Mar 30, 2023Liked by 2nd Smartest Guy in the World
I've been toying with AnCap for a while. Shared this with a neighbor who's still stuck on the left when it comes to the destruction of life via abortion and spaying/neutering human beings via queer theory. She can't get over the CogDis... Nonetheless, she sees evil, greed, corruption everywhere, even in places I never thought to look.
Mar 30, 2023Liked by 2nd Smartest Guy in the World
A small incident I read in the true novel "Babi Yar" shows an example of an ungoverned group - albeit short lived.
It goes as such... The boy, Kolya, and an escaped prisoner from a "camp" in Ukraine in 1941 headed out of Kiev to farmfolk about a 2-day journey away. When they got there the people were living in unbelievable abundance (considering everyone in Kiev were on the brink of starvation, essentially). Their store houses were stocked, etc. The two of them were shocked. The explanation given was, after the German Nazi's rousted the Commies they had no overlords at the bullshit collective farms, which had been an embarrassing disaster with low production, and the Germans didn't bother them because of the distance from the cities and the general inability to dedicate attention to them at that time.
A year or so later, Kolya returned to the farm. By then, the Nazi's had created such profound depletion of everything that they went out to the farms and stole everything and beat the shit out of them and took the people to the labor camps.
One season without government interference and abundance.
But, but, if we don't have an organized system of intimidation, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, torture and murder to inflict on each other, it could result in....disorder.
Until very recently, I mean during the lockdowns, I used to think that Anarchy was a b-word, and that those involved or advocating for it, the anarchists, are a rebellious bunch bent toward chaos and mischief. But the more I look into the organised political party systems, the more I think that the historical party constructs have sabotaged 'anarchism' and painted a bad image of it and rather alienated citizens from it. I wondered if it has a CIA misinformation effort to destroy anarchism in order to maintain the status quo of the political establishment's! This article is helpful in bringing anarchism in the general psyche as a force for good! Thank you.
"the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle’.
“The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception. The idea of force governing the world, of pre-established law, preconceived harmony, disappears to make room for the harmony that Fourier had caught a glimpse of: the one which results from the disorderly and incoherent movements of numberless hosts of matter, each of which goes its own way and all of which hold each other in equilibrium.”
Very interesting, but I'm pretty concerned on Etienne start where in the infographics of "Ism" there are neither Fascism nor Nazism, that are actually the form of Government of USA/Canada and most of EU. In other words Western Countries are all under a sophisticated and hiidden form of Nazi Fascism as we all are witnessing everyday, and especially with Covid and in this Nazi Ukrainians war against Russia that's no more communist or socialist...
As an anarchist I can face all of those "ism" listed and discuss and try to have freedom or change the status quo as I've done since High School years, but with this Nazi Fascists you can't discuss, you can only fight them as they are the same as in the '30s! And I don't forget my Grands and parents lesson on what happened in EU not fighting them since the begging...
People's Economies vs Corporate Control: First Commodification, Then Financialization, Now Demonetization
by
Vandana Shiva
Ever since the Corporate Form was "invented" - in its earliest avatar as the collective East India Companies - those who have ruled via corporation have found innovative "means" new to extract wealth from the earth and people, leaving both poorer in a zero-sum "game".
During The Raj - Company Raj - extraction was carried out through Lagaan - taxation on land & agriculture. Between 1765 to 1815,the Company is recorded to have pirated £ 18 Million annually from India. 50 % of the produce was taken as Lagaan, creating famines like the Great Bengal Famine.
The Company destroyed the people's circular, sustainable and just economies - in which 70% of the value of what rural areas produced circulated in the village economy - and replaced them with linear, extractive economies, where most wealth produced in India went to enrich England, bleeding India.
In recent years, the corporate empire has found new instruments of extraction, with patents and (what should be called) 'capitalisation', being two prominent ones. The Chemical/Biotech/Seed Industry “innovated” and “invented” patents on life and patents on seeds, as a means to extract profits from farmers.
The second instrument - capitalisation - the financialisation of the economy is equally perverse. It has punished real people, marginalised the real wealth that people produce in real economies, and rewarded only the capital-ists. The capital economy has become 70 times bigger than there real economy. The Wall street Crash of 2008 was a result of the creation of this global casino. We were protected, insulated in India because our economy was still real.
The concentration of the worlds wealth in the hands of the 1% is a consequence of patent-isation, capital-isation, and the digit-isation of our lives. The latest bait and switch being used by globalised corporate power, to worm its way into the households of India, is the demonising or "Demonetisation" (as it has been "Hash!-tagged") of Indian Currency.
The “demonetisation” of the India’s economy of more that 1 billion people at the stroke of midnight on 8th November 2016 is the next gamble of the corporate empire to steal people’s wealth, lock it away behind an encryption key, and shut down people’s economies overnight leaving only the parts of the economy willing to indulge the payment-gateway-keeper. Naspers Group is that gatekeeper for Digital India.
