inherent truth. 

However, I wonder if what you're looking at is the different roles individuals and 'authorities' play, and at the same time playing down the fact that authority is of necessity made up of individuals, who do the hugging and the door-opening separate and in addition to their authority roles.  In the naked stranger scenario, where do the nurse and hospital and the tractor come from?  Who is providing technical education and regulating medical training, how is the tractor manufactured and fueled, how are all these fruits of the modern world achieved without some form of organising framework, and how does that framework operate without some form of authority?  Certainly the whole scenario depends on the decent farmer and the committed nurse, but there are other equally important elements there too which are difficult to explain without another level of organisaton.

Incidentally, in the E.T. analogy our man is already sick and dying because of his too-long separation from his spacefaring collective.  The US authorities really do nothing to exacerbate the situation, and are actively if fruitlessly trying to save both Elliot and E.T., and learn what they can about an alien lifeform, which is at worst a different type of good.  It's really only the kids' perception of the interference of the adult world that makes them seem like baddies.

[The Legendary Shark]

Excellent questions.
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The tractor comes from a factory, the nurse was trained at a school. The tractor factory and the school were all manned by individual people co-operating willingly towards a mutual goal - useful tractors and competent nurses.
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Authority knows nothing about manufacturing tractors or training nurses but, to each of these endeavours, it brings only two things - orders (legislation, curriculum, policies) and violence.
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Consider Authority's role in financing these two endeavours. Authority, through taxes and licensing, offers both the factory and the school grants so long as they meet certain legislative standards. Both factory and school need these grants to survive and are glad of them. What neither factory owner nor head teacher want to face is the fact that their grant money is stolen money which has been conned, cheated or just plain stolen (in some areas even at gunpoint) out of the 'electorate'.
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There are many ways to fund factories and schools that don't rely on extortion and many ways to regulate businesses that don't rely on force.
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For example, let's say that the factory owner decided that he wasn't going to pay for mandatory government safety inspections any more but instead agreed to show anyone who was interested around the factory - customers, prospective employees and their families, journalists - anyone and everyone is invited to see how safe and healthy his factory is, anyone and everyone invited to make observations or suggestions.
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The nursing school might do the same thing and hospital administrators from across the land, or their paid researchers, will be allowed access to inspect the school, its syllabus and staff for themselves without relying on the opinion of some government bureaucrat who knows nothing about either tractors or nursing and charges money for their approval.
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If you don't like the way the factory is run, buy another brand of tractor and if you don't like the way the nursing school is run, recruit your carers from somewhere else.
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I think that would be a much better system anyway. Imagine, for instance, that no restaurant had a government hygiene certificate but that the best ones allowed their customers to inspect the kitchens for themselves if they so desired. The customer makes up their own mind whether the restaurant is acceptable or not.
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So the existence of the tractor and the nurse in this example are not dependent on authority. Authority brought nothing to the production of either except immoral violence (tax collecting, protectionism). In fact, if it wasn't for the interference of authority the tractor would probably be of a higher quality and the nurse would probably be a doctor.
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It is people - vast interconnected networks of people - all working together for their own interests and yet conscious and (usually) respectful of the interests of others that get things done. Financiers, inventors, artists, builders, healers, entrepreneurs, destroyers, recyclers, producers, manufacturers, procurers - countless people with innumerable skills working in chaotic anarchy to get things done. Billions of people get fed, watered and clothed every day with absolutely no need for authority's interference. It really is a marvel, when you think about it.
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Authority provides nothing of benefit to this roiling matrix of invention and production but instead seeks to milk it for all its worth - until the whole glorious mess becomes weak, anaemic and impotent.
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Due to its misplaced belief in the superstition of authority, humanity has been driving along with the handbrake on for quite some time now. It's time we released the authority and banged it up a gear.
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P.S.  I've only ever seen E.T. once, when it first came out, hated it and never saw it again. I therefore withdraw my E.T. observation as I am talking 'round my hat on that one, obviously based upon my imperfect memory of something I didn't enjoy. Sorry.

[Jim_Campbell]

The unqualified customer has no idea whether the restaurant is acceptable or not unless it's visibly filthy or has rodents running round the kitchen, so contracts botulism and dies.

FTFY.

Jim

[Richmond Clements]

Or the customer could look on their local council website where the inspection reports for every hotel and restaurant kitchen will be available to read.

[TordelBack]

The unqualified customer has no idea whether the restaurant is acceptable or not unless it's visibly filthy or has rodents running round the kitchen, so contracts botulism and dies.

FTFY.

