digger

This separation can easily be abused, and taken over. FDR's court packing scheme in the 30's gave him a court full of justices he appointed, effectively giving him control of two branches of government. With the system in place, those two branches can effectively control the third. I do agree that Democracy is better than any system that was previously tried, but is that the best that we can do? Is democracy the end game?Despite all your complaints, you do agree that what we have now is better than anything else we've tried. I repeat, if you propose radical changes, the burden is on you to explain how how what you propose would be any better than what we have now. I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying that you haven't demonstrated it.

Bull, your argument is faulty. You're saying that since various states have been and are involved in oppression, therefor states are responsible for all oppression. Not only is this logic faulty, the conclusion is subject to countless counterexamples. There is plenty of oppression that states have no part in, and also plenty of actions that states have taken to reduce oppression. In your second paragraph, you're dodging the question with one of your own. To answer your question, there are mechanisms in our current system to mitigate the impacts of the corruption of power. We have a separation of powers and an electoral system. These are not perfect, but they are tested and have proven to be better than anything else that has been tried. If you want to propose radical change, the burden is on you to explain why what you propose is better.

Well, this thread has drifted pretty far off topic. Blask's view is classic; the state enforces the social contract and protects the commons. The question of what stops a plutocracy from forming is much simpler than it appears. To look deeper, ask how the people would get rid of a plutocracy in the first place. The answer is communal self defense, based on an educated and empowered population. You have to develop that before anarchy can break away from plutocracy in the first place, and it is that same empowered population that would prevent a plutocracy from reforming. But when you start to examine what sort of structures a people free of plutocrats would build to continue to enforce the social contract and protect the commons from plutocracy, it starts to look an awful lot like a state. The difference would be voluntary association based on enlightened self interest. When you ask the question, what would be done about people who enjoy the benefits of an enforced social contract, but refuse to participate, things start to fall apart. In my view, society is not ready for anarchy. People are too selfish. We could change, over time. The zeitgeist progresses. Without socialization, it would be Lord of the Flies. Parents have a social responsibility to instill values in their children, and there are social consequences for breaking those values. One of those values could become voluntarily enforcing the social contract. Then the answer to what prevents the plutocracy becomes socialization. One of the most distasteful aspects of the state is corruption. It is the coercive power of the state combined with an uneducated, disempowered population that allows for corruption. Corruption is not binary, it is analog; there are degrees. Thus anarchy can be seen as the edge of a spectrum; the limit as corruption approaches zero. To promote anarchy can be seen as the fight to hold power accountable. It is the skills that people learn and the alternatives to power that people create in the process that will prevent plutocracy from reforming. If power is the ability to control other people's lives, than in order to create freedom, one must destroy power.

I addressed you because you said that this video does not have much anti-statism, when the whole point of the video is anti-state. Every other point that he makes is just to support his main point that it is crony capitalism, and not the free market, that is responsible for slavery. While he has all the pieces, he puts them together backwards. It's not that slavery has a social cause. For the vast majority of human history, slavery was the assumed norm. It's not-slavery that has a social cause. The question isn't why did we have slave based economies, the question is why did we stop? In his zeal to equate taxation with chattel slavery (seriously, it's in the video!), he completely misses the point. Yes, one of his points was that race was not a predominant factor in slavery. He's completely wrong, but that was one of his points. But he only made that point in order to support his greater point that it's all the state's fault.

Did we watch the same video? You must have gotten stuck in the body of the video with all of the (unsourced) facts, and forgotten the introduction and conclusion, which make it very clear that the cause of slavery is crony capitalism, and that the free market has nothing to do with it (the honor of his sacred cow is protected). He's quite right that the free market has nothing to do with it. Since there has never been a free market and most likely never will be, the free market has nothing to do with anything in history or reality. He does on occasion point the finger at the true culprits, the owners. But he misses the point when he blames the state. Yes, the owners use the state for their own purposes. But that's what the state is, a tool that is used by those who have the power to wield it. There are times when it has been used against slavery; as he pointed out the British Navy stopped the slave trade. It has been used to promote the ideals of the free market; anti trust enforcement, protection of the commons, property rights protection. It has even been used to promote the welfare of the common man over the owners; the New Deal, OSHA, minimum wage. It is a mistake to view the state as a single entity with one agenda or set of interests. The state is a tool that many different classes of people wrestle for control of. If his ideal free market is ever going to come to pass, it is going to rely on the state to prevent the owners from warping the market for their own gain. By vilifying the state he's not only shooting wide of the point, he's shooting himself in the foot.