More than 90% of India functions on cash to sustain the people’s economy. Cash is a neutral form of money, one person's hard earned money is as potent as another's; there are no "AMEX Black" ₹ 1000 notes, yet. 86% of all the currency was made illegal overnight, but that is a de-humanised number. If a chaiwallah (who does not yet find himself dictating monetary policy), accumulates the change he earns, exchanging for ₹100, then ₹500, working his way up to a collection of ₹1000 notes as his savings. He prefers the ₹1000 because they are easier to carry and secure, especially since he does not have a bank account - because he has no address - because he can't afford to rent an address and has not inherited one. At the stroke of midnight on 8th November 2016, this chai-but-no-house-wallah disappeared from the economy. A Nescafé machine will replace him.
The purest currency in people’s economies is life, it is love, it is community, and communion, it is trust. That is why the most civilised societies, when measured in terms of their humanity, happiness and well being, are societies based on barter. When cash becomes the currency of exchange , it can still build community through face to face transactions . People’s Economies are based on solidarity.
Just as patents on seeds were an illegitimate attempt to criminalise farmers by making seed saving illegal, “#demonetisation" is an illegitimate attempt to criminalise the people’s economy which is 80% of India’s real economy.
That this is the aim is clear from the statement of the man who became the richest in the world through patents and the digital economy -Bill Gates .
As he stated in his speech for the 'NITI-Lectures series: Transforming India' in the presence of PM Narendra Modi and his Cabinet colleagues,”the government's bold move to demonetise high-value denominations+ and replace them with new notes with high security features+ was an important step to move away from the shadow economy to a more transparent economy.”
Gates said digital transactions would rise dramatically, and, in the next several years, India would become one of the most digitised economies not just by size, but percentage as well.
The "Pirate of Silicon Valley" has just declared the vibrant community based Swadeshi economy of the people of India a “shadow” economy, just because it is beyond the reach of his digital monopoly. We are not shadows of your empire, Mr Gates. We are hard working, honest people who still know how to trust and share, who have community and real creativity to run and sustain our economy. Transparency as defined by you as the asymmetric power of the financial and digital world over people, to take control of our wealth, our wellbeing, our lives, our freedoms.
It is the end of being in a relationship of trust with a person you know in your local economy, and see face to face. It is the end of people being transparent to each other as human beings. It is not financial transparency either that is supposed to end “Black Money”. You and Microsoft are part of the “Black Economy”. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft's use of offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion, a sum greater than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014). You want to teach us transparency?
How Piracy Opens Doors for Windows, an LA Times article dated 9th April 2006 quotes Bill Gates:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Gates' payment portals are here to collect.
In 1857 we drove out the first Corporation that ruled the world, the East India Company. In 1947 we drove out the British who controlled 80% of the territories of the world. Our determination to defend our economic freedoms, economic democracy and economic sovereignty through Swadeshi is stronger than ever. The need for Swadeshi has never been greater.We will defend and sustain our people’s economies -by the people, of the people, for the people, against the assault of the corporate economy run by the corporations, for the corporations.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.
This is super interesting but I believe would only work in motivated, culturally homogeneous groups where people are equally interested in the well being of others. Places like Orania are thriving but I think they have a Mayor and are not ancap.
"There is no evidence to suggest that anarchism would lead to chaos and disorder." ... um, does CHAZ not register and acknowledgement?
It's fun to play with words, especially in this day and age of relativist truth, but simply using a definition of a word, which itself is a symbol of an idea, and believe that all others believe in the same symbolic definition is not realistic.
I agree with the need for more "voluntaryism". But there is, always has been and always will be a need for some form of "state", "borders" and system of rule, unless the desire is for tribalism to reach its peak and become a region similar to the pre-Columbian native American "nations", that roamed, conquered, pillaged and fought just like any other pack of homo sapiens throughout history.
It is the size of the state, the level of power ceded to it that is important.
It seems to me that Anarchism cannot by definition be 'implemented'. It would have to be enacted individually, and only individually, to be Anarchism. Othwise just another top down system, or some 'someone's' idea of how it should look, not how it would really look.
I've been toying with AnCap for a while. Shared this with a neighbor who's still stuck on the left when it comes to the destruction of life via abortion and spaying/neutering human beings via queer theory. She can't get over the CogDis... Nonetheless, she sees evil, greed, corruption everywhere, even in places I never thought to look.
A small incident I read in the true novel "Babi Yar" shows an example of an ungoverned group - albeit short lived.
