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Old 10-15-2008, 03:16 AM   #45 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Dunedan View Post
Individuals, or groups of individuals who have agreed upon a course of non-violent corrective action (ie shunning or ostracism). If someone attempts to initiate the use of force against someone else, they should suffer for it: either they should suffer at the hands of their intended victim, or at the hands of a society that will have nothing to do with them. If they will not make restitution, let them die freezing in the dark. A person who initiates the use of force or fraud has forfeited their Rights to their intended victim.

At the most basic level, the world operates this way already, we're just arrogant enough in the well-developed nations of the world to forget this. If you are unwilling or unable to defend your Rights, they'll be violated, pure and simple. The idea is to shrink the Government to such an extent that the damage it can do is mitigated to the greatest possible degree; you can't have a plutocracy without a Government for the wealthy to use as a proxy and protect their Corporate interests, after all.
I think you would find that those with the means to enforce this protection of rights--if not a democratically elected government--will be the wealthy, nearly exclusively. That is if you want to avoid society descending into anarchy. In this set up, the wealthy will hold all the power over the means of production and the rules governing them because the rights and security of capital will be prioritized through capital itself. The regulators of rights will be those with the most capital (i.e. the most means of enforcing them and the most interest in protecting them). What you have here is fertile ground for plutocracy. This is mainly because your view of government is as some castrated and insignificant figurehead...maybe as the "assistant to the plutocrats," or at least the plutocratic system of governance, whether official or unofficial.

I can't see things going any other way. To think so is to be idealistic. Am I missing something out of your picture? Some detail about the role and empowerment of (an official) government despite its inability to enforce anything?
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