Weren't there other trade metals? Was there an established conversion rate between gold and silver, for instance? I'm thinking of a situation where a merchant only accepts gold, even though silver has value as currency as well.
Sure there's plenty, but I'm talking about a merchant seeing a bunch of different currency from different countries being brought to him in a market for goods, and deciding "How am I going to have the customer pay for this? I don't know what the exchange rate is. Oh wait, gold is gold."
How to convince an existing nation to give up some of their land for this purpose?
You don't. If we were dealing with non-Leftists, you'd be fine. But since we're dealing with Leftists, ceeding any ground to them is extremely dangerous. They'd rather die than lose power, and if you give them ground they will use it as a launching point for further attacks because expansion of their conquests is absolutely mandatory or their own survival.
As I've said before: I don't accept a "national divorce" because it's like letting go of the gun in an entangled gunfight. All it does is kill you.
The terrible truth is: the Left succumbs to arguments from power. It's why there were almost no third party Leftist voters in 2020. It's why the riots consolidated the Left, it didn't drive them apart.
If you take power, you tell them no, and you break their ability to steal from other people. The useful idiots will sort themselves out when you stop giving them shit, and the predators will destroy themselves by continuing to attack. Just don't ever let any of the predators into a position of power just because they seemingly changed their tune.
Ancap seems like more of a disaster scenario. It should be a temporary system that occurs due to extreme instability.
It actually offers the most stability. The problem is that it requires implementing a power vacuum, which is nigh-on-impossible to maintain. This is why Liberal Republicanism is a better choice: it constructs a kind of rigid honeycomb of low-density power, rather than a full vacuum.
You don't. If we were dealing with non-Leftists, you'd be fine. But since we're dealing with Leftists, ceeding any ground to them is extremely dangerous.
Wouldn't it be sufficient to keep them isolated in their reservation? Set a border and regulate who can cross that border. Have someone go check on them once in a while, take a report for data. Increase status checks when they make it to certain technological benchmarks, like iron forging or blackpowder. Maybe even confiscate phones and computers when they go in. Basically make Australia 2.0, but for unhappy people instead of criminals.
It might sound a little cruel, but I think it's legit. Keep entry voluntary and allow everyone inside to fail. Possibly don't allow them to come back, but make that stipulation known beforehand.
I doubt the hardcore leftists would really sign up, because that shouldn't sound like any kind of power to them.
And if no one signs up, the space can be used for sociological experiments that can't be done in a university (or on US soil). Though I guess it'd be a "black site" then, because experimenting on humans is seen as cruel.
It actually offers the most stability. The problem is that it requires implementing a power vacuum, which is nigh-on-impossible to maintain.
I don't understand. Isn't stability about the ability to maintain present balances? What makes it stable to you?
Wouldn't it be sufficient to keep them isolated in their reservation?
You'd never be able to keep it. It would only be a matter of time before they invaded and started massacring everyone and stealing anything they could touch. It's not a power vacuum, it's that power has concentrated and they don't build anything, so they have to expand until they reach a limit... and at that limit they implode. It's what the Assyrians, Greeks, French, Germans, all did. It's the nature of all militaristic warring empires. It's more like a Power Ponzi Scheme.
This is why it is an attack to not let a Leftist do something when they are the aggressor. Containment is an act of aggression on a system where perpetual expansion is an imperative for survival.
As such, you won't be able to hold out for long, because they will throw absolutely fucking everything at you to take your shit. They don't even know how to do anything else, so it never occurs to them that they could build something.
I don't understand. Isn't stability about the ability to maintain present balances? What makes it stable to you?
Decentralized stability is still stability. The vast swings of centralized power rising and collapsing when a king or chieftan dies, and the violent infighting that breaks out from it is the unstable part of a highly centralized order. This is normal in all highly centrally ordered systems. Some shock takes place, the system can't adapt, and the system fucking dies.
A decentralized system promotes stability by allowing adaptation to shock. There is no "rise and fall of empires", there is no "boom-and-bust cycle of business".The cyclical collapse system is an element of a centralized order. A decentralized order allows for any number of shocks to pepper the system, and for parts of the system to change and alter as needed in response to those shocks.
Almost all natural systems are decentralized orderly systems because there is no mechanism to manage them. An empty field does not "die" without significant environmental change (like a major drought). Your lawn "dies" because you have a very difficult to maintain monoculture of grass that requires precise watering, soil, and temperatures. But, in the empty field, a blade of grass may be eaten by an animal, attacked by a vine, crowded out by a weed, or dominated by a slightly more successful grass. The individual instability allows for the most efficient possible exploitation of light, soil, and water, given the plants available, because it is an emergent order. As such, the field can't die as a system, it just remains a field (until trees take over and eventually it becomes a Forrest in 100 years).
