Re: Hammill 1987 speech

This is a response to feedback on my original post that was originally posted to Cypherpunks@toad.com, newlibertarians@teleport.com, and dnowch2@teleport.com.  The respondor ("Vladimir Z. Nuri",  widely suspected of being an L. Detweiler 'tentacle,') put his response into Cypherpunks alone. 

At 12:43 PM 1/4/96 -0800, you   <vznuri@netcom.com>      wrote:
>
>the Hammill 1987 speech is interesting and prescient but also contains
>some of the subtle mind-biases and prejudices of rabid libertarians
>that are easy for outsiders to spot.

Gee, YOUR biases seem AT LEAST as easy to spot too, huh?!?

> some day I might write a more
>ambitious essay on this, but for now I'll list a few items and suggest some
>counterclaims that will fry any libertarians brain.

Don't flatter yourself.

> all these ideas
>have analogues to cryptography which I'll elucidate as best I can.
>
>1. weaponry is good in the hands of individuals, tyrannical in the hands
>of the state.
>
>the analogy is with the crossbow and other weapons. as a logical
>consequence of these ideas, it seems libertarians
>think that utopia could be achieved if everyone could build their own
>backyard nukes. they are obsessed with the idea of "deterrence" which
>is a fancy word for MAD feer, mutual assured destruction fear.

Not, at least, for me.  The "backyard nukes" analogy is the one typically grabbed by the anti-gunners when they're trying to justify limiting the 2nd amendment.  One problem that I see with this "reasoning" is that they never analogize by trying to limit the power of THE STATE to own weapons, despite the fact that maximum-bang weaponry increased by over a factor of 1,000,000 between about 1935 and 1955 or so.  And not to mention that military weaponry deadliness increased by probably a factor of at least 100 between 1790 and 1935.  
Since (I assume you understand the argument, here) the US Constitution is supposed to be the complete statement of the legal powers of the Federal government, what's missing is a justification for even ALLOWING the government to engage in the kinds of weapons developments that it did post 1935 on constitutional/legal grounds.  The significance of this argument is this:  If you argue that "things have changed" and indiiduals should not be able to make/own nukes, that opens the door to similar claims that "things have changed" and the US Government should not be allowed to maintain the current military that it does.

Don't just come back and say the Constitution provides for open-ended "defense":  Nobody today would argue that the writers of the Constitution could have anticipated the development of the H-bomb or the F-15 or AWACS, but I see nobody using that argument to de-empower the government, while I FREQUENTLY see people trying to justify  restrictions on guns based on the kinds of developments in guns that have happened since the muzzle-loader was king.

>the analogy to cryptography is: cryptography is good in the hands 
>of individuals, tyrannical in the hands of the state.

Sometimes, it is indeed.  Especially since "the state" SHOULD serve at the pleasure of the individuals, not hte other way around.  You may disagree...

>again the idea is that the stronger the cryptography available to the
>individual, the better. however I don't want to get into any of the 
>guns == crypto arguments..
>
>2. the world is screwed up because governments have made it that way.
>
>this is such a silly premise 

It's also your "straw-man argument."

>but vast masses have subscribed to it 
>since the beginning of time. it's easy to say that any problem you have
>with your finances or your pet poodle is the fault of the Government,
>Big Business, or whatever.

While it's true that "the world is screwed  up" and it's also true that "governments have made it screwed up," libertarians don't usually (?) try to claim that governments bear _full_ responsibility.  Just most of it.

> libertarians are especially clever in 
>constantly inventing new terms, synonymous with "enemy" but not quite
>so coarse and vulgar ("statist" is the current favorite epithet), 

Actually, the term "statist" is a particularly useful and interesting term.  Against the backdrop of people stuck in their traditional left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican ruts, libertarians remindthe world that politics can be viewed even better in two dimensions, for example the "Nolan Chart," otherwise known as "the world's smallest political quiz."  The thing I've always found fascinating about that representation is that it contains, embedded within it, the left/right spectrum, but perpendical to this is the libertarian/authoritarian (statist) axis.  In other words, it showed that some people seem to be just naturally control-freaks, whether they come from the left or the right.

Now,  language is IMPORTANT.  If you can control the language, you can control the debate.  Historically, there was no easy way to describe people now well-described by the term "statist", because they could be either of the "liberal" or "conservative" bent, the "Republican" or "Democratic" bent, etc.

>to name their endless list of bogeymen who prevent them from 
>supposedly achieving their full potential in life.
>
>why is it that libertarians have not created their own state long ago,
>but continue to stay in countries that they claim oppress them? I have
>never heard a satisfactory response to this. 

