So What To Do?
Most objectivists I have known say we have a long slog of educating people ahead of us and that we can't expect much to improve until this is accomplished. But Ayn Rand herself experienced that most people are very strongly resistant to this kind of education. They belittle and deny it from the beginning tossing out ad hominem and other logical fallacies with abandon.
We also experience a Government that is far far away from what objectivist minarchist legitimate government would be. On the order of 99% of all the regulatory and enforcement agencies writing and enforcing the rules on all of us are not elected or even very directly subject to control by anyone who is. So it is very unlikely that even an objectivist educated reasonably large chunk of the population could change much by voting or even running for political office.
So what is left? Violent revolution? We have said for so long that it isn't "time to shoot the bastards" that it looks to me like we lost the means and most importantly the will for such measures long ago. And we likely missed the window where that would have made much difference as well. However, in the face of a lawless and evil government resistance and even violent resistance seems quite rational.
So what else? Shrugging and just surviving in what happiness can be found with a few like minded people but with much our productive capacity not on offer and not making the world over as wondrously as it could? Being sort of hunkered down and staying smaller than we really are in protest?
Or perhaps swallowing our ideals and anger and just soldiering own thinking that if only that next invention gets done and out there and integrated that perhaps all these persons, ideologies and forces in the way will not ultimately matter?
Or perhaps it is time to build a real Gulch. A country of our own based on sound ethics and politics growing out of those ethics. I am reading with interest about artificial island creation, some as big as Manhattan. An objectivist city-state or eventual chain of them in international waters may be the only way to a fully alive and rational world that we have left.
Thoughts?
We also experience a Government that is far far away from what objectivist minarchist legitimate government would be. On the order of 99% of all the regulatory and enforcement agencies writing and enforcing the rules on all of us are not elected or even very directly subject to control by anyone who is. So it is very unlikely that even an objectivist educated reasonably large chunk of the population could change much by voting or even running for political office.
So what is left? Violent revolution? We have said for so long that it isn't "time to shoot the bastards" that it looks to me like we lost the means and most importantly the will for such measures long ago. And we likely missed the window where that would have made much difference as well. However, in the face of a lawless and evil government resistance and even violent resistance seems quite rational.
So what else? Shrugging and just surviving in what happiness can be found with a few like minded people but with much our productive capacity not on offer and not making the world over as wondrously as it could? Being sort of hunkered down and staying smaller than we really are in protest?
Or perhaps swallowing our ideals and anger and just soldiering own thinking that if only that next invention gets done and out there and integrated that perhaps all these persons, ideologies and forces in the way will not ultimately matter?
Or perhaps it is time to build a real Gulch. A country of our own based on sound ethics and politics growing out of those ethics. I am reading with interest about artificial island creation, some as big as Manhattan. An objectivist city-state or eventual chain of them in international waters may be the only way to a fully alive and rational world that we have left.
Thoughts?
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I think the logistics of making it happen are the problem, not the people to go there.
I liked the motto in the Gulch. Those that abide by it and all it implies are welcome. Those that don't are not. Just being a relative of someone that holds to it or even married to them is not enough. Without strong ideological basis developing justified laws and practices is not possible.
In cynical experience very few people have the courage to lead. Especially when most would rather throw brickbats than learn what it takes to do so.
Very few hard rules. The chief among the is no initiation of force. Enforcers of laws may use force to bring to justice those that break this basic rule in any of its forms. But that is about it. Laws are come up with by those that seem to be good and teasing out implications of the basic rule. If people think they went overboard they will neither enforce them or convict someone of them in a jury trial.
I think DROs (Dispute Resolution Organizations) and signing up for adjudication by one as part of most contracts are a pretty good idea.
Outside of not breaking the prime rule and its supported derivatives you are free to do whatever you like. That is the short form.
That being said, have you ever been to a Libertarian Party platform meeting? and lived to tell the tale? Lordy-lord, it's heaven and hell all rolled into one magnificent, never-ending package. To put it lightly.
Any organizational meetings of a Free Island would put those meetings to shame, unless it was one guy who invited everyone to come live with him and follow his rules. For example, I read rr's post and immediately think "strong leadership? I don't need to be led anywhere! Hire a good city manager, let him hire a staff, and be done with it." [thanks for giving me the example, rr]
That is, how do you organize it and run it? I have a very difficult time supporting a move [movement?] when I don't know what we're going to get when we get there.
What are the chances of such a one reaching that office? Slim to none. An Objectivist Party might be possible to create except that many an objectivist seems as bent on pulling the splinter out of each other's eyes with great shows of exercising judgment and much rationalization than pulling the beam out of the eye of our country. I would hesitate to try to do it through the Libertarian Party. And in any case 3rd parties in this country are rather systematically kept small and impotent. It is hard to picture either of the major parties going far enough in the right direction. Although I would be delighted if a Rand Paul, even with his flaws, was nominated.
When nearly 50% of the people get their livelihood from the government in one way or another how many do you think will vote on principle to greatly dismantle that same government and recast it in proper terms and proportion?
Is it America? In basic spirit and understanding of its people, is it America? Do the majority of those in their 40s and younger understand and hold as true and important what those of us that are older were taught in high school civics? In what is held most important and sacred is it still America? Or is it something increasingly alien that now inhabits the same land area? Bottom line, is it at all acceptable for rational honest people and if not what to do about it?