Meditations on a better world
Once upon a time, I read an article on ”Bigthink“, about an asteroid made of gold, which was close to landing on our planet. He didn't have the necessary size to cause a mass catastrophe comparable to the ”Big Bang“ that led towards the earth's creation, but worthwhile enough to immediately deflate our world's currencies. The article had me thinking about a common mind game among leftist ideologies: Do we actually need currencies in our societies? Or is it a disposable means only good for grief?
Disclaimer: It is recommended by the author to download the PDF version hereby submitted on Google Drive if one expected to also take a look at the footnotes including further readings, although not by me (those which are by me would be directly linked into the words, although those links might not work with the PDF, as I must confess lamentably). As it might not be the best way to enjoy, it's the best one I could come up with. Nevertheless, don't feel demotivated from reading my text nevertheless, as those footnotes are not necessary in terms of following my arguments but are only baselines to show I am not clutching on straws but working upon an arguable ground.
The PDF: Google Drive
Acknowledgement
Still to be written!!!
Preamble
In spite of my choice of an apparent subtitle, this text will only primarily equip the thread of imagining of a non-monetary society. More broadly, nonetheless, shall I attempt to “philosophise” (that is: Contemplate, aimlessly meander throughout the text, and occasionally criticise our society as of its status quo) about various thoughts of of mine on a Utopian society as it might never be accomplished, neither in my lifetime, nor in anybody else's. Some might question the point in undertaking such a futile quest, especially since so many writers before us committed the very same objective. I won't contradict this matter-of-fact, yet will have to add one argument against it nonetheless: Many of those writings preceded our era, now multilayered by various renown schools of thought represented in subsequent extremities and by plenty of ideologues and thinkers alike. Furthermore do we also recognise a surge in long-living autocracies besides downfalls of once-prosperous nations (prosperous in terms of no reported anti-governmental protests that turned violent eventually, as well as economic prosperity that proved for once the feasibility and perseverance of Bolivian Socialism in an otherwise capitalist society), either through corruption or societal polarisation/politicisation (both terms had to be used since none of them can uniquely stand for what dwelt in the US society during the Trump presidency (2016 to 2020)). The futuristic soar in digitalisation and the internet's interconnection of the world of course had its fair share of this brisk development.
Given all these facts, differing today's society from the status quo ante in which previous opera magna were written, I finally found it necessary to “date them up” by today's standards, while the ideas expressed barely distinguish from already existing works, depending on to which works one referred; I for myself couldn't tell which work inspired me most and I also don't want to get into any name-dropping now. Hence, without further ado (about nothing), we shall go ahead with the first chapter*.
*(Bona note: The Roman numerals were added as means of orientation but don't necessarily represent the closure of one topic to open a new one. Cautiously speaking, as even I don't have a stern overview of those distinctions I so far set, I added them almost arbitrarily, to justify sudden “jumps”. Thus, I hereby apologise for any confusions, please bear with me while reading this text. Taking notes is recommended but not necessary. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an editor to refine the text honorarily prior to its publishing, stating that they still had a life and a family to feed.
I
As I said before, the idea isn't new; it might be as old as the point of creation of first neutral means of value themselves. Since money is only available in a limited amount (beside the central banks' permission to infinitely create new money if they find it useful in a given situation, such as a war), there usually were fewer people with more money, while a great amount of people suffered from their little pocket money to make ends meet. With money, one could tell, the question of justice in our society simultaneously emerged, especially because of the unjust distribution of money to buy things. The question newly emerged into the limelight when Bitcoins entered the stage–the first decentralised currency, accompanied by further alternatives, such as Ethereum. Unlike the currencies that previously existed, such as the Dollar or the Euro, Bitcoin and its kinship didn't primarily function as a normal currency with which you could buy goods and services in the outside world (although Bitcoins are used as a currency in anonymous deals especially in the darknet, to purchase goods and services that are morally detested on the one hand, and criminal on the legal hand), the digital currency could be mined privately with the respective hardware, and traded like shares on the stock market. When Bitcoins took it to the stage for the first time, its appearance was hotly debated, and plenty of miners began to create vast amounts of this new currency, deflating and inflating its value at rampant velocity. Millionaires and billionaires arose as quickly as they fell, it only slowly became steadfast eventually. Whether it ever did, it depends on those who circulate in the widths of this market; at least Alan Greenspan, as it seems, is certain about the cryptocurrencies' eventual decline into oblivion.
Putting the issue aside, we shall deal with a different question, as introduced afore: Could we imagine, let alone install, a society dealing without any money whatsoever? The question itself is controversial, given the fact that no living person in our civilised society regularly experienced a world in which money was not used to sell or swap goods of any kind with a comparable means in return. Wherever one goes to purchase either a good or a service, money or debit cards are the usual means of interchanging the respective means. To therefore go ahead and submit the bare idea of giving up on this simple scheme and instead attempt to do it differently in order to enforce social justice might appear outrageous, as if brought up by an ideological firebrand without enough attention to satisfy his or her narcissist disorder. Nevertheless, such ideas have also become more common in an internet culture in which radical ideas are oftentimes present especially among youngsters, equipping them to make fun of them. This doesn't need to undermine these ideas' seriousness but can make it easier to talk about since these ideas are more often socially accepted at least in front of certain groups, many of them still having a long future before them in this world, thus perhaps being more open-minded towards reshaping it. Hence, to discuss such ideas to detail them in practice could turn out to be surprisingly fruitful, assuming, of course, that this discussion will be held according to its seriousness.
II
One question, when speaking about the issue of money in its primary function and how to either replace or remove it, stands out as the elephant in the room: How would you swap or trade goods once money was a merely worthless good which used to have a steadfast function in our society? Our society won't break down once it has lost one of its centuries-old entities, and so, people will (want to) continue trading goods because they also continue producing goods that will be needed somewhere in this world, as close as next door and as far and wide as somewhere on the other side of the world. As much as they want to trade their goods, they will also want to receive something in return. The first idea, stemming from the time before money was invented, would be to trade goods for goods. Yet this method could bring up difficulties for those who are in no possession of goods worth trading, or those who didn't want to trade any goods of theirs in return for others. For such people, the means of currencies came in handy, because they didn't have to give away any of their possessions to obtain any. On the other hand, money has created an influx of injustice, as I mentioned before, due to the monopoly of money printing on behalf of the central banks, and the many facets of how money pools in the hands of a few individuals, leaving the masses in decline of wealth. It would be arduous to now break down on how money is being pooled through the mechanisms of a corporatist society (a society that oscillates around the two regulating screws: The market, and the state)–about inheritance of wealth or well-functioning companies and/or concerns; creating a monopoly or a precious start-up company as an entrepreneur in a newly discovered market niche and at best be bought by a concern for millions or even billions of dollars (rarely happens, I admit); by being uniquely talented or born into a wealthy or advantageous family or environment and accumulated by one's family, relatives or outside benefactors to become a celebrity in any given field, such as sports or pop culture; acquiring an advanced understanding of stock-trading and becoming a hedge fund manager to broker trades for royalties by one's customers; etc. These are only a couple of examples, many of them not necessarily accessible to certain individuals of our society due to lack of opportunities or personal abilities (the assumption that respective individuals are more creative folks or more logically thinking is not too far-fetched but true to a certain degree). It can be as closely watched how one person might inherit an exorbitant opulence as one will inherit utter poverty, incapable of ever escaping it.
It doesn't mean that those who made a fortune through their talents, their creativity or whatever reason should be punished; nor is it supposed to daemonise those who were lucky to inherit wealth, such as Donald Trump did. The main point is to highlight that there is a staunch division between those who were lucky to gather wealth in one legal way or the other, and those who were in bad luck to not make such a fortune, or those who are even worse off and inherit poverty ad ovo and never managed to climb out of it. It is that exact point that would argue in favour of abolishing monetary means in order to replace it with something less easily corrupted into disjoint.
To dissolve monetary systems would be a downright method addressing a problem that could merely be solved by evening social discontinuations, some might suggest; instead of removing a neutral means of trade, we could as well provide every person in our society with an equal opportunity to succeed on one's own, through one's own earnest efforts. The classical pursuit of happiness, indeed. But the question is: How would that happen? When children are born in poverty and are bound to it eternally, it is mostly caused by parents who were bound to the same situation through social prejudices, such as racism or discrimination on the state's behalf, such as the gender pay gap (which does exist (PDF), even though there are plenty of evidence that women commit disadvantageous choices which shouldn't be disadvantageous since those choices benefit the society in the long run, such as taking care of their children–thus entering part-time instead of working full-time–or choosing jobs that don't pay well but are still demanded by consumers, e. g. as hairdressers or waitresses) or a higher taxation of female hygiene products in a way that can be considered unjust in opposition to non-“vital” products, such as books (while this particular tax was dropped in Germany (instead of the full VAT, the lower VAT is now in use), for example, many US states still put this taxation upon female hygiene products). There are many ways by which governmental oppression against women could operate, many of which are separated from withholding money they are supposed to receive. Hence, to dissolve monetary means would only crop a few of these oppressive measurements, not all; and those who are considered working all assume that a way to replace them can be found, excluding any possibility that they could be exploited. Except for that, to abolish monetary means and everything linked to them (legitimated by them, furthermore be necessitated through them) can also mean to enforce women's rights for equality.
It doesn't mean that those who made a fortune through their talents, their creativity or whatever reason should be punished; nor is it supposed to daemonise those who were lucky to inherit wealth, such as Donald Trump did. The main point is to highlight that there is a staunch division between those who were lucky to gather wealth in one legal way or the other, and those who were in bad luck to not make such a fortune, or those who are even worse off and inherit poverty ad ovo and never managed to climb out of it. It is that exact point that would argue in favour of abolishing monetary means in order to replace it with something less easily corrupted into disjoint.
To dissolve monetary systems would be a downright method addressing a problem that could merely be solved by evening social discontinuations, some might suggest; instead of removing a neutral means of trade, we could as well provide every person in our society with an equal opportunity to succeed on one's own, through one's own earnest efforts. The classical pursuit of happiness, indeed. But the question is: How would that happen? When children are born in poverty and are bound to it eternally, it is mostly caused by parents who were bound to the same situation through social prejudices, such as racism or discrimination on the state's behalf, such as the gender pay gap (which does exist (PDF), even though there are plenty of evidence that women commit disadvantageous choices which shouldn't be disadvantageous since those choices benefit the society in the long run, such as taking care of their children–thus entering part-time instead of working full-time–or choosing jobs that don't pay well but are still demanded by consumers, e. g. as hairdressers or waitresses) or a higher taxation of female hygiene products in a way that can be considered unjust in opposition to non-“vital” products, such as books (while this particular tax was dropped in Germany (instead of the full VAT, the lower VAT is now in use), for example, many US states still put this taxation upon female hygiene products). There are many ways by which governmental oppression against women could operate, many of which are separated from withholding money they are supposed to receive. Hence, to dissolve monetary means would only crop a few of these oppressive measurements, not all; and those who are considered working all assume that a way to replace them can be found, excluding any possibility that they could be exploited. Except for that, to abolish monetary means and everything linked to them (legitimated by them, furthermore be necessitated through them) can also mean to enforce women's rights for equality.
III
At last, we need to elaborate on the question what could replace money in the world. Swapping doesn't work out, as we learnt earlier, regarding the fact that not everyone has got a demanded good to turn in in order to obtain something one wants to have from the individual that demands that one specific good (or those various goods demanded and at hand on the second individual's behalf). Yet before we continue in this example, we shall give those entities “names” to address them more comprehensibly. Thus, let me repeat the example: A doesn't always have the goods demanded by B to turn in in order to obtain the goods A wishes to obtain so. Hence, A might not receive the goods B owns and would be ready to hand in because A could not deliver the goods B wished to obtain in return for his or her goods. Of course the same would apply in a similar situation but with money. B would be ready to sell a certain good for a given price and A would likewise be ready to pay this fixed price, yet he or she is unable to pay it because he or she doesn't have this amount of money at hand. On the other hand, to abolish the monetary means is not a self-evident cause but one objecting towards a brighter future. If it was only to create an alternate future by the same means, it could as well be ceased immediately.
Was there an option to centralise goods and monitor them to be usually available to everyone for free? It would match the collectivist utopia that was contemplated in Anarchist philosophy, but didn't manage to become a functional idea since centralisation proved to be an impractical system. Its main issue was the assumption that the market could be controlled through a central operational system presaging the consumers' needs instead of leaving it to the consumers themselves to fell those respective decisions. On the other hand, in foresight, such some means of control, if functional, could become an instrument worth considering in order to prevent overt exploitation of natural resources. Unfortunately, no functioning centrist system effectually proved to work out, so that it still depends on consumers and producers alike to take on their responsibility and respectively consume and produce consciously. To believe in it might either be our all demise or salvation.
Disregarding the question of whether centralisation deserves a second chance, we should move forward and look for different solutions. Not many remain; as much as philsophers advanced to create fantastic utopias, seldom did they consider the details of their utopias, especially considering swaps of goods. Perhaps they assumed centralised systems to be superior to any second idea that could be thought of. In their defense, one can reiterate the fact that many of them were born prior to the Soviet Union's emergence. Nowadays, we do have history books filled with evidence of how centralised states and societies, with the Soviet Union ranking above them all. It's needless to debate whether the Soviet Union was Socialist or not, let alone Communist. It indeed was Socialist, and showed to all of us why Socialist states are no different from corporatist states, regarding their tendency to attract adversarial individuals. No state is free of flaws, as long as he requires human beings of no thorough preliminary investigation but only a specific amount of votes in the public body. In Socialist dictatorships (even though some might detect a poor wording on Marx' behalf or the alternation of the word's meaning when he spoke about a “dictatorship of the proletariat”), it might even turn out worse, since ministries and the leadership are being succeeded interiorly, from inside the sole existing party, thus being even more eager to corruption. Although the linked text by Socialist scholar Hal Draper might insist otherwise on how we have to understand the term “dictatorship” in this context, it will never be enforced differently from how we do understand dictatorships, exactly verbatim according to today's standards. Who, in the end, would assure that only those who read Marx (beside all the other Socialist philosophers) contextually, thus avoiding the Freudian slip of breaking through a “classical” dictatorship as of today's interpretations? It's the problem we usually confront when talking about fragile static systems in our dynamic society: Their incapability of defending themselves against vermin proliferating and invading from the inside will collapse them sooner or later inevitably. It's like jumping down a high building and not moving your knees downwards and rolling afore in order to spring back and compensating the pressure your body will immediately let down: Your ankles will break because they can't cope with all the pressure your upper part of the body culminates to. You have to spring back, or you will break. The same applies for a state, but unlike natural beings, he cannot, because his bureaucratic body prohibits him from being more flexible. Thus, he can hardly react to pressure either from the inside or the outside. He sadly has to rely on his limited ability of reacting, and, in his worst-case scenario, on his intruder's mercy.
This narrative sounds vague and suggestive, I am aware of this. Thus, let's regard a short example of such an intrusion from the inside (an intrusion into our society's safety, that is, just to clarify on it): A terrorist who was known to the offices on terrorist prevention (who work together with the police commissioners of the entire country, but didn't share valuable information on the terrorist this particular time, unfortunately, but not uncommon) commits a terrorist attack, murdering two and injuring multiple others, was able to flee but captures shortly thereafter. The news will report what I already added in the brackets: That he was known to responsible offices who failed to communicate prior to the attack, so that the terrorist could move freely despite information on his extremist views and contacts, furthermore was even able to plan everything beforehand, ascertaining an instruction by the book. Politicians of the gubernatorial and the federal levels equally lament the event and promise to improve the infrastructure in order to prevent such future attacks from happening in the first place. This will hold until it happens again. And again. And again. Because the whole infrastructure itself is incapable of preventing such attacks due to its thick net of entities to rely upon; one could formulate a rule of thumb regarding such infrastructures: The more entities are involved in one event likely to occur sometimes, the more likely it's going to happen, because the more likely it is that one entity will fail to commit its role duly, hence going to corrupt the whole infrastructure's functioning. It's like a clockwork in which one obstructed gear wheel can stop the entire clockwork's progress abruptly. Likewise, the entire terrorist prevention's infrastructure can abruptly discontinue solely because of one commissioner's failure to hand over precious information on a terrorist. The terrorist then is able to fall off the face of the earth, to move more freely, without fearing to be observed by undercover agents of the police, or the Federal Office of the Constitution's Protection.
IV
Some might hereby suggest that I would maybe prefer an authoritarian leadership that would comfort its own people but would immediately gun down someone trespassing into those country illegally, that might be without valid papers, for example. But no, I don't. What I would prefer instead would be the stateless society that would flexibly accord to outside threats in order to react to it in the best possible way that can be thought of at the very moment. The problem most concerning still remains, though: How about trading? We still didn't figure out a worthwhile idea to fix the issue. Centralisation fell off the rim recently, and so does the barter trade due to a superficial alternation from the current system. What is left? Little, to be honest. Whether allocating goods to others beneficially, without the expectation of being given something back in return might be the most naïve assumption that can be thought of, but I beg to differ, nonetheless, and in spite of the roaring laughter from the background. Hear me out! When we speak of transactions, we might have to consider the overall environment's size, at which range we interact during the transactions. The smaller the field of partakers, the more easily, or rather feasible, it becomes. That's because goods could be acquired than they could be taken away. The one doesn't depend on the other, and vice versa. Likewise, goods could be grabbed by those who can than they might be reloaded, and the other way around, few people might take away goods from this pot than they might be refilled, leading towards an overcharge. To install an equilibrium of takeaways and reloads, the community's people's responsibility has to be addresses, especially referring to the aftermath of increasing decadence leading towards scarcity of goods; after a short period of joy in broad availability of goods, a longer period of autonomously produced deprivation. In regards to the future of the environment and its health in correlation to the human beings' needs of resources (no matter from which point of view one observes this issue, the fundamental need of natural resources will usually be given, there can't be inorganic replacements for everything; what has to be accomplished, thus, is a general plan on how to curb exploitation of resources, which immediately leads towards the aforementioned dilemma on how to avoid yet another vague, abstract consensus of relying on human rationality and conscious consumption. The belief in voluntary responsibility and self-reflection stands contrarily to human behaviour in modern life, leaving no evidence for a broader tendency towards self-reflection; nevertheless, there are few more important attitudes¹ to preserve for a future utopia).
Balancing both the matter-of-fact of centralised distributional systems' inevitable failure and the non-reliability of human behaviour and rationality in times of need, humankind might be determined to condemnation sooner or later, in spite of any goodwill and optimism expressed in politics, partially in science (scientists in climatology, social sciences and political science, ought to distance themselves from making any biased comments and instead sticking to their neutrality, are more likely to express advice and what had to be addressed in order to achieve the best for both humans and the environment, including wildlife as well as biota. Whether one claims advice to be biased itself had to consider the arguments underlining the given advice as well to argue on one's own in which way the advice was biased; advice, as arguments in general, usually have to be balanced according to any given arguments that were uttered either in favour or in contradiction to the advice intent to be given to someone. Otherwise, the advice is predestined to defectiveness, moreover resistible defectiveness, since it's common sense to usually weigh in counter-arguments in order to presume the best possible argument.
I elaborated on this particular point since it has become clear on both sides of the aisle to prefer developing arguments inside one's “echo chamber” despite the easily recalled consequences of doing so. Securely, I added that this phenomenon can be observed on both sides of the aisle–on the left aisle as well as the right. Whether one surveyed the issue on Facebook or Twitter, it didn't matter, the bias of one's own can be found tantamount²) and social discourse. The effects of such a bias created inside an echo chamber are not new, as I mentioned previously, it has just become more ferocious due to the constant, full-force gauntlet of information encircling us individually and being even capable of feeding our bias. It's an effect that wasn't that strong in the past before the internet, since newspapers, even though they already could function as firebrands to a certain bias (Some of us might remember how the New York Daily News, one of the merely renown newspapers of the Big Apple, used to be what the Daily Mail is to the UK nowadays; now, it's known to be a more liberal-leaning Daily), people digested them for themselves, they were less likely to entire public places and shout down random people who they at least assumed to be on the opposite side of their beliefs. Nowadays, on the internet, one's access to one's preferred outlets and those mentioned public places are only a few clicks away from one another. It's a recipe for disaster, one could tell. Obviously, it's at least a recipe for social division, which can only be stopped by those who monitor (or are supposed to monitor) activity on those public places ,since there is no solution to monitor people's digest of news and how they are prepared for them without enacting an authoritarian regime of bringing people's knowledge about politics and the government's activity into line. Even benefactors could fall into such allegations through efforts intent to bring journalism into line with their objectives of defeating deliberately hatred-stirring reports (stirring hatred with regard to what to report and the wording. What one might waive due to its unimportance or lack of impact on the reader is proven to influence the reader already by the very headline. Yet the headline is not the only part of a text that is likely (if not determined) to influence the reader how he or she recognises a certain topic. Given this fact already tells us a lot about how particular subjects that are a steady part in the public discourse–such as criminality among immigrants–are being discussed: On the one hand, there are statistics lying down to us the absolute and relative amount of crimes committed by immigrants, and on the other hand are single articles highlighting single crimes committed, thus raising fears about the dangers caused by migrants living among the native people in the respective country (bona note: Although the article linked across three words between emdashes is already nine years old at least, the facts mentioned are still relevant and correct since the conditions haven't changed; only the public debate was reignited through nationalist stances being brought back into Congress and parliaments throughout the (Western) world).
Of course this was a steep exaggeration, partially in reference to Rand's ‟Atlas Shrugged” and her depiction of ‟moochers”, ‟fair-share vultures” and ‟looters”. But in the end, that's what most individualists hate about the society and the state that relies heavily upon it, in shape of taxes, for example. People cannot choose whether to live in such a society or not, thus are considered to duly pay their ‟fair share” to maintain this civilisation. Of course this is not caused by the creation of money, yet without money, the state would lose another role it hereby bears: As the tax collector and redistributor. Whether or not taxes are theft, is a topic for a different text. And individualism in the political context can work out better by far with money but without a state trying to grasp (full) control all the time.
While no-one directly expected it, across a jolty road, we reached our next checkpoint in the questions surrounding how we could successfully abolish monetary means, because we cannot use dogmas to tell the entire mankind, compiled of so many different practiced schools of thought on our political society, that henceforth, any monetary means, including its surrogates (in some places of the world, the coins and banknotes we use to swap in goods are not in use, but rather shells, appropriately utilised on a couple of islands associated with Papua New Guinea (PDF)), were effectively worthless. Not only did such a move require unanimous agreement from all sides expected to side with this tremendous turn, but also did it require sufficient time to undertake all preparations. How are they ought to look like? We'll come back to that in the next chapter. Prior to this, persuasion has to be minded of, and by persuasion, I mean the confession to oneself that not everyone enjoys the same ‟dogma” of a stateless, societal community in which people are standing hand-in-hand, where no-one is left behind; as I mentioned before, there are individuals who follow the path of ‟the pursuit of happiness” through one's own work instead of being backed by one's next ones, which the state provided through publicly funded securities (beside the private ones), for example. Even an Anarchist society would limit one's fulfillment in the ‟pursuit of happiness” in such a way that the general shape of society would exclude enjoying the fruit of one's own labour only by one's own, it would always be a labourers' united fruits. One couldn't create something only by one's own, but only in interconnection with the other workers. It's the difference between, to again refer to Rand's ‟Atlas Shrugged”, the failed collectivised company that eventually went bankrupt, and Galt's Gulch⁴. People differ from one another, and so do their expectations of a perfect world. To assume that there was one perfect world is effectively inaccurate and dogmatic. While some might believe that toiling in a neoliberal world is greedy exploitation standing in contrary to human nature, it might be the perfect realisation of how to become a self-fulfilling human being proud of one's own creations. Finally, the world should be large enough to fulfill all those utopias at once, without being incarcerated in one's dystopia.
Yet, why doesn't it happen now? Why can one just not move somewhere else where one found one's perfect earthly Heavens? There may be multiple reasons people abstain from moving somewhere more delightful to their own regards, but generally, the reasons can be broken down to approximately three separate ones:
Assuming that the whole world was a libertarian private society with no state borders whatsoever, but only private companies that employ all of us because the monetary means are still up, running and the essence of free trade as it is the matter today. Would it possibly be easier to travel and even move abroad? It shouldn't be more difficult but easier, since there is no-one but oneself who cares about where one travels, or moves. Yet, before we continue to elaborate on this issue, we should clarify about some terminologies that might come up in the meantime: There is a difference between ‟capitalism” and ‟free market” when we think about these two as ideologies to shape our society. While capitalism is about companies and concerns prevailing over states, thus becoming the remaining entities beside private individuals, the free market imagines a world containing only selfish individuals who'll occasionally interact with one another; voluntarily, of course.
Moving on: As we speak of libertarians, there of course won't be any entities that could install a hierarchical structure that might at worst oppress people's liberties. Hence, the libertarian utopia is of course a free-market economy, with only the people toiling and cooperating as they wish and find it necessary. Therefore, it shouldn't be a problem to roam around the world as long as one can afford it. Despite the impossible of non-existing companies but only individuals who might temporarily team up to finish projects. Such cooperations are a permanent necessity, so that companies might not be a wanted assembly, but at least one that is required to function flawlessly. And they are also not to be daemonised as the root of capitalist evil. It only depends on what one makes out of the given structures, whether one believes in hierarchies, in a flat hierarchy, or no hierarchies at all. There are examples (either successful or failed) for all such constructions, so that a keen entrepreneur can learn from them. To equip the internet slang, it's a “debunked myth” to believe that capitalism would mean hierarchical and unfree structures outside of a state, but prevailing in a company. Even capitalism could contribute to individual liberty, just not (necessarily) in a way that the radical free market would do. It just depends on whether one would describe “liberty” generally or individually. Generally, it would mean that liberty depended on one general state of society to be achieved in order to achieve liberty. There would be no awareness to individual desires that would fulfill one's individual expectations of liberty. Not to say that this general definition of liberty could come in favour for that one individual as well, even able to exceed the individual's personal expectations of what was possible to accomplish, yet it might as well underwhelm other individuals. That's where we have to mind a more individual definition at least in terms of comparison: The more individual definition would describe liberty as one's personal understanding of a perfect state of society in terms of what is possible in contrary to what is not possible, for whatever reason (security, negative freedom, etc.). In the latter definition, we of course would inevitably at loggerheads with different definitions of liberty, unless we gathered the like-minded, separated from those groups of those who define liberty starkly different, so that they won't juxtapose one another. The process would normally commence autonomously, since human nature doesn't seek conflict consciously and proactively, except for nationalists and equally hostile ideologues, who, according to my personal point of view, act extremely against their own nature. To those who found this way of arguing blatant, they should wonder how, in a conflict-oriented nature, merely social ideologies like Socialism and Communism could even prosper, let alone find vivid followers. We night agree onto a twofold (or manifold nature, but still, it can hardly include violent conflict essentially.)
Therefore, what happens once we would survey in a vastly ranged field, on how people would describe their personal nature in terms of liberty? We would perhaps receive a mixed result that didn't allow us to draw a one-sided result, such as “XX percent of people prefer a Socialist state rather than a Capitalist society” (such a result was presented by an Axios/YouGov poll recently, which stated that an almost absolute majority (70 percent) of Millennials (years of birth 1985 to 2000) embraced Socialist or Communist policies rather than Capitalist ones), so that the Libertarian model failed some people anyway. The question that remained until its accomplishment, is how it prevailed itself once it was installed and left for the people's majority will and the unpredictability of human action. The state, de jure, its corruption through law and an untransparent bureaucracy. Executive forces and the military are supposed to crack down on unwanted usurpations once they emerge. Libertarian societies don't have any such mechanisms, as they might believe either in people's ability of reason preventing them from not stopping someone trying to grasp power and reinvent statehood. Or people had the choice to voluntarily depart from this newly erected state and move somewhere else, where their basic human rights (reconsidered after the advent of the libertarian world) were respected rather than undermined. What has to be said, then, is that there are no mechanisms to prevent the recreation of etatist structures, but rather, they are allowed to happen, even if it meant that the overall concept of Libertarianism would be diminished or even dissolved in the outcome. It could easily function as a display of human's state of development, how far they have come, and how they tend to believe they are best organised according to either through force of majority or of the most powerful to have their voice heard.
Normally, I now had to recall that such a mechanism would not necessarily bother my idea of the ideal Utopia, which allowed every group of like-minded people to establish a community, state or whatsoever as long as they didn't infringe anyone else's concept just because it didn't suit their notion of (near-)perfect organisation. One problem exists in such a mechanism or laissez-faire development, though (it is also given in my concept, since both of them share few differences when it comes to certain details): The insecurity that once was covered by robust structures maintaining law and order. Unlike in a mere Communist system, “chained” communities and loyal denizens are not required to continue the existence of these communities, so that the likelihood of estrangement is particularly high, letting down those who might be more reliant on helpful peers. Whether such characteristics are enforced by a competitive society⁵ is not decidedly determined, although evidence does exist and has been examined. Nevertheless, as long as no larger experiments in this field, concerning non-competitive societies separately (1) isolated from the rest of the world, (2.1.) interconnected with like-minded and at least similarly organised societies and (2.2.) cooperating with differently-minded and organised societies (the latter in order to see how they will react to them, especially when distress emerges from probable difficulties), we cannot tell what might be the human drive exactly, but only have several points of view on it.
Now, how does this answer our question on whether a community of any kind–we assume that it would be an Anarcho-Communist community (according to my standards: A community of free and equal people living and toiling together in their town; no hierarchies exist but everyone links one's actions to another in order to chain one's actions in a clockwork-like order so that everything works just fine and mutually beneficial)–, which could be theoretically possible, depending on arms resources and citizens willing to fight for their moral standards. The problem that would soon arise from such a moral obligation to defend kindred spirits abroad (although the concept of communities abroad might be in need of a change once this scattering took place; abroad is a terminology which occurred when there still were nations that could be left behind, while communities can be left behind as well whilst no-one would then speak of a person that now lived abroad) is the necessity of voluntarily enlisting soldiers who were ready to carry it to the extremes. Whether there were enough men and women to go that far voluntarily is a question urgently required to be proposed since it is indeed a matter of life and death. As Napoléon Bonaparte is said to have expressed it once (the origin of this utterance seems to be unknown; at least I was unable to track it back to any written source):
Are there any conceivable situations in which people would indirectly ushered towards protecting a foreign community, which they even might never have heard of, nor were familiar with its residents? To put it bluntly: To protect a community completely unbeknownst to them hitherto? And by “unbeknownst”, I also mean the rather improbable occurrence to also never have traded with them. The reason why this is an improbable situation will explain itself within the further description of a situation that bore the particular question we proposed unto ourselves beforehand.
Nevertheless, we did find a good reason for people to risk their lives to defend someone else's safety. Why? Because they will benefit from having undertaken that selfless deed in the long run. If they had acted short-sighted, they would have lost their own freedom eventually as well. It's a simple rule that is obligatory to nowadays' foreign policies: Help someone you hold no relationships to as long as your own future's brightness depends on his or her safety as of now. As long as the community in the forefront remains intact, it can work as a buffer zone to their own community. In retrospective, the consideration of an alliance of trade and “military” (in a broader sense, in shape of a militia or insurgency). This does not necessarily lead towards a repetition of mistakes of the past, as long as the alliance remains in a loose state.
Twice we have now mentioned the likelihood of threats through reactionary uprisings which cannot be prevented in fully, since the freedom of choice shall be maintained without any restrictions that required a supra-state monitoring, comparable to a thought crime prosecution. Such constructs must not be installed anytime, anywhere. That's why the burden of such viruses of nationalist or any other reactionary tendencies will surpass the Utopian change, to transport their backwards ideology in a “forwarded” society (it should be comparably consensual to assume such a society, offering the opportunity to at least the first generation to take over control into their own hands and create a society as they were pleased to have it; as there are no restrictions to anyone, no-one can tell that he or she was infringed in her opportunities. Even to live alone in a deserted spectre of our planet as a hermit was possible, which does not commonly apply to today's world (except for the US, where you could live as a hermit in the woods, unless you brew mountain dew and intent to sell it to make a living; you too would be unlikely to pay your taxes then. Anyway, I was speaking on a more German point of view). No-one could tell you to stop your way of living and assimilate into the society upon whose ground you lived. You could appropriate a piece of land as yours and not cultivate it except for a small batch of land to grow wheat or anything to nourish yourself).
The downside I meant was the likelihood of monetary means' existence beyond the change, which then wouldn't be too much of a change as a mere alternation of given circumstances, such as it was usual in Capitalist/Corporatist societies: Superficial alternations to function as opiate injections to tranquilise upheavals ad ovo. “Why would you want to overthrow this society just because you're currently going through some hardship?”, people would insist, “Cheer up, buttercup! Things will get better soon, I promise. Now you will have to work a little bit harder, but you will soon harvest the fruits of your hard labour. It always is like this”.
People speaking like this are not entirely wrong when they say that into each life, some rain must fall, since the sun will soon shine again, but these people also don't enjoy the idea of a world in which hardship could be decreased at least in its individual magnitude, as well as in its fatality on individual lives. I might speak in my personal experience, but when people speak of taking over personal responsibility, their intentions are benevolent: There's nothing wrong about controlling one's own life's directions and shaping oneself individually and uniquely. Yet personal responsibility doesn't always have its upsides, downsides also regularly happen. Depending on how onerous they are, they can affect individual victims crushingly. As more and more people seem to suffer from mental illnesses, the reason is opined to be the higher weights and fatalities of burdens produced through a society that expects more and more of its people: More and more duties to execute, and heavier burdens and fatalities to stem to arise from them like a phoenix from the ashes, disregarding of one's individual capabilities to really arise, and not just be blown away through the wind. What I intend to say is that the requirements expected to be fulfilled from each individual denizen of this world has become irregularly oppressive, crushing people like an Atlas rejecting to shrug off the earth (Since this is a questionable point of view on a highly polarised topic, I would like to hereby submit three interesting reads to open different points of view: From The Guardian, forwarded by the Brookings Institution; a blog post by Umair Haque, author and contributor to the Harvard Business Review; and by the International Policy Digest, a political magazine run by academics and writers. Yet, some people might argue differently, accusing the government of having failed the people, as Steven Rattner writes for Bloomberg. The question, all in all, is comparably shaky).
The question of moral requirements to intervene once other like-minded entities are being threatened through hostile forces won't end with communities as such general entities being threatened, but also with minorities or women individually threatened inside their community with no chance to flee oppressive conditions for whatever reason. Wouldn't there be a moral requirement to intervene, and save those particular minorities or women from their misery? Normally, it should be confirmed, there is such a requirement. But wouldn't we then fall aback into obsolete schemes of nations intervening against one another to fulfill their own interests, while also letting down one another as they please? To assume that communities in peril should simply rely on other communities' benevolence to release them form their tantalisers would not only be naïve but bluntly irresponsible. In order to survive amidst hostile forces coming for one's head (or ideology), reliable partners are essential, and would also open opportunities for mutual returns, such as trade in a common manner (such as swaps or borrows that would be redeemed someday) or defence for one another in case of serious threats. Another redemption could be support subsequent to natural hazards such as floods, droughts or monsoon rains. Honestly, it might not even a matter to bother talking about since human nature would normally oblige communities and communities/peoples in particular to collaborate when involved agree upon crucial issues. Still, goodwill is no palpable value to introduce to such a problem. What it takes are more pressuring values that can also be debated by both sides of the involvement and are more likely to be agreed upon, again by both sides alike. Goodwill is not debatable but a promise, which are supposed to be kept, theoretically, but are likely to be broken in case the one who breaks the promise doesn't have to be afraid of any significant retaliation and no interest whatsoever to fulfill the promise. The same could of course be argued about moral standards, since those standards, unlike written rule of law, is not compulsory, one doesn't need to follow them if one followed different standards. Even if that argument was abused despite one's personal moral views, it could hardly be argued that actually, that person was morally obliged to support one in trying times. Support through moral obligations cannot be enforced, nor can they be naturally expected. As for rule of law, it could be enforced and has to be expected obviously, yet this only applies if all people of those two entities–the one in need as well as the one commonly capable of supporting that entity in need–signed that very rule of law, which also had to state an obligatory support when experienced by either entity, regardless of any other objectives more urgently endeavoured. In case of the law's violation, courts had the option to punish the violation by a negotiated sentence.
Seldom would it likely occur that two communities sealed such a common rule of law, though, since an incorporation would then be handier, if the two communities were also closely located to one another. In fact, it would have already happened, then, although such a turn would then likely happen pro forma, since incorporations are merely bound to nations in which communities regulate themselves separately and only lately consider an incorporation to cut costs and paperwork. After the unification took place, a common rule of law and mutual support would finally be considered obligatorily, although such occurrences were lucky, therefore, as aforementioned, seldom. It depends on the more unlucky situation such as when communities let down other communities caught in dire desperation, which didn't happen that way when nations were still superordinate, thus lawfully obliged to deliver support (unless the highest-ranking figurehead in the state is George W. Bush). We can see it now, more or less, when a nation calls for support, especially neighbouring nations would readily support it as best as they could spontaneously. It's one of the more advantageous points of having nations which assemble strength and resources under one roof, compared to multiple communities each assembling their small amounts of resources and limited power, which had to be called upon individually, even though one community suffering for itself would also require less support in one situation of danger than an entire nation of the size of Germany, France or Brazil, for example. The only requirement that has to be given, is the readiness to support other communities, assuming the resources were in fact available for others than their own people, without any risks of falling down the dole afterwards, when the same or a similar catastrophe should hit them too.
To not lead further astray, what I try to state is the key to a perfectly remunicipalised society of various schemes of organisation is their cooperation beyond these lines. WE could of course project this maxim onto today's society, where polarisation between partisan and ideological lines has figuratively broken up society (Italics due to the disparity between those who would suggest that society, not only in the US, has been broken up, and those who think that this was only a rumour fueled through the media and people on social media who would at the same time presage an upcoming civil war). This polarisation is unlikely to be cured in a concept that would even confirm its prejudices and presuppositions, moreover use it as a foundation to create a wholly new society. One would rather have to expect to see people become even more hostile towards opposing ideas and ideologies. Whether this has to be seen as a safe prediction of things to become, a pessimistic look into the future on my behalf, or #OKBoomer nonsense–in the end, echo chambers are going to be manifested irreversibly, more or less. Discussions with opposing-minded individuals might be enjoyable from time to time, but when it comes to general organisation of a community, differences that are barely overcome are rather obnoxious than inspiring. As much as dictatorships and autocracies are being detested by the plenty, one has to confess that they get things done more quickly than democracies and the likes. Why is that so? Because they don't have to fish for compromises or struggle with a staunch opposition placing rock in one's way to development. Still, we don't need to elaborate on the pros and cons of both systems, it would lead us too far astray from the actual topic.
But we’re moving astray of the topic. Prisons are a broader example of bureaucracy, compared with the failure to comprehend what is the actual issue that is hardly tried to combat. Only few people commit crimes out of persuasion that they had to do it in order to fulfill themselves; only a few people commit crimes out of lower intentions such as greed or immorality (We'll come back to this argument later on). The greater majority of people commit them out of desperation, because their states or their society let them down and they were unable to support them in such a way that they were given a chance to arise by themselves (as much as Conservatives and right-winged liberals are right that people might be prouder of themselves if they achieved tremendous things on their own rather than by affirmative action, without being given a platform to do so undermines every single effort immediately. Therefore, the two concepts of self-fulfilment and affirmative action could be combined in a society in which administrative tasks are still being coordinated via an administrative organisation; more or less, it’s especially necessary to do so to not lose the young ones to authoritarian ideals of redistribution, such as it happens in these times, where a “hermaphrodite” of unmotivated attempts to provide solutions fails to satisfy any side of the aisle, therefore being caught in the centre between irate Liberals and Social Democrats (beside the few outspoken Socialists who also know what they are talking about and didn’t just equip the controversial etiquette) on the left hand and indignant Conservatives, usually immature Alt-Right jackasses (I’m sorry for the expletive, but there cannot be any good reason to side with the Alternative Right, as Richard Spencer coined it, since their ideas usually align with hostile Reactionism and isolationist nationalism. That’s not to say that their ideological fellows could be simply ignored and overturned whenever decisions had to be made (as this speech, transcribed and published by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities argues), but that we have to understand their cause and find a common ground to defeat them via the best possible way to defeat them. People will again argue in this well-known discussion that some of them are uncompromising, therefore not looking for a general consensus but prefer to defeat the left-winged cause to take over power and bring through their entire agenda. This is true, but still, those people didn’t dwell from thin air, they weren’t born as disgraceful beings, but socialised in such a way. Hence, if no common ground can be found with them, different approaches to dissolving them as peaceful as feasible have to be found: Social backgrounds have to be analysed to understand why some people tend to learn towards the right so far they become uncompromising and would favour illiberal policies and Ethno-Nationalism over a more pluralistic society. Eventually, the result might arise that such Alt- or fringe right-wingers emerge from socially deprecated backgrounds, thus feeling betrayed by their state, especially when seeing how migrants are being supported “from the cradle to the crave”. They want to enjoy that support as well, therefore see their state in a position in which born citizens are let down while immigrants receive support wherever they needed. In terms of money influencing these decisions of who to vote for during an election, we can tell that money again is the predecessor to an entire development finally shaping the decision: When one is born into a poverty-stricken family in a likewise social environment, when money is scarce, the decision is more likely to fall for a party that promises to help people like this one. In contrast, social environments in which money is plentifully available, humans brought up there are more likely to vote for a party that is going to protect their wealth from those who demand their far share by them. Money, therefore, is the central entity shaping their decisions. Either there is too little money available, or there is enough to become paranoid of people wanting to reap it off them.
Now I broke with my promise and went so far astray, one might suspect that there won’t be a transition between the two topics–poverty versus wealth and criminality. Yet, there is one: In today’s legal assumptions, Robin Hood, the dexterous thief stealing money from the rich to redistribute it among the poor, would still be a thief, hence should be placed behind bars for his wrongful deed. In regards to those he gave the money, he was a hero, and his incarceration was wrong; not politically motivated, since the law could be applied logically. But still, it would be wrong in their understanding, since he only wanted to help people in need, but didn’t have the resources to do so, which is the reason why he had to take it from those who had, but were not willing to help despite any better reason. The same law applies to individuals committing crimes because they went through not only dissatisfying conditions in their life which they couldn’t flee through hard work, but conditions likening to an existential crisis: Whether they could still live a good life or only lived to survive. While at least in Germany, human dignity is manifested in basic law, states as the German federal republic don’t ascertain the provision of respective laws and actions anymore due to partisan reason, re-eligibility or sever miscomprehensions of the broader picture. Whatever the reason to particular problems and their correct solution, sometimes, people can’t wait any longer to see their life’s rescue being address and do it themselves, though in a way that might not please everyone. Crimes, in such situations, don’t apply to the formal definition as “activities that are in violation of the laws of the state” per se. While crimes such as theft do violate the law, it would be too superficial to then rush straight towards sentencing the offenders. It has to be considered what deliberate intentions moved them towards committing that particular crime. While murder is being separated in terms of the way the murder has been executed and which intention lied behind that, the same would not necessarily apply for theft of food or petrol. The chances are low that leniency will be granted because someone was desperately poor, therefore could not apply for a raise in social security although the money didn’t make ends meet entirely.
It has to be said, contrarily, that such assumptions might occasionally appear vague when expressed in front of court, I won’t deny that; moreover, we have to consider this to be a reason to adjust our understanding of law and legality. How can people who don’t act under criminal intentions but only in terms of self-fulfillment, self-sufficiency and in regards to the satisfaction of their most essential needs be protected from being stigmatised as criminals? It goes without saying that for such cases, even though they might seldom occur altogether, distinct exceptions could help preventing victims to be marked as offenders for the rest of their life. On the other hand, it could lead to more bureaucratic burden, more confusion on the law in public and a higher likelihood in judiciary errors. Such have to be avoided in a bipartisan fashion, so that to contemplate an alternative to the standardised legal corpus as we experience it today. That’s where communities might introduce themselves to exactly bring up such a model. The closest idea to a combination of justice and “enclosed” communities would be the Vikings, who usually spoke justice in their “things” (although the words look similar to one another, a “thing” is not to be understood as a thing as we use it in English: A “thing” in the Viking age was a gathering of all of the community’s inhabitants and the community’s elder, who was the only person allowed to speak justice): The witnesses and the offender were heard, and finally, the elder either acquitted the offender or sentenced him. As everyone can see, the problem with this concept is the centralisation of justice in one person or a small group of people who were not necessarily qualified to speak justice; their only qualification to be ranked as those who were permitted to speak justice would be their age or their inherited rank, such as in dynasties. Injustice would be inevitable, even though no-one inside the community intended to injure anyone else deliberately. Yet crime as such and the complexity of situations that eventually ended up before court because an extrajudicial agreement could not be achieved, and then, it all depends on the judges and the lawyers debating until a definitive and comprehensive judgement can be manifested.