[note:  already in the Cypherpunks area he has been given a number of reasons for this; primarily based on attack by non-libertarian states]  These examples are presumably true;  governments fear competition that may later eliminate them.  Companies do too, but they're generally limited in their ability to fight back.

> the real answer of course
>is that the rabid libertarians will never find a system they like,

A misleading statement.  They may never "like" any system forced on them, and by saying they "find" it implies that it is made by (and, presumably, ENFORCED BY) somebody else!

> they
>will criticize anything that exists, and never work to find a better
>alternative through constructive, positive means, but are happy to try
>to sabotage whatever has been built by others in the name of some
>noble and holy guerrilla war.

What's wrong with sabotaging the work of flaming statists?!?

>the analogy to crypto: any technology such as crypto that helps people avoid 
>governments, and hide their dealings, promotes utopia. governments
>are the root of all evil, and anything that destroys them destroys 
>evil.

Sounds logical to me...


>3. the government vs. the people dichotomy
>
>endlessly, even in a system that is expressly designed to present this
>polarization,

Maybe you meant, "prevent."  But even expressed this way, that was wrong.

> libertarians subscribe to the idea of "us vs. them" in
>every avenue of reality.

So what else is new for nearly all political philosophy?  If anything, I've heard more "us vs. them" from NON-libertarians than from libertarians.

> this thinking is entirely the same as that
>held by the NSA and cold war defense contractors. what's the difference?

Maybe this portion of the philosophy ISN'T the difference, and something else IS...

>none.  we have a system in which the designers said it was "of, by, and
>for the people", but a libertarian cannot handle this unity, 

The variability is the entent to which "this system" controls society.  Even if we assume that "a government" is necessary, there is still an enormous variability as to HOW MUCH that government controls. 200 years of change has produced an enormous differnece.  There is NO REASON TO BELIEVE that libertarians should have to "handle" the 1996 version of reality that was only originally intended in 1790 to control a tiny fraction of one's life.  Your argument seems to be a paean to an open-ended approval of government.

>nor can
>apparently any other citizen in the US that criticizes their government
>as if it is something apart from themselves.

The answer to that is simple.  "Their ('our') government" is INDEED "something apart from themselves"!  For just one example, those military contractors pay their bribes to POLITICIANS, not randomly selected citizens, for a GOOD REASON. Governments of all kinds are INDEED, "apart" from their citizenry!!! 


>cryptography helps people preserve these illusions of separation.
>there are people who are "in" and "out" and those "out" cannot read
>your messages. what prevents leaks from "in" to "out"? libertarians
>would like to have you believe they have solved this problem with 
>technology. but it is not a technological problem. it is an issue
>of trust, something that cannot be formalized or preserved by any
>invention. but don't tell this to a libertarian, who has dedicated
>his entire ideology to attempting to prove that one can actually
>achieve human integrity & utopia through technology alone and
>insisting that anything else is wholly superfluous.

Detweiler is beginning to lose touch with reality with this previous sentence.

>
>4. egalitarianism: libertarians are always saying that we don't
>have it and ranting about this injustice. 

Odd that you would claim this.  If anything, the libertarians I've met are about as "anti-egalitarian" as they come, as long as you're talking about GOVERNMENT ENFORCED ACCESS TO WEALTH AND POWER.  


>but in their arguments, such as Hammill's, you will always find subtle 
>arguments that they don't really want egalitarianism: some individuals should
>have an "edge" with their technology over those who seek to oppress them.

Subtle?  SUBTLE????  I have, in fact, heard more RABIDLY ANTI-EGALITARIAN (again:  Where egalitarianism is defined as government-enforced equal-treatment by private individuals of private individuals.) arguments by libertarians, who object (for just one example) to the ADA (Americans with a Disability Act) because it requires private organizations (corporations, for instance) to build buildings to be "accessible" to everyone.  If anything, libertarians are the most PROUDLY anti-egalitarian people around, in that they don't want the heavy hand of government to try to equalize society by the barrel of the gun.

In other words, Detweiler...er...Nuri  has totally dissociated himself from reality.  He clearly doesn't understand the first thing about libertarianism.

>they would be all for it if individuals had the capability to create
>atom bombs but somehow governments did not. the philosophy is inherently
>desiring inequality at its root.  the implication with crypto is that
>governments should have to reveal everything but individuals can have 
>total secrecy.

Actually, since "governments" are merely the agents and employees of the citizenry (or they should be!!!) this is a valid argument.  Since the government is the "employee" and the citizenry pays it, the citizenry gets to call the shots.


