While I prepare the final installation in my little series on billionaire charity, you should go listen to Aurini as he explains why Reddit is a case study in Democracy, and of course why it is completely hopeless.
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Aurini is like a godsend, but he’s not without flaws. Someone online who is a fellow reactionary made some points about how he’s been too angry, bitter and hard on himself and not caring about the people who are ignorant and subscribe to other political ideologies. Aaron Clarey at least softens the videos up with humor once in a while.
I really don’t understand why Aurini has been defending the armed forces and blindly thinking that it would be a good way to prove one’s self to be a “man.” A user by the name of “Chiefjusticecoke” made three videos that were right on the money for me. Start with the one on the top right and then work your way across that first row with “First Blood: The Ethics of Joining the Military.” I heard a lot of twisted things about the military and how they treat their recruits and kill innocent people too.
http://www.youtube.com/user/chiefjusticecoke/videos?view=0&flow=grid
Other than that, Aurini has an amazing way of communicating his thoughts and putting them in a framework and I love the style that he does his videos in, but I wanted to point this out because not everyone who stumbles upon his channel is going to share or understand where he’s coming from, and I’m starting to believe that Aaron went a bit too far with that clinically depressed Mishy girl and linking to her video. He was right about her, but he didn’t have to go that far at all to prove his point. I mean I certainly didn’t know any better at 13 or 14, especially in a political or economic sense.
Chiefjusticecoke seems to be a transhumanist of the Kurzweilian kind. Those people need to plant their feet more solidly on the ground.
Also, this …?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB07otlbDMw
Not convinced. I don’t necessarily agree completely with people I link either – but I feel no need to put disclaimers on what I link since I take no responsibility of what others have said, nor the fact that someone may be “offended”. As for the military – as a State entity I am quite obviously against it.
My general view is that the “opinion game” that is out there is juvenile and bordering imbecile, at times. If you disagree with what people said, either do a factual rebuke or nothing. These youtube-contests of who is cooler really are juvenile. And contrary to popular belief, it is in fact completely OK to not respond what-so-ever if one doesn’t want to.
Also – trying to convince others is not a sound or realistic approach to communicating. You communicate the truth, and if no one is listening than its their loss. And pardon the age-racism, but it is conceptually IMPOSSIBLE of convincing someone who is 13 or 14 of anything – they are trend-followers. There is way to little respect for elders these days. And I’m saying this as someone who has not yet turned 30. Basically, everyone think they know best, and no one thinks experience or time spent studying matters.
So yes, if they’re out to convince, both Clarey and Aurini might find better ways to create a political message. But I don’t really think they are interested. At least, I know I’m not.
I see where you’re coming from. If everyone else wants to screw themselves over, then that’s their problem. Any attempt at convincing them to change their ways usually would end up in futility, as Aaron has pointed out many times with trying to debate a liberal or a progressive. I only watched those three videos Coke made and none of the others, and he came across as an antiwar anti-neocon type, so that’s why he made a lot of sense to me. I watched a great documentary from the BBC called Rise of the Politics of Fear which explains where “neoconservatism” really came from and it reaffirmed my hatred for the modern two party system.
Are you an anarcho-capitalist by any chance? I asked Jonathan Catalan the same question the other day since I thought he was a Mises/Hayek/Kirzner influenced minarchist based on his blog posts, but he surprised me by telling me that he finds merit in anarchism and that democracy, despite its flaws, is the least costly and best form of governance that we have at the moment. I’ve been meaning to read David Friedman’s book “The Machinery of Freedom” for a while now.
I think I’ve seen that BBC documentary, but under a different name. It’s great stuff, regardless. And yes, I do also initially like people who are anti-neocons. Unfortunately there are people who are anti-neocons that are a lot of other stupid things simultaneously.
Anarcho-capitalist? Yes. A rather conservative such though, and I have some issues to sort out with how private law would work. But if we take the Rothbardian question “Do you hate the State” then my answer is a resounding yes. Democracy is mostly ridiculous, and (like Hans-Hermann Hoppe says) has throughout history rarely been seen as anything but a weak form of communism.
I had thought about becoming an Ancap several times, but I just can’t picture myself being that radical and I’ve thought about a lot of the implications that can come with trying to bring upon such a society, like the various politicians and bankers who would seek to squash any attempt at creating this society. I also don’t believe that anarchism would guaranteed to lead to capitalism. It might as well devolve into full blown communism depending upon the vision of the anarchist, resulting in even less freedom and putting a lot of people at risk. I think the best way to transition through such a system though would be to gradually privatize and think about what kinds of services that markets can do better than when a government tries to execute the ideas and go from there rather than trying to radically overthrow the government overnight
Bitcoin seems to be really catching some ground, so I don’t rule out the possibility, but pragmatically, I remain a hybrid between a classical liberal, a classical/Burkean conservative, and partially a reactionary and I don’t feel that I should hate the state for the sake of hating the state. I hate bad politicians, but I acknowledge the fact that there are many valid objections to anarchism and that trying to create a society solely based on the non-aggression principle would be difficult, so I think David Friedman’s consequentialist ideas for things like private law might work on a more massive scale. Some people who object to anarcho-capitalism would even say that it would just deolve into having gangs compete against each other. Steven Pinker wrote this book that I really need to read where he writes about the decline in violence and how there has been less violence than if we all lived under primitive tribal societies.