Gradualism 101

Gradualism

9 (60%)

Shock therapy

2 (13.3%)

Ian's magic wand

4 (26.7%)

Total Members Voted: 10

[Alex Libman 15]

[...] Well I know at my monthly anarchist steering committee meeting we discuss ripping up the roads BEFORE we discuss tearing down the state house. [...] Shock therapy tends to backfire.  Gradualism is the only sensible answer. This topic deserves its own thread

So, here we are.  

[digitalfour]

I favor education. That's gradual, but when the time comes it will be shock therapy.

[dc0de]

escapism... via seastead/space.

Gradualism for the rest of the world though.

[Alex Libman 15]

"Ian's magic wand" (which in the poll is hyperlinked to the Wikipedia article on escapism) is an old joke about how Ian expects the society to transition from its current state to full privatization in an instant... poof... magic!

 

[Diogenes The Cynic]

To take apart the repressive government machine without causing terrible chaos, we would need to establish a order of operations as to what needs to go first.

I would say welfare has to go first, because if we begin downsizing government desk jobs and the military, then those useless idiots would clog the ranks of welfare and we would be no better off then before.

We also have to end the foreign entanglements we are in. People bitch and moan about troops being overextended and living in Iraq. What about the guys doing absoutely nothing in Germany, Japan, Korea, Chile, and all those other countries?

[gibson042]

It's worth noting that all of these actions are "gradualist":
1. Voting for political candidates who promise to shrink the state.
2. Pressuring office holders to shrink the state.
3. Piecemeal individual withdrawal from the state.

But obviously, they differ wildly.

[BobRobertson]

The only tolerance for "gradualism" that I have is that repealing laws will take time, opting out of coercive institutions will take time, and for some people getting out of the habit of coercion will take time.

Re-establishing voluntary institutions for those things expropriated by government will also take time, but I do not think it will take very long. Adjudication, education, protection are already provided privately. Just as railroad companies cooperated to establish standards and interoperability in order to foster their own businesses, so will airlines cooperate and maintain "air traffic control", although I doubt it will look much like what we have now once government inertia has been removed.

The various satellite communications companies will continue to cooperate so that everyone gets to share earth orbit without knocking each other out of the sky, and I'm pretty sure that the various tax-funded astronomy efforts will find plenty of space-buffs to keep the money coming in.

Lysander Spooner, UPS and FedEx have already demonstrated ably that the post office is obsolete. Walter Block has done great work for roads.

So what's left to be 'gradual' about? Just get on with it already.

[blackie]

The only way Gradualism will work for "liberty" is if society is already moving in that direction, and it's going in the opposite direction. With shock therapy, you don't know what you will end up with. You can't plan or predict the results.


http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future#Some_principles_of_history

Some principles of history

99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no discernible pattern, and a regular component that consists of long-term historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long-term trends.

First principle

100. If a small change is made that affects a long-term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost always be transitory - the trend will soon revert to its original state. (Example: A reform movement designed to clean up political corruption in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect; sooner or later the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution of the society. Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by widespread social changes; a small change in the society won't be enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to be permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the trend is already moving, so that the trend is not altered but only pushed a step ahead.

101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a long-term trend at all.

Second principle

102. If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are interrelated, and you can't permanently change any important part without changing all the other parts as well.

Third principle

103. If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various other societies have passed through the same change and have all experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that another society that passes through the same change will be likely to experience similar consequences.)

Fourth principle

104. A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to.

105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood.

Fifth principle

106. People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control.

107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.

108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any case) or else it only has a transitory effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required. (A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of a society; and by the third principle changes occur that were never expected or desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The American "Revolution" was not a revolution in our sense of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of American society from the retarding effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its natural direction of development. British society, of which American society was an off-shoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration, to be sure—there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very important step. But it was a step along the road the English-speaking world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.

110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles. They are expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future of society. The principles should be borne constantly in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them one should carefully reexamine one's thinking and retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.

[NHArticleTen]

Maybe the first thing the gunvernment could do as it's flying all those gunvernment aircraft to their new private owners is to air-drop copious quantities of marijuana over populated areas.

Mellow Times Airlines at your service!

Seriously, we need help getting Tom Baugh's new book "Starving The Monkeys" into as many hands as possible...AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

To that end, anyone who purchases the book from us for $35.00 cash, may return it for a full refund as long as they keep their receipt.

Others may wish to purchase a copy from Amazon or secure an autographed copy from Tom himself.

http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Starving-Monkeys-Entrepreneurial-Tom-Baugh/dp/061530155X

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[digitalfour]

The only way Gradualism will work for "liberty" is if society is already moving in that direction, and it's going in the opposite direction.

So in your opinion is there any way to turn this society around?

[blackie]

The only way Gradualism will work for "liberty" is if society is already moving in that direction, and it's going in the opposite direction.

So in your opinion is there any way to turn this society around?

Sure.

[digitalfour]

What do you suggest?

[blackie]

I don't have any suggestions for other people. Do what you think is best.

[anarchir]

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108084

Recruit these people for liberty (FSP, etc.). They already went through shock therapy.

Agree/Disagree? Did they go thru shock therapy? Would they be easy recruits? Should they be given a liberty pitch?

[Diogenes The Cynic]

The only way Gradualism will work for "liberty" is if society is already moving in that direction, and it's going in the opposite direction.

So in your opinion is there any way to turn this society around?

Sure.

I agree with this. A major impedement to progress is special interest groups (NOW, NAACP, MADD, et al.) constantly pressuring the government for more laws instead of realizing that if their platforms were rightous enough on their own, then only social pressure is necessary.