Assuming that a more comprehensible, easier judiciary system was even imaginable, how did it have to look, then? We cannot tell that we treated justice like bureaucracy: Just cut off the pointless burden we hitherto schlepped with us, to make our system more flexible, and more effective. It’s not that easy. A more subtle and thoughtful approach would to go through the law and look for those laws that are in charge just because we have created a system that hinders people from living more peacefully together. I know that this sounds vulgar and populist, but once one contemplates how many crimes are in fact committed because our system is corrupted from the inside, abusing laws to asphyxiate reforms or changes on behalf of the people’s will before they could grow. As Tacitus is oftentimes quoted to have written in his Annals: “Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.”–The more numerous the laws, the more corrupted the government. (Emphasis added) In spite of the quote’s age, it is still contemporary when we think about why laws are in fact needed. Some people might state that it’s because of human nature to hurt one another deliberately. There was no reasonable explanation to it, it was just an idiosyncratic attitude on human’s behalf to hurt members of its own kin. Therefore, to decrease the incidents of “fratricides” (although murders are just one aspect illegalised), laws were implemented to punish those who could no longer control their own nature. A deductive logic indeed; Tacitus, on the other hand, argued that laws essentially exist because corrupt governments need to illegalise actions that could at worst expose their corruption on public display. Both theories appeal through their bluntness and their relatability: While some might look for a simple answer to explain to themselves human maladie, some other might look for a justification for their hatred against the state and why they feel oppressed by it (or maybe they were looking for a fundamental reason why there are so many human beings being oppressed by their superordinate states that were actually supposed to serve them). Those who were looking for Tacitus’ arguments were looking for a theory on what all states might have in common, since there are no perfect states per se; as my emphasis highlights, states are only as beneficial to their people as are the employees inside them, working inside the state to produce valuable outcome.
Hence, in regards to what we now considered to be the reason for the existence of law enforcement, extract an argument on how to make it better? Not yet, since those assumptions we aligned in the prior paragraph rather align with left-winged individuals, but not with the rest of the people dedicated to politics in such a way that they established a determined persuasion. As academic research suggested⁸, the Results are manifold, although the social question might be the most intriguing due to its likelihood. The latter is not suggested by the article, since it doesn’t provide us with such an estimation. Why not? The reason is simple: One cannot measure what is the most likely reason for people to commit crimes. It depends on the cardinal factors in humanities—race, class, gender, behaviour, etc.—, but also on the offender’s state of mentality, upbringing, country in which one committed the offence, even the more locale environment in which the crime was committed. Combining all these various factors relating to the commitment solves the puzzle accurately. People in the US might best recognise the image of a young man of African-American origin murdering a young white woman with blonde hair. Of course, because it’s a racist image that might be shared by Republican politicians in the Deep South, it could be an image taken right out of a newly colourised version of “The Clansman”, also known as (“Birth of a Nation”). Aside of this slight exaggeration, yet it explains a lot about the origin of crimes. It’s manifold even in this depiction: Minorities (in the US) are the most likely to end up in poverty, starting from their (upbringing); meanwhile, the poorer the people are, the likelier they are to commit a crime (vide Fact 2 of this Hamilton Project Policy Memo provided by the (Brookings Institution). So, assuming you were of African-American background (thereby assuming that you might not be it in the first place; in case you, dear reader, are in fact of this origin, please assume that you were brought up in a low-income family and were unable to escape it. If it should be the case that you indeed are locked in such a situation, I wish you all the best for the future and maybe try to organise with people of your fate and assemble your powers to help yourselves via alternative projects to create a small utopia in your own community. The power of the people is what fuels my personal views as well, so how would I consider this idea to not work? In the end, all we have got is ourselves, yet we are all we need to create a better world (and this is more than just a calendar motto, I promise)), you were also highly likely to end up being a criminal against your own moral standards. You might even have tried everything to avoid it, but in the end, there was no way out to avoid committing deeds that were classified as criminal by the legal standards of your community. This is a not-too-uncommon situation many people slide right into, and in the end, even though they might be helped through social programs to get them back into real life, they will end up in a prison, their criminal record will be extended by one (more) sentence, and the etiquette “criminal” will stick upon them, marking them as stained in their society. “Criminals” are also less likely to be employed once released from prison, as this study⁹ proves. So, once an African-American in the US committed a crime such as stealing food from a supermarket and then being caught by the police with the corpus delicti, life is figuratively gone for this person. Since unemployment is now manifested for this marked offender, bills can no longer be paid, the family will be gone, the apartment will be gone, even the car will be beyond repair someday. Suicide appears as close as being murdered during a fisticuffs over a trashed loaf of bread in a dark alley.
Again, we find relations to money in this incident: Jobs are a necessity for every adult all over the world as long as money is the means that keeps the society running. Hence, when there is an “invisible wall” that prevents one from being employed after having gained a criminal record, one is more or less excluded from social life, from society altogether. Of course a criminal record is not an immediate means of exclusion, there are still employers who don’t bar themselves from hiring former convicts (for example, when the economy prospers, employment is high and companies might become desperate to find people eager to take over a job for their own, criminal records (don’t matter) anymore; what counts, then, is the will to work). Some of them might even decide to become freelancers in journalism (convicts might have the right amount of experience to investigate the flaws and corruption in the prison system of their country, contributing to outlets like ProPublica and finally arise to become contributors to renown outlets such as the New York Times. More unfortunate fellows, on the other hand, could again hit rock bottom again and end up in the infamous (gig economy), due to the aforementioned reason that employers turn them down due to their criminal record. This way, a vicious cycle deeper into the “crime scene” descends ever deeper, inescapable for the victims marked as offenders. States with a functioning, rehabilitative justice system would prevent this from happening through intensive resocialisation programmes intending to make a fluent transition from prison to employment possible for the former inmates. Unfortunately, at least in the US, this is not (always) the case, given the privatisation of many prisons to accumulate income and cut down costs, a concept that hardly applies to institutions that don’t naturally function this way. This is not to say that they utterly fail the people they are supposed to support to prevent them from recidivating. Especially educational programmes are a key factor in securing inmates’ futures after release; as obvious as this appears, the numbers underline this fact as well, as research by the (National Institute of Justice) (PDF) (page 7 delivers the according indicator). At least in my opinion, to for once speak more personally, a recidivism of between 11 to 13 percent appear a little bit minor, underwhelming my expectations, as well as since previous pages assumed that low education was one factor increasing the likelihood of becoming an active offender. As for the EMPLOY programme applied in 49 out of 50 US states (since the one state negatively sticking out of the crowd is not named, we all can bet on which one it might be), which directly objects to getting inmates into workplaces again to ~repaying their sojourn in prison via income tax payments~ to not offend again, shows comparably high (or low) outcome in terms of serving inmates in finding back to life: Curtly summarised in the paper itself, it is noted that EMPLOY programmes in prison improved post-employment chances and outcomes for inmates. It has to be highlighted, nevertheless, that those programmes are still treated as voluntary offers on behalf of the state or the private investor of prison facilities, meaning that there are still thousands of inmates who turn down these offers heading towards offering them opportunities to improve their lives. On the one hand, there is a reasonable endeavour to usher Congress and finally the federal states to turn such programmes into mandatory offers so that prison misconduct and increase employment rates among former inmates, but on the other hand, some of them might have reasonable arguments to turn down those offers on their behalf, mainly because they already have got plans on how to proceed once they were released. The US were founded upon the belief that the state should not coerce people into anything they don’t want, giving them as much space to move freely and decide upon their own as best as they can without violating anyone else’s freedom. Thence are such programmes voluntary. So far, this all sounds logic, but the problem is that the US are still a state in which taxes are to be paid to finance social welfare programmes for the needy, those who need support to get back upon their feet again. To finance those programmes, the income tax is applied, paid by those who work. Is it secured that those who turn down EMPLOY offers do in fact have a plan? Easily could they say that those programmes either don’t favour their preferences in terms of future jobs (they might prefer an office job while such programmes are not being offered in their particular correction centre, so that they had to force themselves into participating in it on a daily base) or that they already had a job they could enter once they were out. The most blatant response could be that they just were not interested in working, either out of laziness or the idea of paying taxes in a country they didn’t like, or generally. Still, under a voluntary supposition, they were allowed to do so; after release, they might apply for welfare, living off social programmes, not working one day afterwards, but at least not committing any crimes anymore. This is not to say that they couldn’t behave the same way after release although they obediently participated in those programmes during their prison time, even if it was just to kill time inside. We can clearly see that social programmes are easily tricked by resourceful individuals.
Yet, without getting off the track, we should ask the inevitable question that has to be asked at all costs: How could prisons be renewed in their structure and working, especially in a community system replacing states? Since I as the author of this text could easily be accused of romanticising crimes by considering offenders as victims of our time, I have to clarify that I am clearly aware of the fact that not all offenders commit crimes out of necessity. Many of them also do so out of greed, out of emotional instability (anger, wrath, jealousy, etc.), others do so because they were ordered to do so or suffer from mental disorders that let them do it against their will. There are also many who do so consciously to enter a more advantageous situation for their own, such as when one man murders another to “get” his wife (a situation hardly viable, but I think you know what I mean). Such people have to be put behind bars to maintain public safety, although the chance that crimes altogether happen might decrease due to socially equal conditions. Yet, greed might prevail even after generations having lived in this Utopia. As long as we cannot tell that this is going to happen safely, we have to create plans to be prepared for such wrongdoers trying to disrupt our tranquility. Prisons will have to exist necessarily, even though this idea might not delight us. Therefore, we have to make the best out of it and ask ourselves what is going wrong with prisons nowadays, and what we therefore have to do differently. Yet, what is it, exactly? First, there is no general accusation to be made against prisons. Their function is to rehabilitate inmates so that they can be integrated into society, get rid of their bad attitudes and any presupposition that led to their “criminal” misbehaviour/misdemeanour, depending on how one would like to call it. As for quality standards in prisons, they can vary between countries (for example, Germany vs. USA, as it has already been compared during a TED Talk, or even nationally (Two examples of how those prison conditions differ between the US and Germany: In the US, prisoners suffer intensively, ubiquitously. Despite the TED Talk drawing a hopeful picture of German prisons, they might not be all that better than the US')
Still, this doesn’t answer our question what is wrong with them; whether a prison is a hell on earth or bearable as for the time one is sentenced to remain in there is a question directed to the federal or national governments who bear the responsibility of maintaining them (or the private companies that host these prisons, as it is not unusual in the US). To transfer to a submitted solution, I shall quote from one of Emma Goldman’s essays, “Prisons: A Social Crime And Failure”:
As vulgar as this cited paragraph might sound, it again raises the evidence that prisons were all about retaliation, about avenging society against this offender. Yet, why would a state spend so much money (GER: No summed-up numbers available, and not ready to do the math for our Federal Statistical Office; US: $7,042,328,000 (PDF)) on avenging people who might think that all of this money was wasted and more beneficially invested in preventing crimes at its roots? Because this concept is widely obsolete and no longer pursued by states, at least nationally. Indirectly, although not inadvertently, this happens with private prisons that intend to curb costs by burdening them upon their inmates they accommodate. This leads towards preposterous costs in exchange for goods inside prisons, prohibited deliveries inside prisons, such as books, and equally horrendous costs in purchasing them from verified sellers.
What we shouldn’t do, since we talk about prisons in the Western World of the Northern hemisphere, is comparing our prisons with those of developing countries such as in Brazil, where violence is a common issue leading towards struggles between rivalling gangs, leading towards many casualties. Such rarely happens, or is more likely to not happen at all. Yet in Germany, we do have a problem with Islamist imams radicalising migrants and Germans of different nationalities to recruit them for terrorist organisations such as ISIL. It’s an issue logically happening subsequent to a failed adjustment to heavy migration and arrival of religions that haven’t been there in such an amount beforehand. Islam first disembarked on the Iberian peninsula, leaving a significant mark in Europe, although it didn’t expand further in Europe, so that in Central Europe, the religion was widely unknown, necessities on the cultural level simply weren’t given. After impotence showed the way in failed immigration system, suspicious representatives of the Islamic religion—for example, Ditib from Turkey, holding strong relations to the Turkish government under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—were inevitable in order to not abandoning the asylum seekers behind, thereby leaving them behind for the recruiters of such terrorist organisations in a different way. Measurements necessary to prevent such developments from taking place included an extension of Islamic sciences on universities, primarily in the field of teaching of the Islamic religion (like an Islamic magisterium), in contrary to Christian religion which has been steady part of every student’s curriculum at school for the most part of Germany’s modern school system (alternatively, parents to one student could also choose ethics as a subject if they were no believing Christians and didn’t want their child to participate in this subject in school. If immigration policies had quickly been adapted to successfully integrate future citizens of the state, Islamic religion would have already become a fixed subject, teaching a moderate version of the highly despised religion accused by some to replace the “Occidental” culture based on Christian beliefs, disregarding the fact that Christianity was forced upon “pagan” believers by of naturalist beliefs; an effort the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne became famous for, creating a “showdown” against Widukind, leader of the Saxons. Beside such some teachers, imams could also be trained, though not in universities; yet priests and preachers are also trained in subsidised facilities to hold masses in churches. Likewise, imams could be trained in subsidised facilities so that states could become independent from foreign nations which fell from grace, such as Turkey did. To rely on those who morphed into hostile nations is toxic when defending the Western culture of freedom and diversity is an objective to a Union. The problem itself, moreover, was not unbeknownst to the parliament: Prior to the advent of heavy migration in 2015, the share of foreign-born citizens having migrated to Germany was large enough to consider the declaration of Islam as a second official religion or minority culture inside Germany (to highlight the profundity of the issue itself: Danish, and Sorb are official minor languages in Germany, just as Saterland Frisian language; the first and the third are languages spoken in Northern Germany, while Sorb is spoken in Eastern German. Whether “Plattdüütsch” is a minority language or just a dialect, it depends on who one asked to explain it. Even the difference between a language and a dialect is a controversially disputed debate). The problem with accepting Islam among some people is their baseless clutching on a so-called Occidental culture different from the Oriental one, disregarding the fact that even the Occidental culture is by far no singular one, isolated from foreign influences outside of the European continent. The simplest examples oftentimes expressed in this debate are the following: The numeral system used in European cultures is the Arabic system: while Germanics used ceramic plates to write with Runes, and Egyptians created a paper-like substance made of papyrus, the Chinese were the first to invent actual paper; likewise, the Chinese were the first to invent printing. The German language itself, and so it is verified for the English language, derives from the Proto-Indo-European language, a language that derived from a people located in India. It developed all the way across the Orient until it ended up on the British Isles. Throughout its development across two continents and various cultures (Persian, Indian, Slavic and the Germanic, finally), it caught up several influences which in conclusion shaped the language we now speak, although in the more basic foundation which underwent its own refinery as well¹¹.
A little bit we have come astray, but for good. Prisons are in their own respect an isolated society following its own rules. Those minor influences coming from the outside barely affect what is going on inside, so that hostile influences infiltrating this society inside a society without being detected as such and therefore put under intense surveillance are able to indoctrinate inmates beyond their release, so that they can easily be recruited for terrorist intentions. What I mean with this hollow speech is that Islamist imams are often incarcerated for hate speech and anti-Constitutional efforts; “unfortunately”, their misdemeanours are hardly viewed profoundly, so that they are treated as any felon or thief. What they did and what they are capable of doing (in regards to what they have been arrested for) is being disregarded, so that during their time in prison, they can continue their wretched work. Linguistic impairment on behalf of the policemen and watchmen inside the prisons might contribute to the radical imams’ success as well: Many imams pray in Arabic or languages of any kind that is likely to function as a lingua franca among the listeners. When the guards observing the inmates are unable to understand what the imam is preaching, but is also unpermitted to stop him from speaking in this foreign tongue, he can’t tell whether he is about to commit a crime or not. It’s a catch 22 that costs oh-so many lives in retrospective. The solution to this issue is obvious therefore, although the options to break it through are twofold: Either do upcoming executive forces have to be fluent in both German and Arabic or Turkish (depending on what is more important, or whether the fluency in these two languages will finally be balanced through the speakers inside the commissions), or the employment of policemen whose mother tongues are either Arabic or Turkish besides German has to be expanded. Needless to say that, in the end, both measurements are necessary since one by on its own won’t be enough to cover the required amount. On the other hand, two more problems arise from this necessity: Many policemen and women in training (in Germany) already fail to write flawlessly in German, so that burdening them with another language to learn from the start in order to join the forces could turn a lot of probable recruits for the police. Meanwhile those who were born in Germany but whose parents were born abroad might not favour a job in a sector that is known to share determined racist or fringe right beliefs. Racism and discrimination among one’s colleagues would distract them from ever considering taking place in there, defending law and order and protecting their “kin”, meaning those who are of a similar or akin ethnic background. Racial prejudices are what can be counted in common between police forces in the US and German police forces, perhaps due to its strong hierarchical order, ranks likening to military ones, the access to weapons, and the patriotic subtlety to defend one’s country’s order, thereby serving the nation duly. To some in particular, it might also appeal that one could round up left-winged demonstrators for committing misdemeanours, utilising violence that will be scarcely prosecuted. (Police violence in the US: here and here; in Germany, we only have that one link. (Unfortunately, for Germany, only alleged numbers are available since police violence so far has not been considered to be an addition in according statistics, nor have such cases been thoroughly documented, so that only one study as well as allegations by victims are known). Of course these are only vague reasons that don’t necessarily apply to actual cases in police forces, but this doesn’t demean its probability. Especially in the US, military ranks are even applied for police forces, in which the respective employees can also be promoted. It cannot be said by any means that such ranks, ribbons and medals don’t psychologically alter the employees’ self-comprehension; it’s the same as with motivation versus demotivation when a child shows its bad mark in a school test to its parents: When its parents tell it that although the mark is pretty bad but it can do better than that, the child is more likely to put in efforts to do it better the next time; the same effect wouldn’t take place when the child’s parents would smother their descendant for its failure. Depression about its failure would prevail, leaving a long-term effect of beliefs of its incapability in this particular subject, so that no better mark is ever going to be achieved on its behalf. The same way, military ranks might influence the employees’ understanding of their mission in society: When you’re awarded a military rank even though you work in a civilian environment, not a battlefield, you are more likely to equip excessive force, justifying it doubtlessly because you were entitled by your commission to behave this way. ‘You’re armoured as if you went to war, you’re armed, and you are called a Lieutenant, Sergeant, or Lieutenant Colonel. Crimes happen on a daily base, discontinuing tranquility and lawful maintenance, you’re in a daily battle against the evils of your country. Some people might not confess it, but this is a daily war we are fighting.’
Of course this is exaggeratedly dramatic, but who says that those who were accused of using excessive force against suspects and finally innocent victims of their overpowering violence saw themselves in such a way? Those many incidents of police violence in the US (referring to the statistics mentioned above) didn’t dwell out of thin air; and yes, even per capita, the number is incomparably high.
Now that we were already speaking of police violence, we should also keep an eye on arbitrary examinations of suspects on the streets; in the US, this doubtful practice is called stop-and-frisk. The instruction really follows this way: If policemen on the streets found a person’s behaviour suspicious, they are allowed to pull this person out (in traffic as well as if this person was a pedestrian walking on a pavement) and examine him to see whether the person illegally carried a gun or prohibited substances. So far, no-one seemed to have successfully filed a lawsuit against this practice intimidating people’s privacy and dignity. It’s up to the policemen themselves whether the “suspect” provided enough evidence justifying an impromptu examination. In the country that was once founded upon the beliefs of freedom of the people from excessive force on behest of the state, may it be federal or national, the executive forces enjoy poignant freedom before those who they were supposed to protect. In the end, they are the most likely to legally harass them. Or so the public eye views it. Publicly, debates surround and continuously emerge when for another time, the police reach the headlines again for negative reasons, such as shootouts going horribly wrong once they interacted, or when police fatally shoot civilians after attempting to frisk them. Especially the latter is a controversial issue especially known in the US, more than in any other country. Ironically, the US were once founded upon the belief of self-determination and the importance of privacy. Yet the police enjoy a wide freedom when it comes to the security measurement of “stop-and-frisk”, i.e. to arbitrarily handpick civilians on the streets or walking in case they appear suspicious and might cause a threat to public safety. As expected, there are a few bullet points to orient upon, provided through a worksheet the policemen having stopped and frisked a citizen have to fill out to document the examination. (To read the document, follow this link) This way, we can tell how it comes that police forces may justify their suspects’ involuntary participation in law enforcement, possible to shape their view on the state’s executive power (as we all know, the state holds the monopoly of violence. The state alone, beside soldiers for hire as provided by Blackwater, bare the right to use force and coercion against civilians. Besides this, Blackwater offers soldiers to use in wars against other countries, so that they of course were not allowed to function as policemen in US-American cities, or cities of any other country, since they lack the state’s oversight over their actions). As it was outlined in a study conducted at Yale University¹², in reference to German sociologist Max Weber, people’s experiences with law enforcement shape their view on the same, since legitimacy itself usually depends on one’s own belief: If a community doesn’t belief in the legitimacy of a state, the state’s conditions are calamitous since he will lose the people he governs. How is a state supposed to function if the people disobey him? He will fail. Thus, the law enforcement too has to be viewed as proportionate in its actions and justified especially by those who turn out to be innocent. No-one enjoys being questioned and frisked by law enforcement out of a sudden while enjoying a walk through the city during a bright summer day.
Coming back to the worksheet I listed as the penultimate source, it might raise some eyebrows at some points. The first one is the bullet point “Fits Description” in the second section highlighted with a yellow shade, “Additional Circumstances/Factors (Check all that apply)”—what does it mean? Which description? Since this is the first page (the vertically adjusted rectangular page) and no further descriptions of the victim/suspect had to be given, it stands to question which description was meant in this box. Perhaps this is a box to be checked when police forces were put on vigilante to track down a suspect prosecuted for a recently committed crime, so that a description of the suspect’s appearance was published beforehand. Otherwise, though, the point “Fits Description” has the air of probable racial or at least generally discriminatory prejudices, such as the point of “Wearing Clothes/Disguises Commonly Used In Commission of Crime”: There is no further description of what kind of apparel is meant by this. Every one of us might immediately think/have thought of all-black clothing, including pitch black sunglasses and a neckerchief covering the lower half of one’s face; alternatively, a full-face mask only leaving the eyes and the mouth open to see. Whether this was also meant in this point, we don’t know, the point was left abstractly to match the little space available. Therefore, no deliberate offence can be detected. Only prejudices and deliberate misdemeanours on the officer’s in duty behalf can be opined, although therefore as well, hard evidence had to be brought forward so that it can also be argued.
What about the “Suspicious Bulge/Object (Please Describe)”? Well, we possibly speak about suspicious bulges hidden in one’s backpack, shoulder bag or pockets. As for the latter, especially male policemen might be cautious about believing that a male suspect tried to hide illegal substances or illegally possessed handguns in his pockets, or otherwise, the physical examination might become embarrassing for both sides mutually, although for different reasons. Otherwise, we again speak of a controversial point open for abuse. Some of those points read like a paranoid method to justify a police state. As F. A. Hayek indicated in the surge in totalitarian systems in Europe, many outspoken Socialists justified the erection of a bloated, multifunctional state (i.e. a state bearing far more responsibilities and tasks than he could apparently execute, just so that nothing will be left to the free market) with the current state of civilisation, having gone too far to maintain the liberal society that existed back then. All those individual freedoms and the low regulations were no longer viewed as beneficially to the people, but rather injurious¹³. The same way, police officers in the US seem to be permitted to single out any suspiciously looking citizen and cross-examine him or her for any reason they see according to their worksheet. Beside frankly good reasons to examine a person, such as for “Carrying Objects In Plain View Used In Commission of Crime […]”, “Furtive Movements” is another unfortunate example of how innocent people become inadvertent suspects to the police. What do they mean by furtive movements? Merriam Webster describes the adjective “furtive” as “done by stealth”, “expressive of stealth”. So, we have to imagine a person moving furtively as not only acting like an introvert but also paranoid. Isn’t this a prejudice as well? Perhaps, but we cannot call prejudices everything that could evidently indicate an offender as well. This way, we would disable ourselves as well, forcing ourselves to not intercept probable wrongdoers because we didn’t want to vilify an innocent person. Such decisions are what makes a policeman’s job difficult: He or she has to quickly fell decisions on whether someone behaves suspiciously and whether a person might threaten public safety sooner or later, if not even now.
Occasionally safeguarding neighbourhoods frequently brought to scene for crimes belongs to such obligations as well. And such obligations also seem to find introduction to the aforementioned study as well: Surveyed participants resulted in a high influx of stops among African-Americans, with p=0.059, while it was 0.056 for Whites and only 0.025 for Hispanics. The gap between the first two doesn’t seem too wide, does it? That’s because that is right. Yet, when it comes to aspects such as perceived legality—personally, as well as vicariously, i.e. as the concerned neighbourhood perceives it, when they again become suspect to crimes—and whether justice was being done during these stops, the African-American community ranks the lowest among these three consecutively¹⁴ (therefore, it also undermines the total number).
To those who remember the behaviour of policemen in the US may not be surprised that minority suspects are more likely to receive the brunt of inappropriate behaviour. Not only are the US policemen far more likely to grab their guns in any case (Baton Rouge, LA; Ferguson, MO; Colorado Springs, CO; etc.); yet, even despite these deafening information, there is no comprehensive data showing us that there is a clear sign of an overwhelming racist bias among police officers leading towards a lethally higher likelihood among African-Americans to be murdered by police officers than among any other ethnicity). The encounters mentioned in the bracket before might be the most terrifying examples in recent US-American history, mainly because they gave birth to “Black Lives Matter”, but also were they some of the most polarising murders on the police’s behalf against minorities. NFL player Colin Kaepernick hoisted the issue unto a celebrity level, thus gaining it even more traction. It henceforth enjoyed a prominence it only had for the last time during the “Black Power” movement and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Even though those mentioned murders were only the peak of the iceberg, it was (and still is) important to talk about police violence in the US, since policemen in the US are evidently trigger-happy, thus costing many innocent civilians as well as offenders their lives (the latter still didn’t deserve to die, at least during the time of their arrest. As for whether they would have received a death sentence as their punishment, we were not about to hear it anymore. As for capital punishments in general, of course they are wrong to still have them in various states in the US, since this is a medieval punishment violating the offenders’ right to the protection of their human dignity. Life sentences should be the utmost punishment to offenders, not to be exceeded and never to be executed in solitary confinement, a custody comparable to psychological terrorism. Solitary confinement is proven to increase mortality, so that people who are arrested in solitary confinement are also morel likely to die early. That’s how a punishment turns into a sneaking death penalty, the most ineffective murder legally permitted).
In regards to police violence and racism in the forefront, there are more information to this, even though this too has aged a bit already. Still, it’s data as well as what they tell us are still up to the state of the art. While the author—writing in the Yale University’s “Lux et Data” blog—states the same point that it depends on the “law’s” personal representation in shape of the police. The more the police acts in a justified way (in a way the people can recognise the police’s work as justified and according to the legal establishment), the more people will believe in the prevalence of justice before criminality. If policemen, having sworn to protect the law at all costs, misbehave in charge, why should people continue to treating the law obediently? There wouldn’t be any reason since society already entered an unlawful level.
Or did it, then? The police are not the paragon of lawfulness, they are not the idols to admire and to follow suit. They are those who have to arrest and apprehend those who did the law wrong, they don’t represent the law per se. When it comes to the representation of the law, we have got courts. As long as courts defend justice and punish those who did her wrong according to a rational sentence aiming to rehabilitate the offender instead of solely punishing him, one could believe that at least justice will be done. To assure this, nevertheless, policemen turning into offenders at charge and in the state’s service have to be treated just the same as the “regular” offenders. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds—who is supposed to investigate the case, if not the police? In such cases, a superordinate office has to take care of the case, so that the offenders are not going to investigate themselves, surprisingly telling us that they found no wrongdoing whatsoever. In the US, the FBI might have to take over such an investigation, or should have already, since many murders of civilians by policemen were never really investigated, nor were they brought to court. Most of the time, murdering police officers were put on administrative leave, but were never sentenced to go to gaol. More or less, they got away with their homicide.
Without getting further into this issue, how does this affect the idea of splitting nations and states into bare communities without a larger structure? It affects it in such a way as that instead of police forces and commissions, a more self-determined system has to be erected, less affluent to corruption and holes in the structure easily exploited by wrongdoers. Prior to this ninth chapter, I spoke about the necessity of arming oneself up to be able to defend oneself, which could be contradicted by the very existence of people not willing to shoot somebody, either to disable the person from threatening oneself, nor fatally, to stop this person from whatever he or she did that justified murder (running away is not such a reason, and would also only justify shooting the offender’s leg(s) to stop him or her from further running away. To aim at the chest deliberately would not be justified, at no costs, since an unarmed escapee, assuming he or she was unarmed, did not threaten the shooter at any point. Nor would an armed escapee, normally, unless he or she blindly fired aback, but then, still, shooting the arm whose hand carried the gun would still be a more useful target than the chest, or the spine, or whatever). One cannot force someone to carry a gun and shoot at offenders, even though it might make sense when her or his life was at stakes. In such cases, the will to survive might kick in and he or she simply pulled the trigger. Prior to this, he or she had to carry the gun firstly, though. We’re caught in a mash, obviously, and beside telling the unwilling person that he or she finally had to bear the consequences, and no-one else, it would still be unethical to leave this person alone, at least when he or she was part of the community. As for whether the community’s rules told everyone to at least arm oneself with a handgun to be able to do the least to not cause any trouble due to the incapability of defending themselves.
I am very aware of the ugliness of preemptively hurting someone even though the person planned to do the same consciously against one. Evolution taught us that only those who were able to defend themselves would make it through, while the rest would vanish. The problem is that once humanity no longer had any natural enemies beside natural catastrophes, against which they try to defend themselves by any possible way, individual humans weakened; they no longer were forced to defend themselves because no-one was likely to ever attack them, beside any of their kin. Although one is more likely to be robbed on the streets than to be mauled by a grizzly or assailed by a pack of wolves (or a single wolf)—or especially because of this!—, people lost their instinct of survival. Rather than viewing it as conspicuous to occasionally eradicate a problem lying before one, they try to avoid it somehow else, getting away from it; by any means necessary would they confront the issue, as long as it didn’t include committing a capital crime. Presumably, people were more likely to break an offender’s bones, but would never take his or her life. The point of differentiation is that only one of those two ways of defending oneself excluded any chance of survival, which meant that one chose to play God. One of the Ten Commandments told us not to murder one another, and Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. One doesn’t necessarily need to be taught in a Christian or generally religious way, yet our all understanding, or of our society’s greater part (maybe?), murder is something irresponsible and to be avoided as long as it didn’t cost our own life. Understandable it would be—who of us was chose to decide over one’s life’s continuation? None of us are; not even judges should be allowed to punish someone by a death sentence, to execute him by the descent of the gavel (at least in Germany, this is the case. I spoke about it in previous pages). More broadly speaking, we should even consider any punishment behind bars to be a “theft of lifetime”, with the mere exception that the person will still be alive; one day, he or she will be released from prison, to live on in the outside. Once a “dead man walking” entered the execution chamber, he or she knew that life would soon end. The “angel of death” with the lethal injection in his or her hand awaits the fulfillment of coerced suicide against a poor devil finally suffering from an archaic way of punishment. This is not to say that murder for lower reasons (greed, jealousy, wrath, etc.) was ever justified: All I say is that someone’s misdeed doesn’t justify every way of punishment. There usually has to be a limit to it, and the sky doesn’t count as a limit. The old saying that we have to hold ourselves higher than the wrongdoer might sound inflationary and worn off, yet it bears a core of truth—that we must not become the wrongdoers ourselves in our search for justice.
For quite some time, we now talked about prisons and the police forces which, in a better society, wouldn’t exist, since there was no need for their existence. It would therefore be wrong to allege either one of being substantial threat to our freedom, even though they had a choice to not follow this despicable path. As Charles Krauthammer once coined in one of his most famous essays: “Decline is a choice” (although the essay was concerned about something different, but the title works either way). The argument wouldn’t work, though, just as Capitalists are wrong to advise low-wage workers to tell them to look for a different employment with a higher salary. The job they execute is still needed, it just isn’t paid that high, and is unlikely to experience an eventual wage raise. That’s why minimum wages were introduced: To support those who work in these low-wage fields, executing a poorly paid profession that is needed by society nonetheless. Correspondingly, to tell policemen and those who are in training to become ones that they should cease their work and look for something different, something of a less detested reputation. The fact that they are employed in this field and goodly paid shows us that their job is in dire need to be executed.
A rather small topic sprang in my mind out of a sudden, it relates to a point I previously wrote about: Interventionism in a world full of communities. Capitalists tend to underestimate the value of cultural achievements humans have created, which is the reason why the sometimes fail to make a case for institutional facilities such as museums, operas or theatres. In their logic, those institutions had to defend themselves on the market, showing that they are worth being paid for. Otherwise, they would be shut down eventually, because they were deemed worthless by the consumers. They don’t see anything of value beyond what is being paid for usually, such as nutrition or other resources traded on stock market. States exist for such institutions, to pay them out, therefore vouchsafe their perseverance. Superficially argued, this wouldn’t change in a world of independent communities: “Institutions of cultural maintenance” would be preserved by the people of respective professions, and whether money was still in regular usage or not, their fate was optimistic. Yet here is the point we have to think about: Assuming that the region in which New York City (NYC) lies, was under a Capitalist leadership, and institutions such as the Tate Modern Gallery or the Guggenheim Museum did not make a living out of their works put on display, therefore had to consider a closure someday. What would happen to these works? Would they be sold? And to whom? Who would ascertain that those who received those cultural treasures take good care of them? As it is common sense among Capitalists, there are no moral barriers in terms of trade: Those who are ready to pay for a good one could offer to them, why should he be rejected from sealing that deal? Instead of morality, among Capitalists only exists an antonym to morality: Virtue signalling. A derogative terminology to describe those who behaved normatively in regards to their moral standards, pushing others to behave the same way as they did. Those who accuse others of virtue signalling feel infringed in their freedom of action, speech or movement. More benevolently speaking, one could argue that normative approaches to morality were almost always negatively observed since those who behaved in a normative way usually assumed their own moral views to be superior to anyone else’s, thereby receiving respective responses; it had got nothing to do with an assumption that Capitalists usually were amoralists. They might just follow their own moral standards and were tired of hearing from others what they perceived to be better or superior. Frankly, it’s not unlikely that many Capitalists followed a morality surrounding property rights, radical freedom and individualism. In terms of practice, the active involvement of one’s moral points of view, any morality could be misused, yet then, it’s the equipper who fails morality, not morality itself. Abuse of anything has usually led towards the depiction of normally benevolent ideas and symbols, even led towards utter distortion of symbols and views. One only had to think of the Futhark, the Germanic alphabet, which lost specific letters to the Nazis; the Swastika, once symbol of the Hinduists, lost to the Nazis too; Buddhism, once a religion of peace and calmness, was turned into a nationalist idea by Buddhists of Myanmar, who turned their religion into an identity headed against Muslims; Hinduists suffered a likewise distortion under India’s PM Narendra Modi, the jingoist leader enforcing the battle against Muslims in his country. Just as a few examples of abuse of symbols and ideas in the world in our New Age, some more might be found perhaps, but it wouldn’t be necessary to mention them now. The point may be clear. Symbols or traditions that were not copyrighted by their original inventors are open to abuse, without ever being legally prosecuted (more or less was I joking). It’s true, though, and therefore should not function as the foremost example of an idea or symbol in action. To be precise, people should feel motivated to make their own research to see whether he or she they saw practicing a belief were right to do so or misinterpreted the whole idea/symbol in such a way that they should be corrected by someone who knew better. More politically an example, libertarianism is often hijacked by racists and nationalists (confusingly), distorting the entire idea to their favour, to express a misled critique of the state they currently inhabit.
Never mind, we completely went off the actual topic we raised, although culture of course includes one’s belief, politically as well as culturally. The idiosyncratic case of communities preferring to only preserve what they find culturally worthwhile because it emerged in their own culture (for example, the pyramids of Giza which might no longer be protected from terrorist attacks because people who thought them to be worthless in their regards since they as Muslims didn’t care for monuments that arose during a pagan culture praying unto pharaohs who claimed to be of a dietary dynasty). We saw such a carelessness for culture when ISIL terrorists destroyed the ancient site called Palmyra; from their observation, Palmyra was an archaic relic unimportant in their Islamic culture (or what they understood as such). As quick as it happened, no intervention could have prevented this destruction from happening, yet we do have to think about whether interventionism was justified when it came to saving monuments of human history from its rather dark side.
Again, we face a question we cannot generally answer: As aforementioned, it depends on whether one is rather indifferent about the arts or architecture, or whether one weighs on them, and wishes to preserve them as long as possible for generations to come. To broaden the field of interventionism in this field, we should also add the protection of the world’s climate, and whether communities should unite and intervene against other communities who idly continued running coal plants and the production of combustion engines instead of focusing on more sustainable technologies like windmills and hydrogen-powered cellular cars. The difference between these two is that when it comes to climate change, we are concerned about a more ultimate issue: Whether we manage to successfully address climate change or not will determine whether this planet remains inhabitable or not. It could be argued that climate change is like a checkpoint we have to surpass in order to address any other future topic presuming this checkpoint’s surpassing. Therefore, intervention of any kind in regards to this and its positive outcome should be ethically permitted as long as a consortium of different-minded communities or states (depending on which world we speak about; the rule itself is applicable to both situations) was involved in the decision-making regarding a certain entity. As much as a consortium was not necessarily required to intervene somewhere (the US intervened in several countries to tremble regimes all by themselves, “successfully”. Never did they consult other states to ask them for their advice for their future plans. Fortunately, not all of the world’s states are as strong as the US, so that interventions might be easily fought back by their targets), as better it would be to ascertain the intervention’s success. The reason is simple: Those states that are the most pollutant on any scale are also the strongest: China, India, the US. It took the entire European Union, if not Europe entirely, to invade a country such as China to coerce it into shutting down all of its coal plants and further enforce their development in solar plants, for example. Moreover did we have to work out a detailed plan to explain ourselves what to do exactly when it comes to intervening in China, India or the US. Just moving in and striking down its military, assuming it even excelled, was not the end of the story, as one could easily imagine. Blackmailing the Chinese into changing their means of energy production won’t work either; the Chinese are trained into withstanding outside pressures, furthermore do they hold advantageous means in their own hands: Whether any of the production will be relocated in the Western hemisphere after states have been deconstructed depends on the communities respectively. Such is the issue for work and trade, again on the issue of money. Moneychangers or barters were two entities to dominate trade between European communities and mainland China (in full shape as a nation or as a Chinese edition of kleinstaaterei (for some semiautonomous regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet or Hong Kong/Macao, a dissolution of the Chinese mainland state could come in handy for their full release from the politburo’s hands. Nevertheless, especially for China, a deconstruction might become the most fiercely embattled deconstruction, since dictatorships hardly ever let loose; we have been seeing this during the Hong Kong protests, which began with the implementation of an extradition law, which finally wasn’t implemented at all, but led towards brutal protests against the Beijing-affiliated prime minister Carrie Lam, who those protesters wanted to see removed without any compromises; furthermore did they want to hold democratic elections to succeed her (Nota bene: This timeline is not complete as there doesn’t exist any definitive timeline yet). Bitcoins could also replace the overall money exchange, ease global shipments and trade altogether, thus make a point in leaving production where it is—in mainland China—, and enjoy idle leisure in Europe, with only a few people remaining in work where it is necessary; agriculture, for example, or in goods and services to produce those things that don’t need to be outsourced.
Work itself is a question we were concerned about before, and what will be left of work once robotics will take over most of the production. Most likely it will be dissolved by robots, so that humans indeed can enjoy their lives as they wish to do so, even if it meant for them to continue following a regular day of work. No-one should be forced to abandon it, as long as people were able to make a choice. It would be hard-headed to say that one’s life’s pursuit predominantly was to follow a nine-to-five day (or however long or short one’s normal day at work is) of work and some time of one’s own. If work was to be replaced by machines, this should be seen as a means of a merrier life, not of fear about how to earn money henceforth, because money was still the central means of life’s proceeding. Some people I talked with about this issue suggested that machines could be constructed in such a way that their automatic functioning should be turned off manually whenever it was due, whether it was during a maintenance operation or because somebody wished to do the job oneself. In terms of routine and equal quality standards, such an option sounds foolish, especially when it comes to offering people work spontaneously, because they felt like it. Either there were regular jobs for humans or machines alike, or one sole option—humans or machines—would be implemented. Not both alternatively. We indeed had to fear a sudden decrease in quality when humans suddenly took over the machine’s job, and on the other hand, we might experience a sudden improvement in quality, which might finally confuse consumers. The question is: Is it worth it? To program or construct machines in such a way that humans were able to take over control as they found it favourable? At least to me this sounds like a desperate implementation of oneself into a progress one wanted to have the best out of both worlds: The leisure of a market’s domination of machines to do all the work, and the joy of working as it pleases one; not all the time, just as it is delighted. The longer one thinks about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. Actually, this development—cheap production through machines that routinely produce everything precisely, with only a few strays, while producing akin products of the same high quality in such a large amount that it will be available en masse—could cause two effects:
Another time, I was pretty naïve, speaking like a participant in a beauty pageant, on my dreams for the future of this world. Yet, those ideas are not too far-fetched. Manufacturers with a dozen of employees at best, and a local range in distribution, can hardly make ends meet these days, due to the large concerns producing the ever same products in line by the thousands, distributing their goods to hundreds of supermarkets and discounters, earning millions in revenue. Manufactures, on the other hand, may at best be able to pay their employees at the end of the month, but little will remain down the line. Exceptions remain, though; still, they hardly make anything up in contrary to those who went bankrupt. Freelancers won’t be able to make manufacturing their enduring outcome in a capitalist society, despite what others may say. The chances for success as a freelancer in any field, if one intended to run an own business instead of working in the gig economy (this may include working with the concerns such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo; or as a freelancing journalist for any major news outlet) are comparably low since there is no field which is not already heavily embattled; furthermore, there are never enough customers interested in buying unique products that will exceed the prices for ordinary options by far. The reason: People don’t earn enough money to regularly choose unique options over ordinary ones, and those who do earn enough won’t balance the falter by buying gargantuan amounts of one product, even to succour the seller. Of course, from time to time, people will fly in and buy those manufactured pieces, but it won’t endure the long-time of figurative desertion. This is not to say that for most of the time, people would not buy from this seller at all, but those who are going to buy from this manufacturer (either sometimes or almost regularly) will be too few to warrant the manufacturer’s shop’s perseverance. Some might allege the state of endangering such manufacturer’s existence through high taxes and perhaps through unconscionable rents, in case the proprietor of the foundation of the manufacturer’s shop or manufactory is in fact the state, and no private owner who has no use of the ground him- or herself, yet the latter case would be hypocritical if we just imagined that the manufacturer could also be endangered through stringent rents on the landlord’s behalf. Apparently, we have to imagine that those same people who condemned the state’s actions would shrug when the landlord stood on display. “Well, this is how the market works”, those people would likely state, “the manufacturer just didn’t satisfy as many customers as he had to in order to survive. But don’t you worry, his descendants might excel eventually.” In such a manner, Austro-American economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises justified the market’s grinding procedure in which some of us might fail while our own children might someday be successful¹⁵. It would be wrong, of course, to say that this entire system was flawed and inhumane to the core. Resources are scarce, so that pointless wastage has to be prevented without stately force. Stately force would lead towards arbitrariness on the leading positions’ behest. Generally, moreover, there is no prevalent trust in people to think rational in terms of resource usage. To imagine that people could arrange with others in a community, to trust one another in order to not fall in need of a supreme leader (or a merely Democratically elected leadership, including a lifelong-employed cohorts of bureaucrats), is already a treacherous undertaking putting a great idea at risk and, in a worst-case scenario, float the popularity of pernicious ideas such as totalitarianism of any kind (may it be Nazism, Socialism or any unideological evil (i.e. evils that don’t presumably follow any ideology but are just inherently bad). It’s a scheme we usually see during elections, when a cabinet followed a doctrine (such as fiscal Conservatism) that ended up mainly unfavourable among the ruled people, who consequentially vote for a party that promises to withdraw those policies people experienced so unfavourably. More or less, the Brexit plebiscite was such an election, although the people didn’t punish their ruling party (which also introduced this referendum in the first place) for their policies, but what they recognised as a superordinate leadership from Bruxelles in Continental Europe. In their opinion, the overwhelming bureaucracy and the stymieing regulations that allegedly thinning out their trades. In the end, it was Brexit to blame for a lowered GDP and shortages for the people due to the requirement of new trade deals with different nations, and higher costs due to tolls along the border (While this article mostly focuses on shortages in case of a no-deal Brexit, which were a Brexit without a trade or travelling deal between the Continental European Union and Ireland, the same would also more broadly apply to a situation in which Brexit was done according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans, but with a Brexit deal at least in accordance with the EU. Still, minor shortages might be experienced due to trade deals in progress with other major markets such as with Northern America. The USMCA deal between the three North American countries only proceeded so quickly because no major differences from the former NAFTA deal were made. If anything new had been negotiated, it would have taken up to six years at least).