It goes as such... The boy, Kolya, and an escaped prisoner from a "camp" in Ukraine in 1941 headed out of Kiev to farmfolk about a 2-day journey away. When they got there the people were living in unbelievable abundance (considering everyone in Kiev were on the brink of starvation, essentially). Their store houses were stocked, etc. The two of them were shocked. The explanation given was, after the German Nazi's rousted the Commies they had no overlords at the bullshit collective farms, which had been an embarrassing disaster with low production, and the Germans didn't bother them because of the distance from the cities and the general inability to dedicate attention to them at that time.
A year or so later, Kolya returned to the farm. By then, the Nazi's had created such profound depletion of everything that they went out to the farms and stole everything and beat the shit out of them and took the people to the labor camps.
One season without government interference and abundance.
Down with greed!
Economic and political decentralization is the key.
But, but, if we don't have an organized system of intimidation, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, torture and murder to inflict on each other, it could result in....disorder.
Until very recently, I mean during the lockdowns, I used to think that Anarchy was a b-word, and that those involved or advocating for it, the anarchists, are a rebellious bunch bent toward chaos and mischief. But the more I look into the organised political party systems, the more I think that the historical party constructs have sabotaged 'anarchism' and painted a bad image of it and rather alienated citizens from it. I wondered if it has a CIA misinformation effort to destroy anarchism in order to maintain the status quo of the political establishment's! This article is helpful in bringing anarchism in the general psyche as a force for good! Thank you.
Thank you so much! I’ve been a huge fan of
Etienne de la Boetie2! I’ve bought over 20 copies of his book to hand out.
So thrilled to find that he’s on Substack!
"the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle’.
“The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception. The idea of force governing the world, of pre-established law, preconceived harmony, disappears to make room for the harmony that Fourier had caught a glimpse of: the one which results from the disorderly and incoherent movements of numberless hosts of matter, each of which goes its own way and all of which hold each other in equilibrium.”
-- Peter Kropotkin
Accurate, and logical.
The masses will never accept this, as they have been conditioned to accept rulers over rules.
Stockholm syndrome is almost impossible to reverse!
Very interesting, but I'm pretty concerned on Etienne start where in the infographics of "Ism" there are neither Fascism nor Nazism, that are actually the form of Government of USA/Canada and most of EU. In other words Western Countries are all under a sophisticated and hiidden form of Nazi Fascism as we all are witnessing everyday, and especially with Covid and in this Nazi Ukrainians war against Russia that's no more communist or socialist...
As an anarchist I can face all of those "ism" listed and discuss and try to have freedom or change the status quo as I've done since High School years, but with this Nazi Fascists you can't discuss, you can only fight them as they are the same as in the '30s! And I don't forget my Grands and parents lesson on what happened in EU not fighting them since the begging...
But after reading both posts I'll comment more.
Good day Commentariat,
What follows is by Vandana Shiva. She lives in India and they know what it is like to be under the boot of Bill Gates etal. Enjoy;
ublished on
Monday, December 05, 2016
by
Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/05/peoples-economies-vs-corporate-control-first-commodification-then-financialization
People's Economies vs Corporate Control: First Commodification, Then Financialization, Now Demonetization
by
Vandana Shiva
Ever since the Corporate Form was "invented" - in its earliest avatar as the collective East India Companies - those who have ruled via corporation have found innovative "means" new to extract wealth from the earth and people, leaving both poorer in a zero-sum "game".
During The Raj - Company Raj - extraction was carried out through Lagaan - taxation on land & agriculture. Between 1765 to 1815,the Company is recorded to have pirated £ 18 Million annually from India. 50 % of the produce was taken as Lagaan, creating famines like the Great Bengal Famine.
The Company destroyed the people's circular, sustainable and just economies - in which 70% of the value of what rural areas produced circulated in the village economy - and replaced them with linear, extractive economies, where most wealth produced in India went to enrich England, bleeding India.
In recent years, the corporate empire has found new instruments of extraction, with patents and (what should be called) 'capitalisation', being two prominent ones. The Chemical/Biotech/Seed Industry “innovated” and “invented” patents on life and patents on seeds, as a means to extract profits from farmers.
The second instrument - capitalisation - the financialisation of the economy is equally perverse. It has punished real people, marginalised the real wealth that people produce in real economies, and rewarded only the capital-ists. The capital economy has become 70 times bigger than there real economy. The Wall street Crash of 2008 was a result of the creation of this global casino. We were protected, insulated in India because our economy was still real.
The concentration of the worlds wealth in the hands of the 1% is a consequence of patent-isation, capital-isation, and the digit-isation of our lives. The latest bait and switch being used by globalised corporate power, to worm its way into the households of India, is the demonising or "Demonetisation" (as it has been "Hash!-tagged") of Indian Currency.
The “demonetisation” of the India’s economy of more that 1 billion people at the stroke of midnight on 8th November 2016 is the next gamble of the corporate empire to steal people’s wealth, lock it away behind an encryption key, and shut down people’s economies overnight leaving only the parts of the economy willing to indulge the payment-gateway-keeper. Naspers Group is that gatekeeper for Digital India.
