This article seems relevant:
http://evonomics.com/how-to-legally-own-another-person/
What he's describing as "employable" seems akin (though antithetic) to the
concept of "taboo". The one element that doesn't mesh is the
responsibility/accountability that accompanies freedom. The risks
associated with an ungrounded freedom, including whatever grounding a
monarch/genius might avoid tying themselves to, are always higher. What
made the tea partiers and "new libertarians" so silly is their
arbitrariness with respect to the authorities they admit and those they
rely upon. When I was a libertarian, most of us admitted the fact we'd
probably end up living in a broken van underneath a bridge. Our freedom was
borne out of our willingness to give everything for the ideal. New
"libertarians" are nothing more than slaves to the benefits they don't want
to pay for.
On Apr 7, 2016 9:15 AM, "glen" <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/06/2016 12:50 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> > For those interested in authoritarianism, my favorite read is a classic
> published in 1993 ("The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power"). I'd
> call authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad spiritual realists. The book is
> mind-blowing. I thought they were fearless when they later took on
> Buddhism, but I don't think they ever published the essays (I have a copy.)
>
> That's an interesting looking book. This review makes me want to read
> it: http://www.johnhorgan.org/the_anti_gurus_15278.htm
>
> On 04/06/2016 02:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Trade a pope for a supreme court justice for a Nobel Laureate at some
> level it is all the same. Everyone has a price. defining `price’ broadly.
> Sure I’ll pull from the right on that list if push comes to shove. But I’d
> also say authoritarian leaders, or those that like people like them, want
> some agility in their authoritarianism. They want to see the exercise of
> Power; they don’t want to be bogged down in procedure. Get those leaders
> and the led together and sometimes they’ll get behind some strange rituals.
>
> On 04/06/2016 09:19 PM, Carl wrote:
> > Well, constitutions are tools of the current narrative. Consider
> Article 9. It's pressed into service depending on the story various
> authorities wants to reify. One can consider what's on the paper and say
> oh that's pretty cool, but....
>
> Right. Both you and Marcus point out that any system can be gamed. And
> the winners of that game end up being the authority. And Marcus points out
> that even the authoritarians want the authority to be dynamic in at least
> some sense (each authority and authoritarian may want a different kind of
> dynamism, but that's OK). But the primary issue is, I think, not that an
> elite set of gamers exists (or will obtain eventually). The primary issue
> is the _size_ of the elite, either in absolute terms and/or in proportion
> to the rest of the population (including other species and the planet).
>
> David Deutsch made this vague statement about good explanations being
> "hard to vary", in the sense that if you've got it right enough, precise
> enough, etc., then changing any given part of it, probably breaks it. You
> can't willy nilly change a good theory. You have to do it intelligently.
> The same would be said about an authority that was derived (as directly as
> possible) from the world, rather than being _imposed_ on the world.
>
> Currently, any constitution is more "derived from the world" than any
> Monarch or Genius because our scientific understanding of the mind is
> paltry. So, a constitution, being a concrete artifact, allows _anyone_ who
> can make inferences from that artifact to play. Constitutions allow for a
> large elite class because they're artifacts in the world. If we could
> continue this process, making our constitutions more and more "of the
> world", then it could allow for larger and larger elite classes until,
> perhaps, the difference between those that can _use_ the law and those that
> are abused by the law is simply one of choice. If you put in the hours,
> you too can be a law user.
>
>
> --
> --
> ⊥ glen ⊥
>
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