The Last Communist City

[lakedaemonian]

Re: The Last Communist City

Personally, I think it is perfectly relevant.

IIRC, about a year or two ago EJ himself posted a link to a book dating to the 1920's/30's about propaganda(can't seem to find it, sorry).

I would agree in the respect that time is limited and it would probably be best to limit the conversation to just the relevant bits to the iTulip conversation.

With such an eclectic community things can often go tangential, sometimes in a good way....and sometimes bad.

Modern marketing, advertising, and spin control can trace some of its heritage to the propaganda practices found in marxism/leninism/communism.

And I reckon the odds of the rise of a "digital Che" and/or decent attempt at "Hipster Trotskyism" run from mediocre to good.

There have been some recent examples that received a bit of press in the west. This chick got some decent coverage in the NYTimes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camila_Vallejo

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it,"

With the 50+% youth cohort unemployment rate in parts of developed Europe maybe we will see a repeat of the big protests of the 70's/80's and even a small slice of that leading to the likes of Red Army Faction and Baader Meinhoff.

Or even a coup on the periphery of the EU as found in Portugal, Greece, and Turkey in our lifetimes AGAIN(albeit the risk in Turkey is reduced).

All a bit tangential, and all concurrently a bit of relevant historical rinse and repeat.

Relevance to FIRE?

I think there is some, especially if EJ has posted in the general direction of it himself......if only as what I perceived to be a warning on the power of well constructed propaganda.

[Wiley]

Re: The Last Communist City

"Freedom" is fortunately one of the main tenents of the political philosophy for the founding fathers. We can thank Aristostle, Aquinas, and Locke for providing the foundation of this philosophy. The fathers challenged that the state is not the ruler of the individual. Heady stuff back then.

Woodsman, to keep this thread in tact please impart what you believe would be the proper form of governing to get us closest to utopia. I've read through dozens of your posts and I see a lot of critique but not a lot of what you believe are the answers to our current dilemna.

[gwynedd1]

Re: The Last Communist City

"Freedom" is fortunately one of the main tenents of the political philosophy for the founding fathers. We can thank Aristostle, Aquinas, and Locke for providing the foundation of this philosophy. The fathers challenged that the state is not the ruler of the individual. Heady stuff back then.

Woodsman, to keep this thread in tact please impart what you believe would be the proper form of governing to get us closest to utopia. I've read through dozens of your posts and I see a lot of critique but not a lot of what you believe are the answers to our current dilemna.

Not "freedom". Rape is subjectively freedom. It was based on natural law....

Freedom then is not what Sir R. R. Tells us, O. A. 55, “ a liberty for every on to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.” But freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power where that rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man; as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

- John Locke

For example under Locke's labor theory of ownership, the state has sway over an individual that arbitrarily decides that he owns another's creation via labor. So that the state has power when consistent with natural law, but not when it violates it.

Not sure how charging access fees to absentee land ownership applies to John Lock's natural law. I'd say it violates it since it essentially confiscates one labor for access.