For me the only way it can work is bottom-up. You should only ever pay tax to something local. A county council or, at most, a regional authority. They in turn can pay up the chain for some useful thing like courts or armed forces.
The top-down nature of government means it will inevitably be hijacked by elites. So to defend against this there have to be many competing tiny governments. Lots of little county councils and regional governments.
Hard to do. But we need to get people questioning the logic of paying some distant master far away in a capital city. No one ever signed up for that.
As for being depressing. I think their plans are doomed. They will do a lot of damage, but they are blinded by their technology. They are no better at running things than we are. It will fail.
Local control is essential, I agree. But there is no need to tax at the local level or at the federal level. The power to tax is the power to control and abuse. Taxation is the tool of corruption. We can't see where the money goes and we have no say, really, over how it is spent.
But where would the money come from?
Currently, in the US new currency is created by Federal Reserve affiliated banks when loans are taken out (debt is created). That practice must be ended (and banks must have 100% of the loan amount on deposit to make loans). This will disempower the banking industry that has bought control of our representatives.
New currency should only be created by the US Treasury and only for the purpose of building public infrastructure. That way the US dollar will be backed by the infrastructure assets, not by debt. This will help prevent boom and bust cycles. Public infrastructure is better than gold for backing the dollar.
The people would pay modest fees to use the infrastructure and no one would pay taxes. The federal government should give the infrastructure funds to the local governments and the local population should vote on how to use them. If government can only create new currency for infrastructure, it will be much easier to track where it goes and how it is spent. The construction work should be done by civil engineers and government labor, not by private companies. (No one can tell me that government labor is terrible at building infrastructure: I've seen the Russian train system.)
Public infrastructure = transportation lines, roads, bridges, train tracks, ports etc.; and communication lines, cell towers, Internet cable, and etc; also public buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and community centers.
A tax I like is a tax imposed on foreign goods, aka a tariff, as a fee for using US ports, something like 8% on all goods from all countries, or matching whatever tariff that country charges the US if higher. Only the foreign importer's ships would be subjected to inspection and not the financials of every US citizen.
I also think that land (not buildings) that is larger than the average size lot for that area should be progressively taxed. Again here, no one's property would be subjected to inspection. The local land tax department just needs to measure the land.
Other natural resources besides land--such as oil, water, minerals--should either be taxed heavily when extracted or should be nationalized. I agree with Henry George that it is the monopolization of land and other finite natural resources that creates poverty even in the face of technological progress.
You have clearly given it some thought. I am not sure what would work but we can agree today's systems are not fixable. They must be replaced outright.
Below is my idea for a transition to a Direct Democracy where the People make policy and the "gov't" staff are directed to implement through public oversight. No authority to autocratically craft policy or autocratically craft implementations that veer from public directives is conveyed to staff. All of gov't is employed staff that perform function to serve purpose assigned by the collective consent based decision making of the public.
This is how a small collective operates. It assures consent based operation or it dissolves. Scaling it up will be, imho, the ultimate challenge for Humanity to survive a future where the 1% are driving us into a technological cage in order to keep their criminal enterprise going. I personally cannot see anything else work. Capitalism is the prevailing religion and it's obsession with growth by any means possible is driving catastrophic ecocide, much less a LOCKDOWN of human freedom. Those who manage this horror are totally compromised, from business to politician to government. The employees taking orders to survive are powerless to act with conscience. Only a collective, acceptable to all, consent-based, self organizing will create a world with limits to poverty and wealth, a safe place for Humanity.
It took years for me to assemble this list and publish it. Not all of the ideas are perfect, far from it. But I believe there is much of value in this proposal that could be considered a basis for discussion.
Where there is belief in ‘reform’ you’ll also find one of two things: 1) a clinging to the notion that certain personalities can guide us out of this mess, or 2) a deep-seated laziness which refuses to acknowledge the depth of the hole and tar. This is what too many think of as ‘hope’. This is seen in too many supposedly ‘intelligent’ individuals.
It’s a manifestation of denial, a refusal to come to grips with the true depth and breadth of the problem. Nearly everything we’re commonly taught and trained to believe in is wrong-headed and based in deception. That’s a hard pill to swallow. The imp in too many minds keeps taunting: “It can’t be that bad.” But it is.
A great many have yet to face the true depth of the crisis, and will learn only when they are badly burned by it. Many of the comfortable haven’t had to confront this yet, so don’t grapple with it. Tweaking details at the margins won’t fix anything.
This isn’t a black pill. It’s a frank outlook: the problems are enormous and deep-rooted. It’s so massive that individual action in protest ends up being a whisper. The first collective steps are also challenged by the most inertia. More people need to publicly acknowledge (as you have in your essay) the deep nature of the problem. What should then follow is currently hamstrung by the over-reliance on surveilled and censored technological communication platforms.