Hmmm.  This I suppose is the nub of it for me.  I find it hard to accept that we'd have made the same advances in evidential medicine and disease control through vaccination, hygiene and sanitation, workplace HS&W, transport safety, water and air quality without some form of authority snooping on and scowling at us: the free market (or individual actors, if you prefer) just isn't equipped or motivated to make the kind of sustained expert studies, interventions and troublesome restrictions that enable these kinds of successes.  I'm not saying that authority can't be vested at a local level, that communities of individuals shouldn't be free to define their own methods and schemes, but there is definitely a benefit to scale and consistency that seems to be demonstrated by the progress in these non-trivial areas that has taken place in tandem with the development of (styles of) authority in human societies.

What TLS is describes in the self-serving, wasteful, dehumanising parasitic nature of authority is a real thing too, but I suspect that it's more analagous to the energy lost to disordered heat in any system through friction, a consequence that is independent of the mechanism and more of a rule of (human) nature.  That isn't to say that the mechanisms of authority can't or shouldn't be made far, far better and more efficient, through radical, restructuring just as any mechanism can be improved or rethought, just that there may be an inherent limit to how efficient it can be - but the existence of that limit shouldn't prevent us pushing against it. 

EDIT: Just realised that my studenty rambling seems to trivialise Sharky's ongoing appalling experiences with authority as mere corollaries of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. That's not what I meant to do - obviously these sorts of unfair situations are legitimate grounds to question the entire system that produces them.

[The Legendary Shark]

There is an inherent risk in almost everything, Jim. Rats pay no attention to certificates and neither does botulism. I'm sure Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda all have valid authoritarian certificates hanging out of every orifice but that doesn't stop customers occasionally slipping in the aisles, getting run over on the car park or finding a scorpion in their bananas.
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A lack of authority does not automatically mean a drop in standards. For instance, in the restaurant analogy there's nothing to stop you from voluntarily paying for membership of a professional hygiene inspection company to carry out the inspections you require. There's nothing to stop your local council from issuing hygiene certificates that you can believe in. The only difference is that everyone has a choice and nobody gets punished by authority for saying no.
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Then, if you don't want to visit a place that a body you trust doesn't approve of, then don't go. Those places which remain unapproved will either survive because they meet the standards and get a good reputation anyway or they'll go under because they fail to meet standards and get a bad reputation. Would you rather eat in an establishment where the people who run it Want the place to be hygienic or an establishment where the people who run it must be told to be hygienic?
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[The Legendary Shark]

I think there's a misunderstanding here.
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I am not against organization. Organization is good and necessary thing - you can't build a house, dig a ditch or span a river without some level of organization. The human ability to organize is one of our greatest strengths and has allowed us to build pyramids, put men on the moon, unlock the secrets of the atom and fuck up almost an entire planet. Organization is the key to our future.
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It is "authority" I am against - that evil entity that strives to force A Particular Kind of Organization on Everyone, whether they agree with it or not, under pain of imprisonment, torture or even death.
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To get rid of authority is not to get rid of organization. We can still have a Highways Agency to look after the roads, still have a Health and Safety Executive to provide advice And Help, still have an NHS, still have brass band practice down the Church Hall on a Wednesday night (weather permitting).
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The only difference is that there will be no ruling class imposing their will on these things and no blanket criminalization of anyone who doesn't automatically comply.
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Sure, it would be a pain in the arse and mean a lot more thought and responsibility would be required of us all - but we can do it. When we get rid of authority we'll have much more time anyway because we won't be working every hour God sends just to maintain their banking fraud. When we have to start thinking about solving problems for ourselves instead of relying on the self-serving interests of a gang of well-dressed thugs being imposed upon us, the world will explode with creativity.
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I might not know how to organize a fire station without authority but there are plenty of people out there who do. Instead of trusting in one authority to run everything, putting all our eggs in one basket, why not let the myriad organizations we already have symbiotically in place run themselves? We can still keep an eye on them - probably even moreso as their government protectors will be gone. And we have one massive advantage that no other civilization in human history (so far as we know) has had before. A way to bring everything together without homogenising or exerting blind authority over any of it.
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The internet.

[Richmond Clements]

The beauty of your plan seems to rest on everyone being really into seeds.

[The Legendary Shark]

We plant them, nature grows them...
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[Professor Bear]

The internet splits focus.  Everyone is angry at something, but they're not angry at the same thing.
The internet and social media are a blessing for authority, who want us distracted rather than organised.

[TordelBack]

I blame people who post funny cat images.

[Hawkmumbler]

[TordelBack]

Worse. Than. Hitler.