What does this tell us? First of all, that—Democracies are flawed in such a way that politicians depend on their people to elect them while those who are supposed to vote for them might be the ones who understand the least of what is going on in the capital city, what politicians do, and how their decision-making proceeds, what kind of facts have to be minded and why hardships might occasionally be necessary to succeed into something far greater than before (although their justification tends to be usually hypocritical in reflection to their own salary which counts a multitude of what their people averagely earn). This is not to say that even politicians make mistakes they continuously deny, thereby endangering their own credibility. It’s a cardinal failure to believe that politicians had to be inerrable; a belief people and politicians alike fell for. Hence, people are angry on politicians for making mistakes and then defending those same mistakes. Likability, as subjective as it is, also depends on whether someone is able to confess having been mistaken in a certain issue, then correcting it. A seldom event it is to see a ruler resigning after having acknowledged their vain attempt, the closest it comes to a confession. Why does it happen so rarely? The answer, to some, sounds clear: They clutch onto their power. It’s a cliché uttered so long as people kept rumouring about politicians’ intentions behind according actions, it’s a way to explain to oneself why their representatives behaved in the way they did. A similar explanation is to accuse them of being in lobbyists’ pockets; this happens in particular with politicians who defend an economically friendly policy that partially hurts middle- und underclass people. Whether this actually matches reality, few dare to double-check even though the means to control it exist: in the US, the non-profit organisation “Open Secrets” provides classified information on corporate donations to specific representatives and senators, while in Germany, “Lobbycontrol” lists donations by citizens and corporations as long as they are provided in reports to the General Accounting Office. Loose laws, although, leave plenty of space to not mention some of them, so that even those reports only obscurely display who actually donated to whom.
Do such allegations hold on to the truth? A difficult question; to think this way presupposes a negative assumption, so that a non-biased option is irrevocably lost. We could as well opine that the leaders who fell from grace were apprehensive of a trembling state of control once their government abruptly broke apart, so that a vacuum of power dwelled, a date for new elections had to be set and a temporary government had to be installed. Prior to their resignation, people already took it to the streets, expressing their utmost anger, while those same protests are likely to continue after the president’s/prime minister’s/dictator’s/etc. resignation, so that they might be heard about their favourite option on who’s to succeed the recently vacated office. Depending on which state we talk about, police violence is about to overshadow the protests; those policemen are not necessarily invigorated by their own beliefs in the unrighteousness of those protests leading towards a force-fed step-down: Mostly, those policemen enact on behest of the president or subordinate secretaries/ministers who ordered them to break down those protests. As if history didn’t teach them better, forceful oppression of protesters lead towards international outrage and condemnation, probably implemented sanctions further weaken the country’s economy: Inflation rises, poverty strikes the people, further enraging them, aspiring them to move on with their protests. At some point, violence might be broadly accepted as a means of combating the rogue government. Only at this point does protesting even enjoy a chance of working out. While I would normally recommend to read my respective test which I previously wrote on the pointlessness of nonviolent protests, it might be more useful to again quote Emma Goldman who said that “If anything was likely to make a change in society, it was already prohibited” (not verbatim (Origin unknown, at least commonly referred to Ms. Goldman). She was right about that, more or less, while it depends what one meant by “change” exactly. It’s easy to accuse Democratic governments (or governments in general) of obstructing any (meaningful) change in society, and that it lied in the hands of the people to enforce the change they find worth pursuing, the abolition of governments in general as the most radical intent to be thought of. It could also be said that she spoke of those exact meaningful changes worth mentioning. The closest idea to thinking of what she meant was anything meaningful that could lead towards partially losing control over the people. Because, what good is a government that kept its people on a loose line? (Yes, I was being sarcastic here). Ms. Goldman found a logical paradox in her aphorism (if we want to consider it an aphorism): Democratic governments are systematically limited in their freedom of movement: They can only go as far as they can also keep control of their people, of everything that is going on. To enact only one bill (e.g.) that went too far could mean that the people were more freely to act independently of their government. Speaking metaphorically, the government is like a ball oscillating inside a field limited by pillars at every corner. Above this ball is a puppeteer holding the string to which the ball is attached, but the string would tear off immediately as the ball transcended those pillars’ lines. The ball, in real life, was the control, which roams the political field of control, while the puppeteer symbolised our dear politicians, gambling with their control by occasionally oscillating their control closer to the lines, while also oscillating it with less bravado, centralising it to enjoy a period of calmness (which the people might enjoy as well, especially those who exclaim on Twitter their exhaustion from politics. My fellow Democrats who closely watched every hearing on C-SPAN (I didn’t, I only read about the key takeaways. Ain’t nobody got time for that (whole shitshow of Jim Jordan (R—OH) grasping for attention) might feel what I mean by that.
It’s easy to understand what happened when a politician resigned or should have considered resigning to bring back tranquility and order to his or her country. This is uttered with ease when speaking about once-Democratically elected leaders, but naïve when speaking of dictators such as Robert Mugabe († 06.09.2019) of Zimbabwe or Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. Both of them have turned their countries into respective persiflages in their own regards: Belarus is the last remaining dictatorship in Europe (and even a member of the European Union! (state of information: 10th December 2019)), Zimbabwe suffers from an ineffable inflation rate, having turned its currency completely worthless. How did that happen? Mugabe exploited his own people, isolated the country from the Western world, didn’t install policies to combat droughts and bad harvest. An example of carelessness and indifference by the book, the former fighter for Zimbabwe’s independence from England became a symbol of how the postcolonial era in Africa disrupted aspiring nations into failures one by one (exceptions might be Ethiopia, which became independent from Italy in 1941 (while it kept Eritrea dependent on it until 1991, which marked Ethiopia’s landlocked condition), whose leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for the solution of the conflict between his country and neighbouring Eritrea (although the piece did not last long. Both fare well economically, their political field appears comparably stable; at least in Angola, though, corruption is not unbeknownst to the people, as a five-part investigative series showed). On the conditions that led towards this continental example of failed states, we shall not stick, since this is not part of this chapter’s interest, we spoke about politicians’ understanding of responsibility in front of their own people. Dictators of course don’t have any feeling of responsibility in front of their people, or otherwise, they might have pursued a fair victory in an election to be elected through the better qualifications or arguments in opposite to their contestants. This way, they might have become statesmen or –women in their country’s history; so far, no dictator ever usurped the highest office to lead their country towards prosperity, economically as well as socially. Dictators usually knew that they stood no chance in a just election, so that they chose the “easy way in”.
What we must not leave out in terms of politicians’ responsibility are the representatives and secretaries who misemploy their office for their own good in spite of those they are supposed to serve. In current administrations in Germany and the US, we have got a couple of examples of such abuses:
Of course these are only two examples, many more might have been found especially in the US, among Representatives such as Duncan Hunter (R—CA), who, together with his wife, spent taxpayers’ money (from their own district) for personal expenses; or Devin Nunes (R—CA), who used taxpayers’ money to travel to Europe to meet with Rudy Giuliani’s (President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer) henchman Lev Parnas; of Greg Gianforte (R—MO) who once body-slammed a “Guardian” journalist who asked him about his plans on Medicare during a press conference. He received appraise from President Donald Trump (For those who didn’t know: He’s also Montana’s only representative. Due to Montana’s small size, not more than one district exists). There are multiple examples of bizarre politicians who might have been better off having resigned and vacating their office for someone fitter.
The problem is that not every offence is so severe that they had to be prosecuted therefore, which would lead towards a dishonourable resignation; with some, it is more fitting to speak of a resignation out of respect for the office’s responsibility. As you could recognise from this description, we speak of an abstract concept rather than a lawful inscription to follow by. Such is the same with politicians who throughout their tenure acted rather poorly, therefore would be wished to resign. Normally, those who think this way would find approval among like-minded people on the internet, in social networks; polls barely represent their opinion, though, which makes one wonder how this could be. The most likely response to this is: That person lives inside an echo chamber into which no differing opinion enters, so that one experiences a non-standardised reality. On the other hand, polls are disputable when it comes to whether they evidentially display the average opinion in society. One point against this suggestion would be the small amount of surveyed people; approximately one thousand people are being surveyed per poll, as diverse as possible to display the “mixture” of society as it is (especially in the US, Hispanics and black voters are decisive votes during general elections). Their methodology is not the problem, needless to say: It’s the small amount of people they generally survey that limits their polls’ significance (nota bene: I speak of both countries, Germany and the US, when speaking of polls’ significance in public opinion). Whether there is a necessary amount of people to be reached to verify a poll, I am not aware of, since I am not a sociologist; most likely there is one. Still, if this amount is located somewhere around a thousand people, this does not last long to function as a remarkable point of identification about the mass opinion. To have a mentionable survey, we need to have manifold factors to recognise to assemble various opinions included in our society. Spontaneously brainstorming those factors, I would name the following:
This is all I could think of after obscuring my carcinogenic organ tempestuously. It took me a few more minutes than I planned to, but all in all, this would be a good start to create a worthwhile poll that could create a more detailed depiction of how the public thinks about respective questions. Furthermore, we had to stock up the required amount of surveyed people to approximately five thousand. I am fully aware of the naïveté in these words, that it was hardly feasible to execute in a given time in which a poll was demanded (since most polls are demanded by broadcasters or news outlets, barely surveyed to publish them on their own, although they will also be published on their website separately, mentioning he, she or it who/that demanded it to be created in the first place. Some people assume pollsters conduct their results in such a way as it pleases most their clients’ audience’s main bias; while this sounds bizarrely legit regarding how often this (false) assumption matches what can be viewed in news reports, there hasn’t been any hard evidence to establish this assumption), yet it also has to be contemplated what good a “half-baked” poll is in regards to parties that try to adjust themselves to public opinion, and people who would like to know how the great majority thinks about the governments’ doings? The results will stay vague in terms of the broader view, so that they can only provide a narrow spy through the looking-glass while others would expect an intense look through the bulwark. The latter is also what the people should be provided, or otherwise, one’s personal echo chamber would be good enough as well, but would take less time to concentrate on (either when one read the entire surveillance study or just a report extracting the key takeaways).
How does this relate to what we were talking about shortly beforehand? When it comes to projection of numerical values, bias and relative relations are crucial factors to estimate both entities in this problem. What I mean: Both the US and Germany are large countries with five- to six-digit amounts of people mutually. Hence, when people take their dismal to the streets, their crowd size might look overflowing, while in relation to the absolute number of people living in the country, the crowd ranks obliviously small.
If someone should have loudly exclaimed: “What an unfair comparison is that?!” this person was right, we cannot compare a protest’s crowd to the last census of the country’s population, it doesn’t even make sense. It would make more sense to compare it to other protests of a similar subject, such as protests against a/the government. It could direct towards the activeness of certain ideological affiliations, for example people affiliated to left-winged ideologies compared to right-winged ideologies. An example which became infamous in the interim is the comparison between the inauguration crowd size of 44th president Barack Obama and 45th president Donald J. Trump. Images were shared across the internet, sometimes falsified to let Trump’s inauguration crowd size look larger than his predecessor’s. Beside the narcissist underlining that some president’s crowd size was even of any interest (what matters in the end is the legacy that will survive his tenure), it shows some indicators on whose wing might be more proactive when it comes to representation (a seeing and being seen, to speak indistinctly and colloquially): Obama’s crowd was indeed larger (To understand the facts on crowd size measurement and whose crowd was larger now, read this one as well as this one, although yet-unmentioned factors might have played a role in this visible difference: Barack Obama was a classical liberal when it came to interior policies, while he was strongly interventionist in foreign policies, having outnumbered his Republican predecessor George W. Bush in drone murders in Afghanistan and the Middle East (especially when it comes to civilian casualties The Council on Foreign Relations delivers the definitive death toll on President Obama’s drone strike murders, while the Chicago Sun-Times reminds us that under President Trump’s presidency, far more drone strike murders were committed. Therefore, he mainly abducted urban liberals from the middle class who could spontaneously afford a flight (or train ride) to DC (spontaneously since a liberal wouldn’t have traveled to DC to participate in the inauguration if Mitt Romney (R—UT) had been elected the 43rd/44th president of the United States). Trump, on the other hand, mostly abducted blue-collar workers from rural areas in the West, so that to them, there already were two reasons why to rather watch the inauguration on TV. Regarding the fact that there may also be plenty of people who may have voted for Trump but didn’t feel like spending money on travelling all the way to the Beltway to watch him speak publicly. As it turned out, in the end, he was about to hold multiple campaign rallies throughout his entire tenure, all over the country, particularly in countries which he won bigly or which are considered to be swing states, so that he had to assure them to be red by the end of his first tenure. Hence, almost every follower of his was eventually able to see him speaking in public for a far less costly price.
Just by this one example, we could see that the question is not as easy as to be answered by right-winged versus left-winged. We have to observe the specific situations we chose for our comparison. To choose adequate objects to compare to one another, therefore, also requires us to find two objects that are as similar in regards to the situation and the location as possible. Otherwise, we might find differences that might ultimately bring up complications to those who could have participated but finally didn’t, therefore pulled down their brothers-in-ideology. Consequentially, overlooking this entire problem as such surrounding protests as a means to measure, we should abstain from taking them too serious. It might be more profitable, contrarily, to focus on groups in Social Networks such as Facebook or Twitter (in the latter, thickly crowded accounts by persons of public interest such as politicians, journalists would accord to Facebook groups, since those who don’t follow specific persons for mutual beliefs and points of view are rare, compared to those who follow them out of a shared persuasion).
Again, we have to ask us the same question over and over again: What has this got to do with the aforementioned concern we highlighted? Little it has got to do with it to the distracted eye. But we were talking about politicians’ responsibility and how to read the public opinion, so that they do themselves know when the people are mainly tired of what they do, so that they vacate the office under high approval. In the Western world, we momentarily see many politicians who seem to live in their own echo chamber, not recognising that it was time for them to retire; rather do they stick to their offices as if their life depended on it. In the US, Trump would be the perfect example, regarding his rather low approval rating dwindling at 49 percent at best, and in Germany, it would be the infamous “GroKo”, which continuously ruled for four legislative periods, equaling 16 years in a row (This might not be the most recent article, but it gives you an understanding of what is meant by this everlasting coalition in case you didn’t know yet.)). Polls might be in her favour, although here, too, the margin is low, as well as its approval altogether. It’s heinous to believe that continuing it was to the people’s liking, especially in terms of the Union’s partner, the SPD, which currently polls at 11 percent singly. If elections took place this Sunday, they might still carry a majority if they put their votes together, but still, a great part of the people who voted would be left behind in exhaustion, since they voted for an end to it. It’s an issue that disgraced the incumbent government and would again strengthen the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), to which almost any party with double-digit results in polls share a common objective, namely to prevent her from ever coalescing with anyone, or gaining enough votes to become an inevitable partner. In one way, this will become impossible nevertheless: When the AfD reaches about 20 percent (next to the Greens) and no coalition between the Union (Centre-Right, although having been considered rather Social Democrat post-2010 to 2015), the SPD (Social Democrats, although reckless when it comes to defending their own ideals before their coalition partner CDU (Union)) or the Greens (left-winged liberal, although behaving superficially and populist, it remains to see how they would function outside of the opposition) was created, the AfD was right to wait in front of the Union’s doorstep to offer herself for a coalition. Childish it would be to consequently reject her since she hitherto was not prohibited due to her ideological background (although party members never cease to exclaim that this only belonged to the “Flügel” (Wing), a fringe-right wing (there was no felt need of creativity in giving the wing a name to stick out of the crowd) headed by Bernd Höcke (a politician and former history teacher from Thuringia)), but didn’t establish the collectively shared belief by the rest of the party. Unfortunately, there are well-reasoned arguments contradicting that almost naïve, if not ignorant, belief in the normalcy of that “anti-establishment” party. While it would be more convincing to a broader mass of voters to stand to who they were instead of remaining in a constant state of denial about their own identity while dog-whistling in direction to extreme/radical right-wingers and anti-Semites (to those who might have passed it: During their most recent party congress, a new co-chairman was elected; among those who applied for this position was a politician from Baden-Württemberg, Wolfgang Gedeon, an author of various academic and miscellaneous non-fiction books; he is also accused of openly expressed anti-Semitism. Only once did his party try to throw him out, without success), they also behave like the US’ GOP, turning themselves into a farcical mimicry (they might, by now, also share a mutual ideology, even though the relative amount of outspoken white supremacists might be higher in the AfD than in the modern-day GOP; still, individuals such as Steve King (R—IA) are still a rarity, or so I believe. Alt-Right upstarts such as Devin Nunes (R—CA), Matt Gaetz (R—FL), Jim Jordan (R—OH) are more likely to be met).
Why should the Union coalesce with the AfD, though? Wouldn’t that be a betrayal on Democratic standards, since the AfD is highly likely to overturn certain Constitutional laws? Perhaps, but then, the party also had to come to terms with her partner, which the Union then would be. She is also most likely to maintain her majority in such a coalition, so that she predominated within the coalition unabridged. The AfD, at most times, had to obey her; despite her voters’ belief, she couldn’t move entirely freely, spitting upon migrants (to whom they are stabbers and rapists by and large). Former federal president Joachim Gauck spoke about a coalition with the AfD in order to “demystify” her, for which he received a lot of outrage. The German online satirical outlet “Postillon” compared him to Paul von Hindenburg, who declared Adolf Hitler the Reich’s chancellor, allegedly “demystifying” him and the NSDAP). Apparently, this was a weak joke to jump upon the bandwagon. Those people who threw Gauck under the bus never considered an alternate route to prohibiting the AfD or ignoring her throughout the daily work in the parliament. They thought that either way would work out well and someday, the AfD faded into oblivion. So far, this didn’t happen, the AfD is up and well, hard to be ignored while some of her delegate behave like children, crying for attention with an unrefined language; their short speeches are oftentimes responded with a likewise language vice versa. A fitting pendant to show trials would be those show discouragement. Neither side vividly or tenably defended our liberal society; more likely did they misdirect her for their own party’s reputation, pretending to care for her while actually just spewing their own dogmas.
To some, this last sentence sounded like what many right-wingers would express sotto voce. I beg to differ, though. We have to realise that to polarise between the lines won’t save our liberal Democracy, yet this is what most left-wingers (I single them out on purpose) execute nowadays: They polarise, almost dogmatically lift their own way of thinking as the one that rules supreme above all. There is nothing wrong about confidence in one’s thinking, and it’s also not what I want to accuse them of when saying that they unnecessarily and counterproductively polarised; what I want to highlight, though, is the way of how they encounter their enemies in the discourse (we are not going to replace the civil discourse with the murderous battlefield the Alt-Right hopes to emerge to fight us “Cultural Marxists”): To all intents do they not only do they try to skim over such far right-wingers all the same, but also do they seem to believe that via this method, they could excel in fighting the bad breed. For better comprehension, let me explain what I meant by “skimming” all over the far-right wing: By this figurative term, I meant that they treated them all the same ignorant way, blaming them for their ideology as if they were born with it, and could scratch it off like a scab. Polls so far insisted that to many of them, voting for the AfD (in Germany; the GOP so far is not collectively considered to be a far-right party but rather a Conservative party with a couple of black sheep infiltrating the party. There are good reasons to at worst view this party as being arrayed in a state of transfer from Conservatism to the far right. The question is whether this trend will continue after Trump, since it began during Trump’s tenure. Before that, for example, Devin Nunes of Tulare County viewed himself to be a fiscal Conservative¹⁶. Now, he behaves like Trump’s henchman is an act of persuasion, not an act of protest against the “established olden parties” (Alparteien). To many left-wingers, this was another proof to show that with the AfD, we don’t have another disputable party whose sole concern was to give the silent majority a voice in parliament, but a more popular surrogate of the NPD or the DVU (or Die Rechte; all of them are fringe-right parties decaying in the 0.1 percent sector). Such statements are conceived in a superficial way of thinking as original as claiming that one’s place of birth was a choice. Of course those people spoke about a persuasion in the party, only few people vote for a party out of a lack of alternatives (normally, those people don’t vote at all, as voting for a party as a means to an end is a betrayal to oneself. No-one could ever convince me to vote for any party just to not vote for the AfD but to obstruct her in her procedure. This is not how Democracies are being defended), so when those people vote for the AfD, there are only two options: Vote as a demonstration of disgust with the larger parties, or because they were convinced by their program. As a party to attract the wanna-be punks, a party could only function when it never rose to importance in the political midfield, which the party entered years ago when it surpassed parties like the FDP (Classical Conservative/Right-winged liberal) and The Left (Democratic Socialist). After that movement, and its programmatic specification, it no longer was able to function as a party to only shock one’s family members. You either voted for this party, or you didn’t; but when you did, you didn’t do so because you wanted to “belong to the cool kids”. You did so because you believed in their program as a yeoman (or knight, to be clearer) believed in the king of his kingdom. Hence, to use such reports as an evidence of this party’s derangement doesn’t suffice the public discourse outside of one’s own echo chamber. The party functions as an amplifier to those people; those people carry this persuasion. So far, so good (or bad). But where does their belief come from? As I said before, those people weren’t born with this belief, nor did it suddenly came up in their mind that they actually hated migrants they never saw outside of the news before, and thought that Merkel had got to go immediately, as well as her entire party. Many studies suggest that those people picked up this way of thinking from their social surrounding, through fringe right youth organisations (mostly conducted by gubernatorial facilities of parliamentary parties such as the NPD) or through (the feeling of) social deprivation while seeing how migrants entering the country were accompanied by social workers throughout their way into life in Germany, including all the subsidies (not all of this had to be experienced first-hand; to some, it’s already enough to see how their landsmen lived in a state of deprivation while migrants received all the help they needed; thus the nationalist underlining in their whole way of thinking) (PDF)). The latter reason, to some, might belong to the only understandable ones, but we won’t get into that since we more or less dedicated time and text to it in previous chapters. A welfare state has got his limits, and so, we need to morph into shattered communities to direct help precisely towards those who need it, without never-ending bureaucratic paths some might starve upon while walking them. Yet, do those people complaining about injustice between landsmen and migrants project their personal bias onto reality despite their incapability to matching one another? Comme ci comme ça. Yes, we do have a lot of people who suffer from homelessness or poverty (many more of them to come when entering their retirement in a corrupted retirement program by the state), but we also do have many who prosper after having been released from their dismal conditions. Even after having viewed the according numbers, we would see that the mass of both sides are equally too large to state whether there was a disequilibrium between support for landsmen and migrants. To cut it short, we have to confess that many of them stood in awe when seeing how many people suddenly arrived before our border and cried for help and were actually helped, while so many people who were born here and lived her but were actively deprived by the state by being drained while never seeing something given back to them in return. Rather, they were sentenced to view decades of impotence in the capital city while large-and-growing problems loomed in front of them. It was only natural to then see a turn towards the right, since the formerly centre-right party moved leftwards (yes it did, although only marginally, and only temporarily) while many of them were outspokenly right-winged (some might have been Conservative but were aberrantly fine with allying with far right-wingers which finally exposed them, but more on that later) but lacked a party to vote for. To believe that all of them were unitedly far right and only waited for their chance to rise and shine is ignorant and shouldn’t be paid the attention it unfortunately received (more or less, I paid it the attention as well by granting it a larger part of my text).
To find “back home” again, we propose to ourselves the same lousy question: What does this all have got to do with our above-mentioned topic on politicians’ responsibility and when it was time that they no longer served their people but only their own interest? As I said, we cannot directly extract “the people’s will” from the loudest and the most aptly represented ones we either hear or see best. Some interest groups might be organised better, but this doesn’t mean that they also represented the majority among the people. It comes to no surprise that in a Capitalist society, without a state to be the decisive entity, such a method was reputed as fair: Those who do better also deserve the larger size of the cake, since this one also put more efforts into one’s interest. The larger size of the cake (or whatever was at stakes in this specific situation) was well deserved. Luckily, states that didn’t go fully Capitalist yet are more interested in affirmative action than in the dog-eat-dog rule (which was a reasonable rule in a society in which the better one also receives more: To regulate it in any other way to obstruct the better’s reception of the greater prize would lead astray from the original idea. Therefore, the one dog eating the other dog, to adapt the figure, should not be stopped from continuing creating himself a more advantageous condition), so that they won’t listen to a large crowd protesting in front of their offices. Otherwise, loudmouths would continue tricking politicians into listening preferably to them rather than finding a common-sense compromise. And when it comes to manipulation of this obtuse manner, no wing would be preferable just because of its intentions, since unjust methods were applied to silence the opposition by bluntly lobbying in one’s favour rather than finding the mot juste in an open parliamentary debate tête-à-tête with their opponents. Someone who hasn’t got to fear anything because he or she has found unmatched arguments one couldn’t deny, doesn’t need to wall any efforts to face their opponents in a fair duel.
People would contradict me, saying that as long as the ruling parties hold the reins of power, no argument can be good enough as long as they won’t mind it but stick to their own talking points, their own solutions, disregarding what the opposition ever said. The oppositions’ arguments faded away unheard. And they are not wrong with what they say, but that’s how Democracies work. The opposition is not exterminated, as it is usual in totalitarian states, but they won’t be paid attention either, so that their existence is tolerated because they can easily be ignored. Sometimes,, the ruling parties will have to listen to what they have got to say, which costs them time, but at least, they won’t be targets to criticism on muting voices of the people. As long as the people are convenient with the parliamentary work in terms of the governmental scaffold, a minor loss in time is indifferent.
Those who now favour Democracy over any other social construction might now be caught in a catch 22, since they cannot betray their own beliefs while also infringing their opposition’s equal rights. Therefore, as we saw it during the climate protests, they accused their contestants of being immorally and irrevocably wrong in their relativized comprehension of the “climate catastrophe”. According to them, as little as there was the chance for inhabiting an earth-like planet once this first one was down and out, as little was there any alternate position to rightly occupy when it comes to combatting climate change. I won’t quarrel with those who stand up for a more proactive climate policy, since I agree with them in terms of the foundational argument that something had to be done urgently. The only-begotten point I disagree with them is that they have no understanding of how parliamentary politics work, yet they are also to fearful of overthrowing the system that obviously stands in their way of ideals. They want to enact fast, but won’t enforce the one herculean step that has to be undertaken to make it possible to intercept so quickly in the continuously developing devastation. Long story short, there can be no immediate, no radical action inside a state which would rather observe the destruction of its own people through a foreign force than give up control over the whole situation through radical action that would imply freer movement for its people. The state had to give up certain mechanisms in order to save the climate as it was necessary to truly accomplish this tough assignment. I don’t (generally) speak of loosening the market’s lead (since on the market’s behalf, no primarily ecologically friendly can be expected; already the deforestation of Indonesian rain forests proves this point. Some might argue that this was only possible because the Indonesian government under Prime Minister Joko Widodo didn’t prohibit the deforestation yet, to which I can only propose the following question: Does the opportunity justify its usage? Couldn’t the palm oil producers alternatively refuse to plant more palms in this region already occupied by rain forest, playing a paramount role in converting carbon dioxide into oxygen? Certainly they had a choice, and they made one—supposedly the wrong one, standing trial to the entire market and its tendencies in decision-making), but rather of intentionally asphyxiating the market through diminutions, as it would alternately take place once states were deconstructed. In spite of some people’s impatience, we have to move slowly, or otherwise, the whole transformation is going to fail. Rash behaviour usually comes along with a lack of strategy, although without strategy, no plan is able to function orderly (vide the US’ intervention in Afghanistan, unveiled by the so-called “Afghanistan Papers”). The winning team always drafts a well-thought plan prior to forming its phalanx on the battlefield.
Was it wrong of me to speak of asphyxiating the market? Not necessarily, whether I offended some people or, after a long time of having read my text, finally verified them in my “illiberal” intentions. I may have to explain what I technically mean, though. The market, in general, is a broad term, which doesn’t even stand proximately as a kinsman to Capitalism either. Capitalism and the free market, as I previously explained, are two sides of the same medal, with the important difference that the free market excludes the state with knobs on, to provide individuals with utter freedom of movement and felling decisions on their own. If it hadn’t been for the state, I want to add in shape of my personal opinion, many free-market philosophies as written by Hayek, von Mises and Rand would have made more sense; or would it? As I oftentimes had to annotate in the editions of books by them I read, the market controls our lives in such a way as that he provides us with the means of determining our lives’ directions: Money is provided through work of any kind (except slave work), and work can be found on the market. Now the market would move ahead and state that we all had the freedom to choose what to work as, as long as—here comes the catch—the work is required contemporaneously, meaning that if someone had been trained in a job that was currently of no need anywhere, he or she had two options available: To learn a new job, or remain unemployed until this learnt job was in need again. Unemployment, the market tells us, is also an option we as the people were free to choose, as long as we stood through the consequences of our decision without complaining. If we didn’t like our poverty, we could return to him and look for a job to earn money to change our life in rags with a life as a blue- or white-collar profession, or, if better-experienced in legal affairs, a black-tie job as a reputed esquire. The market, in his heydays, is packed plentifully. Still, his argument is self-complacent and an insult to those who are really interested in freedom for all: While the market propagates the freedom of choice, he subtly doesn’t since the only option to not interacting with him was a life in poverty. Normally, this would not be up to question since every helping hand was desperately needed. Thus, those who withdrew themselves from the market indirectly committed a crime against their community on which they still were likely to depend. Nowadays, the market could well continue without everyone in dire need to participate. Whether low employment rates are a proof to this statement, it depends (Academics state that at some point, a very low unemployment can also have negative effects on the economy’s well-being). When certain métiers honestly do need more employees to do better, they also holler for them. In Germany, for example, the craft annually calls upon young school leavers to look for jobs as craftsmen. Not only were those jobs well paid when they became masters (the highest rank one could obtain after completing their full training) but also did it offer attractive working times. The craft is one of the most tragic victims to a tendency towards “academisation” in Western society: All the young people are looking for highly salaried jobs after graduating from universities/colleges, so that the middle- and lower-class jobs get extinct. Sarcastically speaking, someone could ask why the market didn’t steer away from the craftsmen’s abyss, towards attracting young people to become plumbers, carpenters or anything like this. The market is like a pubescent male adolescent: He wants to be free from his parents [the regulating state], but doesn’t seem to be ready to be on his own yet. To leave him free would be dangerous to himself, in regards to the youngster; dangerous to society in regards to the market. Unfortunately, as for the crafts, there is nothing the state could do without becoming totalitarian, coercing aspiring young people into becoming craftsmen and women rather than pursuing their own dreams (until the market crushes them, telling them what he preferred over their “dreams”). Only the craft itself can try to halt this destructive development, by advertising for itself, thereby attracting future employees to step in this profession. In the meantime, reasons for this tendency are searched everywhere: Some argue that it really was caused by the clichés surrounding those jobs, being dirty, poorly paid, and literally back-breaking. Furthermore, at the end of the day, one usually was tired and unable to do anything but lying down and resting. On the opposite side, sequestered jobs in offices awaited them dearly, bearing as the only serious danger an aching back after years of executing that job if they didn’t watch out. If one had the freedom to choose, they think, why would they want to choose the harder hands-on work if they could as well choose the office desk? It’s a point at which freedom bears long-term consequences affecting everyone while no-one wants to do the first step into the right direction. Drawing a relation not too far-fetched, the scarcity of affordable living quarters could also partially derive from the lack of craftsmen and construction workers to hire for building those same living quarters, flats and houses. Even if space to build them was available, who was supposed to build them in the first place if no-one was ready to do the job? It’s a paradox few people seem to recognise at first glance (or ever). It’s easy to proclaim that it was Hobson’s choice to build more affordable living space, but while it is easy to proclaim something, it is by far more difficult to go ahead and do something against it. Money can be no engine to conduct the construction, what it takes are people to build them. Politicians, vulgar loudmouths might yell, should finally resign and do the job, since they were always the first to repeatedly utter hollow promises that never came true, and call upon their people to do what they want them to do; and it’s true: Politicians won’t bring the change; they hardly improve anything when it comes to urgent requirements. They are more likely to capsize the boat of our society with bureaucratic gibberish instead of throwing it overboard. While the market would blackmail everyone into listening to his commands, threatening to otherwise keelhaul dissenters, he is more controllable once those interacting within him unite and do it on their own, in a parallel concept of similar shape, but by fairer conditions.
One of the market’s key tools to function is the competition, something that might not necessarily exist in a world of communities. Many left-wingers and staunch leftists see in (synthetically created) competition a menace to destroy especially the weak individuals of our society. This raises the question whether they were right or not: Does competition break the weak ones (and if yes, does it matter if we get rid of them?) (*Sarcasm*)? Many of them describe the Capitalist society as a socio-Darwinist one because of the competition. According to an unofficial explanation, the competition is supposed to contribute to innovators’ and inventors’ endeavour to exceed one another mutually in their innovations and inventions. This way, improvements naturally succeeded one another eventually. The competition supposedly drives people to becoming better evermore, so that in a contrary society, in which competition is being stifled by a centralised economy/market, in which inventions don’t matter, or so they say. We could easily question the likelihood of a competitive state of society in order to trigger continuous enhancement in every imaginable sector. If this was the only possible way to start it up, we had to wonder how we went forward beforehand; in the Middle Ages, where monarchists starkly grasped upon their power and every development to not lose control (subordinate aristocrats were just a means to organise their large kingdoms and empires, just as federal states are a means to do the same by more Democratic standards); the same applies to any then-future states by different names, as I curtly elaborated inside the brackets. The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith already considered the separation of tasks inside smaller companies a reason to the wealth of nations, and said that an invisible hand (to me, it was no different from a “Deus ex machina”) subliminally led our mind to fell the right decisions in accordance to the market; yet he was aware of how states almost inadvertently (sometimes downright intentionally) monitored the market—in his time, kings and emperors as well as any other ruler with a country involved in trades dexterously gambled with their products’ and currencies’ values, which forced Smith into broadly distinguishing contemporary goods’ values in various amounts. More or less, we could consider monarchies in each kind to be “proto-totalitarian” states, with Socialist states to be their dynastic successors. Yet, wouldn’t the market be any better or worse? It’s a serious question to easily responded with a shattering “Yes!” on leftists’ behalves (there are several left-winged ideologies who for themselves answered, since some of them might have differing opinions on why the market was a decentralised totalitarian oppressor reigning supreme with an iron fist.
(On a personal note: Should we consider the market’s idol to be a mixture of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher? I think so, and don’t even mean it demeaning. Reagan held a firm Conservative stance, although his blatant racism was not to be excused. As for Ms. Thatcher, she was an unapologetic fiend to the Irish, behaving like a colonial landlord feeling self-entitled to defend Ulster as English for no good reason.)
To answer this question precisely, we first have to contemplate what totalitarianism actually is; whether the definition of “totalitarianism” matches the market’s behaviour, disregarding any personal bias. According to Wolfgang Wippermann, in Dieter Nohlen’s “Wörterbuch Staat und Politik”¹⁷, totalitarian states are characterised through absolute dissolution of freedom for everyone, the provision of a “total” world view, and selected enemies to the states which it is important to exterminate to assure one’s nation’s perseverance. Furthermore does he refer to Ahrendt’s description of totalitarianism to mention that totalitarian states differ from dictatorships in such a way that the latter only limit freedom, while the first ones, as I quoted him afore, abolish freedom altogether, so that police states might fall under this description as well, since surveillance contradicts freedom absolutely.
Now, does this match today’s market behaviour? Certainly not. One reason why this doesn’t match up is that the market by itself doesn’t have an own life; rather it is instrument equipped by those who participate in it. To speak of a sentient interior is doubtful enough, as the market is not held responsible for what it allegedly causes, nor does it by itself do anything: The market doesn’t exist. It is a buzzword to throw in the ring when talking about the free market or Capitalism, while we only have a few (two) entities that cannot be related to the “market”. For example (if I forgot anything, please contact me so that I can edit my mistake):
As futile as this might have appeared, to ramble incoherently about an almost meaningless term, we have to understand what “liberal” states (vulgarly speaking, except for more liberal-leaning states, no government would consciously attempt to increase regulation of the market to protect its citizens) actually want to control further than before; of course no politician would speak in this way: “If you elect me the new […], I will raise the minimum wage and increase overall regulations on the market to curb exploitation of the workers. Vote for me!”—This would appear preposterous beyond partisan lines, for a good reason: Regulating markets is not a means to an end, so does everybody know. Regulations, if enacted, have to be pointedly targeted, sweeping avalanches injure more than they fulfill their objective. A current example of such misconducted policies—to again refer to Germany, followed up immediately by an American example as well—would be the general recording of employees’ working hours per day to precisely examine whether they are paid according to the minimum wage. Many employers (and a few employees too) were upset about the new regulation since such measurements were outdated due to modern time management models which allowed it to employees to begin their workday as they wished, as long as they worked their regular amount of hours. They payment was fixed, no such regulation was even necessary, let alone demanded by either side. The regulation could have worked if legislators had met with representatives of the industry prior to writing this bill and passing it. This way, it again shows how remotely estranged both sides exist to one another, which is worse for the first to the latter than vice versa, since it is also safer to approach the economy as a legislator than the economy approaching the legislators. Firstly because of the optics—it would raise plenty of eyebrows to see the economy again shouldering with legislators, it would appear like Donald Trump seeking closed-door contact with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea—, and secondly because pigs are going to learn how to fly before any industrialist would approach legislators demanding them to finally regulate his métier because he couldn’t stand all of this freedom anymore.
On for the second example, a most recent as well: In California (which some die-hard libertarians already compare to Soviet Russia, once intended to put an end to the gig economy in freelance journalism by limiting the amount of articles one journalist was allowed to write per month. Out of any possible side to complain about this seemingly benevolent attempt, the journalists arose to complain to their legislators about this bill. Legislators presumably thought that freelancing journalists would actually prefer to be fully employed (which would have become necessary on behalf of the demanding outlet or magazine after a journalist exceeded the state’s limit), but as discussions on Twitter unveiled, the Sunshine State’s legislators made the same mistake as did the German ones: They didn’t seek advice from those they wanted to support via bills telling their employers to treat them better.
What does this tell us? To many, a close cooperation of the economy (the market) and the state is a despised idea, usually compared to lobbyism so that the economy can buy itself some new fancy employer-friendly deregulation. And of course, this hatred is not without a stern basement. Yet, to ignore the market at any time while reshaping its field is evenly short-sighted and doomed to fail sooner or later (rather sooner). A cooperation between these two in case of a statist society is vitally necessary, whether people like the idea or not. Someday, they will have to realise this.
Before we move further astray from our upper question, we have to return immediately and draw the circle to an end. What do we know more by now? We know that the state despite some disagreeing voices is not a totalitarian creature, and that the market by itself is not even a creature at all. To be precise, it is a loose conundrum one cannot grasp physically, nor as an idea. It’s a cheap trick by those who invented it to beware it of all responsibility and to withdraw guilt and success alike to the people interacting with whatever is related to the “market”. Finally, we will try to define what to understand under this term—“market”—nevertheless, so that we can draw a conclusion from it, and to show readers which kind of responsibility the market has to bear, whether it wants so or not. My definition, which is not authorised so far, as no-one valued it yet, would be the following:
Disregarding one’s subjective view on clothes worn by the mortal ones, the fashion market is one field in which exploitation differs from many other markets. There, people in South-East Asia work under aggrieving conditions for pittance. In Bangladesh (on Rhana Plaza, to be precise), about two years ago, a skyscraper which used to function as a sewage house, collapsed, burying everyone underneath the rubble. People in the Western world were outrageous about the conditions in which those people had to work and that their whole life was constantly endangered through corruption and unstable housing, let alone the little money they earned to support their family and feed their children. Yet it was the same people who also made such conditions possible: The poor conditions given in the Far East are necessary to provide such high-end clothes for cheap pricing. It is a well-known fact that torturous means of production are the law for many giant retailers in fashion, for example H&M from Sweden, ZARA or “kik”, a German retailer for people with little money to spend on clothing. Cynically, the latter one’s prices come close to what the seamers and seamstresses earn per day, or month.
Could we speak of a catch 22 in this situation? On the one hand, many people not only are aware of the miserable conditions in countries like Bangladesh or China, in which fashionable clothes are produced to be shipped to us, but on the other hand, retailers of those same products still gain bulky revenues annually. In spite of the mass derogation after the collapse, conclusions from it didn’t seem to have been drawn. It’s easy to appear on the right side, but it’s hard to also be on it. Perhaps many of those pretending to act morally right simply don’t want to be since it would cut down parts of their convenient lifestyle. As long as the problem is out of sight, it is also out of mind. As lackadaisical as it might sound, people care less for others when it comes to people they neither have ever heard of, nor have ever seen, nor are ever going to see in their life. To people in the West, people in the East are less than an alien tribe that might as well just be a Potemkin village. It’s only human to care more about people they can relate to more than people that, according to their range of view, might not even exist because they never experienced their existence personally, i.e. first-hand. It compares to having heard of a friend who claims to have encountered a robbery prevented by a shopper who broke the robber’s jaw with a golf club than to have experienced it in close range by standing only a few feet away from the robber when he spit out two of his teeth after being sideswiped by the golf club. Unless surveillance cameras recorded the occurrence, there is little to believe in beside one’s confidence in this friend.
Still, wouldn’t there be reason to believe in the existence of the Bangladeshi people and their “imported grief”? It’s the same method conspiracy theorists end up in their theories—they claim to have no reasonable ground to believe what news outlets and broadcasters tell them; rather, they make up their own theories alleging politicians to be puppets to a higher force, such as the Rothschild family, alien beings having overtaken our élites and morphing into human-like surrogates, or a Zionist-organised government over this world (ZOG). The difference between those shrewd theorists and people who simply doubt theses is that the first ones don’t want to believe in what they are being told; they don’t want to believe in as things happen, but prefer to create their own truth by making up stories about Jews having taken over the world rather than having been scapegoats throughout history, “peaking” in their decimation by six million during the Shoah. To (many of) them, nothing of this has ever happened, none of the scapegoating from the Middle Ages to the Third Reich, it was only a façade to create an “eternal (feeling of) guilt” so that people would not “riot against” them but obey their words. One of the central figures of many conspiracy theories is Hungarian-born George Soros, a liberal philanthrope and multimillionaire with close boundaries into the political business. Due to his liberal partisanship and his many foundations [endowments] augmenting the liberal agenda (which might be his as well), he usually became a target of many theorists presume that he bought off politicians to function as his amplifier. Finally, they state that he was just a part of the ZOG, since he too is a Jew.
Those who argue against such agitators accuse them of practicing anti-Semitism, since they hopped upon a bandwagon which rode on through the entire history of the Occident. And they are not wrong: To single out Jews out of any existing group with enough power to be alleged of unrightfully influencing the political business—large corporations on Wall Street, as it took place during the rise of oil companies such as Standard Oil; the Great Depression and the mutual switch in underlying ideologies in the two great parties of the US; the time which brought up legends such as John D. Rockefeller or JP Morgan at the turn of the 20th Century, used to tie themselves closely to Republican Senators to have their say on fiscal policies¹⁸—is a typically modern-day anti-Semitic trope, although sometimes, even the presumption of richness/wealth was used as a façade to cover up the anti-Semitism, since many wealthy businessmen and CEOs are Jews, although their religion never played a major role (nota bene: If their religion had ever played a role, one could argue that to be a Jew meant to have a sense for making a haul. How came, then, that one of the US’ “most famous Jews”, Bernie Sanders, an independent presidential candidate, former mayor of Burlington (VT), long-time Senator of Vermont and self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, announced to embattle Wall Street bankers and billionaires tending to evade paying taxes, rather than becoming one himself? Sanders is the textbook opposite to any of those theories¹⁹.
It is needless to say that any argument with a conspiracy theorist is futile and a waste of time, comparable to explaining to Donald Trump how global trade works (we all remember when Jean-Claude Juncker magnanimously brought colourful cards with him to explain it to Trump. Unsuccessfully, as we all remember. The fundamental problem is the discordance between both sides regarding the assumptive background of their subject: While the theorist alleges a Jewish conspiracy behind his detestable state of governmental politics leaning too liberal from his point of view (others go as far as to opining an ongoing plan to replace the “white race” with any other, preferably Arabic or African people, alternately Latino or Hispanic), the reason is an indifferent, unmotivated or bluntly incapable political cabinet reflecting too little on their own actions to realise they fail their own people. It’s easy to realise that to feel upset about what is going on in the parliaments nowadays, it doesn’t need a poorly researched conspiracy theory mainly distributed via blogs on the internet, occasionally by the gutter press such as the Daily Mail or far right online outlets such as the Daily Caller or the Daily Stormer (beside RedState.org or One America News Network (OANN). Unless any side is ready to make a compromise on their behalf, discussions between such two sides were determined to eventually end up in a dead end, or caught in a gridlock. At least to conspiracy theorists, arguments established by larger news outlets or broadcasters, both of them related to the derogative term “mainstream media”, are close to outright lies they won’t take serious in any way. While it makes sense to not take lies serious, trying to expose their worthlessness via logical means (lies, if really lies, never withstand unto the end; at one point, they will tremble off the cliff), it makes no sense to condescend upon facts, calling them lies while the indirect truth about this tempo is that those facts might derail their narrative since they themselves went out of arguments to bring up against the actual facts. Hence, baselessly dismissing them comes in handy notwithstanding the predictable outcome of this reaction.
