Someone posted a video about how the natural evolution of a libertarian is to become a monarchist. Monarchies, after all, did a better job preserving the rights of the "little people" than any other form of government throughout history.
His idea was that we'd have a king that goes around murdering commies and marxists and leaves everyone else alone.
That's a good start, but it's not enough, but more on that at the latter half of my post.
I preface all of this by pointing out the obvious: If you do not have any power, then any further discussion is moot. Only those who have some power, or who intend to obtain some power need to think about these things. The rest of you who want to simply be left alone to yourselves have to acknowledge the fact that you will never have any power.
Anyone who is familiar with Roman history knows that a republic must go through a cycle. If you want some good years where men are ruled by laws that are just, then you need to tolerate what has to come before and after it. The natural cycle is something like this:
* Good men use laws to govern themselves.
* Bad men take advantage of those laws to oppress good men.
* Good men are unable to manage the nightmare that the bad men have created, and must resort to some form of violence to restore order.
* Good men appoint a dictator to temporarily suspend all the laws and kill bad men.
* Eventually the dictator steps down after having put things back in order. Go back to step 1.
Some people try to break this up into some sort of "Monarchy cycle" with monarchy at the top. But really you could put any form of government in the cycle at the top as your ideal of what government should look like. For me, it's a republic where laws, not men, rule.
The monarchy cycle looks something like this:
* A just king rules over his people.
* Either due to incompetence or the frailties of mortality, he must surround himself with good advisors to whom he delegates more and more authority. These advisors are the "aristocracy", a group of people who rule because they are superior to others.
* Aristocracy naturally degenerates and eventually wealth, not excellence, is the key to power. The Plutocracy takes over and the government becomes a system whereby the wealthy obtain and retain their wealth at the expense of the state.
* As their wealth multiplies, the number of wealthy people soon overpowers the few at the top. (Just like a king needs to surround himself with advisors, so too do the wealthy.) These people clamor for a system of government based on rules not men and the republic (or Greek-style democracy) is born, typically only granting voting rights to the land owners.
* The land owners treat the poor as equals despite them clearly not being so, and eventually grant suffrage to everyone. This leads to the people plundering the state.
* The state becoming bankrupt, it can no longer maintain order and so a strong man arises to create order and becomes king.
The point of the above is to demonstrate that kings or monarchs are never enough. It's a good start, but it always degenerates into something else. So if monarchy is your goal, then you should rather be talking about some form of government that can either sustain a monarchy, or grant power to a deserving monarch for short periods of time, or that devolves into monarchy when things go wrong. Such a system could only be something like what the Romans built in their republican years. Again, read history to understand where they went wrong and where they went right.
Now, as for actual policy, it's not enough to let everyone else along while performing TKD or TND or whatever. Yes, you've identified the bad guys and now you intend to put an end to them, but just because you have a crown on your head and the people shout your praises from the rooftops does not mean you will be successful at defeating your enemies. Again, look at history books.
The policies that you must enforce must simultaneously increase or consolidate power within yourself and solve the problems you intended to solve in the first place. If you try to merely solve your problems and spend your power to do so, you will run out of power and the problem will remain. On the otherh and, if you endlessly accumulate power but never solve the problem, you're wasting everyone's time, especially your own. A healthy balance must be maintained between accumulating power and using it.
Thankfully, the nature of reality is that one can gain power by enforcing justice, but it has to be done a certain way. I won't go into how that is to be done, but the astute reader will know what I am talking about.
Thus, libertarianism is a failure on all fronts. Those who have libertarian sentiments are fools, and must abandon such ideas. One does not gain power just to hand it out. The very act of "handing out" power must increase your own power. Think about that. Do not give authority to your enemies, ever.
As an example, suppose I were made dictator of America tomorrow. I would NOT lower taxes on all people. I would be very selective over who gets tax breaks, and I might raise taxes on people who oppose me or try to subvert my power. It's that simple. I would reward my friends and supporters who show loyalty and duty and I would punish the rest. That is the only way it can ever work. Our American sense of treating our enemies fairly is a ridiculous concept. You don't treat people trying to kill you as peers and fellow citizens. You have to kill them first. That's that. Disagreement can be ok, but disloyalty is not.
