Reforming the State

[stevec1]

I have some ideas on how the states can take control from the federal government, and things the states can do to separate themselves from the industrial-military-financial complex. I think the system itself drives predatory behavior (and whining people), more than the people in it. Rebellion/supression is as old as time. Whoever wins supresses (or tries to) whoever lost the previous round. If money/capital is what everyone is fighting over, perhaps reducing the influence of the Empire is the best place to start. Yes, we are back to personal responsibility, but without government issued monopolies in the marketplace.

So here goes: (I am thinking of making a renegade run for governor.)

1.) All state fees be abolished. No inspection stickers, excise tax, fishing licenses, etc. No more of the nickle & diming. Take the tollbooths down on pay roads. Let people move about freely.

If it is important enough for the state to regulate it, (automobiles) then it should be paid by the state.

2.) No more mandatory car insurance. If you want it, fine. buy it. But the state should not compel people to purchase a product sold privately. Mike Dukakis created No-Fault Auto Insurance because it clogged the courts with petty disagreements. It was well intentioned, but it doesn't work. Roads are public property and should be used at your own risk. It is not the obligation of the state to work out disagreements for two morons who have a disagreement and can't avoid banging into each other. yes, somebody probably did make a mistake. Save your insurance payment for when that occurs. Accidents happen. Does it matter if somebody is to blame or not? We should all be responsible for our own property, rather than sueing somebody to repair ours. If the courts refuse to accept these cases, then the problem of clogged courts goes away automatically.

3.) Ballot questions should have a preferential mechanism built-in. Yes or No doesn't really mean anything. There should be a listing of nuanced choices, so the voters can prioritize their thinking.

4.) end privileges of all kinds. Married couples should not be taxed separately than single people. Copulation habits are not the business of the tax-collector.

5.) The government will no longer issue marriage licenses. Marriage is a religious ceremony, and has nothing to do with the state.

6.) Return the Blue laws and Sunday closings. We should have better things to do than going shopping. Go visit friends and relatives. Give small businesses a chance to compete with big box retailers from out-of-state.

7.) Return the funds in various state pension plans to the people that own them. The government should not be an investment banker for state employees.

8.) Convert as many hospitals as possible to free health-care facilities, like the Shriners Hospitals, etc., rather than just for extreme cases.

9.) Use state funds to administer a zero interest home loan for first-time home buyers. When selling the house, the buyer must sell the property at the purchase price.

10.) Eliminate the retail practice of club and senior discounts and coupons. The same price must be charged to anyone who visits a store.

....how is that for a start? Thoughts?

[Zingu]

How about giving power to the working class....?


I'll post more later.

[KptnKrill]

I may not agree with you my friend in reforming the state...
But I think we can both agree that you're about to savagely attacked by the violent paramilitary types that seem to frequent these boards ;)

[More Fire for the People]

The problem with reform and no revolutionary action is that it is quick to devolve back into capitalism or something worse.

If the working class were to use reform, then it must also use revolution by demanding worker's rights in mass protest and militantly taking over sectors of the economy.

[The Feral Underclass]

I started reading it, but quite frankly I lost interest very quickly.

We want the destruction of capitalism, its forms of domination and the machines that keep it alive so that human beings can live an existence away from want and in solidarity with each other. What do you want?

Boring.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2005, 04:39 PM
I think we can both agree that you're about to savagely attacked by the violent paramilitary types that seem to frequent these boards ;)
It's called realism. Stark and unfortunate.

[stevec1]

Once the "working class" take over, then how do they govern themselves? They become the new boardmembers, and the boardmembers become the new slaves. That isn't a new system, it is changing places within the existing system.

Marx wrote about capitalism, but he also created an understanding of Capital. If you strip away his politics, what he describes is just like Adam Smith. It is a "system" of supply and demand (more accurately described as blackmail,) and the "strength" of the workers is based on the same principle of supply and demand. They rise up and "demand" their share in the marketplace. It is the same system of control. The violence of the state becomes the violence of the worker.

Most revolutions require the instrument of empire (the military and police) to swap sides. BUT, before a revolution can occur, there must first be an empire. So the goal should not be to change places in the empire, but to remove empire. This is a subtle but important difference, but it is not new. Thomas Paine said the same thing in regard to England.


SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.


Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

All Marx did was substitute corporations (the capitalist) for the monarchy. Anarchists see the Laws themselves as the problem, but around the same time Marx wrote, you also had Thoreau and Frederick Bastiat. They also had a differnt view of things. The problem is obvious, even to the capitalists, but if the solution is to trade one empire for another, most people will prefer their own. Bastiat described three choices for the Law.

1. The few plunder the many
2. The many plunder the many
3. Nobody plunders anybody.

One and Two have both shown to be dismal failures. It is getting to Three that seems difficult. That requires navigating the fine line between the law and lawlessness. As Paine understood, you can suffer the same under both systems. (1 or 2)

That leaves us with only one choice: #3 where the means must justify the means. That requires an end to complacency and the status quo, but it also requires peaceful change. Thus the challenge is to somehow integrate these three opposing views of Thoreau, Marx and Bastiat, since while they all share the same goal, the strategies are different. Thoreau is alone in the woods, Bastiat is at the statehouse, and Marx is at the barricades. The battle for the statehouse does not draw Thoreau into the fray, no matter who wins, so there is still no unity or worker paradise. The people who get booted out will just launch a counter-revolution.

Every war is a civil war, and then it spreads. Central governmnet becomes the solution to hold the parts because the parts cannot hold themselves. My website has some ideas on reforming the central government, but the central government is still a result of the failure of the states to adjust to their own problems.

Slavery, obviously, is a big problem. In fact, THE BIGGEST! The issue of workers not getting the fruits of their labor is beacuse the slave system still exists, but it also has changed. In the South, the states could not solve the slavery issue, but in the North, they did, through different means. With industrialism we have grown more interdependent and codependent. While Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves, in reality he made us all slaves to the central government. The abolitionists made the situation worse. By abandoning negotiation and exposing economic market forces they created a social and political problem which made the economic problem worse. As the empire grows, we all become poorer. Like Paine said, "we furnish the means by which we suffer." We pay taxes to hire the tax collector to collect the taxes. Nothing is accomplished. The state grows bigger, and file cabinets burst with useless pieces of paper. What Mao would call The Paper Tiger.

But, if you look at what Mao created, their Paper Tiger is even bigger than capitalism's. Suddenly Thoreau's choice to stay in the woods doesn't look so insane. The Hilton sisters choice to live "the simple life" is inevitable. They are as caught in an insane universe as anyone else. They play the role of their economic class, because the system is so limiting in both directions.

It is the system (empire) that keeps people in a perpetual state of rich and poor. Everyone who moves up will eventually come down, and everyone down will eventually go up. But big deal. We have been doing that forever. The goal should be to level things out. "The Levelers" were what the English Civil Wars were about. The American Revolution was a continuation of the English Civil Wars and the concept of leveling (all men are created equal.) But the attainment has remained exclusive. A new empire has replaced the old empire.

So, what bricks do we pull out to make the walls of the Empire crumble, without anyone getting hurt? That is what my reforms aim to do.

Can you rise above your own moral certainty and see the capitalists as victims too? When you tear down the financial-insurance empire, then everone will be equal. Can you resist your own will to power?

[stevec1]

I started reading it, but quite frankly I lost interest very quickly.

We want the destruction of capitalism, its forms of domination and the machines that keep it alive so that human beings can live an existence away from want and in solidarity with each other. What do you want?

Boring.

I want the same things, but I don't see any glory in violence and I don't embrace wilful ignorance as a path to understanding another point of view.

war is peace
slavery is freedom
ignorance is strentgth
2+2=5

Those are the methods of thinking that Orwell tried to expose in 1984. They are held equally by the capitalists and fascists as well as others (the left). That was why there is perpetual war. The challenge in the mirror needs to comes first.

[The Feral Underclass]

You have no idea what you're talking about, and I don't think this forum is the right place for you.

Reformists are worse than capitalists. Reformists should no better.

[More Fire for the People]

I have a better summation up on reform and revolution now,
"If you can't kil the system - rape it."