What I did now is accused of being typical for left-wingers or liberals (excluding leftists, which, the higher the move in the Socialist scale, the more similarities do they share with various right-wingers, merely excluding Nazis in case we don’t speak of Stalinists or Maoists, who share a tendency towards authoritarian violence with fascists (believe it or not, this statement is even backed by current developments: The Maoist movement is alive and well in Berlin’s working-class boroughs in shape of the “Jugendwiderstand”): I assumed them all to be wrong in any way and concluded from this assumption that they were inferior to me, more or less. Funnily, they misuse this behaviour to victimise themselves, even verifying their own claims of a liberal agenda controlling everything, therefore being oppressed as a disliked opposition. Excluding their anti-Semitic or hate-spreading inclusions, they display themselves as regular people sharing an opinion of their own in no way different from any other political opinion one could think of, being viciously attacked by a libero-fascist (my own neologism; adapt it if you want) agenda which infiltrated the centre of society. Again, we could detect the same diagnosis as for incapable politicians: A lack of self-reflection. It’s a shape of self-complacency penetrating those people viewing themselves in a position similar to anyone else not sharing fringe views beyond normalcy or “representability”.
Still, this proof also bears an upside: It shows that those people are not comfortable with their own views. They are aware of their view’s viciousness, therefore have to deny their viciousness in front of their own so that they don’t have to realise that they in fact deny certain minorities the status as equal human beings. We could describe this tendency of inconvenience with one’s own views as “auto-persuasion”: Once they persuaded themselves that their views are not as ill-disposed as some people think it is, they can be more convinced of it themselves.
While some could argue that the true inconvenience behind it actually emerged from the negative side-effects of bearing and publicly displaying such a hostile ideology. I would make sense as well, since Nazis too would not enjoy the mainstream’s approval for despising and wishing dead to “non-Aryan” minorities, Jews, Communists/Socialists and the entire opposition (one of Nazi ideology’s ironies in this: To describe their own race, they applied the name of an Iranian pastoral tribe’s name, the Aryans. To adapt such an inhumane ideology can only happen willfully, consciously, despite the odds and in awareness of all the consequences linked to it. As with one’s family, one cannot choose one’s origin (ethnically, socially, and culturally), but when it comes to one’s ideology, one has the full choice to extract one’s experiences and make up one’s mind about them.
The catch to the latter words: Some people tend to become racists because they oftentimes experienced violence from minority groups, thus link being bullied to this particular minority, such as Turks or Arabs (or Latinos). To those who never experienced group-related violence (maybe general violence in disregards to any ethnic group), this might sound irrational, to accuse an entire minority of being actively bullish, when one had “a few bad encounters with a few people”. And of course this decision was not felled rationally, but seldom do humans really behave rationally, it’s a matter of their nature. Thus, it’s pointless and even harmful to tell someone who reasonably (in terms of arguments, not in terms of reason) defends his racism. What it takes is to explain to this person in one’s best possible way why those people were exceptions among many sociable pendants. It might be helpful to support this person, at least sympathise it to calm down again. Socially excluding a person prior to even having heard his or her cause would be ignorant and would float the enemy’s boat intensely. Thus, listen to what the person has got to say, and offer this person help in case the person made a reasonable point other than unfounded racism.
This is all common sense, normally, and doesn’t require any further elaboration. Yet, in these times, we often hear of people arguing not in a personal way—in a way of referring to personal experiences—, but in a prolonged way, lifted unto a more national or international level: For example, instead of arguing that they once were assaulted by a migrant on the streets, they would argue that they read in their newspaper that somewhere in their country, a young woman was assaulted by a migrant in the streets. Thus, they said, it was evidently shown that their country has become less safe when the migrants arrived. Whether this makes sense or not, the numbers in statistics have to show; and to continue arguing on this point, the back-checking has to happen firstly. Too often did I observe during discussions that people left theses unanswered; either did they not come back to them anymore or they really continued their discussion using the hardly noteworthy thesis as the point to elaborate and debate. In many cases, those theses were based on already-debunked points such as the “hockey theory” (in reference to whether the climate change was real or not). Surprisingly, this all happened n the internet, where theses and facts could be double-checked as quickly as by one click. Would laziness count as a reason for continuing upon a weak base easy to debunk? Certainly not. When one has got time to argue with someone in the first place, there is no reason not to double-check presented. In more sociological terms, we could describe such an obligation as “civic participation in the public discourse”. Since we all are active for a very long time on the internet every day, so that we are the greatest source of opinion manufacturing: Through debating one another’s opinions mutually, we refine them as well. In regards to this, we should view it as our primary objective to usually debate as factualised as possible. This goes out especially to those who view themselves as saviours of the idea of a liberal society. Demeaning voices will never penetrate the hard shell that surrounds those who believe that climate change was a hoax while the “Great Replacement” was real. Of course “debating with right-wingers” (the point to not debate with fringe right-wingers is not emphasised in this saying; perhaps on purpose) is like a maxim shared by left-winged liberals convinced about their persuasion, but this easy, our society simply not is. One part of society cannot simply be ignored and left aside. They won’t fade away this way. Rather they have to be addressed in one way or another—no matter which way, the address has to be unanimously shared by everyone in order to be accomplished eventually. In no time would they now say: “Understood. Now, stop insisting on talking with right-wingers, don’t make them feel as if they could be taken serious. You will only enforce them in our society, and one day, they will crush our liberal society!” But this is the wrong way to understand it. It limits public opinion to that one spectrum in which liberalism is located, while everything else will likely be diminished until it is gone. Declaring certain ways of thinking hazardous to our society while they might just function as oppositions to the “more established” way of thinking. Many will possibly fall off their chairs, exclaiming that the fringe right-wing is not just an opposition to ordinary liberalism but a severe and approved threat to our society. Never did I contradict this insistence, it’s true. Still, in an anxious manner, as it seems, every right-winged way of thinking seemed to have been locked up in a cage together with the actual fringe right. Maybe not in the same degree as the fringe right, but ridiculed and demeaned nevertheless. The sole difference existing between these two in regards to how they are being treated in the public discourse might be that only the fringe right is considered to be unconstitutional. It’s unlikely, though, to think that smears on the left’s behalf would decrease the amount of right-winged liberals, Conservatives (in the official understanding, not the understanding as it is now colloquially equipped, meaning mostly the entirety of the fringe right across the Alt-Right leading towards the few true Conservatives remaining) or Libertarians. Most of those who affiliate to them hardly care about what those think about them who don’t care about them when it comes to an exchange of views. And this for sure is an attitude that might fir to most self-proclaimed liberals. Once they would hear that someone would take a more individualist stance rather than a social one, they would call them inhuman and unbearable to our society, and leave it at this. The reason to this defensive behaviour might be the matter-of-fact that some of them are simply not interested in exchanging views, thus broadening their horizon. On the other hand, those same would not assail someone for carrying individualist or egoist views. They would rather nod it off and leave them be. Those liberals don’t care much about political theory or philosophy, yet occasionally fall in anguish when they read something about their country’s despot or far right politician. Beside the “mainstream” media outlets, they might also follow some left-winged liberal news outlets that put populism over neutrality (in the US, such outlets might be the Daily Kos or The Week; no, CNN doesn’t belong in this group). Understandably, this is not the group we’re talking about when we’re talking about the intentional exclusion of right-winged groups that don’t belong in the far or fringe right wing. Yet, before we continue, it might be necessary to explain what is exactly the difference between the “far” and the “fringe” right, since there doesn’t seem to exist a difference. In the end, there are not too many different right-winged ideologies to differ from one another. There are the bearable ones, and there are those we should be lucky once they were gone. Frankly, though, there is only one difference, and it explains to us the difference between predicates such as Neo-Nazism and the Alt-Right (we will also exclude a further profundity in these respective terminologies, since the confrontation remains the same): It’s the openness of its respective members. Openness in such a way as I previously tried to unfold it with the individual that was uncomfortable with its own ideology, thus had to persuade itself about its righteousness despite all the arguments speaking against it. In the end, every ideology s based upon the acceptance of a certain mental narrative, of a certain basement of assumptions that are closely linked to any argument the ideology makes. We also have to suggest it for these two general affiliations, the far as well as the fringe right. Both come along with certain mental narratives which they expect their fellows to adapt immediately and at all costs. Both of them are similar to one another, while they differ in their respective extremity. Nazis, of the old and the new fashion (aujourd’hui, on porte des uniformes noires au lieu des uniformes brunes), had no problem in confessing that they wishes for a genocide commenced on their behest, while the Alt-Right would insist that the left actually accelerated the oncoming of a so-called “Culture War”, meaning the war between two cultures inside the same country, namely between the Right and the Left. The one would fight for its national identity—The Right—, while the other fought for multiculturalism, diversity and “political correctness”—The Left. Funnily, it’s the Right that usually speaks about a culture war, Steve King even went as far as to say that in case of a war, the owners of guns outnumbered those who were without ones, although he merely referred to the upholding of Second Amendment rights, although the dog-whistle towards the Culture War was obvious. Steve King, a Republican representative of Iowa’s fifth district, is an outspoken white supremacist, which in the end doesn’t differ significantly from Nazism, since it too believes in the superiority of the “white race” and of the Western civilisation (which by this vast term could be controversially debated since the West could alternatively refer to the European continent, the countries of Europe from Portugal to Germany, northwards as well as southwards (alongside the “cultural borders” between the Slavs and the Germans, and Italics. Whether Greece belonged to any of these stood up to question). Both of them (would) also stand for a stark Islamophobia, although the Nazis collaborated with the Palestinians to combat the Zionists.
When it came to accomplishing the utmost extermination of Jews and Zionists, Hitler certainly had no problem with collaborating with those who he didn’t view as a threat back then. In the nineteen-thirties and –forties, Muslims were not seen as an invading force in the Western world, it only happened once migrants from civil war-countries moved northwards to seek shelter in Europe, a continent which they saw as morally entitled to help them. In the end, and this has to be substantiated again, many of those who flee their homelands are from countries which were bled out during the colonial era, and left behind once they gained their independence from their ancient oppressors. Indirectly, it can be said, those colonialist countries were glad to shrug off those burdens that no longer produced any revenue. Or don’t they? It would be easy to claim that they gave them their independence since they [the colonialists] could then display a carte blanche to the rest of the international community: “Look, we no longer smother foreign nations we conquered in the past, we are just as peaceful as the rest of you!” This is not to say, though, that until the mid-19th Century, sovereign nations such as France, Italy or the US didn’t hold any more nations in their hands—the US occupied the Philippines, Italy didn’t let loose of Ethiopia, France clutched on Algeria. And all of this happened in the wake of World War II. More or less, a couple of “colonies” still prevail as of today (13th December 2019; it might have changed within the progress of aging, some of them might have even drowned due to the rising sea level): France’s Nouvelles Calédonies (New Caledonia) preferred to stay under France’s leadership, even after twice having voted on whether to gain independence or not; Guam and American Samoa still are considered as “Oversea Departments” of America, each deploying one Representative into Congress; in every English Commonwealth, the highest ruler is the Queen residing in the Buckingham Palace in London; the Faroean Islands and Greenland are still associated to Denmark, while at least autonomous in their leadership; last but not least, Hong Kong and Macao, former colonies to England and Portugal respectively, both live in a twofold situation, pending in one of them while peacefully working in the other. There might even be more examples, but the point should be clear: Even in the post-colonial era, colonialism more or less still prevails. Even stronger it might have survived in a different sense: Companies of the Western world make up most of the greater corporate restructuring in developing countries. Most of the companies excavating rare earths or worthwhile ores such as platinum, copper or iron are headquartered either in the US or in (Western) Europe. The goods are exported from Africa, the money leaves the continent with the goods, so that the countries themselves, except for the corrupt leaders, are left with nothing but the knowledge that they might be richer if they nationalised the progresses; if they had own companies to do the job and cooperate with shipping companies to export their goods, while the revenue stays at home.
The tragedy itself is not even limited to mining, but also to nutrition as well. On the Western coast of Africa, in the Northern part of the continent, fishing once was a veritably profitable business until European fishing companies entered the stage and overfished the seas until African businesses went bankrupt. It was at least with mining companies that jobs were brought to African countries, even to children. Child labour, which used to be a thing of the past, again was reintroduced into the New Age. Not only is child labour cheaper than employing adults, but also does it help those adults that deteriorated unto uselessness through toiling down in the dark dungeons. In the Western world, the tremendous fertility rates south of the Mediterranean Sea were caused by poor education and the subsequent problem that many women didn’t know anything about contraception; this might be true, but it might only be half of the truth. The other half might consist of the necessity to bear children to send them to work to earn some money in order to support the family. A similar progress began shortly after the advent of the Industrial Revolution: Children too were sent to work in the factories to support the family²⁰:
which counted as many as seven to twelve members (including grandparents). Back then, too, child mortality was staggering since hygiene was depraved and employee protection laws (nearly) inexistent, so that those who worked in the factories or mines came into contact with fine dust and carbon monoxide en masse, blackening their lungs, slowly strangling them. In Africa, it’s no better, although it might be less about carbon dust but more about toxic muds or the hard work in general, executed without any modern technology but only with the power of the human body. In Europe, or the Western world in general, this era of spending one’s generational future to higher production here and now has been overcome, thanks to technological and scientific progress. The (alleged) lead on Europe’s behalf might also be considered as Africa’s doom, although it depends from which point of view one observed what happened during the imperialist eras. It could also be the case that Africa then suffered from corrupt leaders (normally, they might be called kings, yet this would undermine the cultures of Africa, incomparable to European ones when it comes to ranks, even though the inner structures were comparable to those which were once existent in Europe, e.g. monarchies) who were ready to throw their own people “under the bus” of European colonialists shipping them away to the New World to “employ” them as slaves. Studies on the Atlantic slave trade in ancient Dahomey West Africa, around today’s Benin shows us that many peoples were ready to trade captives of other “tribes” into enslavement²¹. I shall hereby just mention one quote:
It debunks the belief held by many people that it was the Europeans who penetrated the African continent and immediately enslaved those people all by their own. In fact, corrupt leaders of those people and immoral, egoist people amongst them readily sold their own kin to the Europeans as long as they benefited from it, as I said before. This of course doesn’t whitewash anything they [the Europeans] have done to Africa, but it shows us nevertheless that it didn’t happen the way it is mostly believed. Even among Africans, European colonialists and landlords found support to enforce their cruel misdeeds. Needless to say that this landslide exploitation prodigiously halted development in Africa, throwing almost the entire continent aback, at least the Central continent alongside the Western coast, deeply into the midst.
Now, without getting even further into history lessons and on the inherited guilt of European countries when it comes to mass migration into Europe and the Western world in general (don’t be offended, nationalist snowflakes, it is true that those migrants don’t only come to Europe to enjoy the wealth our nations have hoarded; some of them suffer from long-term damages committed by our ancestors), we should sum up curtly what this has got to do with the Utopia of a more recommunalised society. How would migration be affected by it, or vice versa, how would the world of small communities be affected by mass migration? First of all, it has to be confessed that especially the nationalists and racist libertarians (to separate them from actual libertarians) would highly benefit from their sudden autonomy. No longer did they have to obey a government that approved of migration in terms of enhancement in stifled professions such as the craftsmanship, but could they enjoy their monotony and occasional (probable) inbreeding (the question is how much movement might exist between different communities that isolate themselves from foreign “hostile” influences, such as are suggested by nationalists who equipped racist beliefs). It’s the universal argument I submit to appease any ideology mutually since it is true but works for everyone. The only problem existing throughout the text is the likelihood of invasions on any side’s behalf. False arguments and beliefs descending out of thin air, justifying invasions are easily brought up and thereby endanger communities. We had the argument before, so I won’t repeat it. It just came up to my mind when we were talking about the deterioration of development in Africa through the European colonialism. Observing the situation in this continent before and after the invasion, the thought might arise that Europeans pulling their administrative system and maxims over the Africans. A quote from a short book²². On this issue would establish this argument:
(Translation: “The argument of pacification is a classically colonialist argument. It was also applied during the toppling of Native Americans in North America. There, too, as in Rhodesia, the two civil elements of “mission” and “work” were supposed to reshape the savages.”)
Further does the author explain that in order to reshape the people of those African tribes (or at least, Europeans created so-called tribes out of thin air, since those people themselves never believed in such boundaries, as they mostly shared similar spiritual beliefs but only lived in their adjacently scattered villages in the widths of the Savannah (or, more technically speaking, simply the widths of the African continent)), the old relations, spiritually as well as socially, had to be broken. A new order was to be established among the “savages”, and therefore, the old ones had to disappear. The same argument is being abused when it comes to migration towards Europe: “Deep state operations” enforcing the “Great Replacement” are underway to destroy the Western civilisation and culture to make space for the Arabic and African cultures respectively. Yet they never bemoaned that the same thing happened to those same people beforehand, centuries ago. Of course it wouldn’t make any sense since the people now born grow up in such an environment, and never experienced any other. What good would it do to now overthrow their entire society to create them a world comparable to their forefathers’ world? Unless it is desired and enforced by those people, it would only create a vacuum of power briskly filled out by an autocrat.
It is said that there couldn’t be a society to everybody’s unanimous liking, and whoever coined that phrase was right. But this only applies to large societies bearing many people of several beliefs and ideologies. To crack those large societies up and deconstructing them into various small societies of like-minded individuals could prove a difference: That there can be societies to every inhabitant’s liking, disregarding those who only recognise them from the outside. As for trade and global relations, negotiations will possibly be inevitable, although it of course depends on the societal shape the respective communities and partners in trade decided to overtake. Unions such as the European Union or the global approval of the dollar as a currency to trade in long-lastingly eased trading goods without any difficulties. Bartering or swapping without any neutral means could not be improved due to the easiness of currencies and moneychangers/banks who/that transferred any currency into another in no time. Meanwhile, money also brought us the society we now live in, in conclusion with the capitalist society which without any global regulation—e.g. in regards to moral doctrines to forbid it to companies to utilise developing countries’ or countries of low moral fibre’s (and a devastating human rights record’s) inhumane standards to produce cheaply for customers at home and abroad (morality, in this example, is just one suggestion to create an international commerce and production/manufacturing law compulsory to any internationally producing/manufacturing/trading company or concern; additionally, an internationally approved menagerie of sanctions in case of any violation of this regulation set would be compiled as well by every country interested in contributing to it, assuming that this country would also sign the final edition of this memorandum—has led towards worldwide misdemeanours (to put it slightly, euphemistically) and human rights violations as vaguely elaborated betwixt those two em dashes. It’s clear to see for everyone that the capitalist society has so far failed as to prevent human rights violations to legally happen via outsourced jobs in the Far East. Regulations were missing to avoid it, and most likely, even regulations targeted at these practices would have easily been undermined by founding subsidiary companies or joint ventures in the objected countries/with companies in the objected countries. From that point on, then, the respective country’s laws were in charge. Of course the international law could consider such dirty tricks and declare them unlawful, thus target according “offenders” to the aforementioned sanctions (which may be an amount of money to be reckoned before court during the first trial to later serve as a precedence for future violations. On the other hand, we though don’t want to lament or condescend upon the Capitalist society, system or ideology, since this would be the topic worth granting an own text. The idea itself, it has to be accepted, is not inherently bad, it was just poorly executed by the international community. To condemn an idea for misdeeds and failures committed by its feckless brothers-in-ideology. The argument that “whenever Socialism has been tried, it failed; thus, Socialism is infeasible” not only is a superficial approach, but also doesn’t it comprise the fact that states in general will someday fail as long as they depend on the capability of Democratically elected officials. Democracy itself only works as an addition in a free society; by itself, it isn’t ripe for scaffolding a public order. This is not to say that it was bad, it just doesn’t prosper when acquiesced in shape of a state. As a societal order absent of a state, it indeed prospered to everybody’s delight (assuming that “everybody” enjoyed the freedoms that were impossible to enjoy in a (totalitarian) state, such as arbitrary regulations or oppressions emerging from improper taxation, sudden rises in costs, police violence, discrimination due to one’s origin, colour of skin, accent or name, etc.). So far, though, we don’t know Democracy other than as a stately system, thus translate its name as a “leadership of/by the people(’s vote)”. How, then, would those rules apply in a society described as Democratic but without the state? Only via broadening our definition of Democracy could we install it in a stateless society: We had to consider Democratic the following attitudes: Pluralism—the diversity of ideologies living inside the society peacefully together (while this was not necessarily given in my concept, I would not abhor it. Currently, though, it doesn’t work out since unversatile figureheads polarise society in such a way that different-minded people are likelier to clash against one another rather than conversing about their respective ideologies. Politicians, if not reflecting on their own work, inadvertently ignite society, thus throwing overboard an actually well-intentioned idea); the freedom of speech, movement and action—the first one might be clear, it allows everyone to have one’s own opinion, even if it went straight against the system the person now lives in. Furthermore is the person allowed to publicly and audibly utter this opinion without being put into prison for it, or otherwise experiencing any unbearable, inhumane consequences from having uttered it. The freedom of movement would be the liberty to travel wherever the person wants to go without the state surveying the individual's ’very single move to track it down in case it did anything unlawfully. The last one might be a little bit cryptic to understand, though. It simply means the freedom to do what someone wanted in terms of actions. Yet, what does “actions” mean in this context? It means that a person is not unreasonably barred from anything, that the legal code is cogently balanced. Actions, so to say, contains the previous freedoms plus everything one is capable of doing as long as it won’t infringe anyone else’s freedom, safety or health. To name one crucial freedom, it would also include the freedom of “substance abuse”, i.e. the injection of drugs that were going to ruin someone’s health and lead someone straight into a vicious addiction. Of course most drugs are seriously useless when it comes to increasing someone’s endurance or concentration, since the side-affects are more obnoxious than they do well. When it comes to improvement of mental powers, a healthy diet and sport not only are more favourable but also had the same effects permanently (assuming that one who ate healthier and did more sports in order to accomplish bodily perfection didn’t abruptly stop to do so; otherwise, it’s only natural that one’s body afterwards began to deteriorate).
But as I now wanted to finish this text at last, I should sum up where we stand. Before I do so, though, I shall make a confession: I admit that this text is not an authoritative explanation of how to redeem our society from its chains, the chains binding us to a barely preferable status quo; my text lacks an apparent instruction on how to execute what I hereby submitted, many assumptions are too colossal to somehow ever be accomplished, since many of them rely on common-sense comprehensions of what I stated. Nationalists are never going to watch their nation dissolving for the public good, just to then be told that they could embrace their community’s superiority as well, if they just didn’t attempt to expand their size through conquests of other communities. Neither the first demand, nor the other would ever be promised by them. And if they did, it would eventually be broken, sooner or later. It’s in their ideology’s nature to never be contend with their nation’s size, it usually has to be enlarged. Nationalists are like men purchasing a BMW M3—only a few of them do so because they liked the car for its optics, most of them purchase them to compensate something.
Another requirement I oftentimes contemplated was the trade, and the methods to trade. The finiteness of resources already make it difficult to trade reasonably without a means of shortening availability justly. Capitalism understood this issue, thereby justified its acquisition of monetary means to somewhat solve this particular issue. Putting price labels on goods narrows down the amount of potential buyers able to afford them, thus solving the issue by itself. The fact that those who might need particular goods most are thereby excluded from purchasing them was never contemplated, as it seems; or otherwise, those people might be told to get a better job to earn money in order to purchasing those urgently required goods. Again, the market solved it, allegedly.
Still, I don’t want to shame Capitalism for its flaws, but rather highlight my own ones which I was unable to puzzle out comprehensively. People might consider my moderate attempt to morally oblige communities to stand by like-minded or useful communities in cases of invasions to be a miserable trial of inserting realpolitik into a stateless society. Still, I will stand by it, come hell or high water. Unity across towns’ borders will remain a vital recipe of perseverance in any situation, may it be in shape of a state or a community. Theoretically, such situations may be able to be brought up, but in practice, such relations will be negotiated and amended automatically, so that we don’t have to contemplate probable difficulties by now. In the end, we couldn’t even generalise them since any relation of one to another is an individual one, almost impossible to liken it to another. As unique as human beings are, so are communities, showing us that relations of two independent human beings are incomparable to other human beings’ relations. Therefore, the probability to defend a good friend/partner/ally in case of a conquest depends on the strength of their mutual relation. What I tried to do in the according chapter/paragraph was to create a general scheme exclusive of any individual presupposition, highlighting the attributions under which it might be favourable for oneself to defend a different community from a hostile force. Adjacently, I also introduced good reasons why guns will always be necessary to carry with one, especially in a stateless society in which the monopoly of violence is no longer existent but given into the hands of the common people. Self-defence will become the maxim of those who want to protect themselves against any violation of their freedom. Yet, as I argued long before, when people create an equal society in which no-one has to suffer from mistreatment or deprivation, violence or criminality will become a thing of the past, an issue only to be recognised in history books.
Those were the points that I personally didn’t find satisfactory to the fullest, which might need posterior editing once I was corrected by readers who detected flaws in my arguments. This I address to you now, dear reader who read until hear, not leaving one phrase out: If you have got any points you would like to criticise, please contact me in any way that you find suitable, and let me know about your opinion. Otherwise, I thank you for reading, and hope that I was able to broaden your horizon, and that one day, we all will one day enjoy a freer world in which we all will live together in peace and prosperity, exclusive of any melancholic pressures caused by superordinate forces trying to tell us how to live our lives. To express it in the words of US-American folklorist Woody Guthrie:
“This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York Islands, to the Gulf Stream Waters, to the redwood forests—this land was made for you and me.”
~ Woody Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land” (1940)
Certainly, Guthrie was right—the earth’s soil belongs to no-one generally, it is only cultivated by some of us, which doesn’t mean that we thereby own it. To own something leads towards hostilities since not everyone is going to loyally accept one’s pretence to possess something that is naturally given without any prerequisites. It would be heinous to think that anything existent without infringements should be accessible to only a selected amount of people. Of course to now submit this as part of my belief would contradict my tolerance for various beliefs, including those that lift the right to owning property, including land, so that I can only offer this as my personal belief, without placing it as a universal doctrine. Additionally, I can only recommend it to people to firstly contemplate their understanding of property possession as a human right (interestingly, some people would imply property possession as a human right why they wouldn’t consider housing as the same. Obviously, because the human right to decent housing could only be fully accomplished by the intervention of a welfare state, while the right to property was a legal comprehension of possessing things without any entity to intervene in this right, so that people are legally protected from dispossession without a legal establishment such as prior theft from another legal entity). In the end, we are not to judge such specific rights unless they are based on segregation or discrimination in further detail. Hereby, again, my previous reverie on the presumptions of justified intervention would be necessary to reflect on. Depending on how easy it would be to depart from a community, especially the one that under racist conditions discriminates minorities, offering those people sanctuary or a new place to live and start afresh could function as an alternative to getting into intercommunitary quagmire. Imbeciles and their kinship are never going to die out—whenever a couple of them vanish from earth, new ones are being born. Thus, to murder them or intervening in their living space is like removing weeds from the pavement—within a couple of days, they will be back with support. What good would it do to spend time on such pointless ventures when arrangements could be installed? In case of racist communities, leaving them alone in their uniracial misery as long as they didn’t mock or harass them, to put slightly what is meant as interference into their peace and autonomy by any way from misdemeanours to outright assailment against them, either through armoured skirmishes or through WMDs.
Nevertheless, we have to wrap this piece up now before the length becomes unbearable and the epilogue just another numeral concerned about another feature we already elaborated upon. Pointing back at the flaws and seemingly unfinished ideas, most of this utopia relies on common sense among every single denizen of this planet. The openness in front of fringe- and disconcerting ideologies most likely to, for example, not care about the environment’s well-being to favour those who profit from scorching it, while on the other hand, there is simply no way to intervene against such countries as long as there is no frank unity among those who were the only ones to confront them in the first place. I’m speaking about the Western supremacies, namely the US on the one side of the Great Pond and the EU on the other side. The US under Trump’s leadership introduced climate change denial and boundless withdrawals of environmental protection policies into the White House, while in Europe, especially in the East, right-winged governments such as in Poland or Hungary too raised doubts about the reality of climate change, mainly to appeal to their blue-collar voters who feared to lose conveniences who fell down to protect the climate. If there was one thing people are least likely to wilfully sacrifice their wealth for, it’s for reasons they hardly admit to experiencing themselves (as for landlocked countries or people living far from the coast, in meteorologically moderate areas that so far experienced few natural irregularities, those are especially hard-headed since climate change didn’t fully arrive before their doorstep yet). Why bother to care about something that perhaps doesn’t even exist? It refers to people who never left their country, maybe not even their own federal state, so that they never saw anything of the world. “Provincial townsfolk”, one could say, although the term could be recognised as negatively connoted. This doesn’t mean that it was wrong, though: The discrepancy between urban progressives and Conservative people of the rural parts of one’s country is growing as quickly as the discrepancy between the fillip of a rich élite, and the vast bottom of rather poor people, including those who live in staggering poverty, despite the odds (which may be the employment in up to three jobs and the country’s remarkable wealth).
We experience a growing gap between the rich and the poor, the rural people and the urbanites, and the young and the old. Three divisions thus turning us away from one another, so that unity inside a nation is a merely dead ideal of the past, now dissolved by incapable politicians on the one hand and changing demographics on the other. Hence, a radically new system has to be applied to accustom to it. To stand still and believe in matching policies to do the trick in these trying times not only is naïve but also dangerous since it shows carelessness for the signs of our days—the signs telling us that states have become obsolete, that people are no longer able to unite with their fellowmen beyond their communities. Now this would contradict my idea that once we all lived in our communities, we would not care for our adjacent fellows anymore, so that once someone invaded another community, it would become a battle one versus one. Otherwise, communities, if they remained in the minority beyond re-established or prevailing nations, they would collapse because outsider systems never lived for long since they either experienced strong opposition, embargos or went through exhausting wars forcing the people to rationalise their goods (Yes, they came for your butter—again); no matter for what reason they collapsed (many of them were simply usurped by totalitarian autocrats who believed that this time, a system like theirs would prosper and exist eternally), they went into the history books as justifications for anti-Socialists or –Communists. Whether communities, flexible due to their loose structure and with plenty of opportunities to unite in order to create a cobweb of borderless trading routes, are going to fall for the same fate, this is a theoretical question to debate from various points of view (even the most fiercely opposing ones not giving this construction a single month of survival) on the one hand, and a practical question to be tried and observed. Whatever one might think about this laughable idea, in the end, it will all depend on the people themselves. Unlike all the authoritarian leaderships and the system we live through from the cradle to the grave, this one has to be borne out of a people’s unanimous consensus, and I mean all the people of at least a nation that would thereby dissolved.
Constitutions normally outline the requirement of the parliament’s importance and that it had to be protected at all costs. Yet, what would happen if the people decided that they no longer felt served well by their parliament, or by any parliament at all, so that they wanted to stomp their nation and instead continue living by their own, inside their communities, autonomously and free? Could the parliamentarians then contradict them, telling them that “while you are all entitled to your opinions, such an option is out of any predictability, and furthermore, to fell such decisions is completely out of your purview. These are decisions those are supposed to fell who you have democratically elected”. While they are right from their point of responsibilities, it should be up to the people how they want to live their lives, under which systemic conditions, assuming that those who speak this way are in the absolute majority. Below any absolute majority, such words can be considered to be protests to be mooted when it comes to any fundamental discussion about our society’s maintenance. Most likely is my concept going to ever be put on trial thence, as there are too few people educated in their options beyond totalitarianism, Democracy and lawlessness (falsely called “anarchism” while actually speaking of “anomy”). In the end, when it comes down to starting revolutions, people have to be densely educated in the several details, otherwise, any revolution, any protest, may he be violent or peaceful, is condemned to die out from the inside. Thus my last words in this text: Educate yourselves, and educate your peers as best as you can. After having finished this text, let this be your paramount objective for the future: Gather as many texts on political philosophy and theory, and on sociology, from the left to the right, and from up to down; learn about what the greatest minds in these disciplines had got to say, and once you feel safe to discuss the subjects you passed by in these texts, meet people who too are educated in the problems of politics and sociology, and refine your vast knowledge. Refinery is key to contemplating why we still live in these imperfect times and why the greater mass of people usually fail to get issues’ backgrounds right, thus end up in vulgar misconceptions trying to solve them with equally false solutions. When your knowledge is finally applicable, move forward and educated people so that they can enter the circle you surmounted as well. There is nothing more dangerous to (corrupt) states than educated people who are able to see through the shadows of hollow phrases. (Also, don’t leave this prophetic language to conspiracy theorists who erect their gobbledygook as the prediction of the Völuspa. Don’t grant them more credits than they deserve) As Martin Luther gallantly exclaimed, “We [the people] shall overcome”. And now is our time!
But for now, my America, we must part—just joking. But seriously, I will now have to say goodbye, and again want to thank everyone who read my text despite the odds. You’re awesome!
“Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.”
~ Truman Burbank, “The Truman Show” (1998)
LE FIN
Contact me:
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COMMENTS go hereunder: https://t.me/Rationalpolitik/66
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¹ Cit. first study: « Monika Ardelt & Sabine Grunwald (2018) The Importance of Self-Reflection and Awareness for Human Development in Hard Times, Research in Human Development, 15:3-4, 187-199, DOI: 10.1080/15427609.2018.1489098 »
² However, I would like to submit two studies contradictory to the position I mentioned in my text; they couldn't persuade me from my own experiences gathered throughout years of trying to get in touch with people who are either mildly or strongly in opposition to my own liberal views on daily politics and the overall idea on what to improve in order to repair the failures committed by the “political brass” pulling the strings in the upper levels of decision-making.
Cit. first study: « Elizabeth Dubois & Grant Blank (2018) The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media, Information, Communication & Society, 21:5, 729-745, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656 »
Cit. second study: « Bastos M, Mercea D, Baronchelli A (2018) The geographic embedding of online echo chambers: Evidence from the Brexit campaign. PLoS ONE 13(11): e0206841. DOI: 10.371 »
The first study indicates the probability that people might be less likely to nourish on social networks such as Facebook to assemble their daily news digest, although there is no elaboration on whether they rely on single users to present them posts that the recipients would comprehend as news in spite of less underlining through sources on which they establish their post. Furthermore, perhaps because of the timeout between the study's date of publishing and the introduction of the partnership, Facebook's hitherto unique feature of fact-checking posts shared on its platform hasn't been addressed, even though it might contribute to disrupting echo chambers due to people's apparent realisation about the outright lies and intentional mislead of readers (and watchers, assuming that the source also included visual material). Assuming that this partnership was sealed prior to the publishing of this study, which can safely be contradicted, the authors could not be confronted with their failure to recognise this fact. Yet, we are able to dismiss this claim, since the partnership was sealed years before this study was commenced, so that the authors could have minded it in their argument. When it comes to social networks in charge of influencing people's source of information on the news and politics in general, as one beside many, fact-checks could carry a fair share of influence by indirectly correcting false information the readers might otherwise consume without a glimpse of doubt on the accuracy of what they just read, or watched, depending on the medium itself.
Frankly though, this argument I now made too contradicts my point of echo chambers being supported in their erection through large social networks. At first glance. The question is of how many of the diversely nourished news/politics media ‟connoisseurs‟ are likely to practically participate in public debates compared to those who consciously adhere to their one-sided media digest (assuming that those who consume their information through various outlets and stations ranging throughout a wide field of leanings, so that one would filter a balanced position considering as many positions as possible don't create such an inflammatory discourse likely to explode at any given time) To consume media is not akin to feel encouraged to challenge one's views against other people's views. One might instead prefer to linger in one's environment, spending one's time dedicated to something different, like reading fantasy novels or playing football. Neither study I shared specified the consumers in regards to what they made out of their modern-day media availability opportunities; whether they felt encouraged to commence further and more hotly contested debated or simply took those information for granted without ever converting them into something worthwhile, either to their own or others, it's unbeknownst at least to me Assuming anything adjacent to the information i the study would be a risky undertaking, yet it's important to know in regards to how echo chambers affect the public discourse.
³ Cit. first study: « McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2015). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141(2), 447-473. DOI: Psychological Bulletin »
⁴ Vide Rand, Ayn (YEAR). ‟Atlas Shrugged”. London: Signet Books. Pages 292 ff; 643 ff.
⁵ There are studies on the field, although at least one of them which I found appropriate to deliver side information to contemplate on whether our competitive society does in fact enforce the development of mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety. Beside those, opinion pieces on the issue were also published in newspapers, although they hardly count as evidence to underline it, so that they don't enjoy a pole position. They were just added as honourable mentions.
As for studies,here's the one I found valuable to add in this list:
Cit. first study: « Gilbert P., McEwan K., Bellew R., Mills A., Gale C.(2009): The dark side of competition: How competitive behaviour and striving to avoid inferiority are linked to depression, anxiety, stress and self-harm.Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 82, 123–136 » Link: National Center for Biotechnology Information (No open access to full text)
I admit that this study is already of a particular age, which might have lowered its value since new results could contradict it by having acquired higher standards and new methodologies. Since a single study cannot prove a scheme enforced in our society, more studies were required in order to make an arguable point. Therefore, I cannot express more than a bare thesis easily assailed by those who might rather accuse a society dangerously likely to comfort people and treat them with kid gloves rather than putting the gloves off and preparing them for what is to come once one entered the serious side of life.
⁶ Nota Bene: I alternatively called this hostile force fascist and nationalist, which might have confused some people, even accusing me of blurring the lines between these two ideologies. While worries are reasonable in regards to such a hotly debated topic, I do not try to blur the lines between these two. I just did assume quite a lot that was not characterised beforehand, which gave me a “safe space” to move in. Nevertheless, I would like to recall how fascism is exactly defined, according to the Britannica:
⁷ To elaborate on that vague and highly disputed point, I would also like to hereby submit two different studies and an article shared on the news outlet “Social Europe”, all of them concerned about that statement. It's of course too easy to believe that certain partisan or ideological affiliations could universally be aligned with a certain background, such as a wealthy middle-class income or a lower class craftman's profession, for example. It's never like that generally; most of the time, though, a majority of people are commonly located in a certain class, vaguely adumbrated by statistics and surveys. To do the same, we oversee the three following studies:
Cit. first study: « Examining the Social Basis of the Far-right Parties in Europe
Article 6, Volume 1, Issue 1, Summer 2017, Page 139-174. DOI: 10.22059/WSPS.2017.62283 »
This first study is especially important since it reminds the reader to distinguish between the far right and the fascist movement, which is oftentimes forgotten in the public discourse in which both terminlogoies are alternatively used while it's not necessarily the case that those who are markedly affiliated to the far right support fascist tendencies as outlined in footnote number six. Most of the ideological fellows are rather united in a disliking of what they see as “mainstream politics”, especially highlighting mass migration, “violations” of their free speech rights, “virtue signaling”, etc. All these points are not given in the definition as provided by the Britannica, nor in any other authoritative definition of fascism. More precisely, it would paint the opposite to them as fascists, which led towards calling environmentalist stances in parliamentarian politics “eco-fascist”. Long story short, one has to cautiously handle these two terms to avoid inflationary usage of false declarations leading towards gradual, inadvertent relativisations.
Reagarding the foundational question of this footnote, the study gives us the first hints on who votes for far-right parties, based on prior studies reviewed by the authors of this study:
Cit. second study: « Engler S., Weisstanner D. (2020) Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right. In: Careja R., Emmenegger P., Giger N. (eds) The European Social Model under Pressure. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-27043-8_22 »
This study comes to a similar conclusion although from a different approach: It argues that income equality, not globalisation and the loss of national identity, were the point at which people tended to support far-right parties and their policies rather than any moderate party or more left-winged approaches to current issues. It would also alighn with the mere cliché of the urban progressive in the (upper) middle-class job, being more concerned about gender issues and xenophhiba rather than one's landman'sissues.
Cit. of the opining article: « Halikiopoulou, Daphne (2019): Understanding the far-right populists: focus on their political message. Social Europe »
This article differs from the two aforementioned studies in such a way that it doesn't look directly at the base these parties and ideologies attract but how especially the parties, in a word of states and nations, they are the functionaries it takes to get oen's ideas and proposals through and into the parliaments to break through into lawful action, mesmerise their voters to become more and more. Since politics are the discipline of soft-soaping eligible citizens, being capable of convincingly is key to becoming elected in the first place. The right, on the other hand, didn't apply the rhetoric elements introduced by the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero or Martin Luther King Jr. but preferred to appeal to working men's worries and sow division rather than unity. Instead of equipping elements of style into their speeches, they utilised loudness and anger in their voice.
⁸ Cit. of first study: « Canton R. (2016) Why Do People Commit Crimes?. In: McNeill F., Durnescu I., Butter R. (eds) Probation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-51982-5_2 »
⁹ Cit. of first study: « Minor, D., Persico, N. & Weiss, D.M. Criminal background and job performance. IZA J Labor Policy 7, 8 (2018) » DOI: 10.1186/s40173-018-0101-0
¹⁰ Goldman, Emma (2008): Anarchism and Other Essays. Stilwell: Digibooks.com. Page 51
¹¹ As an evidence for the development of Germanic languages as an offspring of archaic Asian languages, read: « Schmidt, Wilhelm (2013): Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Ein Lehrbuch für das germanistische Studium. 11. Aufl. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag. Page 33/34 »
¹² Tyler, Tom R.; Fagan, Jeffrey; and Geller, Amanda, “Street Stops and Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments in Young Urban Men's Legal Socialization” (2014. Faculty Scholarship Series. 4988.
¹³ Vide Hayek, F. A. (2007). “The Road To Serfdom. Text and Documents”. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Page 94
¹⁴ Tyler, Tom R. et al. (2014), page 07; a quote from this aforementioned study:
¹⁶ Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard; Cook, Charlie; et al. (2019). The Almanac of American Politics. Bethesda: Columbia Books & Information Services. Page 232 cf.
¹⁷ Wippermann, Wolfgang. Totalitarismus/Totalitarismustheorie, in: Nohlen, Dieter (Hrsg.) (1991). Wörterbuch Staat und Politik. München: Piper GmbH und Co. KG
¹⁸ Rothbard, Murray (2015). The Case against the Feds. Auburn (AL): Mises Institute. Page 79 cf.
¹⁹ Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard; Cook, Charlie; et al. (2019). The Almanac of American Politics. Bethesda: Columbia Books & Information Services. Page 1,797 cf.
²⁰ Schieder, Theodor (Ed.) (1981). Handbuch der europäischen Geschichte. Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta. Page 134, 336.; a quote from the text (from page 134):
²¹ Peukert, Werner. Der atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey: (1740–1797); Wirtschaftsanthropologie u. Sozialgeschichte. 1. Aufl. – Wiesbaden: Steiner 1978. (Studien zur Kulturkunde; Bd. 40, S. 63)
²² Gronemeyer, Reimer (1991). Die Tradition: Afrikanische Arbeit in spirituellem Zusammenhang, in: Gronemeyer, Reimer (Hrsg.). Der faule Neger. Vom weißen Kreuzzug gegen den schwarzen Müßiggang. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH. S. 54
Balancing both the matter-of-fact of centralised distributional systems' inevitable failure and the non-reliability of human behaviour and rationality in times of need, humankind might be determined to condemnation sooner or later, in spite of any goodwill and optimism expressed in politics, partially in science (scientists in climatology, social sciences and political science, ought to distance themselves from making any biased comments and instead sticking to their neutrality, are more likely to express advice and what had to be addressed in order to achieve the best for both humans and the environment, including wildlife as well as biota. Whether one claims advice to be biased itself had to consider the arguments underlining the given advice as well to argue on one's own in which way the advice was biased; advice, as arguments in general, usually have to be balanced according to any given arguments that were uttered either in favour or in contradiction to the advice intent to be given to someone. Otherwise, the advice is predestined to defectiveness, moreover resistible defectiveness, since it's common sense to usually weigh in counter-arguments in order to presume the best possible argument.
