{"id":1350,"date":"2011-10-18T19:37:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T23:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1350"},"modified":"2011-11-13T14:28:56","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T18:28:56","slug":"forming-the-structure-of-the-new-society-within-the-shell-of-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1350","title":{"rendered":"Forming the Structure of the New Society Within the Shell of the Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results<\/a> on this post<\/a> about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote:<\/p>\n

As for Georgism, I have to admit, I find it intriguing\u2014even more so when combined with Jefferson\u2019s ward system. Actually, I think the ward system (which sounds a lot like Michael Rozeff\u2019s panarchy) would be essential for a single tax regime, for it would more likely keep closed the door to statism by making the wards compete for citizens.<\/p>\n

Still, the ward system worries me a little because the political class\u2014that is, those that have the power to tax, taken collectively\u2014has a knack for finding ways to expand its jurisdiction. It\u2019s for this reason that I\u2019m partial to Hans Hoppe\u2019s notion of a private law society. Under his conception, security is provided on a subscription basis instead of on a jurisdictional basis. This takes a so-called \u201cpublic good\u201d like security and moves it into the private sphere, thereby eliminating the need for taxation. I have to think that by taking away the two hallmarks of Statism\u2014taxation and jurisdiction\u2014freedom would flourish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I replied [links added]:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure that even under conditions of \u201canarchy,\u201d or a state of nature, that we could get away from the need for territorial defense, security, and \u201cgovernment.\u201d A single landlord, or landholder, is in a sense a \u201cgovernment,\u201d<\/a> claiming jurisdiction over a particular territory, and having the need to secure his claim. By what right would he maintain his claim? I\u2019d suggest that Georgism<\/a> might form the conditions for establishing the justice of his claim<\/a> vis-a-vis other landholders and would-be landholders in the immediate area, as well as the fund by which the people in that area might defend their claims relative to each other and relative to external threats. The need for so-called \u201cnational defense\u201d is to my mind the strongest objection to anarchism (though I\u2019d clarify it\u2019s not so much the need to defend the \u201cnation\u201d as it is to defend a would-be anarchic territory from existing nations). The anarchic impulse, and the impulse of the ward system<\/a>, is to devolve the authority and responsibility for such defense to smaller and smaller areas, ultimately vesting it in the individual landholders themselves<\/a>, who would likely find it advisable to confederate with others for their mutual defense, keeping their confederacies as small as is consistent with the needs of territorial defense (recognizing that the larger the confederacy and the more concentrated its power the larger the threat to the freedoms of its constituents). As I see it, these base-line confederacies formed strictly for territorial defense could co-exist with the kinds of associations<\/a> and private law systems<\/a> envisioned by Rozeff\u2019s panarchy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have to credit “Our Enemy, the State,\u201d<\/a> by Albert Jay Nock, who considered himself an anarchist<\/a>, for selling me on both Georgism and Jefferson\u2019s \u201cward system.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How might we ever get from here to there? First and foremost, by puncturing the pretensions of the State. And I can think of no better authority to quote on this score than Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/a>, for whom a federal holiday is named for Christ’s sake:<\/p>\n

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies.) A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results on this post about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote: As for Georgism, I have to admit, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,119,133,130,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albert-jay-nock","category-henry-george","category-martin-luther-king-jr","category-ryan-at-absurd-results","category-thomas-jefferson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1350"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1479,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions\/1479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}