>beware of someone who tells you that utopia cannot currently be realized
>because
>
>1. governments ("they") do not allow it for "us".
>2. there are a lot of people preventing it from being realized, and we
>have to *get*rid* of them first.
>3. the correct technology does not yet exist. once it is invented, however,
>all problems will be solved.

Actually, my "Assassination Politics" idea stands an excellent chance of achieving exactly these breakthroughs.  You don't like it, however.


>I'm not actually going to rebut any of these outright other than to
>the degree I have,

In other words, you can't think of any better arguments...

> and point out that history is ample evidence they are all false.

Which history?  What history?  Whose version of history?

>  of course I don't expect any of the libertarians to understand
>my points, but frankly I think I am going to enjoy watching obtuse and
>angry flames for pushing the hot buttons.

In other words, you've given up now.  Thank you for your flames.  They'll probably convince something new that I'm right...

Mr. Bell: 

if I were to summarize my arguments, they would be that governments
are the way that they are not so much because they attract certain
dysfunctional individuals, but rather because they are microcosms
and macrocosms of human psychology. the problems with government
that libertarians rant about are problems with human behavior.
the solution is not to get rid of governments-- this is confusing
cause and effect, symptom and cause. the solution is to work on
human behavior. when humans begin to think in a different,
positive way, their governing systems will automatically reflect the change.

my essay was designed to show the negative aspects of governments
that rabid libertarians are always endlessly ranting about are actually
embodied in the psychologies of those libertarians themselves. therefore,
while I agree with the libertarian that there are many problems with
governments, I see no reason to believe that libertarians are proposing
a workable alternative, based on their own stark biases and prejudices. 
in fact it seems quite obvious to me that their own "alternatives" are
either "vaporware" or would be far worse in practice than even the
dysfunctional systems we have in place today.

rabid libertarianism reminds me of Marxism: sounds great in theory, and
you might even convince large parts of the population or key people in
power to follow it. but does it truly present an implementable and workable
alternative? where are the specifics?

identifying problems with government is quite trivial. this is destructive
criticism, analogous to the guerilla warfare of words that rabid libertarians
love. but criticism is easy compared to construction of something that works.

when you focus your attempts on creating a system that embodies your
ideals instead of ranting at those that do not (and complaining that
you cannot because governments prevent you), you will make far more
progress in developing your ideas and convincing the world to follow you
than any number of essays can accomplish.

if libertarianism is truly workable, shouldn't it be workable on
small scales? what prevents individuals from actually starting it going
at a small scale and growing it? that is the path that every government
and nation has taken since the beginning of time, why do you think you
should be exmempt?

I don't see that any of your response to my essay detract from this
basic message so I'm going to pass on a detailed reply.

Here you are limited to begging for mercy. Sure, theoretically, encrypted 
financial transactions on the 'net will inhibit taxation, but Congress
seems likely to nip that in the bud, massive begging notwithstanding.
The 'net could be used for the interaction of true democracy (along with 
the more available Plain Old Telephone System, fax, paper, etc), as well
as for beggary.

The Swiss experience for 148 years is available for review from the very 
first link from our web site:

     Evan Ravitz, director,  VOTING BY PHONE FOUNDATION:  evanr@vote.org
    Electronic democracy! From the directors of the U.S. National Science 
   Foundation's 1974 Televote trials and Boulder's 1993 ballot initiative:
 http://www.vote.org/v  A FUTURE PASTURES PRESENTATION (303)440-6838 fon/fax 
"What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." -Goethe

On Sun, 7 Jan 1996, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:

> when you focus your attempts on creating a system that embodies your
> ideals...you will make far more
> progress in developing your ideas and convincing the world to follow you
> than any number of essays can accomplish.

As well as the Swiss direct democratic system, at the other end of the 
scale, the poorest people of the Americas have the same idea. The 
Zapatista rebels, laboriously "making all the major decisions by the 
referendum" in 8 Mayan languages in the jungles and mountains of Chiapas, 
have stood off the US-funded Mexican army for 2 years and a week now.

Here's what Bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz, how the world's foremost 
exponent of "liberation theology" has to say:

From: Bill Stivers <stiverpp@corcomsv.corcom.com>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Bishop Ruiz: EZLN Calls People to Civil-Political Action
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Date: 25 Dec 1995 05:12:59 GMT

	Enclosure one was excerpted from Latinamerica Press, Nov. 23, 1995. LP
contributor Dauno Totoro Taulis interviewed Chiapas Bishop Samuel Ruiz.
-------------


LP: Does the indigenous uprising in Chiapas contradict the dream of
justice and fraternity among men and women?