I elaborated on this particular point since it has become clear on both sides of the aisle to prefer developing arguments inside one's “echo chamber” despite the easily recalled consequences of doing so. Securely, I added that this phenomenon can be observed on both sides of the aisle–on the left aisle as well as the right. Whether one surveyed the issue on Facebook or Twitter, it didn't matter, the bias of one's own can be found tantamount²) and social discourse. The effects of such a bias created inside an echo chamber are not new, as I mentioned previously, it has just become more ferocious due to the constant, full-force gauntlet of information encircling us individually and being even capable of feeding our bias. It's an effect that wasn't that strong in the past before the internet, since newspapers, even though they already could function as firebrands to a certain bias (Some of us might remember how the New York Daily News, one of the merely renown newspapers of the Big Apple, used to be what the Daily Mail is to the UK nowadays; now, it's known to be a more liberal-leaning Daily), people digested them for themselves, they were less likely to entire public places and shout down random people who they at least assumed to be on the opposite side of their beliefs. Nowadays, on the internet, one's access to one's preferred outlets and those mentioned public places are only a few clicks away from one another. It's a recipe for disaster, one could tell. Obviously, it's at least a recipe for social division, which can only be stopped by those who monitor (or are supposed to monitor) activity on those public places ,since there is no solution to monitor people's digest of news and how they are prepared for them without enacting an authoritarian regime of bringing people's knowledge about politics and the government's activity into line. Even benefactors could fall into such allegations through efforts intent to bring journalism into line with their objectives of defeating deliberately hatred-stirring reports (stirring hatred with regard to what to report and the wording. What one might waive due to its unimportance or lack of impact on the reader is proven to influence the reader already by the very headline. Yet the headline is not the only part of a text that is likely (if not determined) to influence the reader how he or she recognises a certain topic. Given this fact already tells us a lot about how particular subjects that are a steady part in the public discourse–such as criminality among immigrants–are being discussed: On the one hand, there are statistics lying down to us the absolute and relative amount of crimes committed by immigrants, and on the other hand are single articles highlighting single crimes committed, thus raising fears about the dangers caused by migrants living among the native people in the respective country (bona note: Although the article linked across three words between emdashes is already nine years old at least, the facts mentioned are still relevant and correct since the conditions haven't changed; only the public debate was reignited through nationalist stances being brought back into Congress and parliaments throughout the (Western) world).
V
To cut this part short off since all things have been considered, we might clarify why this was all relevant for the consideration of a moneyless world. At first glance, it was just another rambling of an off-topic subject to stretch the text. Only at second glance, and a closer look altogether, it comes clear at last: In order to introduce such a concept, sociality is a necessary tool that has to be given permanently. Otherwise, the system is doomed to fail. The same could be said about capitalism as well, since a non-humane, coldly calculating system doesn't apply well with emotional human beings supposed to become part of it, interacting inside this very tool. By presuming a permanent state of social behaviour, we iterate a dogma, I am highly aware of this. Also am I highly aware of the inevitable failure of dogmas in societies of humans, since humans don't like to be fenced inside a static construct, since they themselves are dynamic beings regularly alternating their behaviour because they prefer to enjoy their freedom. Only a few of them would prefer the regular routine a static society could give them, for various reasons. Those few can be gathered under a broadly defined assemblage of nationalists, parishioners of any Abrahamic belief (normally, religions, although they serve a moral function in comparison to the actual moral beliefs³ as conceptualised by the likes of Aristoteles, for example. Yet instead of objecting towards something like a greater good, as did Aristoteles in his well-renown Nicomachean Ethics, they put a God above who it is the objective to please in order to be allowed to enter the Heavens in the afterlife, the mystified Garden Eden, although it was never questioned how Adam and Eve were able to be expelled from there, presuming that the Garden Eden had to be of infinite size to accommodate all the human beings who followed God's word, therefore having qualified to live in league with God. Otherwise, Heaven by now had to be a crammed place where living conditions are equal to detention facilities in the Third Reich, Xinjiang or the along the US-MEX border), while the rest might prefer to be more individualist, including more liberties (as well as responsibilities) on their own, without a demanding society permanently creeping onto their heels, clutching on them, sucking them out of their energy and properties.Of course this was a steep exaggeration, partially in reference to Rand's ‟Atlas Shrugged” and her depiction of ‟moochers”, ‟fair-share vultures” and ‟looters”. But in the end, that's what most individualists hate about the society and the state that relies heavily upon it, in shape of taxes, for example. People cannot choose whether to live in such a society or not, thus are considered to duly pay their ‟fair share” to maintain this civilisation. Of course this is not caused by the creation of money, yet without money, the state would lose another role it hereby bears: As the tax collector and redistributor. Whether or not taxes are theft, is a topic for a different text. And individualism in the political context can work out better by far with money but without a state trying to grasp (full) control all the time.
While no-one directly expected it, across a jolty road, we reached our next checkpoint in the questions surrounding how we could successfully abolish monetary means, because we cannot use dogmas to tell the entire mankind, compiled of so many different practiced schools of thought on our political society, that henceforth, any monetary means, including its surrogates (in some places of the world, the coins and banknotes we use to swap in goods are not in use, but rather shells, appropriately utilised on a couple of islands associated with Papua New Guinea (PDF)), were effectively worthless. Not only did such a move require unanimous agreement from all sides expected to side with this tremendous turn, but also did it require sufficient time to undertake all preparations. How are they ought to look like? We'll come back to that in the next chapter. Prior to this, persuasion has to be minded of, and by persuasion, I mean the confession to oneself that not everyone enjoys the same ‟dogma” of a stateless, societal community in which people are standing hand-in-hand, where no-one is left behind; as I mentioned before, there are individuals who follow the path of ‟the pursuit of happiness” through one's own work instead of being backed by one's next ones, which the state provided through publicly funded securities (beside the private ones), for example. Even an Anarchist society would limit one's fulfillment in the ‟pursuit of happiness” in such a way that the general shape of society would exclude enjoying the fruit of one's own labour only by one's own, it would always be a labourers' united fruits. One couldn't create something only by one's own, but only in interconnection with the other workers. It's the difference between, to again refer to Rand's ‟Atlas Shrugged”, the failed collectivised company that eventually went bankrupt, and Galt's Gulch⁴. People differ from one another, and so do their expectations of a perfect world. To assume that there was one perfect world is effectively inaccurate and dogmatic. While some might believe that toiling in a neoliberal world is greedy exploitation standing in contrary to human nature, it might be the perfect realisation of how to become a self-fulfilling human being proud of one's own creations. Finally, the world should be large enough to fulfill all those utopias at once, without being incarcerated in one's dystopia.
Yet, why doesn't it happen now? Why can one just not move somewhere else where one found one's perfect earthly Heavens? There may be multiple reasons people abstain from moving somewhere more delightful to their own regards, but generally, the reasons can be broken down to approximately three separate ones:
- Financial reasons – At the moment, they cannot afford moving somewhere else. Perhaps, it's even because of the state, again: For example, a high tax rate that devours up to half of the money one earns through daily work, so that beside the fees that have to be paid monthly, and food and pastimes one dedicates one's free time to, there is not much left to save for moving abroad.
- Insurmountable legal and bureaucratic obstacles – Depending on where someone currently lives, to move abroad, therefore to dissolve one's legal status in the homeland and all the properties that won't be taken with one can become an arduous affair that might grow up to become a reason why to throw away those dreams of someday living in a better world. Of course this reason might not exist for those who really detest their homeland and are determined about a better life in that one country that is not the currently inhabited one. But for others, the legal and bureaucratic boundaries might be stronger than the will to cut them off.
- Political hazard in the land of one's dreams – Out of a sudden, the sitting president might have overturned the Constitution and turn the country into a near-dictatorship or ran for a third term and ‟won” the next election: Whatever it may be, it can turn the desperately languished country into a hellhole, thus might have to wait to redeem itself. And for so long, one will have to wait and see what happens, whether it will ever calm down again. (This might be the most ridiculous reason, though, since protests and political nuisances are hardly a condition that promptly appeared, out of thin air)
Assuming that the whole world was a libertarian private society with no state borders whatsoever, but only private companies that employ all of us because the monetary means are still up, running and the essence of free trade as it is the matter today. Would it possibly be easier to travel and even move abroad? It shouldn't be more difficult but easier, since there is no-one but oneself who cares about where one travels, or moves. Yet, before we continue to elaborate on this issue, we should clarify about some terminologies that might come up in the meantime: There is a difference between ‟capitalism” and ‟free market” when we think about these two as ideologies to shape our society. While capitalism is about companies and concerns prevailing over states, thus becoming the remaining entities beside private individuals, the free market imagines a world containing only selfish individuals who'll occasionally interact with one another; voluntarily, of course.
Moving on: As we speak of libertarians, there of course won't be any entities that could install a hierarchical structure that might at worst oppress people's liberties. Hence, the libertarian utopia is of course a free-market economy, with only the people toiling and cooperating as they wish and find it necessary. Therefore, it shouldn't be a problem to roam around the world as long as one can afford it. Despite the impossible of non-existing companies but only individuals who might temporarily team up to finish projects. Such cooperations are a permanent necessity, so that companies might not be a wanted assembly, but at least one that is required to function flawlessly. And they are also not to be daemonised as the root of capitalist evil. It only depends on what one makes out of the given structures, whether one believes in hierarchies, in a flat hierarchy, or no hierarchies at all. There are examples (either successful or failed) for all such constructions, so that a keen entrepreneur can learn from them. To equip the internet slang, it's a “debunked myth” to believe that capitalism would mean hierarchical and unfree structures outside of a state, but prevailing in a company. Even capitalism could contribute to individual liberty, just not (necessarily) in a way that the radical free market would do. It just depends on whether one would describe “liberty” generally or individually. Generally, it would mean that liberty depended on one general state of society to be achieved in order to achieve liberty. There would be no awareness to individual desires that would fulfill one's individual expectations of liberty. Not to say that this general definition of liberty could come in favour for that one individual as well, even able to exceed the individual's personal expectations of what was possible to accomplish, yet it might as well underwhelm other individuals. That's where we have to mind a more individual definition at least in terms of comparison: The more individual definition would describe liberty as one's personal understanding of a perfect state of society in terms of what is possible in contrary to what is not possible, for whatever reason (security, negative freedom, etc.). In the latter definition, we of course would inevitably at loggerheads with different definitions of liberty, unless we gathered the like-minded, separated from those groups of those who define liberty starkly different, so that they won't juxtapose one another. The process would normally commence autonomously, since human nature doesn't seek conflict consciously and proactively, except for nationalists and equally hostile ideologues, who, according to my personal point of view, act extremely against their own nature. To those who found this way of arguing blatant, they should wonder how, in a conflict-oriented nature, merely social ideologies like Socialism and Communism could even prosper, let alone find vivid followers. We night agree onto a twofold (or manifold nature, but still, it can hardly include violent conflict essentially.)
Therefore, what happens once we would survey in a vastly ranged field, on how people would describe their personal nature in terms of liberty? We would perhaps receive a mixed result that didn't allow us to draw a one-sided result, such as “XX percent of people prefer a Socialist state rather than a Capitalist society” (such a result was presented by an Axios/YouGov poll recently, which stated that an almost absolute majority (70 percent) of Millennials (years of birth 1985 to 2000) embraced Socialist or Communist policies rather than Capitalist ones), so that the Libertarian model failed some people anyway. The question that remained until its accomplishment, is how it prevailed itself once it was installed and left for the people's majority will and the unpredictability of human action. The state, de jure, its corruption through law and an untransparent bureaucracy. Executive forces and the military are supposed to crack down on unwanted usurpations once they emerge. Libertarian societies don't have any such mechanisms, as they might believe either in people's ability of reason preventing them from not stopping someone trying to grasp power and reinvent statehood. Or people had the choice to voluntarily depart from this newly erected state and move somewhere else, where their basic human rights (reconsidered after the advent of the libertarian world) were respected rather than undermined. What has to be said, then, is that there are no mechanisms to prevent the recreation of etatist structures, but rather, they are allowed to happen, even if it meant that the overall concept of Libertarianism would be diminished or even dissolved in the outcome. It could easily function as a display of human's state of development, how far they have come, and how they tend to believe they are best organised according to either through force of majority or of the most powerful to have their voice heard.
Normally, I now had to recall that such a mechanism would not necessarily bother my idea of the ideal Utopia, which allowed every group of like-minded people to establish a community, state or whatsoever as long as they didn't infringe anyone else's concept just because it didn't suit their notion of (near-)perfect organisation. One problem exists in such a mechanism or laissez-faire development, though (it is also given in my concept, since both of them share few differences when it comes to certain details): The insecurity that once was covered by robust structures maintaining law and order. Unlike in a mere Communist system, “chained” communities and loyal denizens are not required to continue the existence of these communities, so that the likelihood of estrangement is particularly high, letting down those who might be more reliant on helpful peers. Whether such characteristics are enforced by a competitive society⁵ is not decidedly determined, although evidence does exist and has been examined. Nevertheless, as long as no larger experiments in this field, concerning non-competitive societies separately (1) isolated from the rest of the world, (2.1.) interconnected with like-minded and at least similarly organised societies and (2.2.) cooperating with differently-minded and organised societies (the latter in order to see how they will react to them, especially when distress emerges from probable difficulties), we cannot tell what might be the human drive exactly, but only have several points of view on it.
VI
Coming back to the actual point I was to make, whose concern would it actually be if a once-free society happened to be trembled and succeeded by a completely different order, like a fascist one? It's the same issue with which diplomats and philosophers struggled to solve ever since the Vienna Congress, when a new European world order had to be constructed; it was the advent of the likes of Otto von Bismarck, the inventor of Realpolitik, a policy ideal driven primarily by vast considerations of the given complications, national interest and balance of power among the strongest forces on the European continent, back then Austria, Russia, France and Germany. It's a question of morality on the one hand, and of international relations on the other hand. Morality would expect from a strong and powerful nation to intervene to liberate the people from the authoritarian leadership (unless they voted for them in an orderly, Democratic election) to henceforth continue living in freedom. Why? Because the nation could do that with little efforts. Foreign affairs would expect the same from most nations (again, those that are strong and powerful, thus could do it comparably easy), although for different reasons: Either to curb a hostile nation's power to keep it down, to seriously liberate the people caught inside the autocracy, or to cooperate with the nation to form an alliance to serve one another and again, curb the hostile nation's power in the world. The latter one took place in spite of any information of human rights violations, consciously, in order to accomplish the objectives lying before the leader.Now, how does this answer our question on whether a community of any kind–we assume that it would be an Anarcho-Communist community (according to my standards: A community of free and equal people living and toiling together in their town; no hierarchies exist but everyone links one's actions to another in order to chain one's actions in a clockwork-like order so that everything works just fine and mutually beneficial)–, which could be theoretically possible, depending on arms resources and citizens willing to fight for their moral standards. The problem that would soon arise from such a moral obligation to defend kindred spirits abroad (although the concept of communities abroad might be in need of a change once this scattering took place; abroad is a terminology which occurred when there still were nations that could be left behind, while communities can be left behind as well whilst no-one would then speak of a person that now lived abroad) is the necessity of voluntarily enlisting soldiers who were ready to carry it to the extremes. Whether there were enough men and women to go that far voluntarily is a question urgently required to be proposed since it is indeed a matter of life and death. As Napoléon Bonaparte is said to have expressed it once (the origin of this utterance seems to be unknown; at least I was unable to track it back to any written source):
“A man does not have himself killed for a half pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.”And he wasn't wrong about it, assuming he really said it and wasn't misquoted. Without any substantial reason to risk one's life in battle for someone or something, one will hardly be persuaded into doing so in the first place. Ideals, such as nationalist ones, might usually work out for some folks, but it won't naturally persuade everyone (capable of fighting). A different motive must take its place to electrify the people, something as strong as a common ideal which does not directly exist when it comes to two communities adjacent to one another.
Are there any conceivable situations in which people would indirectly ushered towards protecting a foreign community, which they even might never have heard of, nor were familiar with its residents? To put it bluntly: To protect a community completely unbeknownst to them hitherto? And by “unbeknownst”, I also mean the rather improbable occurrence to also never have traded with them. The reason why this is an improbable situation will explain itself within the further description of a situation that bore the particular question we proposed unto ourselves beforehand.
Imagine a community in which we might reside, community A. It lies in the centre of Europe, surrounded by numerous other communities far and wide. Many of them are unbeknownst to us because we chose to isolate ourselves and live as an autark, self-sufficient community that prefers to be by its own: don't receive any help on the one hand, and don't offer any help on the other hand. Someday, although, a courier approached our community, yelling for help, waving his hands in the air like a maniac. Once he reached us, he tells us that his village was assailed by an openly nationalist community on its way to conquer more land. He urges us to support them to fight those fascists back. The community elder (of course we have elders, and of course they look like druids) calls for an assembly to democratically discuss how to react to the courier's message. The community is visibly divided over how to react to the courier: While some of us stuck to the community's maxim of not intervening in foreign relations but rather stay behind the fortress of isolation, come hell or high water, others were worried about whether the fascists⁶ might come for them once they were done with these poor devils who now cry for support.The story is thoroughly realistic considering my previous statements that there are unapologetic believers in authoritarian leaderships delivering law and order with an iron fist. Furthermore, there are also staunch nationalists who would like to expand their influence and country's superiority throughout the land, even though such ideologies are scarce nowadays. While many nationalists demand the dissolution of given countries or the usurpation of existing ones, few of them would also consider starting wars against other nations to take over their land to enlarge their own nation (or at least, such sentiments are not publicly and loudly expressed nowadays). Nevertheless, as soon as states were abolished peu à peu, the field would again be wide open, providing space for nationalist firebrands to reshape the field in their personal favour, surpassing any standards or probable victims to their relentless agenda.
Nevertheless, we did find a good reason for people to risk their lives to defend someone else's safety. Why? Because they will benefit from having undertaken that selfless deed in the long run. If they had acted short-sighted, they would have lost their own freedom eventually as well. It's a simple rule that is obligatory to nowadays' foreign policies: Help someone you hold no relationships to as long as your own future's brightness depends on his or her safety as of now. As long as the community in the forefront remains intact, it can work as a buffer zone to their own community. In retrospective, the consideration of an alliance of trade and “military” (in a broader sense, in shape of a militia or insurgency). This does not necessarily lead towards a repetition of mistakes of the past, as long as the alliance remains in a loose state.
Twice we have now mentioned the likelihood of threats through reactionary uprisings which cannot be prevented in fully, since the freedom of choice shall be maintained without any restrictions that required a supra-state monitoring, comparable to a thought crime prosecution. Such constructs must not be installed anytime, anywhere. That's why the burden of such viruses of nationalist or any other reactionary tendencies will surpass the Utopian change, to transport their backwards ideology in a “forwarded” society (it should be comparably consensual to assume such a society, offering the opportunity to at least the first generation to take over control into their own hands and create a society as they were pleased to have it; as there are no restrictions to anyone, no-one can tell that he or she was infringed in her opportunities. Even to live alone in a deserted spectre of our planet as a hermit was possible, which does not commonly apply to today's world (except for the US, where you could live as a hermit in the woods, unless you brew mountain dew and intent to sell it to make a living; you too would be unlikely to pay your taxes then. Anyway, I was speaking on a more German point of view). No-one could tell you to stop your way of living and assimilate into the society upon whose ground you lived. You could appropriate a piece of land as yours and not cultivate it except for a small batch of land to grow wheat or anything to nourish yourself).
VII
To avoid the mood to raise too high, we should face a most likely downside of this entire Utopia, besides given the fact that as a Utopia, there is little to no chance to ever be realised (as I mentioned before). But which great personality in history gave up on the implausibility of an achievement to be actually be achieved someday? Exactly. Victors don't win by giving up, and so don't Utopians.The downside I meant was the likelihood of monetary means' existence beyond the change, which then wouldn't be too much of a change as a mere alternation of given circumstances, such as it was usual in Capitalist/Corporatist societies: Superficial alternations to function as opiate injections to tranquilise upheavals ad ovo. “Why would you want to overthrow this society just because you're currently going through some hardship?”, people would insist, “Cheer up, buttercup! Things will get better soon, I promise. Now you will have to work a little bit harder, but you will soon harvest the fruits of your hard labour. It always is like this”.
People speaking like this are not entirely wrong when they say that into each life, some rain must fall, since the sun will soon shine again, but these people also don't enjoy the idea of a world in which hardship could be decreased at least in its individual magnitude, as well as in its fatality on individual lives. I might speak in my personal experience, but when people speak of taking over personal responsibility, their intentions are benevolent: There's nothing wrong about controlling one's own life's directions and shaping oneself individually and uniquely. Yet personal responsibility doesn't always have its upsides, downsides also regularly happen. Depending on how onerous they are, they can affect individual victims crushingly. As more and more people seem to suffer from mental illnesses, the reason is opined to be the higher weights and fatalities of burdens produced through a society that expects more and more of its people: More and more duties to execute, and heavier burdens and fatalities to stem to arise from them like a phoenix from the ashes, disregarding of one's individual capabilities to really arise, and not just be blown away through the wind. What I intend to say is that the requirements expected to be fulfilled from each individual denizen of this world has become irregularly oppressive, crushing people like an Atlas rejecting to shrug off the earth (Since this is a questionable point of view on a highly polarised topic, I would like to hereby submit three interesting reads to open different points of view: From The Guardian, forwarded by the Brookings Institution; a blog post by Umair Haque, author and contributor to the Harvard Business Review; and by the International Policy Digest, a political magazine run by academics and writers. Yet, some people might argue differently, accusing the government of having failed the people, as Steven Rattner writes for Bloomberg. The question, all in all, is comparably shaky).
The question of moral requirements to intervene once other like-minded entities are being threatened through hostile forces won't end with communities as such general entities being threatened, but also with minorities or women individually threatened inside their community with no chance to flee oppressive conditions for whatever reason. Wouldn't there be a moral requirement to intervene, and save those particular minorities or women from their misery? Normally, it should be confirmed, there is such a requirement. But wouldn't we then fall aback into obsolete schemes of nations intervening against one another to fulfill their own interests, while also letting down one another as they please? To assume that communities in peril should simply rely on other communities' benevolence to release them form their tantalisers would not only be naïve but bluntly irresponsible. In order to survive amidst hostile forces coming for one's head (or ideology), reliable partners are essential, and would also open opportunities for mutual returns, such as trade in a common manner (such as swaps or borrows that would be redeemed someday) or defence for one another in case of serious threats. Another redemption could be support subsequent to natural hazards such as floods, droughts or monsoon rains. Honestly, it might not even a matter to bother talking about since human nature would normally oblige communities and communities/peoples in particular to collaborate when involved agree upon crucial issues. Still, goodwill is no palpable value to introduce to such a problem. What it takes are more pressuring values that can also be debated by both sides of the involvement and are more likely to be agreed upon, again by both sides alike. Goodwill is not debatable but a promise, which are supposed to be kept, theoretically, but are likely to be broken in case the one who breaks the promise doesn't have to be afraid of any significant retaliation and no interest whatsoever to fulfill the promise. The same could of course be argued about moral standards, since those standards, unlike written rule of law, is not compulsory, one doesn't need to follow them if one followed different standards. Even if that argument was abused despite one's personal moral views, it could hardly be argued that actually, that person was morally obliged to support one in trying times. Support through moral obligations cannot be enforced, nor can they be naturally expected. As for rule of law, it could be enforced and has to be expected obviously, yet this only applies if all people of those two entities–the one in need as well as the one commonly capable of supporting that entity in need–signed that very rule of law, which also had to state an obligatory support when experienced by either entity, regardless of any other objectives more urgently endeavoured. In case of the law's violation, courts had the option to punish the violation by a negotiated sentence.
Seldom would it likely occur that two communities sealed such a common rule of law, though, since an incorporation would then be handier, if the two communities were also closely located to one another. In fact, it would have already happened, then, although such a turn would then likely happen pro forma, since incorporations are merely bound to nations in which communities regulate themselves separately and only lately consider an incorporation to cut costs and paperwork. After the unification took place, a common rule of law and mutual support would finally be considered obligatorily, although such occurrences were lucky, therefore, as aforementioned, seldom. It depends on the more unlucky situation such as when communities let down other communities caught in dire desperation, which didn't happen that way when nations were still superordinate, thus lawfully obliged to deliver support (unless the highest-ranking figurehead in the state is George W. Bush). We can see it now, more or less, when a nation calls for support, especially neighbouring nations would readily support it as best as they could spontaneously. It's one of the more advantageous points of having nations which assemble strength and resources under one roof, compared to multiple communities each assembling their small amounts of resources and limited power, which had to be called upon individually, even though one community suffering for itself would also require less support in one situation of danger than an entire nation of the size of Germany, France or Brazil, for example. The only requirement that has to be given, is the readiness to support other communities, assuming the resources were in fact available for others than their own people, without any risks of falling down the dole afterwards, when the same or a similar catastrophe should hit them too.
To not lead further astray, what I try to state is the key to a perfectly remunicipalised society of various schemes of organisation is their cooperation beyond these lines. WE could of course project this maxim onto today's society, where polarisation between partisan and ideological lines has figuratively broken up society (Italics due to the disparity between those who would suggest that society, not only in the US, has been broken up, and those who think that this was only a rumour fueled through the media and people on social media who would at the same time presage an upcoming civil war). This polarisation is unlikely to be cured in a concept that would even confirm its prejudices and presuppositions, moreover use it as a foundation to create a wholly new society. One would rather have to expect to see people become even more hostile towards opposing ideas and ideologies. Whether this has to be seen as a safe prediction of things to become, a pessimistic look into the future on my behalf, or #OKBoomer nonsense–in the end, echo chambers are going to be manifested irreversibly, more or less. Discussions with opposing-minded individuals might be enjoyable from time to time, but when it comes to general organisation of a community, differences that are barely overcome are rather obnoxious than inspiring. As much as dictatorships and autocracies are being detested by the plenty, one has to confess that they get things done more quickly than democracies and the likes. Why is that so? Because they don't have to fish for compromises or struggle with a staunch opposition placing rock in one's way to development. Still, we don't need to elaborate on the pros and cons of both systems, it would lead us too far astray from the actual topic.
VIII
Cooperation is key, we agreed on that. Hence, we don't need to say too much about what would be required in case of criminals fleeing the community and end up in a different community after a long journey. “Intercommunitary” (as a replacement to “international”) online data banks might come in handy to shape prosecution the most efficient way. Again, the most crucial requirements in such a platform would be confidence in those who contribute to this data bank and those who have got access to them (delicate data is easily abused for the wrong intentions). As for accessibility in terms of broadband internet connections, this shouldn't be a problem since even this issue is mostly undermined by bureaucratic malfunctions and balls-and-chains.
Beside these annoying knick-knacks, we didn’t yet focus on a more pressing issue that would be delegated in a world full of autonomous communities so little: Law enforcement. More technically speaking, incarceration of those who broke the law or, when no legal code should be created, harmed the community and therefore needed to be punished for their wrongdoing. Although this would, as I said afore, be a matter of each community of its own (even if a community considered to reintroduce the death penalty, which is illegal in Germany but still active in various US states (SOURCE). Especially among Anarchists, incarceration in shape of prison camps or prisons in general are a pariah of totalitarian leaderships: According to them, rulers who have to incarcerate their own people for breaking with the law which was compiled without their consent, let alone their bare presence to discuss the respective entries (although we all can agree that there neither is any time, nor any point in debating laws whenever a group of people emerges from the masses to have their say on certain laws. If there should be any law they found illegitimate and abusive to their freedom, they could file a complaint before a court to challenge it, to see if judges agreed with their opinion), no matter if this happened inside a nation or a community of about three- to nine-thousand people. Equally in both, it was akin to an almost intentional obstruction of justice through a DDoS-like query of demands (SOURCE). Common-sense legislature, therefore, is the most effective way of writing codes of law in order to organise a gathering of people under one roof. Yet this time, then, it would not be a roof of Representatives-elect but of people who autonomously organise themselves, still “scholarly in retrospective of historical mistakes that had to be learnt of”, to put it the most exaggerated way. What it means is simply the learning of mistakes committed in the past, to which having learnt about the irreparable flaws of bureaucracy, without condemning states in general. There were good ones, and there were (many) bad ones. It’s no use crying over spilled milk (especially when it expired months ago), so at least be precise on our criticism. To compare someone like Ludwig Erhard (German minister of the economy in the post-war era) or Abraham Lincoln (the US president best known for his successful battle on slavery, his Gettysburg Address during the Civil War and his beard) to leaders like Andrew Jackson (the president best known for the Indian Removal Act) or Gerhard Schröder (the late German chancellor best known for his unemployment reform now known as Hartz IV) would equally be denoting against the better leaders and falsely approving of those who failed during their incumbency. What they all have got together is not having curbed bureaucracy although it failed the people the most colossally. Bureaucracy is the reason why people fear visits to the offices for whatever reason, and why some people might not demand the money they were right to receive actually, but don’t because the efforts to put in overwhelm the people. Before contradicting this and claiming that those people who were eligible for paybacks were just “lazy bums” who “don’t deserve money they don’t want to work for” just have to ask themselves how many times they wished they could avoid the war of paperwork against the offices. Then, they have to imagine working one exhausting or two or three jobs–all of them lowly paid–and then had to fill out endless sheets of paper on which they hardly understand what they are being asked for but were too poor to afford a lawyer or adviser to explain them patiently. That’s the situation in which many, if not the most, people the most dependent find themselves in (I was speaking of social security or welfare, while tax returns might also apply to this rather vague description. In general, whenever someone either had to cooperate with offices or could do this because benefits lied ahead of this torturous road of paperwork, these theses applied). Bureaucracy is an interior construct doubtlessly necessary to keep a state functioning: Bureaucrats are the many small gearwheels inside the clockwork that is the state that keep it all running well. A state without its bureaucrats would stand still forever, so that even Conservatives don’t dare to argue against them. They only complain about the amount of bureaucrats employed, intending to cut it down as often as possible (the latter thesis only applies as long as they were not successful in their attempt to cut the number down actually. It’s hard to calculate the exact sum of public employees to balance costs and effectiveness, as it is with so many abstract concepts such as the state is. As with companies, public offices hardly employ more people they need to function, unless an earnestly Socialist government was in charge. For example, the GDR is said to have employed every citizen of its state, whether or not there was work for them. They didn’t want to have any unemployed people, just as they didn’t want to have any homeless people, leading towards their rampant construction of living space, including the then-unknown carcinogenic substance called asbestos, caved in the Russian town of Asbest (in Russian: Асбе́ст) (PDF). But we’re moving astray of the topic. Prisons are a broader example of bureaucracy, compared with the failure to comprehend what is the actual issue that is hardly tried to combat. Only few people commit crimes out of persuasion that they had to do it in order to fulfill themselves; only a few people commit crimes out of lower intentions such as greed or immorality (We'll come back to this argument later on). The greater majority of people commit them out of desperation, because their states or their society let them down and they were unable to support them in such a way that they were given a chance to arise by themselves (as much as Conservatives and right-winged liberals are right that people might be prouder of themselves if they achieved tremendous things on their own rather than by affirmative action, without being given a platform to do so undermines every single effort immediately. Therefore, the two concepts of self-fulfilment and affirmative action could be combined in a society in which administrative tasks are still being coordinated via an administrative organisation; more or less, it’s especially necessary to do so to not lose the young ones to authoritarian ideals of redistribution, such as it happens in these times, where a “hermaphrodite” of unmotivated attempts to provide solutions fails to satisfy any side of the aisle, therefore being caught in the centre between irate Liberals and Social Democrats (beside the few outspoken Socialists who also know what they are talking about and didn’t just equip the controversial etiquette) on the left hand and indignant Conservatives, usually immature Alt-Right jackasses (I’m sorry for the expletive, but there cannot be any good reason to side with the Alternative Right, as Richard Spencer coined it, since their ideas usually align with hostile Reactionism and isolationist nationalism. That’s not to say that their ideological fellows could be simply ignored and overturned whenever decisions had to be made (as this speech, transcribed and published by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities argues), but that we have to understand their cause and find a common ground to defeat them via the best possible way to defeat them. People will again argue in this well-known discussion that some of them are uncompromising, therefore not looking for a general consensus but prefer to defeat the left-winged cause to take over power and bring through their entire agenda. This is true, but still, those people didn’t dwell from thin air, they weren’t born as disgraceful beings, but socialised in such a way. Hence, if no common ground can be found with them, different approaches to dissolving them as peaceful as feasible have to be found: Social backgrounds have to be analysed to understand why some people tend to learn towards the right so far they become uncompromising and would favour illiberal policies and Ethno-Nationalism over a more pluralistic society. Eventually, the result might arise that such Alt- or fringe right-wingers emerge from socially deprecated backgrounds, thus feeling betrayed by their state, especially when seeing how migrants are being supported “from the cradle to the crave”. They want to enjoy that support as well, therefore see their state in a position in which born citizens are let down while immigrants receive support wherever they needed. In terms of money influencing these decisions of who to vote for during an election, we can tell that money again is the predecessor to an entire development finally shaping the decision: When one is born into a poverty-stricken family in a likewise social environment, when money is scarce, the decision is more likely to fall for a party that promises to help people like this one. In contrast, social environments in which money is plentifully available, humans brought up there are more likely to vote for a party that is going to protect their wealth from those who demand their far share by them. Money, therefore, is the central entity shaping their decisions. Either there is too little money available, or there is enough to become paranoid of people wanting to reap it off them.
Now I broke with my promise and went so far astray, one might suspect that there won’t be a transition between the two topics–poverty versus wealth and criminality. Yet, there is one: In today’s legal assumptions, Robin Hood, the dexterous thief stealing money from the rich to redistribute it among the poor, would still be a thief, hence should be placed behind bars for his wrongful deed. In regards to those he gave the money, he was a hero, and his incarceration was wrong; not politically motivated, since the law could be applied logically. But still, it would be wrong in their understanding, since he only wanted to help people in need, but didn’t have the resources to do so, which is the reason why he had to take it from those who had, but were not willing to help despite any better reason. The same law applies to individuals committing crimes because they went through not only dissatisfying conditions in their life which they couldn’t flee through hard work, but conditions likening to an existential crisis: Whether they could still live a good life or only lived to survive. While at least in Germany, human dignity is manifested in basic law, states as the German federal republic don’t ascertain the provision of respective laws and actions anymore due to partisan reason, re-eligibility or sever miscomprehensions of the broader picture. Whatever the reason to particular problems and their correct solution, sometimes, people can’t wait any longer to see their life’s rescue being address and do it themselves, though in a way that might not please everyone. Crimes, in such situations, don’t apply to the formal definition as “activities that are in violation of the laws of the state” per se. While crimes such as theft do violate the law, it would be too superficial to then rush straight towards sentencing the offenders. It has to be considered what deliberate intentions moved them towards committing that particular crime. While murder is being separated in terms of the way the murder has been executed and which intention lied behind that, the same would not necessarily apply for theft of food or petrol. The chances are low that leniency will be granted because someone was desperately poor, therefore could not apply for a raise in social security although the money didn’t make ends meet entirely.
It has to be said, contrarily, that such assumptions might occasionally appear vague when expressed in front of court, I won’t deny that; moreover, we have to consider this to be a reason to adjust our understanding of law and legality. How can people who don’t act under criminal intentions but only in terms of self-fulfillment, self-sufficiency and in regards to the satisfaction of their most essential needs be protected from being stigmatised as criminals? It goes without saying that for such cases, even though they might seldom occur altogether, distinct exceptions could help preventing victims to be marked as offenders for the rest of their life. On the other hand, it could lead to more bureaucratic burden, more confusion on the law in public and a higher likelihood in judiciary errors. Such have to be avoided in a bipartisan fashion, so that to contemplate an alternative to the standardised legal corpus as we experience it today. That’s where communities might introduce themselves to exactly bring up such a model. The closest idea to a combination of justice and “enclosed” communities would be the Vikings, who usually spoke justice in their “things” (although the words look similar to one another, a “thing” is not to be understood as a thing as we use it in English: A “thing” in the Viking age was a gathering of all of the community’s inhabitants and the community’s elder, who was the only person allowed to speak justice): The witnesses and the offender were heard, and finally, the elder either acquitted the offender or sentenced him. As everyone can see, the problem with this concept is the centralisation of justice in one person or a small group of people who were not necessarily qualified to speak justice; their only qualification to be ranked as those who were permitted to speak justice would be their age or their inherited rank, such as in dynasties. Injustice would be inevitable, even though no-one inside the community intended to injure anyone else deliberately. Yet crime as such and the complexity of situations that eventually ended up before court because an extrajudicial agreement could not be achieved, and then, it all depends on the judges and the lawyers debating until a definitive and comprehensive judgement can be manifested.
Assuming that a more comprehensible, easier judiciary system was even imaginable, how did it have to look, then? We cannot tell that we treated justice like bureaucracy: Just cut off the pointless burden we hitherto schlepped with us, to make our system more flexible, and more effective. It’s not that easy. A more subtle and thoughtful approach would to go through the law and look for those laws that are in charge just because we have created a system that hinders people from living more peacefully together. I know that this sounds vulgar and populist, but once one contemplates how many crimes are in fact committed because our system is corrupted from the inside, abusing laws to asphyxiate reforms or changes on behalf of the people’s will before they could grow. As Tacitus is oftentimes quoted to have written in his Annals: “Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.”–The more numerous the laws, the more corrupted the government. (Emphasis added) In spite of the quote’s age, it is still contemporary when we think about why laws are in fact needed. Some people might state that it’s because of human nature to hurt one another deliberately. There was no reasonable explanation to it, it was just an idiosyncratic attitude on human’s behalf to hurt members of its own kin. Therefore, to decrease the incidents of “fratricides” (although murders are just one aspect illegalised), laws were implemented to punish those who could no longer control their own nature. A deductive logic indeed; Tacitus, on the other hand, argued that laws essentially exist because corrupt governments need to illegalise actions that could at worst expose their corruption on public display. Both theories appeal through their bluntness and their relatability: While some might look for a simple answer to explain to themselves human maladie, some other might look for a justification for their hatred against the state and why they feel oppressed by it (or maybe they were looking for a fundamental reason why there are so many human beings being oppressed by their superordinate states that were actually supposed to serve them). Those who were looking for Tacitus’ arguments were looking for a theory on what all states might have in common, since there are no perfect states per se; as my emphasis highlights, states are only as beneficial to their people as are the employees inside them, working inside the state to produce valuable outcome.
Hence, in regards to what we now considered to be the reason for the existence of law enforcement, extract an argument on how to make it better? Not yet, since those assumptions we aligned in the prior paragraph rather align with left-winged individuals, but not with the rest of the people dedicated to politics in such a way that they established a determined persuasion. As academic research suggested⁸, the Results are manifold, although the social question might be the most intriguing due to its likelihood. The latter is not suggested by the article, since it doesn’t provide us with such an estimation. Why not? The reason is simple: One cannot measure what is the most likely reason for people to commit crimes. It depends on the cardinal factors in humanities—race, class, gender, behaviour, etc.—, but also on the offender’s state of mentality, upbringing, country in which one committed the offence, even the more locale environment in which the crime was committed. Combining all these various factors relating to the commitment solves the puzzle accurately. People in the US might best recognise the image of a young man of African-American origin murdering a young white woman with blonde hair. Of course, because it’s a racist image that might be shared by Republican politicians in the Deep South, it could be an image taken right out of a newly colourised version of “The Clansman”, also known as (“Birth of a Nation”). Aside of this slight exaggeration, yet it explains a lot about the origin of crimes. It’s manifold even in this depiction: Minorities (in the US) are the most likely to end up in poverty, starting from their (upbringing); meanwhile, the poorer the people are, the likelier they are to commit a crime (vide Fact 2 of this Hamilton Project Policy Memo provided by the (Brookings Institution). So, assuming you were of African-American background (thereby assuming that you might not be it in the first place; in case you, dear reader, are in fact of this origin, please assume that you were brought up in a low-income family and were unable to escape it. If it should be the case that you indeed are locked in such a situation, I wish you all the best for the future and maybe try to organise with people of your fate and assemble your powers to help yourselves via alternative projects to create a small utopia in your own community. The power of the people is what fuels my personal views as well, so how would I consider this idea to not work? In the end, all we have got is ourselves, yet we are all we need to create a better world (and this is more than just a calendar motto, I promise)), you were also highly likely to end up being a criminal against your own moral standards. You might even have tried everything to avoid it, but in the end, there was no way out to avoid committing deeds that were classified as criminal by the legal standards of your community. This is a not-too-uncommon situation many people slide right into, and in the end, even though they might be helped through social programs to get them back into real life, they will end up in a prison, their criminal record will be extended by one (more) sentence, and the etiquette “criminal” will stick upon them, marking them as stained in their society. “Criminals” are also less likely to be employed once released from prison, as this study⁹ proves. So, once an African-American in the US committed a crime such as stealing food from a supermarket and then being caught by the police with the corpus delicti, life is figuratively gone for this person. Since unemployment is now manifested for this marked offender, bills can no longer be paid, the family will be gone, the apartment will be gone, even the car will be beyond repair someday. Suicide appears as close as being murdered during a fisticuffs over a trashed loaf of bread in a dark alley.
Again, we find relations to money in this incident: Jobs are a necessity for every adult all over the world as long as money is the means that keeps the society running. Hence, when there is an “invisible wall” that prevents one from being employed after having gained a criminal record, one is more or less excluded from social life, from society altogether. Of course a criminal record is not an immediate means of exclusion, there are still employers who don’t bar themselves from hiring former convicts (for example, when the economy prospers, employment is high and companies might become desperate to find people eager to take over a job for their own, criminal records (don’t matter) anymore; what counts, then, is the will to work). Some of them might even decide to become freelancers in journalism (convicts might have the right amount of experience to investigate the flaws and corruption in the prison system of their country, contributing to outlets like ProPublica and finally arise to become contributors to renown outlets such as the New York Times. More unfortunate fellows, on the other hand, could again hit rock bottom again and end up in the infamous (gig economy), due to the aforementioned reason that employers turn them down due to their criminal record. This way, a vicious cycle deeper into the “crime scene” descends ever deeper, inescapable for the victims marked as offenders. States with a functioning, rehabilitative justice system would prevent this from happening through intensive resocialisation programmes intending to make a fluent transition from prison to employment possible for the former inmates. Unfortunately, at least in the US, this is not (always) the case, given the privatisation of many prisons to accumulate income and cut down costs, a concept that hardly applies to institutions that don’t naturally function this way. This is not to say that they utterly fail the people they are supposed to support to prevent them from recidivating. Especially educational programmes are a key factor in securing inmates’ futures after release; as obvious as this appears, the numbers underline this fact as well, as research by the (National Institute of Justice) (PDF) (page 7 delivers the according indicator). At least in my opinion, to for once speak more personally, a recidivism of between 11 to 13 percent appear a little bit minor, underwhelming my expectations, as well as since previous pages assumed that low education was one factor increasing the likelihood of becoming an active offender. As for the EMPLOY programme applied in 49 out of 50 US states (since the one state negatively sticking out of the crowd is not named, we all can bet on which one it might be), which directly objects to getting inmates into workplaces again to ~repaying their sojourn in prison via income tax payments~ to not offend again, shows comparably high (or low) outcome in terms of serving inmates in finding back to life: Curtly summarised in the paper itself, it is noted that EMPLOY programmes in prison improved post-employment chances and outcomes for inmates. It has to be highlighted, nevertheless, that those programmes are still treated as voluntary offers on behalf of the state or the private investor of prison facilities, meaning that there are still thousands of inmates who turn down these offers heading towards offering them opportunities to improve their lives. On the one hand, there is a reasonable endeavour to usher Congress and finally the federal states to turn such programmes into mandatory offers so that prison misconduct and increase employment rates among former inmates, but on the other hand, some of them might have reasonable arguments to turn down those offers on their behalf, mainly because they already have got plans on how to proceed once they were released. The US were founded upon the belief that the state should not coerce people into anything they don’t want, giving them as much space to move freely and decide upon their own as best as they can without violating anyone else’s freedom. Thence are such programmes voluntary. So far, this all sounds logic, but the problem is that the US are still a state in which taxes are to be paid to finance social welfare programmes for the needy, those who need support to get back upon their feet again. To finance those programmes, the income tax is applied, paid by those who work. Is it secured that those who turn down EMPLOY offers do in fact have a plan? Easily could they say that those programmes either don’t favour their preferences in terms of future jobs (they might prefer an office job while such programmes are not being offered in their particular correction centre, so that they had to force themselves into participating in it on a daily base) or that they already had a job they could enter once they were out. The most blatant response could be that they just were not interested in working, either out of laziness or the idea of paying taxes in a country they didn’t like, or generally. Still, under a voluntary supposition, they were allowed to do so; after release, they might apply for welfare, living off social programmes, not working one day afterwards, but at least not committing any crimes anymore. This is not to say that they couldn’t behave the same way after release although they obediently participated in those programmes during their prison time, even if it was just to kill time inside. We can clearly see that social programmes are easily tricked by resourceful individuals.
