[OT] What's happening here in Turkey...

[Richmond]

On 06/08/2013 11:34 PM, Dar Scott wrote:
> Politicians stay in power by buying cronies.  They make the favors for these few look good,  good to groups in the populace.  So, they get crony funding and popular support.  These bought cronies are usually big businessmen who would usually fail by being inept or crooked.  The result is big power in states and bad management in a fifth of the big businesses.  To compete, some other businesses have to play along.
>
> This is enabled by those of the populace who love states or worship states.  The process is also helped by those who are would-be petty dictators and like the idea of a mechanism where they can control others.
>
> So, all over the world as states grow in power,  we see the state as a growing burden in our lives.
>
> But, relying less on the state means a better understanding of property.

That's right; as the concept of the state owning anything is a very odd 
concept indeed.

I own a large, brown wooden elephant. You can point at me and say 
"Richmond owns that elephant." What do you point at
when the state "owns" something - something pretty amorphous if it has 
any sort of form at all.

People pay me to teach their children English because the state (the 
Bulgarian state) fails miserably; I use that money to send my younger son to
private High school in Germany, pay for a half-decent dentist (instead 
of the useless ones who can only get a job by working for the state), pay
for a half-decent doctor.

This also means than when a filling falls out I am in a position to 
complain, while if the state does it (even though I do pay for it via 
tax) because of
the lie that it is somehow 'free' I cannot complain. I have been trying 
for 8 years to get parents of children I teach to go and complain about 
the physical abuse (hitting) many of their children suffer at state 
"schools" to no avail; after all "if it is free we cannot complain" - 
and these really quite stupid
parents cannot understand that "free and the point of delivery" is NOT free.

As the profit-motive is almost genetically encoded into humans any 
stateless society has to allow private property and private interests; 
hence the idea of Anarcho-Capitalism; which, in practice should produce 
something rather similar to all other types anarchism.

Political systems (whether voted in or imposed) that do away with 
private property have signally failed.

>    The example of politicians helping cronies by building a mall is a good example.  Who owns the park?  Who owns the trees?  Who has the say?  Is it jointly owned by all the people?  Are pieces owned by individuals?  Does the politician own it?  The many answers people have for these questions muddy the water and creates confusion as we look for freedom and a lesser role of the state in our lives.
>
> However, for most people of the world, the state is the highest authority, the determiner of right and wrong,

Only if you are daft enough to equate morality with legality!

It is illegal to smoke inside a restaurant in Bulgaria; it is not wrong, 
but an awful lot of people are stupid enough to think it is.

> the bringer of blessings, the blesser of actions.

Um; a side-effect of the waning away of mass religiousness is that the 
state has taken the place of a deity and its rules have taken the place
of a divinely determined moral code; its judges and other officers have 
become priests.

>    As much as we feel for your plight, most people will see the state as the one in the right by definition.  Only by a change in this view can you gain world sympathy.  (Of course, some might pretend a sympathy in state-vs-state contexts.)

state-vs-state contexts are very rarely really state-vs-state pure and 
simple. If one looks at the second world war the Axis powers were committing
acts that were morally repugnant to the vast majority of people (gassing 
vast numbers of people); and while the Allies, in combatting the Axis powers
also committed many morally wrong things (c.f. fire-bombing of Dresden), 
one can argue on the basis of "greater-good" grounds that their actions
were morally justified.

Now, as to the US sending drones to blow up targets in Yemen and so 
forth; as far as I can see that is morally indefensible.
>
> So, my heart goes out for you.  But, I don't think we are going to see much of a positive view around the world, unless a few politicians try to exploit the situation.
>
> I wish you well.
>
> Dar
>
>

Sorry, Livecoders, went off on that one a bit.

Richmond.