Have you ever had vegan food? I'm completely serious. If you haven't find a vegan restaurant or potlatch nearby and try some. They are some of the most creative cooks and most amazing food engineers I know of. Without milk, cheese, or eggs they can make superior mac and cheese, cookies, brownies, you name it really. These are people that come up with solutions to problems, and that's why I admire them and their cooking in spite of being a mere vegetarian myself.
So what's the relevance to left-libertarianism and the libertarian movement in general?
Well, you see for the same reasons I really admire the anarchists I know. These also are people that create solutions to problems. Because they are not expending their time, energy, and resources on political action (which offers little direct return in investment), they are able to craft work arounds and solutions to real problems.
Bit Coin, Silk Road, Agorism, Counter-Economics, Pirate Bay, Food Not Bombs food kitchens, Wiki Leaks; these are all anarchist inventions or are anarchic by nature. These are the tools and the stones which are building the foundation of the free society in which we want to live.
Minarchists are doing plenty of this too, but their time will always be divided between invention and the latest Ron Paul or Gary Johnson.
Where ever you fall on the libertarian spectrum, we can all learn from the anarchists and others who are building the real world tools of freedom. It is these tools that make the biggest difference in the level of choice, agency, and freedom for individuals throughout history. The invention and proliferation of the printing press, the internet, and now 3-D printing bring whole new paradigms that state oppression must catch up to in order begin the suppress again. Political action while it does have it's uses, mostly is able to slow down the machine or keep the society open or closed by up-down vote. The libertarian world we desire will not be voted in, but be constructed in spite of those that oppose it.
From the vegans and anarchists we can learn how to build that world.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Monday, September 5, 2016
Solution to the Problem of State Schooling
Having grown up in the state schooling system I have thought long about my experience. Though it was better than some have had, it is on the whole as George Carlin said,
There is a better way. Of course there is home and private schooling, but a more radical approach is necessary.
I propose that all the teachers of the public system nationally and worldwide en masse opt out. Take your skills and your certifications and just leave.
In the place of the messy stratified state system can be built a horizontally organized education system. It shall be a network of coops and and the teacher salaries will come from crowd sourcing. The classes can be taught locally and also through the internet. Parents and children will be able to put together their own curriculum from all the available options.
The state will surely still mandate certain standards as is required of homeschoolers, but this is to be expected and can be easily met.
Through mass crowd funding costs can still be generalized and scholarships can still be given out, so that the unmonied will also be empowered. If the poor and wealthy could not alike be educated though this distributed non-system then it would be without merit.
Let's develop people who are smart enough to know that the machines are irrelevant and outdated in the first place. Let's build a free society of pluralistic and educated people through distributed schooling.
Here's how easy this will be. A Kickstarter is started, teachers agree to sign onto the program when certain financial goals are met, educators opt out and rebuild with increased academic freedom while maintaining financial security as well, distributed schooled youth passes ACTs, GEDs, get into jobs and colleges [or higher distributed schooling programs, and finally the old system is completely obsolete and destroyed.
This could be so effective that the National Guard is called in to force kids and teachers back into the state schools, but this would only further show the archaicness and irrelevance of the old structures.
This program also is without limits. As many people can teach as there are those willing to learn, so teacher employment should actually increase dramatically.
Let it begin today.
"You know what they want? ... People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it."
There is a better way. Of course there is home and private schooling, but a more radical approach is necessary.
I propose that all the teachers of the public system nationally and worldwide en masse opt out. Take your skills and your certifications and just leave.
In the place of the messy stratified state system can be built a horizontally organized education system. It shall be a network of coops and and the teacher salaries will come from crowd sourcing. The classes can be taught locally and also through the internet. Parents and children will be able to put together their own curriculum from all the available options.
The state will surely still mandate certain standards as is required of homeschoolers, but this is to be expected and can be easily met.
Through mass crowd funding costs can still be generalized and scholarships can still be given out, so that the unmonied will also be empowered. If the poor and wealthy could not alike be educated though this distributed non-system then it would be without merit.
Let's develop people who are smart enough to know that the machines are irrelevant and outdated in the first place. Let's build a free society of pluralistic and educated people through distributed schooling.
Here's how easy this will be. A Kickstarter is started, teachers agree to sign onto the program when certain financial goals are met, educators opt out and rebuild with increased academic freedom while maintaining financial security as well, distributed schooled youth passes ACTs, GEDs, get into jobs and colleges [or higher distributed schooling programs, and finally the old system is completely obsolete and destroyed.
This could be so effective that the National Guard is called in to force kids and teachers back into the state schools, but this would only further show the archaicness and irrelevance of the old structures.