Yet, without getting off the track, we should ask the inevitable question that has to be asked at all costs: How could prisons be renewed in their structure and working, especially in a community system replacing states? Since I as the author of this text could easily be accused of romanticising crimes by considering offenders as victims of our time, I have to clarify that I am clearly aware of the fact that not all offenders commit crimes out of necessity. Many of them also do so out of greed, out of emotional instability (anger, wrath, jealousy, etc.), others do so because they were ordered to do so or suffer from mental disorders that let them do it against their will. There are also many who do so consciously to enter a more advantageous situation for their own, such as when one man murders another to “get” his wife (a situation hardly viable, but I think you know what I mean). Such people have to be put behind bars to maintain public safety, although the chance that crimes altogether happen might decrease due to socially equal conditions. Yet, greed might prevail even after generations having lived in this Utopia. As long as we cannot tell that this is going to happen safely, we have to create plans to be prepared for such wrongdoers trying to disrupt our tranquility. Prisons will have to exist necessarily, even though this idea might not delight us. Therefore, we have to make the best out of it and ask ourselves what is going wrong with prisons nowadays, and what we therefore have to do differently. Yet, what is it, exactly? First, there is no general accusation to be made against prisons. Their function is to rehabilitate inmates so that they can be integrated into society, get rid of their bad attitudes and any presupposition that led to their “criminal” misbehaviour/misdemeanour, depending on how one would like to call it. As for quality standards in prisons, they can vary between countries (for example, Germany vs. USA, as it has already been compared during a TED Talk, or even nationally (Two examples of how those prison conditions differ between the US and Germany: In the US, prisoners suffer intensively, ubiquitously. Despite the TED Talk drawing a hopeful picture of German prisons, they might not be all that better than the US')
Still, this doesn’t answer our question what is wrong with them; whether a prison is a hell on earth or bearable as for the time one is sentenced to remain in there is a question directed to the federal or national governments who bear the responsibility of maintaining them (or the private companies that host these prisons, as it is not unusual in the US). To transfer to a submitted solution, I shall quote from one of Emma Goldman’s essays, “Prisons: A Social Crime And Failure”:
“The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a ‘higher’ nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic (sic!) muddle, which proclaims punishment as a means of purification, o the vicarious atonement of sin. But legally and socially, the statute exercises punishment, not merely as an infliction, of pain upon the offender, but also for its terrifying effect upon others.”¹⁰
As vulgar as this cited paragraph might sound, it again raises the evidence that prisons were all about retaliation, about avenging society against this offender. Yet, why would a state spend so much money (GER: No summed-up numbers available, and not ready to do the math for our Federal Statistical Office; US: $7,042,328,000 (PDF)) on avenging people who might think that all of this money was wasted and more beneficially invested in preventing crimes at its roots? Because this concept is widely obsolete and no longer pursued by states, at least nationally. Indirectly, although not inadvertently, this happens with private prisons that intend to curb costs by burdening them upon their inmates they accommodate. This leads towards preposterous costs in exchange for goods inside prisons, prohibited deliveries inside prisons, such as books, and equally horrendous costs in purchasing them from verified sellers.
What we shouldn’t do, since we talk about prisons in the Western World of the Northern hemisphere, is comparing our prisons with those of developing countries such as in Brazil, where violence is a common issue leading towards struggles between rivalling gangs, leading towards many casualties. Such rarely happens, or is more likely to not happen at all. Yet in Germany, we do have a problem with Islamist imams radicalising migrants and Germans of different nationalities to recruit them for terrorist organisations such as ISIL. It’s an issue logically happening subsequent to a failed adjustment to heavy migration and arrival of religions that haven’t been there in such an amount beforehand. Islam first disembarked on the Iberian peninsula, leaving a significant mark in Europe, although it didn’t expand further in Europe, so that in Central Europe, the religion was widely unknown, necessities on the cultural level simply weren’t given. After impotence showed the way in failed immigration system, suspicious representatives of the Islamic religion—for example, Ditib from Turkey, holding strong relations to the Turkish government under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—were inevitable in order to not abandoning the asylum seekers behind, thereby leaving them behind for the recruiters of such terrorist organisations in a different way. Measurements necessary to prevent such developments from taking place included an extension of Islamic sciences on universities, primarily in the field of teaching of the Islamic religion (like an Islamic magisterium), in contrary to Christian religion which has been steady part of every student’s curriculum at school for the most part of Germany’s modern school system (alternatively, parents to one student could also choose ethics as a subject if they were no believing Christians and didn’t want their child to participate in this subject in school. If immigration policies had quickly been adapted to successfully integrate future citizens of the state, Islamic religion would have already become a fixed subject, teaching a moderate version of the highly despised religion accused by some to replace the “Occidental” culture based on Christian beliefs, disregarding the fact that Christianity was forced upon “pagan” believers by of naturalist beliefs; an effort the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne became famous for, creating a “showdown” against Widukind, leader of the Saxons. Beside such some teachers, imams could also be trained, though not in universities; yet priests and preachers are also trained in subsidised facilities to hold masses in churches. Likewise, imams could be trained in subsidised facilities so that states could become independent from foreign nations which fell from grace, such as Turkey did. To rely on those who morphed into hostile nations is toxic when defending the Western culture of freedom and diversity is an objective to a Union. The problem itself, moreover, was not unbeknownst to the parliament: Prior to the advent of heavy migration in 2015, the share of foreign-born citizens having migrated to Germany was large enough to consider the declaration of Islam as a second official religion or minority culture inside Germany (to highlight the profundity of the issue itself: Danish, and Sorb are official minor languages in Germany, just as Saterland Frisian language; the first and the third are languages spoken in Northern Germany, while Sorb is spoken in Eastern German. Whether “Plattdüütsch” is a minority language or just a dialect, it depends on who one asked to explain it. Even the difference between a language and a dialect is a controversially disputed debate). The problem with accepting Islam among some people is their baseless clutching on a so-called Occidental culture different from the Oriental one, disregarding the fact that even the Occidental culture is by far no singular one, isolated from foreign influences outside of the European continent. The simplest examples oftentimes expressed in this debate are the following: The numeral system used in European cultures is the Arabic system: while Germanics used ceramic plates to write with Runes, and Egyptians created a paper-like substance made of papyrus, the Chinese were the first to invent actual paper; likewise, the Chinese were the first to invent printing. The German language itself, and so it is verified for the English language, derives from the Proto-Indo-European language, a language that derived from a people located in India. It developed all the way across the Orient until it ended up on the British Isles. Throughout its development across two continents and various cultures (Persian, Indian, Slavic and the Germanic, finally), it caught up several influences which in conclusion shaped the language we now speak, although in the more basic foundation which underwent its own refinery as well¹¹.
A little bit we have come astray, but for good. Prisons are in their own respect an isolated society following its own rules. Those minor influences coming from the outside barely affect what is going on inside, so that hostile influences infiltrating this society inside a society without being detected as such and therefore put under intense surveillance are able to indoctrinate inmates beyond their release, so that they can easily be recruited for terrorist intentions. What I mean with this hollow speech is that Islamist imams are often incarcerated for hate speech and anti-Constitutional efforts; “unfortunately”, their misdemeanours are hardly viewed profoundly, so that they are treated as any felon or thief. What they did and what they are capable of doing (in regards to what they have been arrested for) is being disregarded, so that during their time in prison, they can continue their wretched work. Linguistic impairment on behalf of the policemen and watchmen inside the prisons might contribute to the radical imams’ success as well: Many imams pray in Arabic or languages of any kind that is likely to function as a lingua franca among the listeners. When the guards observing the inmates are unable to understand what the imam is preaching, but is also unpermitted to stop him from speaking in this foreign tongue, he can’t tell whether he is about to commit a crime or not. It’s a catch 22 that costs oh-so many lives in retrospective. The solution to this issue is obvious therefore, although the options to break it through are twofold: Either do upcoming executive forces have to be fluent in both German and Arabic or Turkish (depending on what is more important, or whether the fluency in these two languages will finally be balanced through the speakers inside the commissions), or the employment of policemen whose mother tongues are either Arabic or Turkish besides German has to be expanded. Needless to say that, in the end, both measurements are necessary since one by on its own won’t be enough to cover the required amount. On the other hand, two more problems arise from this necessity: Many policemen and women in training (in Germany) already fail to write flawlessly in German, so that burdening them with another language to learn from the start in order to join the forces could turn a lot of probable recruits for the police. Meanwhile those who were born in Germany but whose parents were born abroad might not favour a job in a sector that is known to share determined racist or fringe right beliefs. Racism and discrimination among one’s colleagues would distract them from ever considering taking place in there, defending law and order and protecting their “kin”, meaning those who are of a similar or akin ethnic background. Racial prejudices are what can be counted in common between police forces in the US and German police forces, perhaps due to its strong hierarchical order, ranks likening to military ones, the access to weapons, and the patriotic subtlety to defend one’s country’s order, thereby serving the nation duly. To some in particular, it might also appeal that one could round up left-winged demonstrators for committing misdemeanours, utilising violence that will be scarcely prosecuted. (Police violence in the US: here and here; in Germany, we only have that one link. (Unfortunately, for Germany, only alleged numbers are available since police violence so far has not been considered to be an addition in according statistics, nor have such cases been thoroughly documented, so that only one study as well as allegations by victims are known). Of course these are only vague reasons that don’t necessarily apply to actual cases in police forces, but this doesn’t demean its probability. Especially in the US, military ranks are even applied for police forces, in which the respective employees can also be promoted. It cannot be said by any means that such ranks, ribbons and medals don’t psychologically alter the employees’ self-comprehension; it’s the same as with motivation versus demotivation when a child shows its bad mark in a school test to its parents: When its parents tell it that although the mark is pretty bad but it can do better than that, the child is more likely to put in efforts to do it better the next time; the same effect wouldn’t take place when the child’s parents would smother their descendant for its failure. Depression about its failure would prevail, leaving a long-term effect of beliefs of its incapability in this particular subject, so that no better mark is ever going to be achieved on its behalf. The same way, military ranks might influence the employees’ understanding of their mission in society: When you’re awarded a military rank even though you work in a civilian environment, not a battlefield, you are more likely to equip excessive force, justifying it doubtlessly because you were entitled by your commission to behave this way. ‘You’re armoured as if you went to war, you’re armed, and you are called a Lieutenant, Sergeant, or Lieutenant Colonel. Crimes happen on a daily base, discontinuing tranquility and lawful maintenance, you’re in a daily battle against the evils of your country. Some people might not confess it, but this is a daily war we are fighting.’
Of course this is exaggeratedly dramatic, but who says that those who were accused of using excessive force against suspects and finally innocent victims of their overpowering violence saw themselves in such a way? Those many incidents of police violence in the US (referring to the statistics mentioned above) didn’t dwell out of thin air; and yes, even per capita, the number is incomparably high.
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| (Image by skeeze from Pixabay) |
Now that we were already speaking of police violence, we should also keep an eye on arbitrary examinations of suspects on the streets; in the US, this doubtful practice is called stop-and-frisk. The instruction really follows this way: If policemen on the streets found a person’s behaviour suspicious, they are allowed to pull this person out (in traffic as well as if this person was a pedestrian walking on a pavement) and examine him to see whether the person illegally carried a gun or prohibited substances. So far, no-one seemed to have successfully filed a lawsuit against this practice intimidating people’s privacy and dignity. It’s up to the policemen themselves whether the “suspect” provided enough evidence justifying an impromptu examination. In the country that was once founded upon the beliefs of freedom of the people from excessive force on behest of the state, may it be federal or national, the executive forces enjoy poignant freedom before those who they were supposed to protect. In the end, they are the most likely to legally harass them. Or so the public eye views it. Publicly, debates surround and continuously emerge when for another time, the police reach the headlines again for negative reasons, such as shootouts going horribly wrong once they interacted, or when police fatally shoot civilians after attempting to frisk them. Especially the latter is a controversial issue especially known in the US, more than in any other country. Ironically, the US were once founded upon the belief of self-determination and the importance of privacy. Yet the police enjoy a wide freedom when it comes to the security measurement of “stop-and-frisk”, i.e. to arbitrarily handpick civilians on the streets or walking in case they appear suspicious and might cause a threat to public safety. As expected, there are a few bullet points to orient upon, provided through a worksheet the policemen having stopped and frisked a citizen have to fill out to document the examination. (To read the document, follow this link) This way, we can tell how it comes that police forces may justify their suspects’ involuntary participation in law enforcement, possible to shape their view on the state’s executive power (as we all know, the state holds the monopoly of violence. The state alone, beside soldiers for hire as provided by Blackwater, bare the right to use force and coercion against civilians. Besides this, Blackwater offers soldiers to use in wars against other countries, so that they of course were not allowed to function as policemen in US-American cities, or cities of any other country, since they lack the state’s oversight over their actions). As it was outlined in a study conducted at Yale University¹², in reference to German sociologist Max Weber, people’s experiences with law enforcement shape their view on the same, since legitimacy itself usually depends on one’s own belief: If a community doesn’t belief in the legitimacy of a state, the state’s conditions are calamitous since he will lose the people he governs. How is a state supposed to function if the people disobey him? He will fail. Thus, the law enforcement too has to be viewed as proportionate in its actions and justified especially by those who turn out to be innocent. No-one enjoys being questioned and frisked by law enforcement out of a sudden while enjoying a walk through the city during a bright summer day.
Coming back to the worksheet I listed as the penultimate source, it might raise some eyebrows at some points. The first one is the bullet point “Fits Description” in the second section highlighted with a yellow shade, “Additional Circumstances/Factors (Check all that apply)”—what does it mean? Which description? Since this is the first page (the vertically adjusted rectangular page) and no further descriptions of the victim/suspect had to be given, it stands to question which description was meant in this box. Perhaps this is a box to be checked when police forces were put on vigilante to track down a suspect prosecuted for a recently committed crime, so that a description of the suspect’s appearance was published beforehand. Otherwise, though, the point “Fits Description” has the air of probable racial or at least generally discriminatory prejudices, such as the point of “Wearing Clothes/Disguises Commonly Used In Commission of Crime”: There is no further description of what kind of apparel is meant by this. Every one of us might immediately think/have thought of all-black clothing, including pitch black sunglasses and a neckerchief covering the lower half of one’s face; alternatively, a full-face mask only leaving the eyes and the mouth open to see. Whether this was also meant in this point, we don’t know, the point was left abstractly to match the little space available. Therefore, no deliberate offence can be detected. Only prejudices and deliberate misdemeanours on the officer’s in duty behalf can be opined, although therefore as well, hard evidence had to be brought forward so that it can also be argued.
What about the “Suspicious Bulge/Object (Please Describe)”? Well, we possibly speak about suspicious bulges hidden in one’s backpack, shoulder bag or pockets. As for the latter, especially male policemen might be cautious about believing that a male suspect tried to hide illegal substances or illegally possessed handguns in his pockets, or otherwise, the physical examination might become embarrassing for both sides mutually, although for different reasons. Otherwise, we again speak of a controversial point open for abuse. Some of those points read like a paranoid method to justify a police state. As F. A. Hayek indicated in the surge in totalitarian systems in Europe, many outspoken Socialists justified the erection of a bloated, multifunctional state (i.e. a state bearing far more responsibilities and tasks than he could apparently execute, just so that nothing will be left to the free market) with the current state of civilisation, having gone too far to maintain the liberal society that existed back then. All those individual freedoms and the low regulations were no longer viewed as beneficially to the people, but rather injurious¹³. The same way, police officers in the US seem to be permitted to single out any suspiciously looking citizen and cross-examine him or her for any reason they see according to their worksheet. Beside frankly good reasons to examine a person, such as for “Carrying Objects In Plain View Used In Commission of Crime […]”, “Furtive Movements” is another unfortunate example of how innocent people become inadvertent suspects to the police. What do they mean by furtive movements? Merriam Webster describes the adjective “furtive” as “done by stealth”, “expressive of stealth”. So, we have to imagine a person moving furtively as not only acting like an introvert but also paranoid. Isn’t this a prejudice as well? Perhaps, but we cannot call prejudices everything that could evidently indicate an offender as well. This way, we would disable ourselves as well, forcing ourselves to not intercept probable wrongdoers because we didn’t want to vilify an innocent person. Such decisions are what makes a policeman’s job difficult: He or she has to quickly fell decisions on whether someone behaves suspiciously and whether a person might threaten public safety sooner or later, if not even now.
Occasionally safeguarding neighbourhoods frequently brought to scene for crimes belongs to such obligations as well. And such obligations also seem to find introduction to the aforementioned study as well: Surveyed participants resulted in a high influx of stops among African-Americans, with p=0.059, while it was 0.056 for Whites and only 0.025 for Hispanics. The gap between the first two doesn’t seem too wide, does it? That’s because that is right. Yet, when it comes to aspects such as perceived legality—personally, as well as vicariously, i.e. as the concerned neighbourhood perceives it, when they again become suspect to crimes—and whether justice was being done during these stops, the African-American community ranks the lowest among these three consecutively¹⁴ (therefore, it also undermines the total number).
To those who remember the behaviour of policemen in the US may not be surprised that minority suspects are more likely to receive the brunt of inappropriate behaviour. Not only are the US policemen far more likely to grab their guns in any case (Baton Rouge, LA; Ferguson, MO; Colorado Springs, CO; etc.); yet, even despite these deafening information, there is no comprehensive data showing us that there is a clear sign of an overwhelming racist bias among police officers leading towards a lethally higher likelihood among African-Americans to be murdered by police officers than among any other ethnicity). The encounters mentioned in the bracket before might be the most terrifying examples in recent US-American history, mainly because they gave birth to “Black Lives Matter”, but also were they some of the most polarising murders on the police’s behalf against minorities. NFL player Colin Kaepernick hoisted the issue unto a celebrity level, thus gaining it even more traction. It henceforth enjoyed a prominence it only had for the last time during the “Black Power” movement and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Even though those mentioned murders were only the peak of the iceberg, it was (and still is) important to talk about police violence in the US, since policemen in the US are evidently trigger-happy, thus costing many innocent civilians as well as offenders their lives (the latter still didn’t deserve to die, at least during the time of their arrest. As for whether they would have received a death sentence as their punishment, we were not about to hear it anymore. As for capital punishments in general, of course they are wrong to still have them in various states in the US, since this is a medieval punishment violating the offenders’ right to the protection of their human dignity. Life sentences should be the utmost punishment to offenders, not to be exceeded and never to be executed in solitary confinement, a custody comparable to psychological terrorism. Solitary confinement is proven to increase mortality, so that people who are arrested in solitary confinement are also morel likely to die early. That’s how a punishment turns into a sneaking death penalty, the most ineffective murder legally permitted).
In regards to police violence and racism in the forefront, there are more information to this, even though this too has aged a bit already. Still, it’s data as well as what they tell us are still up to the state of the art. While the author—writing in the Yale University’s “Lux et Data” blog—states the same point that it depends on the “law’s” personal representation in shape of the police. The more the police acts in a justified way (in a way the people can recognise the police’s work as justified and according to the legal establishment), the more people will believe in the prevalence of justice before criminality. If policemen, having sworn to protect the law at all costs, misbehave in charge, why should people continue to treating the law obediently? There wouldn’t be any reason since society already entered an unlawful level.
Or did it, then? The police are not the paragon of lawfulness, they are not the idols to admire and to follow suit. They are those who have to arrest and apprehend those who did the law wrong, they don’t represent the law per se. When it comes to the representation of the law, we have got courts. As long as courts defend justice and punish those who did her wrong according to a rational sentence aiming to rehabilitate the offender instead of solely punishing him, one could believe that at least justice will be done. To assure this, nevertheless, policemen turning into offenders at charge and in the state’s service have to be treated just the same as the “regular” offenders. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds—who is supposed to investigate the case, if not the police? In such cases, a superordinate office has to take care of the case, so that the offenders are not going to investigate themselves, surprisingly telling us that they found no wrongdoing whatsoever. In the US, the FBI might have to take over such an investigation, or should have already, since many murders of civilians by policemen were never really investigated, nor were they brought to court. Most of the time, murdering police officers were put on administrative leave, but were never sentenced to go to gaol. More or less, they got away with their homicide.
Without getting further into this issue, how does this affect the idea of splitting nations and states into bare communities without a larger structure? It affects it in such a way as that instead of police forces and commissions, a more self-determined system has to be erected, less affluent to corruption and holes in the structure easily exploited by wrongdoers. Prior to this ninth chapter, I spoke about the necessity of arming oneself up to be able to defend oneself, which could be contradicted by the very existence of people not willing to shoot somebody, either to disable the person from threatening oneself, nor fatally, to stop this person from whatever he or she did that justified murder (running away is not such a reason, and would also only justify shooting the offender’s leg(s) to stop him or her from further running away. To aim at the chest deliberately would not be justified, at no costs, since an unarmed escapee, assuming he or she was unarmed, did not threaten the shooter at any point. Nor would an armed escapee, normally, unless he or she blindly fired aback, but then, still, shooting the arm whose hand carried the gun would still be a more useful target than the chest, or the spine, or whatever). One cannot force someone to carry a gun and shoot at offenders, even though it might make sense when her or his life was at stakes. In such cases, the will to survive might kick in and he or she simply pulled the trigger. Prior to this, he or she had to carry the gun firstly, though. We’re caught in a mash, obviously, and beside telling the unwilling person that he or she finally had to bear the consequences, and no-one else, it would still be unethical to leave this person alone, at least when he or she was part of the community. As for whether the community’s rules told everyone to at least arm oneself with a handgun to be able to do the least to not cause any trouble due to the incapability of defending themselves.
I am very aware of the ugliness of preemptively hurting someone even though the person planned to do the same consciously against one. Evolution taught us that only those who were able to defend themselves would make it through, while the rest would vanish. The problem is that once humanity no longer had any natural enemies beside natural catastrophes, against which they try to defend themselves by any possible way, individual humans weakened; they no longer were forced to defend themselves because no-one was likely to ever attack them, beside any of their kin. Although one is more likely to be robbed on the streets than to be mauled by a grizzly or assailed by a pack of wolves (or a single wolf)—or especially because of this!—, people lost their instinct of survival. Rather than viewing it as conspicuous to occasionally eradicate a problem lying before one, they try to avoid it somehow else, getting away from it; by any means necessary would they confront the issue, as long as it didn’t include committing a capital crime. Presumably, people were more likely to break an offender’s bones, but would never take his or her life. The point of differentiation is that only one of those two ways of defending oneself excluded any chance of survival, which meant that one chose to play God. One of the Ten Commandments told us not to murder one another, and Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. One doesn’t necessarily need to be taught in a Christian or generally religious way, yet our all understanding, or of our society’s greater part (maybe?), murder is something irresponsible and to be avoided as long as it didn’t cost our own life. Understandable it would be—who of us was chose to decide over one’s life’s continuation? None of us are; not even judges should be allowed to punish someone by a death sentence, to execute him by the descent of the gavel (at least in Germany, this is the case. I spoke about it in previous pages). More broadly speaking, we should even consider any punishment behind bars to be a “theft of lifetime”, with the mere exception that the person will still be alive; one day, he or she will be released from prison, to live on in the outside. Once a “dead man walking” entered the execution chamber, he or she knew that life would soon end. The “angel of death” with the lethal injection in his or her hand awaits the fulfillment of coerced suicide against a poor devil finally suffering from an archaic way of punishment. This is not to say that murder for lower reasons (greed, jealousy, wrath, etc.) was ever justified: All I say is that someone’s misdeed doesn’t justify every way of punishment. There usually has to be a limit to it, and the sky doesn’t count as a limit. The old saying that we have to hold ourselves higher than the wrongdoer might sound inflationary and worn off, yet it bears a core of truth—that we must not become the wrongdoers ourselves in our search for justice.
X
For quite some time, we now talked about prisons and the police forces which, in a better society, wouldn’t exist, since there was no need for their existence. It would therefore be wrong to allege either one of being substantial threat to our freedom, even though they had a choice to not follow this despicable path. As Charles Krauthammer once coined in one of his most famous essays: “Decline is a choice” (although the essay was concerned about something different, but the title works either way). The argument wouldn’t work, though, just as Capitalists are wrong to advise low-wage workers to tell them to look for a different employment with a higher salary. The job they execute is still needed, it just isn’t paid that high, and is unlikely to experience an eventual wage raise. That’s why minimum wages were introduced: To support those who work in these low-wage fields, executing a poorly paid profession that is needed by society nonetheless. Correspondingly, to tell policemen and those who are in training to become ones that they should cease their work and look for something different, something of a less detested reputation. The fact that they are employed in this field and goodly paid shows us that their job is in dire need to be executed.
A rather small topic sprang in my mind out of a sudden, it relates to a point I previously wrote about: Interventionism in a world full of communities. Capitalists tend to underestimate the value of cultural achievements humans have created, which is the reason why the sometimes fail to make a case for institutional facilities such as museums, operas or theatres. In their logic, those institutions had to defend themselves on the market, showing that they are worth being paid for. Otherwise, they would be shut down eventually, because they were deemed worthless by the consumers. They don’t see anything of value beyond what is being paid for usually, such as nutrition or other resources traded on stock market. States exist for such institutions, to pay them out, therefore vouchsafe their perseverance. Superficially argued, this wouldn’t change in a world of independent communities: “Institutions of cultural maintenance” would be preserved by the people of respective professions, and whether money was still in regular usage or not, their fate was optimistic. Yet here is the point we have to think about: Assuming that the region in which New York City (NYC) lies, was under a Capitalist leadership, and institutions such as the Tate Modern Gallery or the Guggenheim Museum did not make a living out of their works put on display, therefore had to consider a closure someday. What would happen to these works? Would they be sold? And to whom? Who would ascertain that those who received those cultural treasures take good care of them? As it is common sense among Capitalists, there are no moral barriers in terms of trade: Those who are ready to pay for a good one could offer to them, why should he be rejected from sealing that deal? Instead of morality, among Capitalists only exists an antonym to morality: Virtue signalling. A derogative terminology to describe those who behaved normatively in regards to their moral standards, pushing others to behave the same way as they did. Those who accuse others of virtue signalling feel infringed in their freedom of action, speech or movement. More benevolently speaking, one could argue that normative approaches to morality were almost always negatively observed since those who behaved in a normative way usually assumed their own moral views to be superior to anyone else’s, thereby receiving respective responses; it had got nothing to do with an assumption that Capitalists usually were amoralists. They might just follow their own moral standards and were tired of hearing from others what they perceived to be better or superior. Frankly, it’s not unlikely that many Capitalists followed a morality surrounding property rights, radical freedom and individualism. In terms of practice, the active involvement of one’s moral points of view, any morality could be misused, yet then, it’s the equipper who fails morality, not morality itself. Abuse of anything has usually led towards the depiction of normally benevolent ideas and symbols, even led towards utter distortion of symbols and views. One only had to think of the Futhark, the Germanic alphabet, which lost specific letters to the Nazis; the Swastika, once symbol of the Hinduists, lost to the Nazis too; Buddhism, once a religion of peace and calmness, was turned into a nationalist idea by Buddhists of Myanmar, who turned their religion into an identity headed against Muslims; Hinduists suffered a likewise distortion under India’s PM Narendra Modi, the jingoist leader enforcing the battle against Muslims in his country. Just as a few examples of abuse of symbols and ideas in the world in our New Age, some more might be found perhaps, but it wouldn’t be necessary to mention them now. The point may be clear. Symbols or traditions that were not copyrighted by their original inventors are open to abuse, without ever being legally prosecuted (more or less was I joking). It’s true, though, and therefore should not function as the foremost example of an idea or symbol in action. To be precise, people should feel motivated to make their own research to see whether he or she they saw practicing a belief were right to do so or misinterpreted the whole idea/symbol in such a way that they should be corrected by someone who knew better. More politically an example, libertarianism is often hijacked by racists and nationalists (confusingly), distorting the entire idea to their favour, to express a misled critique of the state they currently inhabit.
Never mind, we completely went off the actual topic we raised, although culture of course includes one’s belief, politically as well as culturally. The idiosyncratic case of communities preferring to only preserve what they find culturally worthwhile because it emerged in their own culture (for example, the pyramids of Giza which might no longer be protected from terrorist attacks because people who thought them to be worthless in their regards since they as Muslims didn’t care for monuments that arose during a pagan culture praying unto pharaohs who claimed to be of a dietary dynasty). We saw such a carelessness for culture when ISIL terrorists destroyed the ancient site called Palmyra; from their observation, Palmyra was an archaic relic unimportant in their Islamic culture (or what they understood as such). As quick as it happened, no intervention could have prevented this destruction from happening, yet we do have to think about whether interventionism was justified when it came to saving monuments of human history from its rather dark side.
Again, we face a question we cannot generally answer: As aforementioned, it depends on whether one is rather indifferent about the arts or architecture, or whether one weighs on them, and wishes to preserve them as long as possible for generations to come. To broaden the field of interventionism in this field, we should also add the protection of the world’s climate, and whether communities should unite and intervene against other communities who idly continued running coal plants and the production of combustion engines instead of focusing on more sustainable technologies like windmills and hydrogen-powered cellular cars. The difference between these two is that when it comes to climate change, we are concerned about a more ultimate issue: Whether we manage to successfully address climate change or not will determine whether this planet remains inhabitable or not. It could be argued that climate change is like a checkpoint we have to surpass in order to address any other future topic presuming this checkpoint’s surpassing. Therefore, intervention of any kind in regards to this and its positive outcome should be ethically permitted as long as a consortium of different-minded communities or states (depending on which world we speak about; the rule itself is applicable to both situations) was involved in the decision-making regarding a certain entity. As much as a consortium was not necessarily required to intervene somewhere (the US intervened in several countries to tremble regimes all by themselves, “successfully”. Never did they consult other states to ask them for their advice for their future plans. Fortunately, not all of the world’s states are as strong as the US, so that interventions might be easily fought back by their targets), as better it would be to ascertain the intervention’s success. The reason is simple: Those states that are the most pollutant on any scale are also the strongest: China, India, the US. It took the entire European Union, if not Europe entirely, to invade a country such as China to coerce it into shutting down all of its coal plants and further enforce their development in solar plants, for example. Moreover did we have to work out a detailed plan to explain ourselves what to do exactly when it comes to intervening in China, India or the US. Just moving in and striking down its military, assuming it even excelled, was not the end of the story, as one could easily imagine. Blackmailing the Chinese into changing their means of energy production won’t work either; the Chinese are trained into withstanding outside pressures, furthermore do they hold advantageous means in their own hands: Whether any of the production will be relocated in the Western hemisphere after states have been deconstructed depends on the communities respectively. Such is the issue for work and trade, again on the issue of money. Moneychangers or barters were two entities to dominate trade between European communities and mainland China (in full shape as a nation or as a Chinese edition of kleinstaaterei (for some semiautonomous regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet or Hong Kong/Macao, a dissolution of the Chinese mainland state could come in handy for their full release from the politburo’s hands. Nevertheless, especially for China, a deconstruction might become the most fiercely embattled deconstruction, since dictatorships hardly ever let loose; we have been seeing this during the Hong Kong protests, which began with the implementation of an extradition law, which finally wasn’t implemented at all, but led towards brutal protests against the Beijing-affiliated prime minister Carrie Lam, who those protesters wanted to see removed without any compromises; furthermore did they want to hold democratic elections to succeed her (Nota bene: This timeline is not complete as there doesn’t exist any definitive timeline yet). Bitcoins could also replace the overall money exchange, ease global shipments and trade altogether, thus make a point in leaving production where it is—in mainland China—, and enjoy idle leisure in Europe, with only a few people remaining in work where it is necessary; agriculture, for example, or in goods and services to produce those things that don’t need to be outsourced.
Work itself is a question we were concerned about before, and what will be left of work once robotics will take over most of the production. Most likely it will be dissolved by robots, so that humans indeed can enjoy their lives as they wish to do so, even if it meant for them to continue following a regular day of work. No-one should be forced to abandon it, as long as people were able to make a choice. It would be hard-headed to say that one’s life’s pursuit predominantly was to follow a nine-to-five day (or however long or short one’s normal day at work is) of work and some time of one’s own. If work was to be replaced by machines, this should be seen as a means of a merrier life, not of fear about how to earn money henceforth, because money was still the central means of life’s proceeding. Some people I talked with about this issue suggested that machines could be constructed in such a way that their automatic functioning should be turned off manually whenever it was due, whether it was during a maintenance operation or because somebody wished to do the job oneself. In terms of routine and equal quality standards, such an option sounds foolish, especially when it comes to offering people work spontaneously, because they felt like it. Either there were regular jobs for humans or machines alike, or one sole option—humans or machines—would be implemented. Not both alternatively. We indeed had to fear a sudden decrease in quality when humans suddenly took over the machine’s job, and on the other hand, we might experience a sudden improvement in quality, which might finally confuse consumers. The question is: Is it worth it? To program or construct machines in such a way that humans were able to take over control as they found it favourable? At least to me this sounds like a desperate implementation of oneself into a progress one wanted to have the best out of both worlds: The leisure of a market’s domination of machines to do all the work, and the joy of working as it pleases one; not all the time, just as it is delighted. The longer one thinks about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. Actually, this development—cheap production through machines that routinely produce everything precisely, with only a few strays, while producing akin products of the same high quality in such a large amount that it will be available en masse—could cause two effects:
- Vital products could be produced so cheaply that at best, no-one will have to starve anymore, anyplace in the world. Although it would be possible today as well, the problem is a matter of distribution. Perhaps, assuming a flawless communication between the communities around the world—globalisation will add its share to the success of this—the construction of machines in every community in this world, the production could take place in such a way, with any ingredients available just in time, additionally those that were imported from abroad.
- The sudden addition of freedom to all the denizens of this world could ease some people’s endeavour to add unique products manufactured one piece at a time to the ordinary line products. Such endeavours were oppressed all-too-often by the necessity of economic efficiency and the requirement of profits outnumbering the costs. With the exclusion of those two requirements, such “pastimes” can become a perpetual activity.
Another time, I was pretty naïve, speaking like a participant in a beauty pageant, on my dreams for the future of this world. Yet, those ideas are not too far-fetched. Manufacturers with a dozen of employees at best, and a local range in distribution, can hardly make ends meet these days, due to the large concerns producing the ever same products in line by the thousands, distributing their goods to hundreds of supermarkets and discounters, earning millions in revenue. Manufactures, on the other hand, may at best be able to pay their employees at the end of the month, but little will remain down the line. Exceptions remain, though; still, they hardly make anything up in contrary to those who went bankrupt. Freelancers won’t be able to make manufacturing their enduring outcome in a capitalist society, despite what others may say. The chances for success as a freelancer in any field, if one intended to run an own business instead of working in the gig economy (this may include working with the concerns such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo; or as a freelancing journalist for any major news outlet) are comparably low since there is no field which is not already heavily embattled; furthermore, there are never enough customers interested in buying unique products that will exceed the prices for ordinary options by far. The reason: People don’t earn enough money to regularly choose unique options over ordinary ones, and those who do earn enough won’t balance the falter by buying gargantuan amounts of one product, even to succour the seller. Of course, from time to time, people will fly in and buy those manufactured pieces, but it won’t endure the long-time of figurative desertion. This is not to say that for most of the time, people would not buy from this seller at all, but those who are going to buy from this manufacturer (either sometimes or almost regularly) will be too few to warrant the manufacturer’s shop’s perseverance. Some might allege the state of endangering such manufacturer’s existence through high taxes and perhaps through unconscionable rents, in case the proprietor of the foundation of the manufacturer’s shop or manufactory is in fact the state, and no private owner who has no use of the ground him- or herself, yet the latter case would be hypocritical if we just imagined that the manufacturer could also be endangered through stringent rents on the landlord’s behalf. Apparently, we have to imagine that those same people who condemned the state’s actions would shrug when the landlord stood on display. “Well, this is how the market works”, those people would likely state, “the manufacturer just didn’t satisfy as many customers as he had to in order to survive. But don’t you worry, his descendants might excel eventually.” In such a manner, Austro-American economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises justified the market’s grinding procedure in which some of us might fail while our own children might someday be successful¹⁵. It would be wrong, of course, to say that this entire system was flawed and inhumane to the core. Resources are scarce, so that pointless wastage has to be prevented without stately force. Stately force would lead towards arbitrariness on the leading positions’ behest. Generally, moreover, there is no prevalent trust in people to think rational in terms of resource usage. To imagine that people could arrange with others in a community, to trust one another in order to not fall in need of a supreme leader (or a merely Democratically elected leadership, including a lifelong-employed cohorts of bureaucrats), is already a treacherous undertaking putting a great idea at risk and, in a worst-case scenario, float the popularity of pernicious ideas such as totalitarianism of any kind (may it be Nazism, Socialism or any unideological evil (i.e. evils that don’t presumably follow any ideology but are just inherently bad). It’s a scheme we usually see during elections, when a cabinet followed a doctrine (such as fiscal Conservatism) that ended up mainly unfavourable among the ruled people, who consequentially vote for a party that promises to withdraw those policies people experienced so unfavourably. More or less, the Brexit plebiscite was such an election, although the people didn’t punish their ruling party (which also introduced this referendum in the first place) for their policies, but what they recognised as a superordinate leadership from Bruxelles in Continental Europe. In their opinion, the overwhelming bureaucracy and the stymieing regulations that allegedly thinning out their trades. In the end, it was Brexit to blame for a lowered GDP and shortages for the people due to the requirement of new trade deals with different nations, and higher costs due to tolls along the border (While this article mostly focuses on shortages in case of a no-deal Brexit, which were a Brexit without a trade or travelling deal between the Continental European Union and Ireland, the same would also more broadly apply to a situation in which Brexit was done according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans, but with a Brexit deal at least in accordance with the EU. Still, minor shortages might be experienced due to trade deals in progress with other major markets such as with Northern America. The USMCA deal between the three North American countries only proceeded so quickly because no major differences from the former NAFTA deal were made. If anything new had been negotiated, it would have taken up to six years at least).
What does this tell us? First of all, that—Democracies are flawed in such a way that politicians depend on their people to elect them while those who are supposed to vote for them might be the ones who understand the least of what is going on in the capital city, what politicians do, and how their decision-making proceeds, what kind of facts have to be minded and why hardships might occasionally be necessary to succeed into something far greater than before (although their justification tends to be usually hypocritical in reflection to their own salary which counts a multitude of what their people averagely earn). This is not to say that even politicians make mistakes they continuously deny, thereby endangering their own credibility. It’s a cardinal failure to believe that politicians had to be inerrable; a belief people and politicians alike fell for. Hence, people are angry on politicians for making mistakes and then defending those same mistakes. Likability, as subjective as it is, also depends on whether someone is able to confess having been mistaken in a certain issue, then correcting it. A seldom event it is to see a ruler resigning after having acknowledged their vain attempt, the closest it comes to a confession. Why does it happen so rarely? The answer, to some, sounds clear: They clutch onto their power. It’s a cliché uttered so long as people kept rumouring about politicians’ intentions behind according actions, it’s a way to explain to oneself why their representatives behaved in the way they did. A similar explanation is to accuse them of being in lobbyists’ pockets; this happens in particular with politicians who defend an economically friendly policy that partially hurts middle- und underclass people. Whether this actually matches reality, few dare to double-check even though the means to control it exist: in the US, the non-profit organisation “Open Secrets” provides classified information on corporate donations to specific representatives and senators, while in Germany, “Lobbycontrol” lists donations by citizens and corporations as long as they are provided in reports to the General Accounting Office. Loose laws, although, leave plenty of space to not mention some of them, so that even those reports only obscurely display who actually donated to whom.
Do such allegations hold on to the truth? A difficult question; to think this way presupposes a negative assumption, so that a non-biased option is irrevocably lost. We could as well opine that the leaders who fell from grace were apprehensive of a trembling state of control once their government abruptly broke apart, so that a vacuum of power dwelled, a date for new elections had to be set and a temporary government had to be installed. Prior to their resignation, people already took it to the streets, expressing their utmost anger, while those same protests are likely to continue after the president’s/prime minister’s/dictator’s/etc. resignation, so that they might be heard about their favourite option on who’s to succeed the recently vacated office. Depending on which state we talk about, police violence is about to overshadow the protests; those policemen are not necessarily invigorated by their own beliefs in the unrighteousness of those protests leading towards a force-fed step-down: Mostly, those policemen enact on behest of the president or subordinate secretaries/ministers who ordered them to break down those protests. As if history didn’t teach them better, forceful oppression of protesters lead towards international outrage and condemnation, probably implemented sanctions further weaken the country’s economy: Inflation rises, poverty strikes the people, further enraging them, aspiring them to move on with their protests. At some point, violence might be broadly accepted as a means of combating the rogue government. Only at this point does protesting even enjoy a chance of working out. While I would normally recommend to read my respective test which I previously wrote on the pointlessness of nonviolent protests, it might be more useful to again quote Emma Goldman who said that “If anything was likely to make a change in society, it was already prohibited” (not verbatim (Origin unknown, at least commonly referred to Ms. Goldman). She was right about that, more or less, while it depends what one meant by “change” exactly. It’s easy to accuse Democratic governments (or governments in general) of obstructing any (meaningful) change in society, and that it lied in the hands of the people to enforce the change they find worth pursuing, the abolition of governments in general as the most radical intent to be thought of. It could also be said that she spoke of those exact meaningful changes worth mentioning. The closest idea to thinking of what she meant was anything meaningful that could lead towards partially losing control over the people. Because, what good is a government that kept its people on a loose line? (Yes, I was being sarcastic here). Ms. Goldman found a logical paradox in her aphorism (if we want to consider it an aphorism): Democratic governments are systematically limited in their freedom of movement: They can only go as far as they can also keep control of their people, of everything that is going on. To enact only one bill (e.g.) that went too far could mean that the people were more freely to act independently of their government. Speaking metaphorically, the government is like a ball oscillating inside a field limited by pillars at every corner. Above this ball is a puppeteer holding the string to which the ball is attached, but the string would tear off immediately as the ball transcended those pillars’ lines. The ball, in real life, was the control, which roams the political field of control, while the puppeteer symbolised our dear politicians, gambling with their control by occasionally oscillating their control closer to the lines, while also oscillating it with less bravado, centralising it to enjoy a period of calmness (which the people might enjoy as well, especially those who exclaim on Twitter their exhaustion from politics. My fellow Democrats who closely watched every hearing on C-SPAN (I didn’t, I only read about the key takeaways. Ain’t nobody got time for that (whole shitshow of Jim Jordan (R—OH) grasping for attention) might feel what I mean by that.
It’s easy to understand what happened when a politician resigned or should have considered resigning to bring back tranquility and order to his or her country. This is uttered with ease when speaking about once-Democratically elected leaders, but naïve when speaking of dictators such as Robert Mugabe († 06.09.2019) of Zimbabwe or Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. Both of them have turned their countries into respective persiflages in their own regards: Belarus is the last remaining dictatorship in Europe (and even a member of the European Union! (state of information: 10th December 2019)), Zimbabwe suffers from an ineffable inflation rate, having turned its currency completely worthless. How did that happen? Mugabe exploited his own people, isolated the country from the Western world, didn’t install policies to combat droughts and bad harvest. An example of carelessness and indifference by the book, the former fighter for Zimbabwe’s independence from England became a symbol of how the postcolonial era in Africa disrupted aspiring nations into failures one by one (exceptions might be Ethiopia, which became independent from Italy in 1941 (while it kept Eritrea dependent on it until 1991, which marked Ethiopia’s landlocked condition), whose leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for the solution of the conflict between his country and neighbouring Eritrea (although the piece did not last long. Both fare well economically, their political field appears comparably stable; at least in Angola, though, corruption is not unbeknownst to the people, as a five-part investigative series showed). On the conditions that led towards this continental example of failed states, we shall not stick, since this is not part of this chapter’s interest, we spoke about politicians’ understanding of responsibility in front of their own people. Dictators of course don’t have any feeling of responsibility in front of their people, or otherwise, they might have pursued a fair victory in an election to be elected through the better qualifications or arguments in opposite to their contestants. This way, they might have become statesmen or –women in their country’s history; so far, no dictator ever usurped the highest office to lead their country towards prosperity, economically as well as socially. Dictators usually knew that they stood no chance in a just election, so that they chose the “easy way in”.
What we must not leave out in terms of politicians’ responsibility are the representatives and secretaries who misemploy their office for their own good in spite of those they are supposed to serve. In current administrations in Germany and the US, we have got a couple of examples of such abuses:
- In the US: Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), who used money invested in his ministry to use for his own furniture in his office. He did not resign.
- In Germany: Andreas Scheuer, secretary of traffic and infrastructure, who sealed a deal over tolls for vehicles entering Germany to pay their fair share for using German roads and autobahns. Prior to ever having been sealed, it was called discriminating and impossible to pass since it violated the law of the European Union. Disregarding any such evidence of its immediate failure, he moved on, paid the involved companies—CTS Eventim, a company in ticket selling for events, and Kapsch, an Austrian company. (This is not the latest progress as Mr. Scheuer’s unlawful misbehaviour is also going to be challenged in court, but at least, this one is in English)—with taxpayers’ money, and saw his deal imploding, as expected. When it came out how much money he wasted, he was caught in a gauntlet of criticism, which didn’t move him towards considering his resignation. Furthermore did he accuse a pointless media outrage headed against him to despising him publicly.