Ruiz: One must look at the facts. Something awaits the world,
something that can come out of all this. Perhaps it is a certain
model, a road to greater citizen participation in the transformation
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
of their own reality. The EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army)
has not called on the people to rise up in arms, it has called on them
to rise up as civic-political actors. It is curious that, after 500
years, when nobody was expecting there to be articulated indigenous
groups but only   "conquered Indians," it is precisely these Indians
who are motivating us to change, to participate.

It is surprising that the most marginalized inhabitants of the
continent, who are on the social floor, are those who are rising up
with the prospects of a transforming success. A voice is being heard
from those living in a culture distinct from the West, from the heart
of the communitarian concept. It is an ancient voice that has never
been heard before--and for this reason appears as a new voice--and it
offers a successful alternative for everyone.

Besides it was always thought that we had to "rescue" the Indians,
that we had to help them, and now they are offering the possibility of
renovation for us.

LP: Isn't it contradictory that to talk of peace, the communities had
to take up arms?

Ruiz: What is new is that those who have risen up in arms did not make
the same decision as the continent's other known armed movements,
which believed that to achieve justice they first had to take power.
The EZLN does not espouse this idea. This is war for peace, a war so
that there is peace, a war in which they are not asking others to rise
up in arms but to rise up as subjects of a transformation.

It is not an armed group talking with a government to reach partial
accords, but a people, an organized civil society, that is
transforming itself through social change. It is a search that has
returned to the subject and protagonist of history, the citizen, the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
right and duty for his or her own transformation.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     Evan Ravitz, director,  VOTING BY PHONE FOUNDATION:  evanr@vote.org
    Electronic democracy! From the directors of the U.S. National Science 
   Foundation's 1974 Televote trials and Boulder's 1993 ballot initiative:
 http://www.vote.org/v  A FUTURE PASTURES PRESENTATION (303)440-6838 fon/fax 
"What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." -Goethe

Hi Evan,

Thanks for that lovely peice about the Chiapas uprising. I'm saving it to 
disk. It's so archtypal of the turgid prose of graduates of Moscow's 
Patrice Lumumba University. How wondrous that leftists-without-a-home can 
find a cause to latch onto and keep their rhetorical skills in practice.

Want to come with me tomorrow? I'm going down to the library to re-read
the history of the Indians of Meso-America.  I like the part about the
hundreds of thousands of peasants who had their hearts cut out without
anesthesia, so that the Emperor could collect lots of taxes on an abundant
harvest.  Damn shame that the Spaniards came along and destroyed a
culture, ya know? 


Alan Horowitz
alanh@infi.net

On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote:
> Thanks for that lovely peice about the Chiapas uprising. I'm saving it to 
> disk. It's so archtypal of the turgid prose of graduates of Moscow's 
> Patrice Lumumba University. How wondrous that leftists-without-a-home can 
> find a cause to latch onto and keep their rhetorical skills in practice.

Carlos Fuentes calls the rebellion the first "post-Communist" revolution. 
They specifically reject the rhetoric you set up as a straw-man. If you 
want to actually become informed about reality down there (I lived in 
Chiapas 2 winters, Guatemala 4), please subscribe to the mailing list 
that the NY Times says has prevented more Mexican Army massacres:

To subscribe to the chiapas-l list send a message to:   

	majordomo@profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx 

with these words in the body of the message: 

	subscribe chiapas-l Your-Email-Adress

and leave the subject line empty. You will receive a welcome message with
info on the group *and on how to unsubscribe*. You should save this 
message for future reference. You can expect several messages per day.

> Want to come with me tomorrow? I'm going down to the library to re-read
> the history of the Indians of Meso-America.  I like the part about the
> hundreds of thousands of peasants who had their hearts cut out without
> anesthesia, so that the Emperor could collect lots of taxes on an abundant
> harvest.  Damn shame that the Spaniards came along and destroyed a
> culture, ya know? 

Having lived with Mayans for 6 winters I still have my heart and suggest 
you don't hold the campesinos responsible for their "emperor's" actions 
of centuries ago.

Stop fighting the cold war and against the past and transcend virtual 
reality and see how others really live and act. Or is your ignorance such 
bliss? My Mayan friends are some of the finest I have. 


     Evan Ravitz, director,  VOTING BY PHONE FOUNDATION:  evanr@vote.org
    Electronic democracy! From the directors of the U.S. National Science 
   Foundation's 1974 Televote trials and Boulder's 1993 ballot initiative:
http://www.vote.org/v  A FUTURE PASTURES PRESENTATION. We sell voting systems 
"What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." -Goethe