[Social Greenman]

Only misguided think of reforms which has hampered workers from creating a class concious. Reforms keep us divided and serve as a life preserver for the capitalist class. If things as they are keep on going we will end up with a worldwide industrial feudal system. Multi-national corporations would have us all attached to our jobs in the same way serfs were attached to the land. We would have no political rights to strike or to speak out.

Social

[stevec1]

Multi-national corporations are owned by the "workers," too. The AFL-CIO lost $23 Billion on Enron and WorldCom. How is a pension planned of invested funds owned by factory workers and school teachers any different than a portfolio of the rich and famous?

To give you an idea of how big a number $23 Billion is, if you worked at minimum wage for 45 years, it would be the LIFETIME wages of 18,000 workers.

Can you explain how so much value can dissapear overnight? Enron went bankrupt. The money was gone. In fact, it was never real. Karl Marx cannot explain that. His theory is M-C-M+ and it is wrong. He describes Interest as an aberration. M-M+ In fact, interest is the key to the whole thing. Once people accept that 2+2=5, then the numbers make no sense. The correct forula of capital is C=M+L (Capital = Money+Labor) Interest destroys the value of both M and L, so naturally C changes too: Inflation. Inflation eats everyone alive. To protect oneself from inflation, one invests, and the cycle feeds itself until it results in unrest. (Planes fly into banks.) The Interest Mechanism automatically divides the wealth.

The reason my reform has 0 interest loans for homeowners is that it controls the cost of property. Real estate drives the inflation, because people try to recover the costs of Interest paid on purchasing on credit. Basically, what I do is take the profit out of debt. Corporations are not evil, they are in debt to the stockholders. To cover the debt, they squeeze workers, vendors and cut corners. Eventually they lose the battle, and get swallowed up by another equally desperate corporation. If you read all these mergers going on, almost all of them involve purchasing a corporation that is in debt. If they were screwing the workers, then they should be flush. In fact, they are suffocating, just like the people on the bottom. A few players get out with the cash, but they still have no place to put their money. If they invest they will eventually lose it, if they hold it it will shrink in value. If they buy a painting, then they can't spend it, and they have to purchase insurance to protect it. It becomes a liability rather than an asset, and they then WANT inflation, so it is worth more, but the other 99 items they purchase costs more, too.

No one can escape the cycle. The financial system is set up wrong. Marx is a detour. Inflation eats everyone alive.

[rice349]

Reformists are worse than capitalists. Reformists should no better.

I agree, reformists are as dangerous to real progress in the same light in which Malcolm X described "northern racists" as more detrimental to the plight of African Americans than the outright southern racists....

[NovelGentry]

Once the "working class" take over, then how do they govern themselves? They become the new boardmembers, and the boardmembers become the new slaves. That isn't a new system, it is changing places within the existing system.

Except they do not become the new board members, at least not in terms of wealth distribution. Quite the contrary, wealth distribution takes on a nature which is transparent.

You presume the worker to be set above the worker somehow. If we say, all workers of a particular work place decide, democratically, the direction and goals of that work place and it's subsequent production, one cannot presume any worker to be excluded. The board exists as a separate body, whether it consists of "workers" or not, it is alienated from the workers as a whole.

What we propose is to hand it over to the workers, as a whole.


Marx wrote about capitalism, but he also created an understanding of Capital. If you strip away his politics, what he describes is just like Adam Smith. It is a "system" of supply and demand (more accurately described as blackmail,) and the "strength" of the workers is based on the same principle of supply and demand. They rise up and "demand" their share in the marketplace. It is the same system of control. The violence of the state becomes the violence of the worker.

Marx was extremely apolitical in his critique of capitalism and what he presented as historical materialism, the drive behind class struggle.

If you strip away Marx's politics, you are left with the same exact conclusions. What he describes, is actually very little. Marx never went into great detail on the nature of the socialist or communist system, his work was primarily reserved to a historical objective philosophy, and the critique of capital itself.

