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For instance, Capitalism is based upon the principals of freedom and prosperity for the individual and equality for all. But in practice, it is more like a game of musical chairs; everyone joins in the rat race and when the music stops they all rush, pushing everyone else aside to get their piece of the pie or to get to the top, and someone gets cast aide every time.
"Voting is the fundamental principal behind the political philosophy of Democracy. This is the driving force of a functioning republic. The requirements for voting are in place so that intelligent people with the perspective of a citizen can elect a functioning system of government. In order for the masses to make informed decisions they must have a reliable medium of information. Unfortunately the organizations that provide this necessary information are in business for profit and allow companies to fund them on grounds that they only report information that will lead the masses into thinking in ways that re beneficial towards their agenda. "
"Business indirectly elects representatives through the mediums in which information is bestowed to the public. Nearly anyone can run for public office but if you don’t have a big bank account you’re going to need the support of someone who does."
"With the Supreme Court uplifting caps on corporate campaigns contributions and economic situations in which people don’t have the means to voice their own opinion on large scale, the propaganda that convinces us that our institutions are operating for the better good of society will constantly be more widely accepted. Given these factors, how can the citizens of the United States expect to have a reliable system of electing representatives?
Let’s ignore any mainstream propaganda and boycott the two powerful political parties and the mega-corporations that operate the machine. A country where economies are localized and towns are independently self sustaining so that if one economy crashed the rest of the dominoes won’t fall along with them.
The most remarkable historical example of a society of libertarian law and courts, however, has been neglected by historians until very recently. And this was also a society where not only the courts and the law were largely libertarian, but where they operated within a purely state-less and libertarian society. This was ancient Ireland. Ireland which persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century. And, in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes (such as the Ibos in West Africa, and many European tribes), pre-conquest Ireland was not in any sense a "primitive" society: it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe.
For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has written:
'There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice. There was no trace of State-administered justice.'
How then was justice secured? The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath. All 'freemen' who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their 'kings.' An important point is that, in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from atuath and join a competing tuath. Often, two or more tuatha decided to merge into a single, more efficient unit. As Professor Peden states, 'the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.' In short, they did not have the modern State with its claim to sovereignty over a given (usually expanding) territorial area, divorced from the landed property rights of its subjects; on the contrary, tuatha were voluntary associations which only comprised the landed properties of its voluntary members. Historically, about 80 to 100 tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.
But what of the elected 'king'? Did he constitute a form of State ruler? Chiefly, the king functioned as a religious high priest, presiding over the worship rites of the tuath, which functioned as a voluntary religious, as well as a social and political, organization. As in pagan, pre-Christian, priesthoods, the kingly function was hereditary, this practice carrying over to Christian times. The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin-group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies; and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.
Again, how, then, was law developed and justice maintained? In the first place, the law itself was based on a body of ancient and immemorial custom, passed down as oral and then written tradition through a class of professional jurists called the brehons. The brehons were in no sense public, or governmental, officials; they were simply selected by parties to disputes on the basis of their reputations for wisdom, knowledge of the customary law, and the integrity of their decisions. As Professor Peden states:
The professional jurists were consulted by parties to disputes for advice as to what the law was in particular cases, and these same men often acted as arbitrators between suitors. They remained at all times private persons, not public officials; their functioning depended upon their knowledge of the law and the integrity of their judicial reputations.
Furthermore, the brehons had no connection whatsoever with the individual tuatha or with their kings. They were completely private, national in scope, and were used by disputants throughout Ireland. Moreover, and this is a vital point, in contrast to the system of private Roman lawyers, the brehon was all there was; there were no other judges, no 'public' judges of any kind, in ancient Ireland.