Of course these are only two examples, many more might have been found especially in the US, among Representatives such as Duncan Hunter (R—CA), who, together with his wife, spent taxpayers’ money (from their own district) for personal expenses; or Devin Nunes (R—CA), who used taxpayers’ money to travel to Europe to meet with Rudy Giuliani’s (President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer) henchman Lev Parnas; of Greg Gianforte (R—MO) who once body-slammed a “Guardian” journalist who asked him about his plans on Medicare during a press conference. He received appraise from President Donald Trump (For those who didn’t know: He’s also Montana’s only representative. Due to Montana’s small size, not more than one district exists). There are multiple examples of bizarre politicians who might have been better off having resigned and vacating their office for someone fitter.
The problem is that not every offence is so severe that they had to be prosecuted therefore, which would lead towards a dishonourable resignation; with some, it is more fitting to speak of a resignation out of respect for the office’s responsibility. As you could recognise from this description, we speak of an abstract concept rather than a lawful inscription to follow by. Such is the same with politicians who throughout their tenure acted rather poorly, therefore would be wished to resign. Normally, those who think this way would find approval among like-minded people on the internet, in social networks; polls barely represent their opinion, though, which makes one wonder how this could be. The most likely response to this is: That person lives inside an echo chamber into which no differing opinion enters, so that one experiences a non-standardised reality. On the other hand, polls are disputable when it comes to whether they evidentially display the average opinion in society. One point against this suggestion would be the small amount of surveyed people; approximately one thousand people are being surveyed per poll, as diverse as possible to display the “mixture” of society as it is (especially in the US, Hispanics and black voters are decisive votes during general elections). Their methodology is not the problem, needless to say: It’s the small amount of people they generally survey that limits their polls’ significance (nota bene: I speak of both countries, Germany and the US, when speaking of polls’ significance in public opinion). Whether there is a necessary amount of people to be reached to verify a poll, I am not aware of, since I am not a sociologist; most likely there is one. Still, if this amount is located somewhere around a thousand people, this does not last long to function as a remarkable point of identification about the mass opinion. To have a mentionable survey, we need to have manifold factors to recognise to assemble various opinions included in our society. Spontaneously brainstorming those factors, I would name the following:
- Race (Hispanic, black, Asian, Latino, Arabic…)
- Class (Upper class, middle class, lower class, somewhere in between)
- Sex/Gender (Male, Female, intersectional…)
- Migrant (which generation? First, Second…?)
- Who they voted before (in terms of understanding how many people averagely changed their mind after the last election)
- Their personal ideological “location” (Liberal, Conservative, Socialist… (To see if there were any unexpected tendencies in voting behaviour)
- Equal shares of age group (18 to 35, 35 to 64, 64 to approximately 90; or so); depending on how many groups are considered in one poll, their shares should equal either 25 percent, 33 percent, 12.5 percent or whatever.
This is all I could think of after obscuring my carcinogenic organ tempestuously. It took me a few more minutes than I planned to, but all in all, this would be a good start to create a worthwhile poll that could create a more detailed depiction of how the public thinks about respective questions. Furthermore, we had to stock up the required amount of surveyed people to approximately five thousand. I am fully aware of the naïveté in these words, that it was hardly feasible to execute in a given time in which a poll was demanded (since most polls are demanded by broadcasters or news outlets, barely surveyed to publish them on their own, although they will also be published on their website separately, mentioning he, she or it who/that demanded it to be created in the first place. Some people assume pollsters conduct their results in such a way as it pleases most their clients’ audience’s main bias; while this sounds bizarrely legit regarding how often this (false) assumption matches what can be viewed in news reports, there hasn’t been any hard evidence to establish this assumption), yet it also has to be contemplated what good a “half-baked” poll is in regards to parties that try to adjust themselves to public opinion, and people who would like to know how the great majority thinks about the governments’ doings? The results will stay vague in terms of the broader view, so that they can only provide a narrow spy through the looking-glass while others would expect an intense look through the bulwark. The latter is also what the people should be provided, or otherwise, one’s personal echo chamber would be good enough as well, but would take less time to concentrate on (either when one read the entire surveillance study or just a report extracting the key takeaways).
How does this relate to what we were talking about shortly beforehand? When it comes to projection of numerical values, bias and relative relations are crucial factors to estimate both entities in this problem. What I mean: Both the US and Germany are large countries with five- to six-digit amounts of people mutually. Hence, when people take their dismal to the streets, their crowd size might look overflowing, while in relation to the absolute number of people living in the country, the crowd ranks obliviously small.
If someone should have loudly exclaimed: “What an unfair comparison is that?!” this person was right, we cannot compare a protest’s crowd to the last census of the country’s population, it doesn’t even make sense. It would make more sense to compare it to other protests of a similar subject, such as protests against a/the government. It could direct towards the activeness of certain ideological affiliations, for example people affiliated to left-winged ideologies compared to right-winged ideologies. An example which became infamous in the interim is the comparison between the inauguration crowd size of 44th president Barack Obama and 45th president Donald J. Trump. Images were shared across the internet, sometimes falsified to let Trump’s inauguration crowd size look larger than his predecessor’s. Beside the narcissist underlining that some president’s crowd size was even of any interest (what matters in the end is the legacy that will survive his tenure), it shows some indicators on whose wing might be more proactive when it comes to representation (a seeing and being seen, to speak indistinctly and colloquially): Obama’s crowd was indeed larger (To understand the facts on crowd size measurement and whose crowd was larger now, read this one as well as this one, although yet-unmentioned factors might have played a role in this visible difference: Barack Obama was a classical liberal when it came to interior policies, while he was strongly interventionist in foreign policies, having outnumbered his Republican predecessor George W. Bush in drone murders in Afghanistan and the Middle East (especially when it comes to civilian casualties The Council on Foreign Relations delivers the definitive death toll on President Obama’s drone strike murders, while the Chicago Sun-Times reminds us that under President Trump’s presidency, far more drone strike murders were committed. Therefore, he mainly abducted urban liberals from the middle class who could spontaneously afford a flight (or train ride) to DC (spontaneously since a liberal wouldn’t have traveled to DC to participate in the inauguration if Mitt Romney (R—UT) had been elected the 43rd/44th president of the United States). Trump, on the other hand, mostly abducted blue-collar workers from rural areas in the West, so that to them, there already were two reasons why to rather watch the inauguration on TV. Regarding the fact that there may also be plenty of people who may have voted for Trump but didn’t feel like spending money on travelling all the way to the Beltway to watch him speak publicly. As it turned out, in the end, he was about to hold multiple campaign rallies throughout his entire tenure, all over the country, particularly in countries which he won bigly or which are considered to be swing states, so that he had to assure them to be red by the end of his first tenure. Hence, almost every follower of his was eventually able to see him speaking in public for a far less costly price.
Just by this one example, we could see that the question is not as easy as to be answered by right-winged versus left-winged. We have to observe the specific situations we chose for our comparison. To choose adequate objects to compare to one another, therefore, also requires us to find two objects that are as similar in regards to the situation and the location as possible. Otherwise, we might find differences that might ultimately bring up complications to those who could have participated but finally didn’t, therefore pulled down their brothers-in-ideology. Consequentially, overlooking this entire problem as such surrounding protests as a means to measure, we should abstain from taking them too serious. It might be more profitable, contrarily, to focus on groups in Social Networks such as Facebook or Twitter (in the latter, thickly crowded accounts by persons of public interest such as politicians, journalists would accord to Facebook groups, since those who don’t follow specific persons for mutual beliefs and points of view are rare, compared to those who follow them out of a shared persuasion).
Again, we have to ask us the same question over and over again: What has this got to do with the aforementioned concern we highlighted? Little it has got to do with it to the distracted eye. But we were talking about politicians’ responsibility and how to read the public opinion, so that they do themselves know when the people are mainly tired of what they do, so that they vacate the office under high approval. In the Western world, we momentarily see many politicians who seem to live in their own echo chamber, not recognising that it was time for them to retire; rather do they stick to their offices as if their life depended on it. In the US, Trump would be the perfect example, regarding his rather low approval rating dwindling at 49 percent at best, and in Germany, it would be the infamous “GroKo”, which continuously ruled for four legislative periods, equaling 16 years in a row (This might not be the most recent article, but it gives you an understanding of what is meant by this everlasting coalition in case you didn’t know yet.)). Polls might be in her favour, although here, too, the margin is low, as well as its approval altogether. It’s heinous to believe that continuing it was to the people’s liking, especially in terms of the Union’s partner, the SPD, which currently polls at 11 percent singly. If elections took place this Sunday, they might still carry a majority if they put their votes together, but still, a great part of the people who voted would be left behind in exhaustion, since they voted for an end to it. It’s an issue that disgraced the incumbent government and would again strengthen the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), to which almost any party with double-digit results in polls share a common objective, namely to prevent her from ever coalescing with anyone, or gaining enough votes to become an inevitable partner. In one way, this will become impossible nevertheless: When the AfD reaches about 20 percent (next to the Greens) and no coalition between the Union (Centre-Right, although having been considered rather Social Democrat post-2010 to 2015), the SPD (Social Democrats, although reckless when it comes to defending their own ideals before their coalition partner CDU (Union)) or the Greens (left-winged liberal, although behaving superficially and populist, it remains to see how they would function outside of the opposition) was created, the AfD was right to wait in front of the Union’s doorstep to offer herself for a coalition. Childish it would be to consequently reject her since she hitherto was not prohibited due to her ideological background (although party members never cease to exclaim that this only belonged to the “Flügel” (Wing), a fringe-right wing (there was no felt need of creativity in giving the wing a name to stick out of the crowd) headed by Bernd Höcke (a politician and former history teacher from Thuringia)), but didn’t establish the collectively shared belief by the rest of the party. Unfortunately, there are well-reasoned arguments contradicting that almost naïve, if not ignorant, belief in the normalcy of that “anti-establishment” party. While it would be more convincing to a broader mass of voters to stand to who they were instead of remaining in a constant state of denial about their own identity while dog-whistling in direction to extreme/radical right-wingers and anti-Semites (to those who might have passed it: During their most recent party congress, a new co-chairman was elected; among those who applied for this position was a politician from Baden-Württemberg, Wolfgang Gedeon, an author of various academic and miscellaneous non-fiction books; he is also accused of openly expressed anti-Semitism. Only once did his party try to throw him out, without success), they also behave like the US’ GOP, turning themselves into a farcical mimicry (they might, by now, also share a mutual ideology, even though the relative amount of outspoken white supremacists might be higher in the AfD than in the modern-day GOP; still, individuals such as Steve King (R—IA) are still a rarity, or so I believe. Alt-Right upstarts such as Devin Nunes (R—CA), Matt Gaetz (R—FL), Jim Jordan (R—OH) are more likely to be met).
Why should the Union coalesce with the AfD, though? Wouldn’t that be a betrayal on Democratic standards, since the AfD is highly likely to overturn certain Constitutional laws? Perhaps, but then, the party also had to come to terms with her partner, which the Union then would be. She is also most likely to maintain her majority in such a coalition, so that she predominated within the coalition unabridged. The AfD, at most times, had to obey her; despite her voters’ belief, she couldn’t move entirely freely, spitting upon migrants (to whom they are stabbers and rapists by and large). Former federal president Joachim Gauck spoke about a coalition with the AfD in order to “demystify” her, for which he received a lot of outrage. The German online satirical outlet “Postillon” compared him to Paul von Hindenburg, who declared Adolf Hitler the Reich’s chancellor, allegedly “demystifying” him and the NSDAP). Apparently, this was a weak joke to jump upon the bandwagon. Those people who threw Gauck under the bus never considered an alternate route to prohibiting the AfD or ignoring her throughout the daily work in the parliament. They thought that either way would work out well and someday, the AfD faded into oblivion. So far, this didn’t happen, the AfD is up and well, hard to be ignored while some of her delegate behave like children, crying for attention with an unrefined language; their short speeches are oftentimes responded with a likewise language vice versa. A fitting pendant to show trials would be those show discouragement. Neither side vividly or tenably defended our liberal society; more likely did they misdirect her for their own party’s reputation, pretending to care for her while actually just spewing their own dogmas.
To some, this last sentence sounded like what many right-wingers would express sotto voce. I beg to differ, though. We have to realise that to polarise between the lines won’t save our liberal Democracy, yet this is what most left-wingers (I single them out on purpose) execute nowadays: They polarise, almost dogmatically lift their own way of thinking as the one that rules supreme above all. There is nothing wrong about confidence in one’s thinking, and it’s also not what I want to accuse them of when saying that they unnecessarily and counterproductively polarised; what I want to highlight, though, is the way of how they encounter their enemies in the discourse (we are not going to replace the civil discourse with the murderous battlefield the Alt-Right hopes to emerge to fight us “Cultural Marxists”): To all intents do they not only do they try to skim over such far right-wingers all the same, but also do they seem to believe that via this method, they could excel in fighting the bad breed. For better comprehension, let me explain what I meant by “skimming” all over the far-right wing: By this figurative term, I meant that they treated them all the same ignorant way, blaming them for their ideology as if they were born with it, and could scratch it off like a scab. Polls so far insisted that to many of them, voting for the AfD (in Germany; the GOP so far is not collectively considered to be a far-right party but rather a Conservative party with a couple of black sheep infiltrating the party. There are good reasons to at worst view this party as being arrayed in a state of transfer from Conservatism to the far right. The question is whether this trend will continue after Trump, since it began during Trump’s tenure. Before that, for example, Devin Nunes of Tulare County viewed himself to be a fiscal Conservative¹⁶. Now, he behaves like Trump’s henchman is an act of persuasion, not an act of protest against the “established olden parties” (Alparteien). To many left-wingers, this was another proof to show that with the AfD, we don’t have another disputable party whose sole concern was to give the silent majority a voice in parliament, but a more popular surrogate of the NPD or the DVU (or Die Rechte; all of them are fringe-right parties decaying in the 0.1 percent sector). Such statements are conceived in a superficial way of thinking as original as claiming that one’s place of birth was a choice. Of course those people spoke about a persuasion in the party, only few people vote for a party out of a lack of alternatives (normally, those people don’t vote at all, as voting for a party as a means to an end is a betrayal to oneself. No-one could ever convince me to vote for any party just to not vote for the AfD but to obstruct her in her procedure. This is not how Democracies are being defended), so when those people vote for the AfD, there are only two options: Vote as a demonstration of disgust with the larger parties, or because they were convinced by their program. As a party to attract the wanna-be punks, a party could only function when it never rose to importance in the political midfield, which the party entered years ago when it surpassed parties like the FDP (Classical Conservative/Right-winged liberal) and The Left (Democratic Socialist). After that movement, and its programmatic specification, it no longer was able to function as a party to only shock one’s family members. You either voted for this party, or you didn’t; but when you did, you didn’t do so because you wanted to “belong to the cool kids”. You did so because you believed in their program as a yeoman (or knight, to be clearer) believed in the king of his kingdom. Hence, to use such reports as an evidence of this party’s derangement doesn’t suffice the public discourse outside of one’s own echo chamber. The party functions as an amplifier to those people; those people carry this persuasion. So far, so good (or bad). But where does their belief come from? As I said before, those people weren’t born with this belief, nor did it suddenly came up in their mind that they actually hated migrants they never saw outside of the news before, and thought that Merkel had got to go immediately, as well as her entire party. Many studies suggest that those people picked up this way of thinking from their social surrounding, through fringe right youth organisations (mostly conducted by gubernatorial facilities of parliamentary parties such as the NPD) or through (the feeling of) social deprivation while seeing how migrants entering the country were accompanied by social workers throughout their way into life in Germany, including all the subsidies (not all of this had to be experienced first-hand; to some, it’s already enough to see how their landsmen lived in a state of deprivation while migrants received all the help they needed; thus the nationalist underlining in their whole way of thinking) (PDF)). The latter reason, to some, might belong to the only understandable ones, but we won’t get into that since we more or less dedicated time and text to it in previous chapters. A welfare state has got his limits, and so, we need to morph into shattered communities to direct help precisely towards those who need it, without never-ending bureaucratic paths some might starve upon while walking them. Yet, do those people complaining about injustice between landsmen and migrants project their personal bias onto reality despite their incapability to matching one another? Comme ci comme ça. Yes, we do have a lot of people who suffer from homelessness or poverty (many more of them to come when entering their retirement in a corrupted retirement program by the state), but we also do have many who prosper after having been released from their dismal conditions. Even after having viewed the according numbers, we would see that the mass of both sides are equally too large to state whether there was a disequilibrium between support for landsmen and migrants. To cut it short, we have to confess that many of them stood in awe when seeing how many people suddenly arrived before our border and cried for help and were actually helped, while so many people who were born here and lived her but were actively deprived by the state by being drained while never seeing something given back to them in return. Rather, they were sentenced to view decades of impotence in the capital city while large-and-growing problems loomed in front of them. It was only natural to then see a turn towards the right, since the formerly centre-right party moved leftwards (yes it did, although only marginally, and only temporarily) while many of them were outspokenly right-winged (some might have been Conservative but were aberrantly fine with allying with far right-wingers which finally exposed them, but more on that later) but lacked a party to vote for. To believe that all of them were unitedly far right and only waited for their chance to rise and shine is ignorant and shouldn’t be paid the attention it unfortunately received (more or less, I paid it the attention as well by granting it a larger part of my text).
To find “back home” again, we propose to ourselves the same lousy question: What does this all have got to do with our above-mentioned topic on politicians’ responsibility and when it was time that they no longer served their people but only their own interest? As I said, we cannot directly extract “the people’s will” from the loudest and the most aptly represented ones we either hear or see best. Some interest groups might be organised better, but this doesn’t mean that they also represented the majority among the people. It comes to no surprise that in a Capitalist society, without a state to be the decisive entity, such a method was reputed as fair: Those who do better also deserve the larger size of the cake, since this one also put more efforts into one’s interest. The larger size of the cake (or whatever was at stakes in this specific situation) was well deserved. Luckily, states that didn’t go fully Capitalist yet are more interested in affirmative action than in the dog-eat-dog rule (which was a reasonable rule in a society in which the better one also receives more: To regulate it in any other way to obstruct the better’s reception of the greater prize would lead astray from the original idea. Therefore, the one dog eating the other dog, to adapt the figure, should not be stopped from continuing creating himself a more advantageous condition), so that they won’t listen to a large crowd protesting in front of their offices. Otherwise, loudmouths would continue tricking politicians into listening preferably to them rather than finding a common-sense compromise. And when it comes to manipulation of this obtuse manner, no wing would be preferable just because of its intentions, since unjust methods were applied to silence the opposition by bluntly lobbying in one’s favour rather than finding the mot juste in an open parliamentary debate tête-à-tête with their opponents. Someone who hasn’t got to fear anything because he or she has found unmatched arguments one couldn’t deny, doesn’t need to wall any efforts to face their opponents in a fair duel.
XI
People would contradict me, saying that as long as the ruling parties hold the reins of power, no argument can be good enough as long as they won’t mind it but stick to their own talking points, their own solutions, disregarding what the opposition ever said. The oppositions’ arguments faded away unheard. And they are not wrong with what they say, but that’s how Democracies work. The opposition is not exterminated, as it is usual in totalitarian states, but they won’t be paid attention either, so that their existence is tolerated because they can easily be ignored. Sometimes,, the ruling parties will have to listen to what they have got to say, which costs them time, but at least, they won’t be targets to criticism on muting voices of the people. As long as the people are convenient with the parliamentary work in terms of the governmental scaffold, a minor loss in time is indifferent.
Those who now favour Democracy over any other social construction might now be caught in a catch 22, since they cannot betray their own beliefs while also infringing their opposition’s equal rights. Therefore, as we saw it during the climate protests, they accused their contestants of being immorally and irrevocably wrong in their relativized comprehension of the “climate catastrophe”. According to them, as little as there was the chance for inhabiting an earth-like planet once this first one was down and out, as little was there any alternate position to rightly occupy when it comes to combatting climate change. I won’t quarrel with those who stand up for a more proactive climate policy, since I agree with them in terms of the foundational argument that something had to be done urgently. The only-begotten point I disagree with them is that they have no understanding of how parliamentary politics work, yet they are also to fearful of overthrowing the system that obviously stands in their way of ideals. They want to enact fast, but won’t enforce the one herculean step that has to be undertaken to make it possible to intercept so quickly in the continuously developing devastation. Long story short, there can be no immediate, no radical action inside a state which would rather observe the destruction of its own people through a foreign force than give up control over the whole situation through radical action that would imply freer movement for its people. The state had to give up certain mechanisms in order to save the climate as it was necessary to truly accomplish this tough assignment. I don’t (generally) speak of loosening the market’s lead (since on the market’s behalf, no primarily ecologically friendly can be expected; already the deforestation of Indonesian rain forests proves this point. Some might argue that this was only possible because the Indonesian government under Prime Minister Joko Widodo didn’t prohibit the deforestation yet, to which I can only propose the following question: Does the opportunity justify its usage? Couldn’t the palm oil producers alternatively refuse to plant more palms in this region already occupied by rain forest, playing a paramount role in converting carbon dioxide into oxygen? Certainly they had a choice, and they made one—supposedly the wrong one, standing trial to the entire market and its tendencies in decision-making), but rather of intentionally asphyxiating the market through diminutions, as it would alternately take place once states were deconstructed. In spite of some people’s impatience, we have to move slowly, or otherwise, the whole transformation is going to fail. Rash behaviour usually comes along with a lack of strategy, although without strategy, no plan is able to function orderly (vide the US’ intervention in Afghanistan, unveiled by the so-called “Afghanistan Papers”). The winning team always drafts a well-thought plan prior to forming its phalanx on the battlefield.
Was it wrong of me to speak of asphyxiating the market? Not necessarily, whether I offended some people or, after a long time of having read my text, finally verified them in my “illiberal” intentions. I may have to explain what I technically mean, though. The market, in general, is a broad term, which doesn’t even stand proximately as a kinsman to Capitalism either. Capitalism and the free market, as I previously explained, are two sides of the same medal, with the important difference that the free market excludes the state with knobs on, to provide individuals with utter freedom of movement and felling decisions on their own. If it hadn’t been for the state, I want to add in shape of my personal opinion, many free-market philosophies as written by Hayek, von Mises and Rand would have made more sense; or would it? As I oftentimes had to annotate in the editions of books by them I read, the market controls our lives in such a way as that he provides us with the means of determining our lives’ directions: Money is provided through work of any kind (except slave work), and work can be found on the market. Now the market would move ahead and state that we all had the freedom to choose what to work as, as long as—here comes the catch—the work is required contemporaneously, meaning that if someone had been trained in a job that was currently of no need anywhere, he or she had two options available: To learn a new job, or remain unemployed until this learnt job was in need again. Unemployment, the market tells us, is also an option we as the people were free to choose, as long as we stood through the consequences of our decision without complaining. If we didn’t like our poverty, we could return to him and look for a job to earn money to change our life in rags with a life as a blue- or white-collar profession, or, if better-experienced in legal affairs, a black-tie job as a reputed esquire. The market, in his heydays, is packed plentifully. Still, his argument is self-complacent and an insult to those who are really interested in freedom for all: While the market propagates the freedom of choice, he subtly doesn’t since the only option to not interacting with him was a life in poverty. Normally, this would not be up to question since every helping hand was desperately needed. Thus, those who withdrew themselves from the market indirectly committed a crime against their community on which they still were likely to depend. Nowadays, the market could well continue without everyone in dire need to participate. Whether low employment rates are a proof to this statement, it depends (Academics state that at some point, a very low unemployment can also have negative effects on the economy’s well-being). When certain métiers honestly do need more employees to do better, they also holler for them. In Germany, for example, the craft annually calls upon young school leavers to look for jobs as craftsmen. Not only were those jobs well paid when they became masters (the highest rank one could obtain after completing their full training) but also did it offer attractive working times. The craft is one of the most tragic victims to a tendency towards “academisation” in Western society: All the young people are looking for highly salaried jobs after graduating from universities/colleges, so that the middle- and lower-class jobs get extinct. Sarcastically speaking, someone could ask why the market didn’t steer away from the craftsmen’s abyss, towards attracting young people to become plumbers, carpenters or anything like this. The market is like a pubescent male adolescent: He wants to be free from his parents [the regulating state], but doesn’t seem to be ready to be on his own yet. To leave him free would be dangerous to himself, in regards to the youngster; dangerous to society in regards to the market. Unfortunately, as for the crafts, there is nothing the state could do without becoming totalitarian, coercing aspiring young people into becoming craftsmen and women rather than pursuing their own dreams (until the market crushes them, telling them what he preferred over their “dreams”). Only the craft itself can try to halt this destructive development, by advertising for itself, thereby attracting future employees to step in this profession. In the meantime, reasons for this tendency are searched everywhere: Some argue that it really was caused by the clichés surrounding those jobs, being dirty, poorly paid, and literally back-breaking. Furthermore, at the end of the day, one usually was tired and unable to do anything but lying down and resting. On the opposite side, sequestered jobs in offices awaited them dearly, bearing as the only serious danger an aching back after years of executing that job if they didn’t watch out. If one had the freedom to choose, they think, why would they want to choose the harder hands-on work if they could as well choose the office desk? It’s a point at which freedom bears long-term consequences affecting everyone while no-one wants to do the first step into the right direction. Drawing a relation not too far-fetched, the scarcity of affordable living quarters could also partially derive from the lack of craftsmen and construction workers to hire for building those same living quarters, flats and houses. Even if space to build them was available, who was supposed to build them in the first place if no-one was ready to do the job? It’s a paradox few people seem to recognise at first glance (or ever). It’s easy to proclaim that it was Hobson’s choice to build more affordable living space, but while it is easy to proclaim something, it is by far more difficult to go ahead and do something against it. Money can be no engine to conduct the construction, what it takes are people to build them. Politicians, vulgar loudmouths might yell, should finally resign and do the job, since they were always the first to repeatedly utter hollow promises that never came true, and call upon their people to do what they want them to do; and it’s true: Politicians won’t bring the change; they hardly improve anything when it comes to urgent requirements. They are more likely to capsize the boat of our society with bureaucratic gibberish instead of throwing it overboard. While the market would blackmail everyone into listening to his commands, threatening to otherwise keelhaul dissenters, he is more controllable once those interacting within him unite and do it on their own, in a parallel concept of similar shape, but by fairer conditions.
One of the market’s key tools to function is the competition, something that might not necessarily exist in a world of communities. Many left-wingers and staunch leftists see in (synthetically created) competition a menace to destroy especially the weak individuals of our society. This raises the question whether they were right or not: Does competition break the weak ones (and if yes, does it matter if we get rid of them?) (*Sarcasm*)? Many of them describe the Capitalist society as a socio-Darwinist one because of the competition. According to an unofficial explanation, the competition is supposed to contribute to innovators’ and inventors’ endeavour to exceed one another mutually in their innovations and inventions. This way, improvements naturally succeeded one another eventually. The competition supposedly drives people to becoming better evermore, so that in a contrary society, in which competition is being stifled by a centralised economy/market, in which inventions don’t matter, or so they say. We could easily question the likelihood of a competitive state of society in order to trigger continuous enhancement in every imaginable sector. If this was the only possible way to start it up, we had to wonder how we went forward beforehand; in the Middle Ages, where monarchists starkly grasped upon their power and every development to not lose control (subordinate aristocrats were just a means to organise their large kingdoms and empires, just as federal states are a means to do the same by more Democratic standards); the same applies to any then-future states by different names, as I curtly elaborated inside the brackets. The Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith already considered the separation of tasks inside smaller companies a reason to the wealth of nations, and said that an invisible hand (to me, it was no different from a “Deus ex machina”) subliminally led our mind to fell the right decisions in accordance to the market; yet he was aware of how states almost inadvertently (sometimes downright intentionally) monitored the market—in his time, kings and emperors as well as any other ruler with a country involved in trades dexterously gambled with their products’ and currencies’ values, which forced Smith into broadly distinguishing contemporary goods’ values in various amounts. More or less, we could consider monarchies in each kind to be “proto-totalitarian” states, with Socialist states to be their dynastic successors. Yet, wouldn’t the market be any better or worse? It’s a serious question to easily responded with a shattering “Yes!” on leftists’ behalves (there are several left-winged ideologies who for themselves answered, since some of them might have differing opinions on why the market was a decentralised totalitarian oppressor reigning supreme with an iron fist.
(On a personal note: Should we consider the market’s idol to be a mixture of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher? I think so, and don’t even mean it demeaning. Reagan held a firm Conservative stance, although his blatant racism was not to be excused. As for Ms. Thatcher, she was an unapologetic fiend to the Irish, behaving like a colonial landlord feeling self-entitled to defend Ulster as English for no good reason.)
To answer this question precisely, we first have to contemplate what totalitarianism actually is; whether the definition of “totalitarianism” matches the market’s behaviour, disregarding any personal bias. According to Wolfgang Wippermann, in Dieter Nohlen’s “Wörterbuch Staat und Politik”¹⁷, totalitarian states are characterised through absolute dissolution of freedom for everyone, the provision of a “total” world view, and selected enemies to the states which it is important to exterminate to assure one’s nation’s perseverance. Furthermore does he refer to Ahrendt’s description of totalitarianism to mention that totalitarian states differ from dictatorships in such a way that the latter only limit freedom, while the first ones, as I quoted him afore, abolish freedom altogether, so that police states might fall under this description as well, since surveillance contradicts freedom absolutely.
Now, does this match today’s market behaviour? Certainly not. One reason why this doesn’t match up is that the market by itself doesn’t have an own life; rather it is instrument equipped by those who participate in it. To speak of a sentient interior is doubtful enough, as the market is not held responsible for what it allegedly causes, nor does it by itself do anything: The market doesn’t exist. It is a buzzword to throw in the ring when talking about the free market or Capitalism, while we only have a few (two) entities that cannot be related to the “market”. For example (if I forgot anything, please contact me so that I can edit my mistake):
- Companies and jobs, which are mutually run and provided by employers, the first of them either run by CEOs and their partners or by bosses (when talking about a single business or an enfranchised company);
- Stocks and shares, of which the first are held and the second sold by the companies when they are publicly financed. The latter are being sold either at a stock exchange or online on according trading places. Stock exchanges might be the first index to speak of a “market” as a physical entity, yet I wouldn’t say so either. A stock exchange, in the end, doesn’t differ much from a simple marketplace in the middle of a town, where sellers assemble to barter their goods for money. Whether this would count as a “market” in the superordinate sense of a circumference of all spaces of trade lying under this general terminology. In this case, a verb would be more fitting, describing the myriad actions of trading goods as “marketing”. In this case, the word would be properly used. Especially because of the vastness of miscellaneous encounters in which humans trade goods, abridging it is difficult, last but not least because we not only talk about trading as such, as an action between two mature beings but because of an organised multitude of trades taking place simultaneously, under one roof. Because of this, three locations coming to mind would actually apply to it: A supermarket (including all the shops of larger or smaller size providing nutrition as well as random stuff that may come in handy once in a while), a farmers’ market (or a fair), or the stock exchange, although there, instead of food and such, bonds and shares are traded. Nevertheless, the concept is the same. Yet, do they match the usage of the word “market” in the Capitalist sense? No! It’s hard to understand how to correctly narrow down the meaning of the market in this particular usage (needless to say that it would be more apparent to rather speak of “market economics”, although then, we would open up another topic comparably broad and insuperably definable). Having excluded so many options now, what remains lastly is the loose gathering of companies minding their own business (literally), trying to increase their profits to the best of their abilities. More or less, this is all we’re talking about when it comes to the “market”.
As futile as this might have appeared, to ramble incoherently about an almost meaningless term, we have to understand what “liberal” states (vulgarly speaking, except for more liberal-leaning states, no government would consciously attempt to increase regulation of the market to protect its citizens) actually want to control further than before; of course no politician would speak in this way: “If you elect me the new […], I will raise the minimum wage and increase overall regulations on the market to curb exploitation of the workers. Vote for me!”—This would appear preposterous beyond partisan lines, for a good reason: Regulating markets is not a means to an end, so does everybody know. Regulations, if enacted, have to be pointedly targeted, sweeping avalanches injure more than they fulfill their objective. A current example of such misconducted policies—to again refer to Germany, followed up immediately by an American example as well—would be the general recording of employees’ working hours per day to precisely examine whether they are paid according to the minimum wage. Many employers (and a few employees too) were upset about the new regulation since such measurements were outdated due to modern time management models which allowed it to employees to begin their workday as they wished, as long as they worked their regular amount of hours. They payment was fixed, no such regulation was even necessary, let alone demanded by either side. The regulation could have worked if legislators had met with representatives of the industry prior to writing this bill and passing it. This way, it again shows how remotely estranged both sides exist to one another, which is worse for the first to the latter than vice versa, since it is also safer to approach the economy as a legislator than the economy approaching the legislators. Firstly because of the optics—it would raise plenty of eyebrows to see the economy again shouldering with legislators, it would appear like Donald Trump seeking closed-door contact with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea—, and secondly because pigs are going to learn how to fly before any industrialist would approach legislators demanding them to finally regulate his métier because he couldn’t stand all of this freedom anymore.
On for the second example, a most recent as well: In California (which some die-hard libertarians already compare to Soviet Russia, once intended to put an end to the gig economy in freelance journalism by limiting the amount of articles one journalist was allowed to write per month. Out of any possible side to complain about this seemingly benevolent attempt, the journalists arose to complain to their legislators about this bill. Legislators presumably thought that freelancing journalists would actually prefer to be fully employed (which would have become necessary on behalf of the demanding outlet or magazine after a journalist exceeded the state’s limit), but as discussions on Twitter unveiled, the Sunshine State’s legislators made the same mistake as did the German ones: They didn’t seek advice from those they wanted to support via bills telling their employers to treat them better.
What does this tell us? To many, a close cooperation of the economy (the market) and the state is a despised idea, usually compared to lobbyism so that the economy can buy itself some new fancy employer-friendly deregulation. And of course, this hatred is not without a stern basement. Yet, to ignore the market at any time while reshaping its field is evenly short-sighted and doomed to fail sooner or later (rather sooner). A cooperation between these two in case of a statist society is vitally necessary, whether people like the idea or not. Someday, they will have to realise this.
Before we move further astray from our upper question, we have to return immediately and draw the circle to an end. What do we know more by now? We know that the state despite some disagreeing voices is not a totalitarian creature, and that the market by itself is not even a creature at all. To be precise, it is a loose conundrum one cannot grasp physically, nor as an idea. It’s a cheap trick by those who invented it to beware it of all responsibility and to withdraw guilt and success alike to the people interacting with whatever is related to the “market”. Finally, we will try to define what to understand under this term—“market”—nevertheless, so that we can draw a conclusion from it, and to show readers which kind of responsibility the market has to bear, whether it wants so or not. My definition, which is not authorised so far, as no-one valued it yet, would be the following:
The market is a semi-organised assembly of traders in any way, from independent merchants in their stationary shop, CEOs and investors who hold shares of large concerns with stationary stores all over the country (or the world) and a revenue of multiple million dollars. It also includes stock exchanges such as in London, Frankfurt/Main or New York City. Wherever multiple people return money for goods ubiquitously in several places at once, we can speak about a market. To refine our comprehension of “markets”, we have to highlight that the term “market” is not a means to an end by itself, but a superordinate terminology which can be redefined to several narrower terminologies, depending on the specific goods that are being traded on this specific market. As much as this is common sense, we still continue to speak about a “market” in general, although to any market, specific attitudes, manners and opportunities to exploit natural resources or human beings refer as well, which distinguish these markets from other markets. Therefore, it is hazardous to solely speak of “the market”. It comes close to comparing the free market thought to Capitalism, although these two are too significantly distinguished schools of thought, one of them being in charge in our current world, while the other is a pipe dream by many libertarians pursuing its unapologetic execution.Obviously, I couldn’t resist commenting inside my definition, although it was necessary in terms of assuming it to be able to stand alone as well. It was necessary to already highlight weaknesses of the “market” term and why it is far from perfect, and urgently requires readjustment to make it bearable for common workers who interact in the “market’s” lowest level. As I mentioned in my definition, there are multiple markets which, beside many positive remarks, also offer different ways of exploitation of both, natural resources (some of them only finitely available, such as ores or fossil fuels) and human beings (or human resources, depending on how indifferent one thought about one’s common folks).
XII
Disregarding one’s subjective view on clothes worn by the mortal ones, the fashion market is one field in which exploitation differs from many other markets. There, people in South-East Asia work under aggrieving conditions for pittance. In Bangladesh (on Rhana Plaza, to be precise), about two years ago, a skyscraper which used to function as a sewage house, collapsed, burying everyone underneath the rubble. People in the Western world were outrageous about the conditions in which those people had to work and that their whole life was constantly endangered through corruption and unstable housing, let alone the little money they earned to support their family and feed their children. Yet it was the same people who also made such conditions possible: The poor conditions given in the Far East are necessary to provide such high-end clothes for cheap pricing. It is a well-known fact that torturous means of production are the law for many giant retailers in fashion, for example H&M from Sweden, ZARA or “kik”, a German retailer for people with little money to spend on clothing. Cynically, the latter one’s prices come close to what the seamers and seamstresses earn per day, or month.
Could we speak of a catch 22 in this situation? On the one hand, many people not only are aware of the miserable conditions in countries like Bangladesh or China, in which fashionable clothes are produced to be shipped to us, but on the other hand, retailers of those same products still gain bulky revenues annually. In spite of the mass derogation after the collapse, conclusions from it didn’t seem to have been drawn. It’s easy to appear on the right side, but it’s hard to also be on it. Perhaps many of those pretending to act morally right simply don’t want to be since it would cut down parts of their convenient lifestyle. As long as the problem is out of sight, it is also out of mind. As lackadaisical as it might sound, people care less for others when it comes to people they neither have ever heard of, nor have ever seen, nor are ever going to see in their life. To people in the West, people in the East are less than an alien tribe that might as well just be a Potemkin village. It’s only human to care more about people they can relate to more than people that, according to their range of view, might not even exist because they never experienced their existence personally, i.e. first-hand. It compares to having heard of a friend who claims to have encountered a robbery prevented by a shopper who broke the robber’s jaw with a golf club than to have experienced it in close range by standing only a few feet away from the robber when he spit out two of his teeth after being sideswiped by the golf club. Unless surveillance cameras recorded the occurrence, there is little to believe in beside one’s confidence in this friend.
Still, wouldn’t there be reason to believe in the existence of the Bangladeshi people and their “imported grief”? It’s the same method conspiracy theorists end up in their theories—they claim to have no reasonable ground to believe what news outlets and broadcasters tell them; rather, they make up their own theories alleging politicians to be puppets to a higher force, such as the Rothschild family, alien beings having overtaken our élites and morphing into human-like surrogates, or a Zionist-organised government over this world (ZOG). The difference between those shrewd theorists and people who simply doubt theses is that the first ones don’t want to believe in what they are being told; they don’t want to believe in as things happen, but prefer to create their own truth by making up stories about Jews having taken over the world rather than having been scapegoats throughout history, “peaking” in their decimation by six million during the Shoah. To (many of) them, nothing of this has ever happened, none of the scapegoating from the Middle Ages to the Third Reich, it was only a façade to create an “eternal (feeling of) guilt” so that people would not “riot against” them but obey their words. One of the central figures of many conspiracy theories is Hungarian-born George Soros, a liberal philanthrope and multimillionaire with close boundaries into the political business. Due to his liberal partisanship and his many foundations [endowments] augmenting the liberal agenda (which might be his as well), he usually became a target of many theorists presume that he bought off politicians to function as his amplifier. Finally, they state that he was just a part of the ZOG, since he too is a Jew.
Those who argue against such agitators accuse them of practicing anti-Semitism, since they hopped upon a bandwagon which rode on through the entire history of the Occident. And they are not wrong: To single out Jews out of any existing group with enough power to be alleged of unrightfully influencing the political business—large corporations on Wall Street, as it took place during the rise of oil companies such as Standard Oil; the Great Depression and the mutual switch in underlying ideologies in the two great parties of the US; the time which brought up legends such as John D. Rockefeller or JP Morgan at the turn of the 20th Century, used to tie themselves closely to Republican Senators to have their say on fiscal policies¹⁸—is a typically modern-day anti-Semitic trope, although sometimes, even the presumption of richness/wealth was used as a façade to cover up the anti-Semitism, since many wealthy businessmen and CEOs are Jews, although their religion never played a major role (nota bene: If their religion had ever played a role, one could argue that to be a Jew meant to have a sense for making a haul. How came, then, that one of the US’ “most famous Jews”, Bernie Sanders, an independent presidential candidate, former mayor of Burlington (VT), long-time Senator of Vermont and self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, announced to embattle Wall Street bankers and billionaires tending to evade paying taxes, rather than becoming one himself? Sanders is the textbook opposite to any of those theories¹⁹.
It is needless to say that any argument with a conspiracy theorist is futile and a waste of time, comparable to explaining to Donald Trump how global trade works (we all remember when Jean-Claude Juncker magnanimously brought colourful cards with him to explain it to Trump. Unsuccessfully, as we all remember. The fundamental problem is the discordance between both sides regarding the assumptive background of their subject: While the theorist alleges a Jewish conspiracy behind his detestable state of governmental politics leaning too liberal from his point of view (others go as far as to opining an ongoing plan to replace the “white race” with any other, preferably Arabic or African people, alternately Latino or Hispanic), the reason is an indifferent, unmotivated or bluntly incapable political cabinet reflecting too little on their own actions to realise they fail their own people. It’s easy to realise that to feel upset about what is going on in the parliaments nowadays, it doesn’t need a poorly researched conspiracy theory mainly distributed via blogs on the internet, occasionally by the gutter press such as the Daily Mail or far right online outlets such as the Daily Caller or the Daily Stormer (beside RedState.org or One America News Network (OANN). Unless any side is ready to make a compromise on their behalf, discussions between such two sides were determined to eventually end up in a dead end, or caught in a gridlock. At least to conspiracy theorists, arguments established by larger news outlets or broadcasters, both of them related to the derogative term “mainstream media”, are close to outright lies they won’t take serious in any way. While it makes sense to not take lies serious, trying to expose their worthlessness via logical means (lies, if really lies, never withstand unto the end; at one point, they will tremble off the cliff), it makes no sense to condescend upon facts, calling them lies while the indirect truth about this tempo is that those facts might derail their narrative since they themselves went out of arguments to bring up against the actual facts. Hence, baselessly dismissing them comes in handy notwithstanding the predictable outcome of this reaction.
What I did now is accused of being typical for left-wingers or liberals (excluding leftists, which, the higher the move in the Socialist scale, the more similarities do they share with various right-wingers, merely excluding Nazis in case we don’t speak of Stalinists or Maoists, who share a tendency towards authoritarian violence with fascists (believe it or not, this statement is even backed by current developments: The Maoist movement is alive and well in Berlin’s working-class boroughs in shape of the “Jugendwiderstand”): I assumed them all to be wrong in any way and concluded from this assumption that they were inferior to me, more or less. Funnily, they misuse this behaviour to victimise themselves, even verifying their own claims of a liberal agenda controlling everything, therefore being oppressed as a disliked opposition. Excluding their anti-Semitic or hate-spreading inclusions, they display themselves as regular people sharing an opinion of their own in no way different from any other political opinion one could think of, being viciously attacked by a libero-fascist (my own neologism; adapt it if you want) agenda which infiltrated the centre of society. Again, we could detect the same diagnosis as for incapable politicians: A lack of self-reflection. It’s a shape of self-complacency penetrating those people viewing themselves in a position similar to anyone else not sharing fringe views beyond normalcy or “representability”.
Still, this proof also bears an upside: It shows that those people are not comfortable with their own views. They are aware of their view’s viciousness, therefore have to deny their viciousness in front of their own so that they don’t have to realise that they in fact deny certain minorities the status as equal human beings. We could describe this tendency of inconvenience with one’s own views as “auto-persuasion”: Once they persuaded themselves that their views are not as ill-disposed as some people think it is, they can be more convinced of it themselves.
While some could argue that the true inconvenience behind it actually emerged from the negative side-effects of bearing and publicly displaying such a hostile ideology. I would make sense as well, since Nazis too would not enjoy the mainstream’s approval for despising and wishing dead to “non-Aryan” minorities, Jews, Communists/Socialists and the entire opposition (one of Nazi ideology’s ironies in this: To describe their own race, they applied the name of an Iranian pastoral tribe’s name, the Aryans. To adapt such an inhumane ideology can only happen willfully, consciously, despite the odds and in awareness of all the consequences linked to it. As with one’s family, one cannot choose one’s origin (ethnically, socially, and culturally), but when it comes to one’s ideology, one has the full choice to extract one’s experiences and make up one’s mind about them.