Of course you are right about one thing, it is the same system of control, however, this control has nothing to do with supply and demand or any market economics. In fact, the control itself is stripped from the economic conditions set down by the proletariat. Unlike capitalism, the economic power is not so closely tied with the politicla power. The bourgeoisie is folded into the working class population, that is, they work. They work for the same cause of the proletariat, to survive. We have turned the wheel on the bourgeoisie, to inflict the same force which they currently inflict to the proletariat, however, we have not removed that force from the proletariat. If capitalism is "the many support the few" -- socialism is not "the few support the many."

Not only would such a system be economically unfeasible, but the same problem is run all over again, where power does centralize. I agree state capitalism (as seen in many of the so-called socialist nations) is not the answer. I'm not sure where Marx ever proposed it was.


Most revolutions require the instrument of empire (the military and police) to swap sides. BUT, before a revolution can occur, there must first be an empire. So the goal should not be to change places in the empire, but to remove empire. This is a subtle but important difference, but it is not new. Thomas Paine said the same thing in regard to England.

Most of us do not intend to uphold the current form of the state, rather, we seek to abolish the state, and place a new means of control within the hands of the proletariat. Economically speaking, man becomes free -- Politically speaking, the bourgeoisie is suppressed.


All Marx did was substitute corporations (the capitalist) for the monarchy.

I don't think you understand what Monarchy is. Marx's intention would seem, at least within the context of what he wrote, to replace the private centralized corporations, with public decentralized worker's organization.


The problem is obvious, even to the capitalists, but if the solution is to trade one empire for another, most people will prefer their own. Bastiat described three choices for the Law.

1. The few plunder the many
2. The many plunder the many
3. Nobody plunders anybody.

Socialism is #3. We seek to end exploitation, indeed, it is difficult to say you've achieved socialism if you have not done this.


One and Two have both shown to be dismal failures. It is getting to Three that seems difficult. That requires navigating the fine line between the law and lawlessness. As Paine understood, you can suffer the same under both systems. (1 or 2)

You again tie political power directly to economic power. This is a poor argument. Capitalism has tied these two together, and it is doubtful you can see beyond a system where this is the case. You do not need law or lawlessness to create this sort of condition, you simply need an economic foundation which effectively destroys capital in it's current form. A direct one to one relationship between production and consumption. To do this you need little more than to centralize control over "currency" -- not control over production and consumption itself.

If you work 3 hours, you are rewarded with 3 hours labor time -- from this you can buy 3 hours of labor time.


Every war is a civil war, and then it spreads. Central governmnet becomes the solution to hold the parts because the parts cannot hold themselves. My website has some ideas on reforming the central government, but the central government is still a result of the failure of the states to adjust to their own problems.

Where did Marx ever talk about a "central government" ?


But, if you look at what Mao created, their Paper Tiger is even bigger than capitalism's

Agreed.


They are as caught in an insane universe as anyone else. They play the role of their economic class, because the system is so limiting in both directions.

Maybe under state capitalism. Socialism avoids this issue.


It is the system (empire) that keeps people in a perpetual state of rich and poor. Everyone who moves up will eventually come down, and everyone down will eventually go up. But big deal. We have been doing that forever. The goal should be to level things out. "The Levelers" were what the English Civil Wars were about. The American Revolution was a continuation of the English Civil Wars and the concept of leveling (all men are created equal.) But the attainment has remained exclusive. A new empire has replaced the old empire.

This is because the "leveling" was founded on the principle of "private property for all." Unlike the days of fedual restraints, it was intended that anyone could acquire private property -- we intend not to expand who is realistically able to acquire private property, but abolish it.


So, what bricks do we pull out to make the walls of the Empire crumble, without anyone getting hurt? That is what my reforms aim to do.

But the bricks are being pulled from the exact same system which you propose allows you to pull them. You want to destroy a system from within the system -- it will not allow it. The walls protect what you believe is your ability to destroy the walls, in doing so you become self-defeating. The more you attempt to ensure your ability to work within the system, while trying to destroy it, the more you restrict your own ability within that system. You want to destroy the political and economic authority, but in order to do so you need political and economic authority.


Can you rise above your own moral certainty and see the capitalists as victims too? When you tear down the financial-insurance empire, then everone will be equal. Can you resist your own will to power?

Can you realize the nature of your own?