Immediately, before the 2020 lockdown, there were protests and revolts percolating worldwide. The lockdown successfully got people to huddle around authority for protection.
I've been thinking about the problem of alternative institutions for some time.
One of the problems we see over and over is that alternative isn't always better.
A person may feel more informed by switching from CNN to Infowars, but the truth is they're still outsourcing their thinking to a different authority.
I think truly radical change requires truly creative thinking when it comes to what we actually want to bring into being.
A better replacement for academia (or other institutions) can't just be a recreation of the same structure that has been captured or corrupted, because the soil (our political, social, and economic environment) will corrupt any new seeds planted.
This isn't me saying we shouldn't try to recreate important institutions, but I believe a significant amount of care is necessary to build the foundation for actual change.
You hint at the fact that it is genuinely difficult to work to change current incentives while being beholden to them. I think this is something we need to consider not just for individuals, but also institutions and organizations we support. There is a very fine line between demanding absolute purity and being accountable to values. As far as I can tell genuine change is a legitimately difficult problem, and the only "real solution" I've come across for that is to support each other however we can. Mutual aid seems to be a very powerful weapon against the forces that use scarcity as a weapon.
Thanks for all the work you do at Libre Solutions trying to help us figure out how to protect our privacy and free speech online.
Whatever we build "can't just be a recreation of the same structure that has been captured or corrupted, because the soil (our political, social, and economic environment) will corrupt any new seeds planted." Yes. I think that the main underlying problem is currency as money, which can be counterfeited (and is, by banks, by governments, by those with power who can just alter the ledger). How can we possibly compete with entities that just make their own money by fiat?
Of course, we can't go back to using precious metals to trade with, but perhaps any new currency created has to be in the form of a blockchained currency, so that we know how much was created and then we see where it goes when it's spent into the economy. I don't know if after it leaves government hands it could be turned off to preserve the financial privacy of those who subsequently use it.
Thanks for the shout out! My thought is that before we build, or maybe while we are trying to build, resilient local communities, we need to get as many people out of the various propaganda bubbles as possible. Simply warning friends, relatives and neighbors about mRNA, vaccines in general, CBDCs, NATO as a nexus of evil, etc is a huge task. If most of the Covid dissidents hadn’t been vacuumed into the MAHA/MAGA bubble, we would be so much better off. They might not be as brainwashed as the Covid cultists, so perhaps trying to extract them is worthwhile. I’m not sure of anything at this point, except that we need as many people as possible to get off the hopium and stay in the struggle.
My first step is to get this into my brain solidly and start talking to my friends and neighbors and get them off the Hopium (great term btw).
Next I will expand the concepts from James Lyons-Weiler and your class on what to do in the case of pre-collapse and post collapse. I lost some ground on this for a few months due to the new HHS sec ( my own hopium addiction) But now? I am my communities HHS director. If they will listen.
Warning friends. Yes. I try to drop a hint whenever I can, even to strangers. For instance, I might mention in passing vaccine deaths, off handedly, as if I'm not trying to inform, but just talking about the weather. My, it was sure windy last night!
If the comment doesn't lead to a deeper conversation, it might crack the facade a bit.
Change usually begins to happen after we reach a critical mass of understanding of our current reality. Looking around me I see nobody who had originally fallen for COVID learning anything from it. Five years later, nothing! With so many clueless people, how can we ever reach a critical mass? I don’t believe we can.
Therefore, what do we do? Whatever we do, it must be an equivalent to guerilla warfare because large foes win any challenge on their level. Just to be clear I don’t advocate for violent means. I don’t believe we’ve exhausted all those means allowed by our individual agency, things like taking our services and purchases away from entities owned by our enemies. I believe there is more potential there than in anything in the current political space, which is utterly controlled by criminal networks. We must develop our survival muscles. Change must first happen on the local level, growing outward and upward in ever increasing concentric circles.
Positive change is possible but only if forces and structures responsible for our current reality are effectively neutered. Any attempt for change while they remain in control will end in failure.
Thank you for your thoughtful, informative, and intelligent presentations.
My only comment at this time is; Where you spend your money and your energy seems to me to be the only actual Vote that makes a difference
Like growing vegetables.
For me the only way it can work is bottom-up. You should only ever pay tax to something local. A county council or, at most, a regional authority. They in turn can pay up the chain for some useful thing like courts or armed forces.
The top-down nature of government means it will inevitably be hijacked by elites. So to defend against this there have to be many competing tiny governments. Lots of little county councils and regional governments.
