Politics, again

I apologize if I offended anyone with my last couple of posts. I wasn't trying to paint a bleak or pessimistic picture; I'm very optimistic about humanity. But I felt the need  to testify to the truth as I see it in this one area.

Nor was I trying to say that all politicians are evil. Doubtless, many have approached politics with the sincere desire to do good.

It's just that I don't believe politicians anymore. The higher you ascend the political tower, the less and less sincere you become. You can tell that the presidential candidates are not honest or sincere people. Or if they are, it's been buried beneath the advice of their political advisors. I would normally not say that about anyone ... but actions speak.

I do believe in working for good in whatever situation you are in. But I also believe that if you're going to be a bull-fighter, you should expect to be gored. Certain things just go together, like politics and corruption.

For what it's worth, Ron Paul and Barak Obama seem to be the most sincere of the candidates.

-Micah Redding

Alternatives to Politics

If politics is about who controls the guns (and it is), what alternatives can we create? Here are some ideas:

Most people view "law" as a series of statements about what we value. As in, "we hold marriage to be between a man and a woman". But those kinds of "laws" are just touchy-feely comments added in to make you feel nice. They're not really laws. Real laws specify who lives and who dies; who spends their life in jail, and who goes free.

We could perhaps extract the one from the other. Statements of values need to be made, and are valuable in and of themselves. We could easily establish a universally recognized body which would make appropriate statements about the values of the nation. Such an entity would be known as a "Court", but would have no connection to an executive branch (unlike in the current system).

Such an entity could even judge cases, and make decisions in difficult controversies. When neighbors fought, they could bring their cases before this Court. But because this entity would have no executive branch, it would be very inclined to bring mutually acceptable resolutions to bear for both parties. When this failed, the judgment of the Court would be held by the country as most likely being the truth, and people who were aware of the case would use this information in choosing how to behave towards the guilty party.

Any executive groups that developed, like security or police forces, would use the judgment of the Court as the basis of how people are treated. If they interacted with a criminal who had been judged guilty, they might feel free to lock that person up for an appropriate amount of time. The security force would be hesitant to abuse their power, as they would rely on the endorsement of the Court to drum up new business.

In this case, we've extracted violence from any kind of government-like organization, and put it in the hands of small, de-centralized citizen groups. That may be the recipe for less control, but it's also certainly the recipe for less fascism.

On the other hand, we've switched from creating "laws" to having a "central standards organization", much as we have for web programming. In web programming, we have no laws, we just have recommendations from a central, trusted group. And they accomplish more than laws ever could.

I've presented just one possibility here. What are some others?

Here's to Politics

Here's politics and the world in a few hundred words.

Law is violence. A "law" is just the statement, "do this or we will kill you". Tax law means "pay taxes or we will lock you up in jail, or shoot you, or destroy your family". Criminal law is "don't do bad things to other people, or we will lock you up in jail or shoot you, however we feel at the moment". Civil law is "pay those people the money you owe, or we'll send someone out to harass you, and if you don't listen to them, we'll send someone out to threaten you, and if you don't listen to them, we'll shoot you".

The motives might be good, and we might defend the right of the law to use violence. But violence is what it is.

Government is the use of violence in a diplomatic and secretive way.
Politics is the bitter struggle for the right to control the guns.

When you have something that is birthed in violence, it will return to violence. Thus, politics will never be clean, politicians will never be honest, and the government will never be effective. They're not designed to be. The government exists to maximize its ability to perform violence, not to suit some petty purpose you believe you've foisted on it.

Because of this, entanglement in politics leads to corruption. Look at the religious right and their multitude of scandals.

But there's a better way. Politics doesn't have to rule. Let's consider other possibilities.