It was the brehons who were schooled in the law, and who added glosses and applications to the law to fit changing conditions. Furthermore, there was no monopoly, in any sense, of the brehon jurists; instead, several competing schools of jurisprudence existed and competed for the custom of the Irish people. How were the decisions of the brehons enforced? Through an elaborate, voluntarily developed system of 'insurance,' or sureties. Men were linked together by a variety of surety relationships by which they guaran?teed one another for the righting of wrongs, and for the enforcement of justice and the decisions of the brehons. In short, the brehons themselves were not involved in the enforcement of decisions, which rested again with private individuals linked through sureties. There were various types of surety. For example, the surety would guarantee with his own property the payment of a debt, and then join the plaintiff in enforcing a debt judgement if the debtor refused to pay. In that case, the debtor would have to pay double damages: one to the original creditor, and another as compensation to his surety. And this system applied to all offences, aggressions and assaults as well as commercial contracts; in short, it applied to all cases of what we would call 'civil' and 'criminal' law. All criminals were considered to be 'debtors' who owed restitution and compensation to their victims, who thus became their 'creditors.' The victim would gather his sureties around him and pro?ceed to apprehend the criminal or to proclaim his suit publicly and demand that the defendant submit to adjudication of their dispute with the brehons. The criminal might then send his own sureties to negotiate a settlement or agree to submit the dispute to the brehons. If he did not do so, he was considered an 'outlaw' by the entire community; he could no longer enforce any claim of his own in the courts, and he was treated to the opprobrium of the entire community.
There were occasional 'wars,' to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest of Europe. As Professor Peden points out,
'without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards.'
What you describe as "in practice" is not free market capitalism. It is corporatism/fascism and government intervention sold as capitalism through media and it gets repeated ad nausea here and elsewhere. So it is wrong to say this is capitalism in practice in any form.
Here is another area where you and I have a problem. Democracy is not mentioned on the Constitution for a reason. The founders abhorred it! Democracy is not the fundamental driving force behind a free republic it is the anti thesis to it. Democracy and the pernicious idea that we are one is what has led to the idea that all things are open to a vote. That every aspect of our lives can be regulated by the 51% over the other 49%, that is mob rule not a free republic. The whole point of the free republic is to limit government to upholding and protecting rights period. For instance Congress has not constitutional authority to pass a bill telling us we have to buy health care. In fact it has no constitutional authority to tell us anything, it only has authority to operate the federal government in protection of rights and free trade period so it operates completely outside of its scope of delegated authority and that is because of the lie that we are a democracy in any way shape or form.
Welcome to the socialist democracy which has supplanted the free republic. Just trying to get back control over the mediums of information to the people will not fix this problem the problem is the democracy itself and the fact it is not what we started out with! It wrongly leads people to believe the 51% have the right to rule over the other 49%.
That being said, Direct Democracy is functional in 21/50 States in the Unions with the Initiate, Referendum, and Recall Systems in which citizens can Vote on Laws, Recall Elected Officers, and Referendums for Constitutional Amendments. This system is debatable but I feel that it is necessary in some cases.
I also don't think we should be Socialist but I do believe there should be a Socialized Healthcare so that the poor are able to get healthcare. (FTW, I don't agree with Barack Obama's Insurance Reform) This though wouldn't have to entail not allowing a Free Market Healthcare System, just a system that the poor can use.
That being said, I don't agree being a total Socialist Democracy, maybe some things should be socialized but we NEED a Free Market. If we initiate social programs we would need another Bill of Rights to clarify what is allowed to be Socialized instead of everything. Remember Public Education, the Postal Service, and Social Security are all forms of Socialism.
I enjoyed the information you brought up as well. I need some more time to read it though, I will comment on it when I do.
Regulation has turned into Deregualtion which led to the corrupt practices of business.
I would rather see a society in which economies are controlled from the ground up, not vice-versa.
You have it completely backward we went from unregulated to super regulation which led to corrupt business practices by POLITICALLY CONNECTED CORPS protected by said regulation.
Oh wow... YOUR LVING IN ONE NOW! Again I can't believe my ears. If this is what you believe then we have absolutely nothing in common and you don't understand the first thing about freedom.
Government so the Corporations who line the pockets of government most get the most perks and benefits in the way of legislation and looking the other way etc. Man I thought you had an understanding of this but to say you want an economy controlled from the ground up and not even know you live in one it astonishing.