This program also is without limits. As many people can teach as there are those willing to learn, so teacher employment should actually increase dramatically.
Let it begin today.
Why Left Libertarianism?
Welcome to the Blue Corn Maze, a Left Libertarian Hub.
A few words about why I would call literally anything a "blue corn maze":
Libertarianism, a revolutionary philosophy of redistributing power generally, is today mainly associated with the Right Wing of American politics. Others still believe that libertarianism is a "third path" from left and right and has nothing to do with those concepts.
This is wrong-headed and ahistorical. Libertarianism grew out of classical liberalism, which is properly viewed as belonging to the left. The core concept that libertarianism rests, liberalism, is liberatory by nature. Conscripting with theocratic restrictions on the right is illiberal and anti-thetical.
And so it was long ago, in the time before the rise of conspiratorial state socialism. The implementation of the Communism/Capitalism dichotomy thrust allies of individual freedom to the right wing. They could not rely on the left of the 20th century as they were too busy building bureaucratic behemoths and obsessing over what Orwell called the "stupid cult of Russia".
The Origin Heroes and Heroines of Liberalism, the ur-myths that built the libertarianism we know have been forgotten. Gone is Kropotkin, de Cleyre, and Spooner. They understood that libertarianism is a socialist idea, because it seeks for the social sphere to encompass most or all of society.
This essential knowledge has been obscured, bought out, and buried. As such we as libertarians find ourselves in a corn maze- lost. By seeing this maze as Blue, we will see the exit and begin again to repair this broken world.
Until we reestablish our context, the primary enemy of libertarianism is not any state or opposing ideology, it is libertarianism itself.
We must break from toxic language and terms like "capitalism", and remember who we truly are.
Though Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard worked very hard to build the movement we have and without question it wouldn't exist without them and many others, libertarianism has become decayed and shriveled over time. Deprived of it's mother-home, of it's source, our ideas have become hollow and meaningless. A libertarianism that is thin and not thick is flimsy and useless.
If this seems shocking to you, don't be too surprised. A hundred plus years of sophistry and confusion have muddied these waters. Markets Not Capitalism will elucidate all these concepts, though I will write further about them as well.
A libertarianism worth furthering always expands options, individual agency, and personal freedom.
Let us now all take hands. Radical, moderate, minarchist, anarchist; these distinctions while useful are less important than working together under a common context. Let us all walk free of this maze and liberate this sick world.
A few words about why I would call literally anything a "blue corn maze":
Libertarianism, a revolutionary philosophy of redistributing power generally, is today mainly associated with the Right Wing of American politics. Others still believe that libertarianism is a "third path" from left and right and has nothing to do with those concepts.
This is wrong-headed and ahistorical. Libertarianism grew out of classical liberalism, which is properly viewed as belonging to the left. The core concept that libertarianism rests, liberalism, is liberatory by nature. Conscripting with theocratic restrictions on the right is illiberal and anti-thetical.
And so it was long ago, in the time before the rise of conspiratorial state socialism. The implementation of the Communism/Capitalism dichotomy thrust allies of individual freedom to the right wing. They could not rely on the left of the 20th century as they were too busy building bureaucratic behemoths and obsessing over what Orwell called the "stupid cult of Russia".
The Origin Heroes and Heroines of Liberalism, the ur-myths that built the libertarianism we know have been forgotten. Gone is Kropotkin, de Cleyre, and Spooner. They understood that libertarianism is a socialist idea, because it seeks for the social sphere to encompass most or all of society.
This essential knowledge has been obscured, bought out, and buried. As such we as libertarians find ourselves in a corn maze- lost. By seeing this maze as Blue, we will see the exit and begin again to repair this broken world.
Until we reestablish our context, the primary enemy of libertarianism is not any state or opposing ideology, it is libertarianism itself.
We must break from toxic language and terms like "capitalism", and remember who we truly are.
Though Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard worked very hard to build the movement we have and without question it wouldn't exist without them and many others, libertarianism has become decayed and shriveled over time. Deprived of it's mother-home, of it's source, our ideas have become hollow and meaningless. A libertarianism that is thin and not thick is flimsy and useless.
If this seems shocking to you, don't be too surprised. A hundred plus years of sophistry and confusion have muddied these waters. Markets Not Capitalism will elucidate all these concepts, though I will write further about them as well.
A libertarianism worth furthering always expands options, individual agency, and personal freedom.
Let us now all take hands. Radical, moderate, minarchist, anarchist; these distinctions while useful are less important than working together under a common context. Let us all walk free of this maze and liberate this sick world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)