The decentralized system promotes system-wide stability by allowing instability among the individuals. It creates an efficient use of limited resources. The centralized system provides a very specific kind of exploitation by creating a stability for one and only one party; while making the system that individual creates inherently unstable. The larger the centralized system is, the less efficient it becomes, the less responsive it is to shocks, and the more likely it is to collapse.
As such, you won't be able to hold out for long, because they will throw absolutely fucking everything at you to take your shit. They don't even know how to do anything else, so it never occurs to them that they could build something.
Hmm. I can't really argue against what you say, but I feel backed into a corner here. Tell me, what place can these leftists hold in society? They want positions of power, but I don't think they can be trusted with power unless you can somehow keep them focused on foreign enemies. Leftists would do great in the CIA, probably, but I'd rather disband them (and stop harassing foreign powers altogether). I don't know if I could trust them to even work as executioners, because they might botch the process for a thrill.
I prefer to believe that every type of person can be put to use in some way. And I don't think you would advocate for them all to be rounded up and "dealt with". Ideally, society would somehow discourage leftist mentality, but we have a long road there (if it's even possible) - so until then, how to manage this volatile "resource"?
The larger the centralized system is, the less efficient it becomes, the less responsive it is to shocks, and the more likely it is to collapse.
I do agree, but I thought even your liberal libertarianism was somewhat decentralized? Wasn't that one of the foundations for libertarianism, getting away from our current excessively centralized government? Or was the point that it's a middle ground between the extremes?
Tell me, what place can these leftists hold in society?
Nowhere. Leftism is anti-human and anti-human freedom. Should we continue to exist in a society that respects freedom, they have no place. They are the war-mongering raiders and violent hordes of past eras, with none of the tolerance of the Mongols, or the competency of Mycenae or Normans.
It must be the goal of of a Liberal civilization to strip down centralized power to the point where Leftism struggles to survive beyond their local personal fiefdoms as hall monitors, con men, and serial killers.
I prefer to believe that every type of person can be put to use in some way.
You're wrong. Some people have no place. There is no place in society for infant rapists and puppy fuckers. Similarly, there is no place for a power-monger that hunts people for power.
There are places for the useful idiots, if that's what you mean. And yeah, those are just gullible people who have learned helplessness. They can be taught the values of responsibility.
The predators can not.
I do agree, but I thought even your liberal libertarianism was somewhat decentralized? Wasn't that one of the foundations for libertarianism, getting away from our current excessively centralized government? Or was the point that it's a middle ground between the extremes?
Liberal Republicanism, or Minarchist Militarism.
My statement remains true as a general rule for systems. The larger a system is, the more complex it gets at an exponential level, the more centralized it becomes, the less responsive it becomes, until the system fundamentally collapses.
My point behind Republicanism is that it keeps the direct oversight of central governments low, by making decentralized control a priority, and their influence significant. They aren't central powers, so they can't take the initiative to apply top-down plans, but they actually respond to shocks well in a decentralized manner.
Sure there's plenty, but I'm talking about a merchant seeing a bunch of different currency from different countries being brought to him in a market for goods, and deciding "How am I going to have the customer pay for this? I don't know what the exchange rate is. Oh wait, gold is gold."
You don't. If we were dealing with non-Leftists, you'd be fine. But since we're dealing with Leftists, ceeding any ground to them is extremely dangerous. They'd rather die than lose power, and if you give them ground they will use it as a launching point for further attacks because expansion of their conquests is absolutely mandatory or their own survival.
As I've said before: I don't accept a "national divorce" because it's like letting go of the gun in an entangled gunfight. All it does is kill you.
The terrible truth is: the Left succumbs to arguments from power. It's why there were almost no third party Leftist voters in 2020. It's why the riots consolidated the Left, it didn't drive them apart.
If you take power, you tell them no, and you break their ability to steal from other people. The useful idiots will sort themselves out when you stop giving them shit, and the predators will destroy themselves by continuing to attack. Just don't ever let any of the predators into a position of power just because they seemingly changed their tune.
It actually offers the most stability. The problem is that it requires implementing a power vacuum, which is nigh-on-impossible to maintain. This is why Liberal Republicanism is a better choice: it constructs a kind of rigid honeycomb of low-density power, rather than a full vacuum.
Wouldn't it be sufficient to keep them isolated in their reservation? Set a border and regulate who can cross that border. Have someone go check on them once in a while, take a report for data. Increase status checks when they make it to certain technological benchmarks, like iron forging or blackpowder. Maybe even confiscate phones and computers when they go in. Basically make Australia 2.0, but for unhappy people instead of criminals.