The catch to the latter words: Some people tend to become racists because they oftentimes experienced violence from minority groups, thus link being bullied to this particular minority, such as Turks or Arabs (or Latinos). To those who never experienced group-related violence (maybe general violence in disregards to any ethnic group), this might sound irrational, to accuse an entire minority of being actively bullish, when one had “a few bad encounters with a few people”. And of course this decision was not felled rationally, but seldom do humans really behave rationally, it’s a matter of their nature. Thus, it’s pointless and even harmful to tell someone who reasonably (in terms of arguments, not in terms of reason) defends his racism. What it takes is to explain to this person in one’s best possible way why those people were exceptions among many sociable pendants. It might be helpful to support this person, at least sympathise it to calm down again. Socially excluding a person prior to even having heard his or her cause would be ignorant and would float the enemy’s boat intensely. Thus, listen to what the person has got to say, and offer this person help in case the person made a reasonable point other than unfounded racism.
This is all common sense, normally, and doesn’t require any further elaboration. Yet, in these times, we often hear of people arguing not in a personal way—in a way of referring to personal experiences—, but in a prolonged way, lifted unto a more national or international level: For example, instead of arguing that they once were assaulted by a migrant on the streets, they would argue that they read in their newspaper that somewhere in their country, a young woman was assaulted by a migrant in the streets. Thus, they said, it was evidently shown that their country has become less safe when the migrants arrived. Whether this makes sense or not, the numbers in statistics have to show; and to continue arguing on this point, the back-checking has to happen firstly. Too often did I observe during discussions that people left theses unanswered; either did they not come back to them anymore or they really continued their discussion using the hardly noteworthy thesis as the point to elaborate and debate. In many cases, those theses were based on already-debunked points such as the “hockey theory” (in reference to whether the climate change was real or not). Surprisingly, this all happened n the internet, where theses and facts could be double-checked as quickly as by one click. Would laziness count as a reason for continuing upon a weak base easy to debunk? Certainly not. When one has got time to argue with someone in the first place, there is no reason not to double-check presented. In more sociological terms, we could describe such an obligation as “civic participation in the public discourse”. Since we all are active for a very long time on the internet every day, so that we are the greatest source of opinion manufacturing: Through debating one another’s opinions mutually, we refine them as well. In regards to this, we should view it as our primary objective to usually debate as factualised as possible. This goes out especially to those who view themselves as saviours of the idea of a liberal society. Demeaning voices will never penetrate the hard shell that surrounds those who believe that climate change was a hoax while the “Great Replacement” was real. Of course “debating with right-wingers” (the point to not debate with fringe right-wingers is not emphasised in this saying; perhaps on purpose) is like a maxim shared by left-winged liberals convinced about their persuasion, but this easy, our society simply not is. One part of society cannot simply be ignored and left aside. They won’t fade away this way. Rather they have to be addressed in one way or another—no matter which way, the address has to be unanimously shared by everyone in order to be accomplished eventually. In no time would they now say: “Understood. Now, stop insisting on talking with right-wingers, don’t make them feel as if they could be taken serious. You will only enforce them in our society, and one day, they will crush our liberal society!” But this is the wrong way to understand it. It limits public opinion to that one spectrum in which liberalism is located, while everything else will likely be diminished until it is gone. Declaring certain ways of thinking hazardous to our society while they might just function as oppositions to the “more established” way of thinking. Many will possibly fall off their chairs, exclaiming that the fringe right-wing is not just an opposition to ordinary liberalism but a severe and approved threat to our society. Never did I contradict this insistence, it’s true. Still, in an anxious manner, as it seems, every right-winged way of thinking seemed to have been locked up in a cage together with the actual fringe right. Maybe not in the same degree as the fringe right, but ridiculed and demeaned nevertheless. The sole difference existing between these two in regards to how they are being treated in the public discourse might be that only the fringe right is considered to be unconstitutional. It’s unlikely, though, to think that smears on the left’s behalf would decrease the amount of right-winged liberals, Conservatives (in the official understanding, not the understanding as it is now colloquially equipped, meaning mostly the entirety of the fringe right across the Alt-Right leading towards the few true Conservatives remaining) or Libertarians. Most of those who affiliate to them hardly care about what those think about them who don’t care about them when it comes to an exchange of views. And this for sure is an attitude that might fir to most self-proclaimed liberals. Once they would hear that someone would take a more individualist stance rather than a social one, they would call them inhuman and unbearable to our society, and leave it at this. The reason to this defensive behaviour might be the matter-of-fact that some of them are simply not interested in exchanging views, thus broadening their horizon. On the other hand, those same would not assail someone for carrying individualist or egoist views. They would rather nod it off and leave them be. Those liberals don’t care much about political theory or philosophy, yet occasionally fall in anguish when they read something about their country’s despot or far right politician. Beside the “mainstream” media outlets, they might also follow some left-winged liberal news outlets that put populism over neutrality (in the US, such outlets might be the Daily Kos or The Week; no, CNN doesn’t belong in this group). Understandably, this is not the group we’re talking about when we’re talking about the intentional exclusion of right-winged groups that don’t belong in the far or fringe right wing. Yet, before we continue, it might be necessary to explain what is exactly the difference between the “far” and the “fringe” right, since there doesn’t seem to exist a difference. In the end, there are not too many different right-winged ideologies to differ from one another. There are the bearable ones, and there are those we should be lucky once they were gone. Frankly, though, there is only one difference, and it explains to us the difference between predicates such as Neo-Nazism and the Alt-Right (we will also exclude a further profundity in these respective terminologies, since the confrontation remains the same): It’s the openness of its respective members. Openness in such a way as I previously tried to unfold it with the individual that was uncomfortable with its own ideology, thus had to persuade itself about its righteousness despite all the arguments speaking against it. In the end, every ideology s based upon the acceptance of a certain mental narrative, of a certain basement of assumptions that are closely linked to any argument the ideology makes. We also have to suggest it for these two general affiliations, the far as well as the fringe right. Both come along with certain mental narratives which they expect their fellows to adapt immediately and at all costs. Both of them are similar to one another, while they differ in their respective extremity. Nazis, of the old and the new fashion (aujourd’hui, on porte des uniformes noires au lieu des uniformes brunes), had no problem in confessing that they wishes for a genocide commenced on their behest, while the Alt-Right would insist that the left actually accelerated the oncoming of a so-called “Culture War”, meaning the war between two cultures inside the same country, namely between the Right and the Left. The one would fight for its national identity—The Right—, while the other fought for multiculturalism, diversity and “political correctness”—The Left. Funnily, it’s the Right that usually speaks about a culture war, Steve King even went as far as to say that in case of a war, the owners of guns outnumbered those who were without ones, although he merely referred to the upholding of Second Amendment rights, although the dog-whistle towards the Culture War was obvious. Steve King, a Republican representative of Iowa’s fifth district, is an outspoken white supremacist, which in the end doesn’t differ significantly from Nazism, since it too believes in the superiority of the “white race” and of the Western civilisation (which by this vast term could be controversially debated since the West could alternatively refer to the European continent, the countries of Europe from Portugal to Germany, northwards as well as southwards (alongside the “cultural borders” between the Slavs and the Germans, and Italics. Whether Greece belonged to any of these stood up to question). Both of them (would) also stand for a stark Islamophobia, although the Nazis collaborated with the Palestinians to combat the Zionists.
When it came to accomplishing the utmost extermination of Jews and Zionists, Hitler certainly had no problem with collaborating with those who he didn’t view as a threat back then. In the nineteen-thirties and –forties, Muslims were not seen as an invading force in the Western world, it only happened once migrants from civil war-countries moved northwards to seek shelter in Europe, a continent which they saw as morally entitled to help them. In the end, and this has to be substantiated again, many of those who flee their homelands are from countries which were bled out during the colonial era, and left behind once they gained their independence from their ancient oppressors. Indirectly, it can be said, those colonialist countries were glad to shrug off those burdens that no longer produced any revenue. Or don’t they? It would be easy to claim that they gave them their independence since they [the colonialists] could then display a carte blanche to the rest of the international community: “Look, we no longer smother foreign nations we conquered in the past, we are just as peaceful as the rest of you!” This is not to say, though, that until the mid-19th Century, sovereign nations such as France, Italy or the US didn’t hold any more nations in their hands—the US occupied the Philippines, Italy didn’t let loose of Ethiopia, France clutched on Algeria. And all of this happened in the wake of World War II. More or less, a couple of “colonies” still prevail as of today (13th December 2019; it might have changed within the progress of aging, some of them might have even drowned due to the rising sea level): France’s Nouvelles Calédonies (New Caledonia) preferred to stay under France’s leadership, even after twice having voted on whether to gain independence or not; Guam and American Samoa still are considered as “Oversea Departments” of America, each deploying one Representative into Congress; in every English Commonwealth, the highest ruler is the Queen residing in the Buckingham Palace in London; the Faroean Islands and Greenland are still associated to Denmark, while at least autonomous in their leadership; last but not least, Hong Kong and Macao, former colonies to England and Portugal respectively, both live in a twofold situation, pending in one of them while peacefully working in the other. There might even be more examples, but the point should be clear: Even in the post-colonial era, colonialism more or less still prevails. Even stronger it might have survived in a different sense: Companies of the Western world make up most of the greater corporate restructuring in developing countries. Most of the companies excavating rare earths or worthwhile ores such as platinum, copper or iron are headquartered either in the US or in (Western) Europe. The goods are exported from Africa, the money leaves the continent with the goods, so that the countries themselves, except for the corrupt leaders, are left with nothing but the knowledge that they might be richer if they nationalised the progresses; if they had own companies to do the job and cooperate with shipping companies to export their goods, while the revenue stays at home.
The tragedy itself is not even limited to mining, but also to nutrition as well. On the Western coast of Africa, in the Northern part of the continent, fishing once was a veritably profitable business until European fishing companies entered the stage and overfished the seas until African businesses went bankrupt. It was at least with mining companies that jobs were brought to African countries, even to children. Child labour, which used to be a thing of the past, again was reintroduced into the New Age. Not only is child labour cheaper than employing adults, but also does it help those adults that deteriorated unto uselessness through toiling down in the dark dungeons. In the Western world, the tremendous fertility rates south of the Mediterranean Sea were caused by poor education and the subsequent problem that many women didn’t know anything about contraception; this might be true, but it might only be half of the truth. The other half might consist of the necessity to bear children to send them to work to earn some money in order to support the family. A similar progress began shortly after the advent of the Industrial Revolution: Children too were sent to work in the factories to support the family²⁰:
“Wichtig in der Geschichte des Arbeitsschutzes ist die Factory Act (sic!) von 1833 gewesen: Die Nachtarbeit wurde in der Textilindustrie verboten, die Tagesarbeit für Kinder unter 13 Jahren auf 8 Stunden, für Jugendliche unter 18 Jahren auf 12 Stunden beschränkt. 1847 wurde der Zehn-Stunden-Tag für Kinder, Jugendliche und Frauen eingeführt.”(Translation: “An important milestone in the history of employee protection was the so-called ‘Factory Act’ of 1833. Night shifts in the textile industry were henceforth prohibited, the daily work for minors was respectively limited to eight hours for children under the age of 13 and 12 hours for adolescents under the age of 18. In 1847, the ten-hours-day for children, adolescents and women was introduced.”)
which counted as many as seven to twelve members (including grandparents). Back then, too, child mortality was staggering since hygiene was depraved and employee protection laws (nearly) inexistent, so that those who worked in the factories or mines came into contact with fine dust and carbon monoxide en masse, blackening their lungs, slowly strangling them. In Africa, it’s no better, although it might be less about carbon dust but more about toxic muds or the hard work in general, executed without any modern technology but only with the power of the human body. In Europe, or the Western world in general, this era of spending one’s generational future to higher production here and now has been overcome, thanks to technological and scientific progress. The (alleged) lead on Europe’s behalf might also be considered as Africa’s doom, although it depends from which point of view one observed what happened during the imperialist eras. It could also be the case that Africa then suffered from corrupt leaders (normally, they might be called kings, yet this would undermine the cultures of Africa, incomparable to European ones when it comes to ranks, even though the inner structures were comparable to those which were once existent in Europe, e.g. monarchies) who were ready to throw their own people “under the bus” of European colonialists shipping them away to the New World to “employ” them as slaves. Studies on the Atlantic slave trade in ancient Dahomey West Africa, around today’s Benin shows us that many peoples were ready to trade captives of other “tribes” into enslavement²¹. I shall hereby just mention one quote:
“In Danhome waren besonders die Mahi und die Yoruba (unter dessen wieder die Oyo), in den örtlichen Konkurrenzhäfen an erster Stelle die Oyo (oder die Yoruba allgemein )und an zweiter Stelle die Mahi als Hauptträger des Sklavenhandels bekannt. Die Angaben beweisen, daß (sic!) die Mehrzahl sowohl der Sklaven als auch der Sklavenhändler diesen Völkern und Staaten angehörte.”(Translation: “In Danhome, especially the Mahi and the Yoruba (to which again the Oyos belonged) were well reputed, while in the local harbours of the opposition, it was the Oyos (or the Yoruba in general), with the Mahi as second in line as the main distributors of the slave trade. The indicators prove that the majority of slaves and slave traders were of these particular peoples.”)
It debunks the belief held by many people that it was the Europeans who penetrated the African continent and immediately enslaved those people all by their own. In fact, corrupt leaders of those people and immoral, egoist people amongst them readily sold their own kin to the Europeans as long as they benefited from it, as I said before. This of course doesn’t whitewash anything they [the Europeans] have done to Africa, but it shows us nevertheless that it didn’t happen the way it is mostly believed. Even among Africans, European colonialists and landlords found support to enforce their cruel misdeeds. Needless to say that this landslide exploitation prodigiously halted development in Africa, throwing almost the entire continent aback, at least the Central continent alongside the Western coast, deeply into the midst.
Now, without getting even further into history lessons and on the inherited guilt of European countries when it comes to mass migration into Europe and the Western world in general (don’t be offended, nationalist snowflakes, it is true that those migrants don’t only come to Europe to enjoy the wealth our nations have hoarded; some of them suffer from long-term damages committed by our ancestors), we should sum up curtly what this has got to do with the Utopia of a more recommunalised society. How would migration be affected by it, or vice versa, how would the world of small communities be affected by mass migration? First of all, it has to be confessed that especially the nationalists and racist libertarians (to separate them from actual libertarians) would highly benefit from their sudden autonomy. No longer did they have to obey a government that approved of migration in terms of enhancement in stifled professions such as the craftsmanship, but could they enjoy their monotony and occasional (probable) inbreeding (the question is how much movement might exist between different communities that isolate themselves from foreign “hostile” influences, such as are suggested by nationalists who equipped racist beliefs). It’s the universal argument I submit to appease any ideology mutually since it is true but works for everyone. The only problem existing throughout the text is the likelihood of invasions on any side’s behalf. False arguments and beliefs descending out of thin air, justifying invasions are easily brought up and thereby endanger communities. We had the argument before, so I won’t repeat it. It just came up to my mind when we were talking about the deterioration of development in Africa through the European colonialism. Observing the situation in this continent before and after the invasion, the thought might arise that Europeans pulling their administrative system and maxims over the Africans. A quote from a short book²². On this issue would establish this argument:
“Das Befriedungsargument ist ein klassisches koloniales Argument. Es hat zum Beispiel auch bei der Entmachtung der Indianer in Nordamerika eine Rolle gespielt. Auch da sind es – wie in Rhodesien – die beiden zivilisatorischen Elemente « Mission » und « Arbeit », mit denen die Ordnung der Wilden in die Tat umgesetzt werden soll.”
(Translation: “The argument of pacification is a classically colonialist argument. It was also applied during the toppling of Native Americans in North America. There, too, as in Rhodesia, the two civil elements of “mission” and “work” were supposed to reshape the savages.”)
Further does the author explain that in order to reshape the people of those African tribes (or at least, Europeans created so-called tribes out of thin air, since those people themselves never believed in such boundaries, as they mostly shared similar spiritual beliefs but only lived in their adjacently scattered villages in the widths of the Savannah (or, more technically speaking, simply the widths of the African continent)), the old relations, spiritually as well as socially, had to be broken. A new order was to be established among the “savages”, and therefore, the old ones had to disappear. The same argument is being abused when it comes to migration towards Europe: “Deep state operations” enforcing the “Great Replacement” are underway to destroy the Western civilisation and culture to make space for the Arabic and African cultures respectively. Yet they never bemoaned that the same thing happened to those same people beforehand, centuries ago. Of course it wouldn’t make any sense since the people now born grow up in such an environment, and never experienced any other. What good would it do to now overthrow their entire society to create them a world comparable to their forefathers’ world? Unless it is desired and enforced by those people, it would only create a vacuum of power briskly filled out by an autocrat.
Epilogue?
It is said that there couldn’t be a society to everybody’s unanimous liking, and whoever coined that phrase was right. But this only applies to large societies bearing many people of several beliefs and ideologies. To crack those large societies up and deconstructing them into various small societies of like-minded individuals could prove a difference: That there can be societies to every inhabitant’s liking, disregarding those who only recognise them from the outside. As for trade and global relations, negotiations will possibly be inevitable, although it of course depends on the societal shape the respective communities and partners in trade decided to overtake. Unions such as the European Union or the global approval of the dollar as a currency to trade in long-lastingly eased trading goods without any difficulties. Bartering or swapping without any neutral means could not be improved due to the easiness of currencies and moneychangers/banks who/that transferred any currency into another in no time. Meanwhile, money also brought us the society we now live in, in conclusion with the capitalist society which without any global regulation—e.g. in regards to moral doctrines to forbid it to companies to utilise developing countries’ or countries of low moral fibre’s (and a devastating human rights record’s) inhumane standards to produce cheaply for customers at home and abroad (morality, in this example, is just one suggestion to create an international commerce and production/manufacturing law compulsory to any internationally producing/manufacturing/trading company or concern; additionally, an internationally approved menagerie of sanctions in case of any violation of this regulation set would be compiled as well by every country interested in contributing to it, assuming that this country would also sign the final edition of this memorandum—has led towards worldwide misdemeanours (to put it slightly, euphemistically) and human rights violations as vaguely elaborated betwixt those two em dashes. It’s clear to see for everyone that the capitalist society has so far failed as to prevent human rights violations to legally happen via outsourced jobs in the Far East. Regulations were missing to avoid it, and most likely, even regulations targeted at these practices would have easily been undermined by founding subsidiary companies or joint ventures in the objected countries/with companies in the objected countries. From that point on, then, the respective country’s laws were in charge. Of course the international law could consider such dirty tricks and declare them unlawful, thus target according “offenders” to the aforementioned sanctions (which may be an amount of money to be reckoned before court during the first trial to later serve as a precedence for future violations. On the other hand, we though don’t want to lament or condescend upon the Capitalist society, system or ideology, since this would be the topic worth granting an own text. The idea itself, it has to be accepted, is not inherently bad, it was just poorly executed by the international community. To condemn an idea for misdeeds and failures committed by its feckless brothers-in-ideology. The argument that “whenever Socialism has been tried, it failed; thus, Socialism is infeasible” not only is a superficial approach, but also doesn’t it comprise the fact that states in general will someday fail as long as they depend on the capability of Democratically elected officials. Democracy itself only works as an addition in a free society; by itself, it isn’t ripe for scaffolding a public order. This is not to say that it was bad, it just doesn’t prosper when acquiesced in shape of a state. As a societal order absent of a state, it indeed prospered to everybody’s delight (assuming that “everybody” enjoyed the freedoms that were impossible to enjoy in a (totalitarian) state, such as arbitrary regulations or oppressions emerging from improper taxation, sudden rises in costs, police violence, discrimination due to one’s origin, colour of skin, accent or name, etc.). So far, though, we don’t know Democracy other than as a stately system, thus translate its name as a “leadership of/by the people(’s vote)”. How, then, would those rules apply in a society described as Democratic but without the state? Only via broadening our definition of Democracy could we install it in a stateless society: We had to consider Democratic the following attitudes: Pluralism—the diversity of ideologies living inside the society peacefully together (while this was not necessarily given in my concept, I would not abhor it. Currently, though, it doesn’t work out since unversatile figureheads polarise society in such a way that different-minded people are likelier to clash against one another rather than conversing about their respective ideologies. Politicians, if not reflecting on their own work, inadvertently ignite society, thus throwing overboard an actually well-intentioned idea); the freedom of speech, movement and action—the first one might be clear, it allows everyone to have one’s own opinion, even if it went straight against the system the person now lives in. Furthermore is the person allowed to publicly and audibly utter this opinion without being put into prison for it, or otherwise experiencing any unbearable, inhumane consequences from having uttered it. The freedom of movement would be the liberty to travel wherever the person wants to go without the state surveying the individual's ’very single move to track it down in case it did anything unlawfully. The last one might be a little bit cryptic to understand, though. It simply means the freedom to do what someone wanted in terms of actions. Yet, what does “actions” mean in this context? It means that a person is not unreasonably barred from anything, that the legal code is cogently balanced. Actions, so to say, contains the previous freedoms plus everything one is capable of doing as long as it won’t infringe anyone else’s freedom, safety or health. To name one crucial freedom, it would also include the freedom of “substance abuse”, i.e. the injection of drugs that were going to ruin someone’s health and lead someone straight into a vicious addiction. Of course most drugs are seriously useless when it comes to increasing someone’s endurance or concentration, since the side-affects are more obnoxious than they do well. When it comes to improvement of mental powers, a healthy diet and sport not only are more favourable but also had the same effects permanently (assuming that one who ate healthier and did more sports in order to accomplish bodily perfection didn’t abruptly stop to do so; otherwise, it’s only natural that one’s body afterwards began to deteriorate).
But as I now wanted to finish this text at last, I should sum up where we stand. Before I do so, though, I shall make a confession: I admit that this text is not an authoritative explanation of how to redeem our society from its chains, the chains binding us to a barely preferable status quo; my text lacks an apparent instruction on how to execute what I hereby submitted, many assumptions are too colossal to somehow ever be accomplished, since many of them rely on common-sense comprehensions of what I stated. Nationalists are never going to watch their nation dissolving for the public good, just to then be told that they could embrace their community’s superiority as well, if they just didn’t attempt to expand their size through conquests of other communities. Neither the first demand, nor the other would ever be promised by them. And if they did, it would eventually be broken, sooner or later. It’s in their ideology’s nature to never be contend with their nation’s size, it usually has to be enlarged. Nationalists are like men purchasing a BMW M3—only a few of them do so because they liked the car for its optics, most of them purchase them to compensate something.
Another requirement I oftentimes contemplated was the trade, and the methods to trade. The finiteness of resources already make it difficult to trade reasonably without a means of shortening availability justly. Capitalism understood this issue, thereby justified its acquisition of monetary means to somewhat solve this particular issue. Putting price labels on goods narrows down the amount of potential buyers able to afford them, thus solving the issue by itself. The fact that those who might need particular goods most are thereby excluded from purchasing them was never contemplated, as it seems; or otherwise, those people might be told to get a better job to earn money in order to purchasing those urgently required goods. Again, the market solved it, allegedly.
Still, I don’t want to shame Capitalism for its flaws, but rather highlight my own ones which I was unable to puzzle out comprehensively. People might consider my moderate attempt to morally oblige communities to stand by like-minded or useful communities in cases of invasions to be a miserable trial of inserting realpolitik into a stateless society. Still, I will stand by it, come hell or high water. Unity across towns’ borders will remain a vital recipe of perseverance in any situation, may it be in shape of a state or a community. Theoretically, such situations may be able to be brought up, but in practice, such relations will be negotiated and amended automatically, so that we don’t have to contemplate probable difficulties by now. In the end, we couldn’t even generalise them since any relation of one to another is an individual one, almost impossible to liken it to another. As unique as human beings are, so are communities, showing us that relations of two independent human beings are incomparable to other human beings’ relations. Therefore, the probability to defend a good friend/partner/ally in case of a conquest depends on the strength of their mutual relation. What I tried to do in the according chapter/paragraph was to create a general scheme exclusive of any individual presupposition, highlighting the attributions under which it might be favourable for oneself to defend a different community from a hostile force. Adjacently, I also introduced good reasons why guns will always be necessary to carry with one, especially in a stateless society in which the monopoly of violence is no longer existent but given into the hands of the common people. Self-defence will become the maxim of those who want to protect themselves against any violation of their freedom. Yet, as I argued long before, when people create an equal society in which no-one has to suffer from mistreatment or deprivation, violence or criminality will become a thing of the past, an issue only to be recognised in history books.
Those were the points that I personally didn’t find satisfactory to the fullest, which might need posterior editing once I was corrected by readers who detected flaws in my arguments. This I address to you now, dear reader who read until hear, not leaving one phrase out: If you have got any points you would like to criticise, please contact me in any way that you find suitable, and let me know about your opinion. Otherwise, I thank you for reading, and hope that I was able to broaden your horizon, and that one day, we all will one day enjoy a freer world in which we all will live together in peace and prosperity, exclusive of any melancholic pressures caused by superordinate forces trying to tell us how to live our lives. To express it in the words of US-American folklorist Woody Guthrie:
“This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York Islands, to the Gulf Stream Waters, to the redwood forests—this land was made for you and me.”
~ Woody Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land” (1940)
Certainly, Guthrie was right—the earth’s soil belongs to no-one generally, it is only cultivated by some of us, which doesn’t mean that we thereby own it. To own something leads towards hostilities since not everyone is going to loyally accept one’s pretence to possess something that is naturally given without any prerequisites. It would be heinous to think that anything existent without infringements should be accessible to only a selected amount of people. Of course to now submit this as part of my belief would contradict my tolerance for various beliefs, including those that lift the right to owning property, including land, so that I can only offer this as my personal belief, without placing it as a universal doctrine. Additionally, I can only recommend it to people to firstly contemplate their understanding of property possession as a human right (interestingly, some people would imply property possession as a human right why they wouldn’t consider housing as the same. Obviously, because the human right to decent housing could only be fully accomplished by the intervention of a welfare state, while the right to property was a legal comprehension of possessing things without any entity to intervene in this right, so that people are legally protected from dispossession without a legal establishment such as prior theft from another legal entity). In the end, we are not to judge such specific rights unless they are based on segregation or discrimination in further detail. Hereby, again, my previous reverie on the presumptions of justified intervention would be necessary to reflect on. Depending on how easy it would be to depart from a community, especially the one that under racist conditions discriminates minorities, offering those people sanctuary or a new place to live and start afresh could function as an alternative to getting into intercommunitary quagmire. Imbeciles and their kinship are never going to die out—whenever a couple of them vanish from earth, new ones are being born. Thus, to murder them or intervening in their living space is like removing weeds from the pavement—within a couple of days, they will be back with support. What good would it do to spend time on such pointless ventures when arrangements could be installed? In case of racist communities, leaving them alone in their uniracial misery as long as they didn’t mock or harass them, to put slightly what is meant as interference into their peace and autonomy by any way from misdemeanours to outright assailment against them, either through armoured skirmishes or through WMDs.
Nevertheless, we have to wrap this piece up now before the length becomes unbearable and the epilogue just another numeral concerned about another feature we already elaborated upon. Pointing back at the flaws and seemingly unfinished ideas, most of this utopia relies on common sense among every single denizen of this planet. The openness in front of fringe- and disconcerting ideologies most likely to, for example, not care about the environment’s well-being to favour those who profit from scorching it, while on the other hand, there is simply no way to intervene against such countries as long as there is no frank unity among those who were the only ones to confront them in the first place. I’m speaking about the Western supremacies, namely the US on the one side of the Great Pond and the EU on the other side. The US under Trump’s leadership introduced climate change denial and boundless withdrawals of environmental protection policies into the White House, while in Europe, especially in the East, right-winged governments such as in Poland or Hungary too raised doubts about the reality of climate change, mainly to appeal to their blue-collar voters who feared to lose conveniences who fell down to protect the climate. If there was one thing people are least likely to wilfully sacrifice their wealth for, it’s for reasons they hardly admit to experiencing themselves (as for landlocked countries or people living far from the coast, in meteorologically moderate areas that so far experienced few natural irregularities, those are especially hard-headed since climate change didn’t fully arrive before their doorstep yet). Why bother to care about something that perhaps doesn’t even exist? It refers to people who never left their country, maybe not even their own federal state, so that they never saw anything of the world. “Provincial townsfolk”, one could say, although the term could be recognised as negatively connoted. This doesn’t mean that it was wrong, though: The discrepancy between urban progressives and Conservative people of the rural parts of one’s country is growing as quickly as the discrepancy between the fillip of a rich élite, and the vast bottom of rather poor people, including those who live in staggering poverty, despite the odds (which may be the employment in up to three jobs and the country’s remarkable wealth).
We experience a growing gap between the rich and the poor, the rural people and the urbanites, and the young and the old. Three divisions thus turning us away from one another, so that unity inside a nation is a merely dead ideal of the past, now dissolved by incapable politicians on the one hand and changing demographics on the other. Hence, a radically new system has to be applied to accustom to it. To stand still and believe in matching policies to do the trick in these trying times not only is naïve but also dangerous since it shows carelessness for the signs of our days—the signs telling us that states have become obsolete, that people are no longer able to unite with their fellowmen beyond their communities. Now this would contradict my idea that once we all lived in our communities, we would not care for our adjacent fellows anymore, so that once someone invaded another community, it would become a battle one versus one. Otherwise, communities, if they remained in the minority beyond re-established or prevailing nations, they would collapse because outsider systems never lived for long since they either experienced strong opposition, embargos or went through exhausting wars forcing the people to rationalise their goods (Yes, they came for your butter—again); no matter for what reason they collapsed (many of them were simply usurped by totalitarian autocrats who believed that this time, a system like theirs would prosper and exist eternally), they went into the history books as justifications for anti-Socialists or –Communists. Whether communities, flexible due to their loose structure and with plenty of opportunities to unite in order to create a cobweb of borderless trading routes, are going to fall for the same fate, this is a theoretical question to debate from various points of view (even the most fiercely opposing ones not giving this construction a single month of survival) on the one hand, and a practical question to be tried and observed. Whatever one might think about this laughable idea, in the end, it will all depend on the people themselves. Unlike all the authoritarian leaderships and the system we live through from the cradle to the grave, this one has to be borne out of a people’s unanimous consensus, and I mean all the people of at least a nation that would thereby dissolved.
Constitutions normally outline the requirement of the parliament’s importance and that it had to be protected at all costs. Yet, what would happen if the people decided that they no longer felt served well by their parliament, or by any parliament at all, so that they wanted to stomp their nation and instead continue living by their own, inside their communities, autonomously and free? Could the parliamentarians then contradict them, telling them that “while you are all entitled to your opinions, such an option is out of any predictability, and furthermore, to fell such decisions is completely out of your purview. These are decisions those are supposed to fell who you have democratically elected”. While they are right from their point of responsibilities, it should be up to the people how they want to live their lives, under which systemic conditions, assuming that those who speak this way are in the absolute majority. Below any absolute majority, such words can be considered to be protests to be mooted when it comes to any fundamental discussion about our society’s maintenance. Most likely is my concept going to ever be put on trial thence, as there are too few people educated in their options beyond totalitarianism, Democracy and lawlessness (falsely called “anarchism” while actually speaking of “anomy”). In the end, when it comes down to starting revolutions, people have to be densely educated in the several details, otherwise, any revolution, any protest, may he be violent or peaceful, is condemned to die out from the inside. Thus my last words in this text: Educate yourselves, and educate your peers as best as you can. After having finished this text, let this be your paramount objective for the future: Gather as many texts on political philosophy and theory, and on sociology, from the left to the right, and from up to down; learn about what the greatest minds in these disciplines had got to say, and once you feel safe to discuss the subjects you passed by in these texts, meet people who too are educated in the problems of politics and sociology, and refine your vast knowledge. Refinery is key to contemplating why we still live in these imperfect times and why the greater mass of people usually fail to get issues’ backgrounds right, thus end up in vulgar misconceptions trying to solve them with equally false solutions. When your knowledge is finally applicable, move forward and educated people so that they can enter the circle you surmounted as well. There is nothing more dangerous to (corrupt) states than educated people who are able to see through the shadows of hollow phrases. (Also, don’t leave this prophetic language to conspiracy theorists who erect their gobbledygook as the prediction of the Völuspa. Don’t grant them more credits than they deserve) As Martin Luther gallantly exclaimed, “We [the people] shall overcome”. And now is our time!
But for now, my America, we must part—just joking. But seriously, I will now have to say goodbye, and again want to thank everyone who read my text despite the odds. You’re awesome!
“Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.”
~ Truman Burbank, “The Truman Show” (1998)
LE FIN
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COMMENTS go hereunder: https://t.me/Rationalpolitik/66
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¹ Cit. first study: « Monika Ardelt & Sabine Grunwald (2018) The Importance of Self-Reflection and Awareness for Human Development in Hard Times, Research in Human Development, 15:3-4, 187-199, DOI: 10.1080/15427609.2018.1489098 »
² However, I would like to submit two studies contradictory to the position I mentioned in my text; they couldn't persuade me from my own experiences gathered throughout years of trying to get in touch with people who are either mildly or strongly in opposition to my own liberal views on daily politics and the overall idea on what to improve in order to repair the failures committed by the “political brass” pulling the strings in the upper levels of decision-making.
Cit. first study: « Elizabeth Dubois & Grant Blank (2018) The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media, Information, Communication & Society, 21:5, 729-745, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656 »
Cit. second study: « Bastos M, Mercea D, Baronchelli A (2018) The geographic embedding of online echo chambers: Evidence from the Brexit campaign. PLoS ONE 13(11): e0206841. DOI: 10.371 »
The first study indicates the probability that people might be less likely to nourish on social networks such as Facebook to assemble their daily news digest, although there is no elaboration on whether they rely on single users to present them posts that the recipients would comprehend as news in spite of less underlining through sources on which they establish their post. Furthermore, perhaps because of the timeout between the study's date of publishing and the introduction of the partnership, Facebook's hitherto unique feature of fact-checking posts shared on its platform hasn't been addressed, even though it might contribute to disrupting echo chambers due to people's apparent realisation about the outright lies and intentional mislead of readers (and watchers, assuming that the source also included visual material). Assuming that this partnership was sealed prior to the publishing of this study, which can safely be contradicted, the authors could not be confronted with their failure to recognise this fact. Yet, we are able to dismiss this claim, since the partnership was sealed years before this study was commenced, so that the authors could have minded it in their argument. When it comes to social networks in charge of influencing people's source of information on the news and politics in general, as one beside many, fact-checks could carry a fair share of influence by indirectly correcting false information the readers might otherwise consume without a glimpse of doubt on the accuracy of what they just read, or watched, depending on the medium itself.
Frankly though, this argument I now made too contradicts my point of echo chambers being supported in their erection through large social networks. At first glance. The question is of how many of the diversely nourished news/politics media ‟connoisseurs‟ are likely to practically participate in public debates compared to those who consciously adhere to their one-sided media digest (assuming that those who consume their information through various outlets and stations ranging throughout a wide field of leanings, so that one would filter a balanced position considering as many positions as possible don't create such an inflammatory discourse likely to explode at any given time) To consume media is not akin to feel encouraged to challenge one's views against other people's views. One might instead prefer to linger in one's environment, spending one's time dedicated to something different, like reading fantasy novels or playing football. Neither study I shared specified the consumers in regards to what they made out of their modern-day media availability opportunities; whether they felt encouraged to commence further and more hotly contested debated or simply took those information for granted without ever converting them into something worthwhile, either to their own or others, it's unbeknownst at least to me Assuming anything adjacent to the information i the study would be a risky undertaking, yet it's important to know in regards to how echo chambers affect the public discourse.
³ Cit. first study: « McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2015). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141(2), 447-473. DOI: Psychological Bulletin »
⁴ Vide Rand, Ayn (YEAR). ‟Atlas Shrugged”. London: Signet Books. Pages 292 ff; 643 ff.
⁵ There are studies on the field, although at least one of them which I found appropriate to deliver side information to contemplate on whether our competitive society does in fact enforce the development of mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety. Beside those, opinion pieces on the issue were also published in newspapers, although they hardly count as evidence to underline it, so that they don't enjoy a pole position. They were just added as honourable mentions.
As for studies,here's the one I found valuable to add in this list:
Cit. first study: « Gilbert P., McEwan K., Bellew R., Mills A., Gale C.(2009): The dark side of competition: How competitive behaviour and striving to avoid inferiority are linked to depression, anxiety, stress and self-harm.Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 82, 123–136 » Link: National Center for Biotechnology Information (No open access to full text)
I admit that this study is already of a particular age, which might have lowered its value since new results could contradict it by having acquired higher standards and new methodologies. Since a single study cannot prove a scheme enforced in our society, more studies were required in order to make an arguable point. Therefore, I cannot express more than a bare thesis easily assailed by those who might rather accuse a society dangerously likely to comfort people and treat them with kid gloves rather than putting the gloves off and preparing them for what is to come once one entered the serious side of life.
⁶ Nota Bene: I alternatively called this hostile force fascist and nationalist, which might have confused some people, even accusing me of blurring the lines between these two ideologies. While worries are reasonable in regards to such a hotly debated topic, I do not try to blur the lines between these two. I just did assume quite a lot that was not characterised beforehand, which gave me a “safe space” to move in. Nevertheless, I would like to recall how fascism is exactly defined, according to the Britannica:
Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.Since the hostile force threatening those two communities is not going to be characterised any further in this small thought game, I would like to apologise to those to whom this narrow difference between sole nationalism and outspoken, practiced fascism is held dearly, but once nationalists grasp power through a democratic election, there is little chance they would give it up to light-hearted liberals to whom nationalism is nothing but a pointless burden to be thrown aside to act more flexibly. From nationalism to fascism, it's only one putsch to execute.
⁷ To elaborate on that vague and highly disputed point, I would also like to hereby submit two different studies and an article shared on the news outlet “Social Europe”, all of them concerned about that statement. It's of course too easy to believe that certain partisan or ideological affiliations could universally be aligned with a certain background, such as a wealthy middle-class income or a lower class craftman's profession, for example. It's never like that generally; most of the time, though, a majority of people are commonly located in a certain class, vaguely adumbrated by statistics and surveys. To do the same, we oversee the three following studies:
Cit. first study: « Examining the Social Basis of the Far-right Parties in Europe
Article 6, Volume 1, Issue 1, Summer 2017, Page 139-174. DOI: 10.22059/WSPS.2017.62283 »
This first study is especially important since it reminds the reader to distinguish between the far right and the fascist movement, which is oftentimes forgotten in the public discourse in which both terminlogoies are alternatively used while it's not necessarily the case that those who are markedly affiliated to the far right support fascist tendencies as outlined in footnote number six. Most of the ideological fellows are rather united in a disliking of what they see as “mainstream politics”, especially highlighting mass migration, “violations” of their free speech rights, “virtue signaling”, etc. All these points are not given in the definition as provided by the Britannica, nor in any other authoritative definition of fascism. More precisely, it would paint the opposite to them as fascists, which led towards calling environmentalist stances in parliamentarian politics “eco-fascist”. Long story short, one has to cautiously handle these two terms to avoid inflationary usage of false declarations leading towards gradual, inadvertent relativisations.
Reagarding the foundational question of this footnote, the study gives us the first hints on who votes for far-right parties, based on prior studies reviewed by the authors of this study:
In general, it was found that support for the far-right is concentrated among the older and younger generations, the less educated working-class men living in the declining industrial towns, cynical of their economic future (Ford & Goodwin, 2010; Arzheimer, 2010). The research conducted by Chris shows that during the early 1990s, the most electoral support for eight far-right parties across seven western European countries has been concentrated among less-educated farmers, artisans and workers. The obtained results from studies conducted by Rodrik and Mudde based on International Social Survey and World Values Survey Data suggest that in developed democracies of Western Europe, less-educated workers who live on less income with no job security support the restrictive and strict immigration and trade policies and vote for these parties.As we can tell, the common knowledge of the lower-class people and those who are mostly the first to be hit by economic downturns and crises are those who are most likely to vote for those who promise them a safer future and more attention for their worries and problems, no matter what they may be. Since they are also the parties who provide them with the most superficial (and oftentimes plainly made-up) solutions to problems that were only solved for a short term, returning with even greater force afterwards, they appeal the most to their own understanding of politics as a binary construct rather than a complex, multi-faceted issue which requires profound dedication in order to fully understand this. (That's not to say that the left was therefore the wing almost exclusively assembled by intellectuals and graduates in sociology or political science/theory. There, too, are many people who only rarely dedicate themselves to deeper analyses of policy problems or poltiical theory as a merely philosophical discipline. they only came to different conclusion of a depth similar to that of the (far) right)
Cit. second study: « Engler S., Weisstanner D. (2020) Income inequality, status decline and support for the radical right. In: Careja R., Emmenegger P., Giger N. (eds) The European Social Model under Pressure. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-27043-8_22 »
This study comes to a similar conclusion although from a different approach: It argues that income equality, not globalisation and the loss of national identity, were the point at which people tended to support far-right parties and their policies rather than any moderate party or more left-winged approaches to current issues. It would also alighn with the mere cliché of the urban progressive in the (upper) middle-class job, being more concerned about gender issues and xenophhiba rather than one's landman'sissues.
Cit. of the opining article: « Halikiopoulou, Daphne (2019): Understanding the far-right populists: focus on their political message. Social Europe »
This article differs from the two aforementioned studies in such a way that it doesn't look directly at the base these parties and ideologies attract but how especially the parties, in a word of states and nations, they are the functionaries it takes to get oen's ideas and proposals through and into the parliaments to break through into lawful action, mesmerise their voters to become more and more. Since politics are the discipline of soft-soaping eligible citizens, being capable of convincingly is key to becoming elected in the first place. The right, on the other hand, didn't apply the rhetoric elements introduced by the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero or Martin Luther King Jr. but preferred to appeal to working men's worries and sow division rather than unity. Instead of equipping elements of style into their speeches, they utilised loudness and anger in their voice.
⁸ Cit. of first study: « Canton R. (2016) Why Do People Commit Crimes?. In: McNeill F., Durnescu I., Butter R. (eds) Probation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-51982-5_2 »
⁹ Cit. of first study: « Minor, D., Persico, N. & Weiss, D.M. Criminal background and job performance. IZA J Labor Policy 7, 8 (2018) » DOI: 10.1186/s40173-018-0101-0
¹⁰ Goldman, Emma (2008): Anarchism and Other Essays. Stilwell: Digibooks.com. Page 51
¹¹ As an evidence for the development of Germanic languages as an offspring of archaic Asian languages, read: « Schmidt, Wilhelm (2013): Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Ein Lehrbuch für das germanistische Studium. 11. Aufl. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag. Page 33/34 »
¹² Tyler, Tom R.; Fagan, Jeffrey; and Geller, Amanda, “Street Stops and Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments in Young Urban Men's Legal Socialization” (2014. Faculty Scholarship Series. 4988.
¹³ Vide Hayek, F. A. (2007). “The Road To Serfdom. Text and Documents”. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Page 94
¹⁴ Tyler, Tom R. et al. (2014), page 07; a quote from this aforementioned study:
Force is significantly more likely to be used against minority suspects in street stop encounters than against whites (Fagan 2010), compounding the assaults on dignity by including a dimension of racial targeting for the most extreme forms of police contact.¹⁵ Mises, Ludwig von (2013). Die Bürokratie. St. Augustin: Academia Verlag
¹⁶ Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard; Cook, Charlie; et al. (2019). The Almanac of American Politics. Bethesda: Columbia Books & Information Services. Page 232 cf.
¹⁷ Wippermann, Wolfgang. Totalitarismus/Totalitarismustheorie, in: Nohlen, Dieter (Hrsg.) (1991). Wörterbuch Staat und Politik. München: Piper GmbH und Co. KG
¹⁸ Rothbard, Murray (2015). The Case against the Feds. Auburn (AL): Mises Institute. Page 79 cf.
¹⁹ Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard; Cook, Charlie; et al. (2019). The Almanac of American Politics. Bethesda: Columbia Books & Information Services. Page 1,797 cf.
²⁰ Schieder, Theodor (Ed.) (1981). Handbuch der europäischen Geschichte. Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta. Page 134, 336.; a quote from the text (from page 134):
²¹ Peukert, Werner. Der atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey: (1740–1797); Wirtschaftsanthropologie u. Sozialgeschichte. 1. Aufl. – Wiesbaden: Steiner 1978. (Studien zur Kulturkunde; Bd. 40, S. 63)
²² Gronemeyer, Reimer (1991). Die Tradition: Afrikanische Arbeit in spirituellem Zusammenhang, in: Gronemeyer, Reimer (Hrsg.). Der faule Neger. Vom weißen Kreuzzug gegen den schwarzen Müßiggang. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH. S. 54
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