Hard to do. But we need to get people questioning the logic of paying some distant master far away in a capital city. No one ever signed up for that.
As for being depressing. I think their plans are doomed. They will do a lot of damage, but they are blinded by their technology. They are no better at running things than we are. It will fail.
How to disempower corrupt government.
Local control is essential, I agree. But there is no need to tax at the local level or at the federal level. The power to tax is the power to control and abuse. Taxation is the tool of corruption. We can't see where the money goes and we have no say, really, over how it is spent.
But where would the money come from?
Currently, in the US new currency is created by Federal Reserve affiliated banks when loans are taken out (debt is created). That practice must be ended (and banks must have 100% of the loan amount on deposit to make loans). This will disempower the banking industry that has bought control of our representatives.
New currency should only be created by the US Treasury and only for the purpose of building public infrastructure. That way the US dollar will be backed by the infrastructure assets, not by debt. This will help prevent boom and bust cycles. Public infrastructure is better than gold for backing the dollar.
The people would pay modest fees to use the infrastructure and no one would pay taxes. The federal government should give the infrastructure funds to the local governments and the local population should vote on how to use them. If government can only create new currency for infrastructure, it will be much easier to track where it goes and how it is spent. The construction work should be done by civil engineers and government labor, not by private companies. (No one can tell me that government labor is terrible at building infrastructure: I've seen the Russian train system.)
Public infrastructure = transportation lines, roads, bridges, train tracks, ports etc.; and communication lines, cell towers, Internet cable, and etc; also public buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and community centers.
A tax I like is a tax imposed on foreign goods, aka a tariff, as a fee for using US ports, something like 8% on all goods from all countries, or matching whatever tariff that country charges the US if higher. Only the foreign importer's ships would be subjected to inspection and not the financials of every US citizen.
I also think that land (not buildings) that is larger than the average size lot for that area should be progressively taxed. Again here, no one's property would be subjected to inspection. The local land tax department just needs to measure the land.
Other natural resources besides land--such as oil, water, minerals--should either be taxed heavily when extracted or should be nationalized. I agree with Henry George that it is the monopolization of land and other finite natural resources that creates poverty even in the face of technological progress.
You have clearly given it some thought. I am not sure what would work but we can agree today's systems are not fixable. They must be replaced outright.
Below is my idea for a transition to a Direct Democracy where the People make policy and the "gov't" staff are directed to implement through public oversight. No authority to autocratically craft policy or autocratically craft implementations that veer from public directives is conveyed to staff. All of gov't is employed staff that perform function to serve purpose assigned by the collective consent based decision making of the public.
This is how a small collective operates. It assures consent based operation or it dissolves. Scaling it up will be, imho, the ultimate challenge for Humanity to survive a future where the 1% are driving us into a technological cage in order to keep their criminal enterprise going. I personally cannot see anything else work. Capitalism is the prevailing religion and it's obsession with growth by any means possible is driving catastrophic ecocide, much less a LOCKDOWN of human freedom. Those who manage this horror are totally compromised, from business to politician to government. The employees taking orders to survive are powerless to act with conscience. Only a collective, acceptable to all, consent-based, self organizing will create a world with limits to poverty and wealth, a safe place for Humanity.
It took years for me to assemble this list and publish it. Not all of the ideas are perfect, far from it. But I believe there is much of value in this proposal that could be considered a basis for discussion.
https://sandys.art/peoples_policy+budget_directives_ballot_2018.html
Thanks for offering a forum for ideas, so very much needed!!!
“Reform isn’t going to happen.” <— Precisely.
Where there is belief in ‘reform’ you’ll also find one of two things: 1) a clinging to the notion that certain personalities can guide us out of this mess, or 2) a deep-seated laziness which refuses to acknowledge the depth of the hole and tar. This is what too many think of as ‘hope’. This is seen in too many supposedly ‘intelligent’ individuals.
It’s a manifestation of denial, a refusal to come to grips with the true depth and breadth of the problem. Nearly everything we’re commonly taught and trained to believe in is wrong-headed and based in deception. That’s a hard pill to swallow. The imp in too many minds keeps taunting: “It can’t be that bad.” But it is.
A great many have yet to face the true depth of the crisis, and will learn only when they are badly burned by it. Many of the comfortable haven’t had to confront this yet, so don’t grapple with it. Tweaking details at the margins won’t fix anything.
This isn’t a black pill. It’s a frank outlook: the problems are enormous and deep-rooted. It’s so massive that individual action in protest ends up being a whisper. The first collective steps are also challenged by the most inertia. More people need to publicly acknowledge (as you have in your essay) the deep nature of the problem. What should then follow is currently hamstrung by the over-reliance on surveilled and censored technological communication platforms.