His idea was that we'd have a king that goes around murdering commies and marxists and leaves everyone else alone.
That's a good start, but it's not enough, but more on that at the latter half of my post.
I preface all of this by pointing out the obvious: If you do not have any power, then any further discussion is moot. Only those who have some power, or who intend to obtain some power need to think about these things. The rest of you who want to simply be left alone to yourselves have to acknowledge the fact that you will never have any power.
Anyone who is familiar with Roman history knows that a republic must go through a cycle. If you want some good years where men are ruled by laws that are just, then you need to tolerate what has to come before and after it. The natural cycle is something like this:
* Good men use laws to govern themselves.
* Bad men take advantage of those laws to oppress good men.
* Good men are unable to manage the nightmare that the bad men have created, and must resort to some form of violence to restore order.
* Good men appoint a dictator to temporarily suspend all the laws and kill bad men.
* Eventually the dictator steps down after having put things back in order. Go back to step 1.
Some people try to break this up into some sort of "Monarchy cycle" with monarchy at the top. But really you could put any form of government in the cycle at the top as your ideal of what government should look like. For me, it's a republic where laws, not men, rule.
The monarchy cycle looks something like this:
* A just king rules over his people.
* Either due to incompetence or the frailties of mortality, he must surround himself with good advisors to whom he delegates more and more authority. These advisors are the "aristocracy", a group of people who rule because they are superior to others.
* Aristocracy naturally degenerates and eventually wealth, not excellence, is the key to power. The Plutocracy takes over and the government becomes a system whereby the wealthy obtain and retain their wealth at the expense of the state.
* As their wealth multiplies, the number of wealthy people soon overpowers the few at the top. (Just like a king needs to surround himself with advisors, so too do the wealthy.) These people clamor for a system of government based on rules not men and the republic (or Greek-style democracy) is born, typically only granting voting rights to the land owners.
* The land owners treat the poor as equals despite them clearly not being so, and eventually grant suffrage to everyone. This leads to the people plundering the state.
* The state becoming bankrupt, it can no longer maintain order and so a strong man arises to create order and becomes king.
The point of the above is to demonstrate that kings or monarchs are never enough. It's a good start, but it always degenerates into something else. So if monarchy is your goal, then you should rather be talking about some form of government that can either sustain a monarchy, or grant power to a deserving monarch for short periods of time, or that devolves into monarchy when things go wrong. Such a system could only be something like what the Romans built in their republican years. Again, read history to understand where they went wrong and where they went right.
Now, as for actual policy, it's not enough to let everyone else along while performing TKD or TND or whatever. Yes, you've identified the bad guys and now you intend to put an end to them, but just because you have a crown on your head and the people shout your praises from the rooftops does not mean you will be successful at defeating your enemies. Again, look at history books.
The policies that you must enforce must simultaneously increase or consolidate power within yourself and solve the problems you intended to solve in the first place. If you try to merely solve your problems and spend your power to do so, you will run out of power and the problem will remain. On the otherh and, if you endlessly accumulate power but never solve the problem, you're wasting everyone's time, especially your own. A healthy balance must be maintained between accumulating power and using it.
Thankfully, the nature of reality is that one can gain power by enforcing justice, but it has to be done a certain way. I won't go into how that is to be done, but the astute reader will know what I am talking about.
Thus, libertarianism is a failure on all fronts. Those who have libertarian sentiments are fools, and must abandon such ideas. One does not gain power just to hand it out. The very act of "handing out" power must increase your own power. Think about that. Do not give authority to your enemies, ever.
As an example, suppose I were made dictator of America tomorrow. I would NOT lower taxes on all people. I would be very selective over who gets tax breaks, and I might raise taxes on people who oppose me or try to subvert my power. It's that simple. I would reward my friends and supporters who show loyalty and duty and I would punish the rest. That is the only way it can ever work. Our American sense of treating our enemies fairly is a ridiculous concept. You don't treat people trying to kill you as peers and fellow citizens. You have to kill them first. That's that. Disagreement can be ok, but disloyalty is not.
I don't think we're in a post-scarcity world yet, and I don't think we'll ever fully reach there. There is always going to be a need for human minds and human hands and feet, but we have to be smart about it.