More than 90% of India functions on cash to sustain the people’s economy. Cash is a neutral form of money, one person's hard earned money is as potent as another's; there are no "AMEX Black" ₹ 1000 notes, yet. 86% of all the currency was made illegal overnight, but that is a de-humanised number. If a chaiwallah (who does not yet find himself dictating monetary policy), accumulates the change he earns, exchanging for ₹100, then ₹500, working his way up to a collection of ₹1000 notes as his savings. He prefers the ₹1000 because they are easier to carry and secure, especially since he does not have a bank account - because he has no address - because he can't afford to rent an address and has not inherited one. At the stroke of midnight on 8th November 2016, this chai-but-no-house-wallah disappeared from the economy. A Nescafé machine will replace him.
The purest currency in people’s economies is life, it is love, it is community, and communion, it is trust. That is why the most civilised societies, when measured in terms of their humanity, happiness and well being, are societies based on barter. When cash becomes the currency of exchange , it can still build community through face to face transactions . People’s Economies are based on solidarity.
Just as patents on seeds were an illegitimate attempt to criminalise farmers by making seed saving illegal, “#demonetisation" is an illegitimate attempt to criminalise the people’s economy which is 80% of India’s real economy.
That this is the aim is clear from the statement of the man who became the richest in the world through patents and the digital economy -Bill Gates .
As he stated in his speech for the 'NITI-Lectures series: Transforming India' in the presence of PM Narendra Modi and his Cabinet colleagues,”the government's bold move to demonetise high-value denominations+ and replace them with new notes with high security features+ was an important step to move away from the shadow economy to a more transparent economy.”
Gates said digital transactions would rise dramatically, and, in the next several years, India would become one of the most digitised economies not just by size, but percentage as well.
The "Pirate of Silicon Valley" has just declared the vibrant community based Swadeshi economy of the people of India a “shadow” economy, just because it is beyond the reach of his digital monopoly. We are not shadows of your empire, Mr Gates. We are hard working, honest people who still know how to trust and share, who have community and real creativity to run and sustain our economy. Transparency as defined by you as the asymmetric power of the financial and digital world over people, to take control of our wealth, our wellbeing, our lives, our freedoms.
It is the end of being in a relationship of trust with a person you know in your local economy, and see face to face. It is the end of people being transparent to each other as human beings. It is not financial transparency either that is supposed to end “Black Money”. You and Microsoft are part of the “Black Economy”. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft's use of offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion, a sum greater than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014). You want to teach us transparency?
How Piracy Opens Doors for Windows, an LA Times article dated 9th April 2006 quotes Bill Gates:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Gates' payment portals are here to collect.
In 1857 we drove out the first Corporation that ruled the world, the East India Company. In 1947 we drove out the British who controlled 80% of the territories of the world. Our determination to defend our economic freedoms, economic democracy and economic sovereignty through Swadeshi is stronger than ever. The need for Swadeshi has never been greater.We will defend and sustain our people’s economies -by the people, of the people, for the people, against the assault of the corporate economy run by the corporations, for the corporations.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.
This is super interesting but I believe would only work in motivated, culturally homogeneous groups where people are equally interested in the well being of others. Places like Orania are thriving but I think they have a Mayor and are not ancap.
A better term is Decentralization not Anarchy because that is almost indistinguishable from anarcho-tyranny.
"There is no evidence to suggest that anarchism would lead to chaos and disorder." ... um, does CHAZ not register and acknowledgement?
It's fun to play with words, especially in this day and age of relativist truth, but simply using a definition of a word, which itself is a symbol of an idea, and believe that all others believe in the same symbolic definition is not realistic.
I agree with the need for more "voluntaryism". But there is, always has been and always will be a need for some form of "state", "borders" and system of rule, unless the desire is for tribalism to reach its peak and become a region similar to the pre-Columbian native American "nations", that roamed, conquered, pillaged and fought just like any other pack of homo sapiens throughout history.
It is the size of the state, the level of power ceded to it that is important.
What a coincidence, I just wrote about this yesterday! It's tough finding a term that hasn't already been dragged through the mud by the media.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/the-power-of-voluntary-transactions
It seems to me that Anarchism cannot by definition be 'implemented'. It would have to be enacted individually, and only individually, to be Anarchism. Othwise just another top down system, or some 'someone's' idea of how it should look, not how it would really look.
Well shoot. My handle was chosen cause I just thought it was humorous, with elemental knowledge of LS. Now I gotta really read more LS...
and my copy of The Politics of Disobedience...
and my copy of Our Enemy The State...
and order The White Pill.
Can I watch a few more Andy Griffith Show episodes before I do my homework?