Immediately, before the 2020 lockdown, there were protests and revolts percolating worldwide. The lockdown successfully got people to huddle around authority for protection.
Never again?
We've heard that before, right?
Yes, that is an important connection to make. Clearly, the entire COVID debacle was about much much more than a ‘public health emergency’.
I've been thinking about the problem of alternative institutions for some time.
One of the problems we see over and over is that alternative isn't always better.
A person may feel more informed by switching from CNN to Infowars, but the truth is they're still outsourcing their thinking to a different authority.
I think truly radical change requires truly creative thinking when it comes to what we actually want to bring into being.
A better replacement for academia (or other institutions) can't just be a recreation of the same structure that has been captured or corrupted, because the soil (our political, social, and economic environment) will corrupt any new seeds planted.
This isn't me saying we shouldn't try to recreate important institutions, but I believe a significant amount of care is necessary to build the foundation for actual change.
You hint at the fact that it is genuinely difficult to work to change current incentives while being beholden to them. I think this is something we need to consider not just for individuals, but also institutions and organizations we support. There is a very fine line between demanding absolute purity and being accountable to values. As far as I can tell genuine change is a legitimately difficult problem, and the only "real solution" I've come across for that is to support each other however we can. Mutual aid seems to be a very powerful weapon against the forces that use scarcity as a weapon.
Thanks for all the work you do at Libre Solutions trying to help us figure out how to protect our privacy and free speech online.
Whatever we build "can't just be a recreation of the same structure that has been captured or corrupted, because the soil (our political, social, and economic environment) will corrupt any new seeds planted." Yes. I think that the main underlying problem is currency as money, which can be counterfeited (and is, by banks, by governments, by those with power who can just alter the ledger). How can we possibly compete with entities that just make their own money by fiat?
Of course, we can't go back to using precious metals to trade with, but perhaps any new currency created has to be in the form of a blockchained currency, so that we know how much was created and then we see where it goes when it's spent into the economy. I don't know if after it leaves government hands it could be turned off to preserve the financial privacy of those who subsequently use it.
Thanks for the shout out! My thought is that before we build, or maybe while we are trying to build, resilient local communities, we need to get as many people out of the various propaganda bubbles as possible. Simply warning friends, relatives and neighbors about mRNA, vaccines in general, CBDCs, NATO as a nexus of evil, etc is a huge task. If most of the Covid dissidents hadn’t been vacuumed into the MAHA/MAGA bubble, we would be so much better off. They might not be as brainwashed as the Covid cultists, so perhaps trying to extract them is worthwhile. I’m not sure of anything at this point, except that we need as many people as possible to get off the hopium and stay in the struggle.
Great term Debbie. Hopium. I got sucked in for a few.
My first step is to get this into my brain solidly and start talking to my friends and neighbors and get them off the Hopium (great term btw).
Next I will expand the concepts from James Lyons-Weiler and your class on what to do in the case of pre-collapse and post collapse. I lost some ground on this for a few months due to the new HHS sec ( my own hopium addiction) But now? I am my communities HHS director. If they will listen.
Warning friends. Yes. I try to drop a hint whenever I can, even to strangers. For instance, I might mention in passing vaccine deaths, off handedly, as if I'm not trying to inform, but just talking about the weather. My, it was sure windy last night!
If the comment doesn't lead to a deeper conversation, it might crack the facade a bit.
Change usually begins to happen after we reach a critical mass of understanding of our current reality. Looking around me I see nobody who had originally fallen for COVID learning anything from it. Five years later, nothing! With so many clueless people, how can we ever reach a critical mass? I don’t believe we can.
Therefore, what do we do? Whatever we do, it must be an equivalent to guerilla warfare because large foes win any challenge on their level. Just to be clear I don’t advocate for violent means. I don’t believe we’ve exhausted all those means allowed by our individual agency, things like taking our services and purchases away from entities owned by our enemies. I believe there is more potential there than in anything in the current political space, which is utterly controlled by criminal networks. We must develop our survival muscles. Change must first happen on the local level, growing outward and upward in ever increasing concentric circles.
Positive change is possible but only if forces and structures responsible for our current reality are effectively neutered. Any attempt for change while they remain in control will end in failure.
100% agree that we start locally. Here's some good news for you: Over a year ago, a survey found that about half the US thinks the Covid vax caused deaths. I'd say that the tipping threshold has been surpassed by now. The scene is set for revolt. That's why they are rolling out the digital prison before it's quite ready. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/public_surveys/more_than_half_suspect_covid_19_vaccines_have_caused_deaths
This is a great piece.