It might sound a little cruel, but I think it's legit. Keep entry voluntary and allow everyone inside to fail. Possibly don't allow them to come back, but make that stipulation known beforehand.
I doubt the hardcore leftists would really sign up, because that shouldn't sound like any kind of power to them.
And if no one signs up, the space can be used for sociological experiments that can't be done in a university (or on US soil). Though I guess it'd be a "black site" then, because experimenting on humans is seen as cruel.
I don't understand. Isn't stability about the ability to maintain present balances? What makes it stable to you?
You'd never be able to keep it. It would only be a matter of time before they invaded and started massacring everyone and stealing anything they could touch. It's not a power vacuum, it's that power has concentrated and they don't build anything, so they have to expand until they reach a limit... and at that limit they implode. It's what the Assyrians, Greeks, French, Germans, all did. It's the nature of all militaristic warring empires. It's more like a Power Ponzi Scheme.
This is why it is an attack to not let a Leftist do something when they are the aggressor. Containment is an act of aggression on a system where perpetual expansion is an imperative for survival.
As such, you won't be able to hold out for long, because they will throw absolutely fucking everything at you to take your shit. They don't even know how to do anything else, so it never occurs to them that they could build something.
Decentralized stability is still stability. The vast swings of centralized power rising and collapsing when a king or chieftan dies, and the violent infighting that breaks out from it is the unstable part of a highly centralized order. This is normal in all highly centrally ordered systems. Some shock takes place, the system can't adapt, and the system fucking dies.
A decentralized system promotes stability by allowing adaptation to shock. There is no "rise and fall of empires", there is no "boom-and-bust cycle of business".The cyclical collapse system is an element of a centralized order. A decentralized order allows for any number of shocks to pepper the system, and for parts of the system to change and alter as needed in response to those shocks.
Almost all natural systems are decentralized orderly systems because there is no mechanism to manage them. An empty field does not "die" without significant environmental change (like a major drought). Your lawn "dies" because you have a very difficult to maintain monoculture of grass that requires precise watering, soil, and temperatures. But, in the empty field, a blade of grass may be eaten by an animal, attacked by a vine, crowded out by a weed, or dominated by a slightly more successful grass. The individual instability allows for the most efficient possible exploitation of light, soil, and water, given the plants available, because it is an emergent order. As such, the field can't die as a system, it just remains a field (until trees take over and eventually it becomes a Forrest in 100 years).
The decentralized system promotes system-wide stability by allowing instability among the individuals. It creates an efficient use of limited resources. The centralized system provides a very specific kind of exploitation by creating a stability for one and only one party; while making the system that individual creates inherently unstable. The larger the centralized system is, the less efficient it becomes, the less responsive it is to shocks, and the more likely it is to collapse.
Hmm. I can't really argue against what you say, but I feel backed into a corner here. Tell me, what place can these leftists hold in society? They want positions of power, but I don't think they can be trusted with power unless you can somehow keep them focused on foreign enemies. Leftists would do great in the CIA, probably, but I'd rather disband them (and stop harassing foreign powers altogether). I don't know if I could trust them to even work as executioners, because they might botch the process for a thrill.
I prefer to believe that every type of person can be put to use in some way. And I don't think you would advocate for them all to be rounded up and "dealt with". Ideally, society would somehow discourage leftist mentality, but we have a long road there (if it's even possible) - so until then, how to manage this volatile "resource"?
I do agree, but I thought even your liberal libertarianism was somewhat decentralized? Wasn't that one of the foundations for libertarianism, getting away from our current excessively centralized government? Or was the point that it's a middle ground between the extremes?
Nowhere. Leftism is anti-human and anti-human freedom. Should we continue to exist in a society that respects freedom, they have no place. They are the war-mongering raiders and violent hordes of past eras, with none of the tolerance of the Mongols, or the competency of Mycenae or Normans.
It must be the goal of of a Liberal civilization to strip down centralized power to the point where Leftism struggles to survive beyond their local personal fiefdoms as hall monitors, con men, and serial killers.
You're wrong. Some people have no place. There is no place in society for infant rapists and puppy fuckers. Similarly, there is no place for a power-monger that hunts people for power.
There are places for the useful idiots, if that's what you mean. And yeah, those are just gullible people who have learned helplessness. They can be taught the values of responsibility.
The predators can not.
Liberal Republicanism, or Minarchist Militarism.
My statement remains true as a general rule for systems. The larger a system is, the more complex it gets at an exponential level, the more centralized it becomes, the less responsive it becomes, until the system fundamentally collapses.
My point behind Republicanism is that it keeps the direct oversight of central governments low, by making decentralized control a priority, and their influence significant. They aren't central powers, so they can't take the initiative to apply top-down plans, but they actually respond to shocks well in a decentralized manner.