I have long been convinced that institutions are the primary vector for evil in the world. From spiteful librarians to savage thugs, institutions create power over individuals that people intent on doing evil seek and gain.
Recently I was prevented by such parties from using extant institutions to prevent ongoing violence that affects not only myself, but even innocent and helpless children in the community. Government is claimed to be instituted in order that free people might wield their power and authority to defend themselves and their communities from enemies.
It has become cliche that government has become a weapon for those exact enemies. I am confident that such institutions cannot fail to be corrupted in exactly that way, and can cite reams of recent examples of such corruption of every type and kind of institution that exists, from government to charity.
Perhaps the first technology to be invented, the institution is yet the most powerful weapon used to oppress and harm free people. Long before people invented pointy sticks, gangs created power over individuals. Lions hunt in packs. People did not invent institutions, but we provably have refined them in the ways most powerful to do harm.
Ants may outweigh us in toto, but they cannot equal the power our institutions wield to ravage the Earth, despite their high degree of social organization and ecological impact.
People needing to combat the power of institutions to survive have embarked on an arms race, inventing pointy sticks, fire, and domesticated dogs to cope with herds, gangs, and governments, until today technology promises to eradicate the power of institutions to impact the quality of life individuals may enjoy altogether.
That is an extraordinary claim, and I will here provide extraordinary evidence to support it.
Institutions gain the strength of many that contribute to them. Governments can field armies, fund scientific research, and pass laws that individuals have heretofore been unable to overcome. As technology was gained first by institutions such as governments, corporations, and universities, technology has perennially been a source of institutional power, yet technology inevitably disperses throughout the population and increases the power of individuals against institutions.
Some technology more than evens the playing field between institutions and individuals. Pointy sticks did not, as a gang with pointy sticks was able to use that technology over an individual with a pointy stick. Fire, on the other hand, levels the playing field, and can take out an entire institution wielded by one individual, yet presents no greater power of an institution over that individual.
Various technologies today demonstrate that effect, rendering an individual as powerful as institutions. 3D printing enables one person to create a good that before required the power of an institution to manufacture. I do not need to have institutional capital and workers to staff my factory to produce a plastic knob for my car stereo, for example.
@tlavagabond does not need an organization to produce news broadcasts and disseminate factual information to all and sundry. Governments no longer have exclusive power to bomb people from the air now that an individual can buy a drone for lunch money. With an app on my phone I can detect my position, monitor my health, and xfer currency across the world, all without the need for institutions that have historically been necessary to actively provide those services.
Aquaponics enables me to grow my own food, solar enables me to manufacture my own electricity, and the list of goods and services I can effect as an individual that only recently I would have only been able to get from institutions is too long to list, and the technologies enabling all these gains in individual power are concatenating across industry to create a transformative paradigm shift in human society.
Back to the violent assaults I have suffered at the hands of thugs with covert connections to government (drug dealing snitches), government corrupted by such gangs with drug money has become less relevant since my neighbors are armed, have security cameras, and can act to deal with such threats without recourse to government services that were previously necessary. Since government itself has become the threat by being corrupted, the individuals in my community have gained more power than the government to protect themselves from criminals.
Unless humanity goes extinct, there is no way to prevent individuals from gaining knowledge of physics that makes technology possible and becoming more powerful than the institutions that previously were able to oppress individuals, such as governments corrupted by criminal gangs.
Freedom is the inevitable result of scientific progress. All we need to do to become free is to learn and apply what we learn. When that education includes the aforementioned technologies that enable us to meet our needs for goods and services invariably corrupt institutions formerly were necessary to provide, those institutions become obsolete - and the power gained by criminals by corrupting them becomes obsolete with them.
Eventually, all we have to do to defeat institutional evil is ignore it until it goes away. We won't need to fight them in the streets, buy guns and bombs to blow them up, or rope to hang them. We just need to take care of our needs ourselves.
Since it's vastly more profitable to do so, we will. Government alone takes about half the GDP of the world. It's unnecessary. Since ignoring government will save you about half your productivity, you will almost certainly do so when the ability to do so is available to you.
Technology isn't the enemy. It is salvation.
Couldn't agree more. Technology is our defence. The rise of blockchain is just an example and a testament to that fact
there have not been any scandals related to any blockchains?
I have long been convinced that institutions are the primary vector for evil in the world.
That's one way of describing it.
I agree.
institutions cannot fail to be corrupted
right again
today technology promises to eradicate the power of institutions to impact the quality of life individuals.
yup..and it's happening at an incredible, accelerating rate.
Eventually, all we have to do to defeat institutional evil is ignore it until it goes away.
I've been saying that for years.
Technology isn't the enemy. It is salvation.
Sing it BROTHER!
Truer words have never been spoken.
The app developer is not an institution most likely a fairly large corporation?
The phone company/ISP is not a huge international institution?
The android or iPhone store where you downloaded the app is not a huge international institution?
The manufacturer of your phone is not a huge institution?
you didn't use US government GPS satellites created launched and maintained by the United States government taxpayers to geolocate yourself?
In almost all cases the points you are making are completely valid, but even so, those particular capabilities are examples of those powers being delivered to individuals through technology, despite the desire and active intentions of institutions to maintain their power..
I do not claim that the transformation we are undergoing has not developed through institutional power and control of society and technology, but that technology is transferring that power to individuals, and always has.
Thus, the pic.
My point is not that extant technology is the result of the freedom technology will bring, but that freedom will ensue despite the best efforts of institutions to prevent it, and that technology will continue to burgeon thereafter.
there will always be institutions and institutions will be run by people and people will either respond by either a fight or flight response when faced with a threat, in an institution this takes the form of the choice to either cover it up or face the music when some individual or group associated with the institution fucks something up, perhaps someday technology will make it impossible to cover things up but we are a long way from there.
Do see my reply to @soo.chong163 regarding this topic on this very post. IIRC, when confronted with a drunken knife-wielding belligerent, my response was neither fight nor flight. I remember saying "So, you're gonna stick me because YOU have a big mouth."
I suspect you infer the same responses in others you see in yourself. I reckon that's inaccurate at best. I also know that society is using it's new technological abilities - to surveil, for example - profitably.
This is not gonna happen. It's already mostly happened, and we're still figgerin' out how it changed everything.
in that case you choose "fight", I suppose "go limp" or "play dead" is an option for possums but those are not typical human responses. Standing your ground and responding is a "fight" response even if you didn't start swinging.
You have really never heard of the flight or flight response?
Says the guy who believes there is a worldwide conspiracy to lie about the effectiveness of vaccines.
Sigh. Is it impossible for you to not twist my words? Safe is not a synonym for effective. Profitable is not a synonym for scientifically superable.
Mocking my assailant is neither synonymous for fighting them.
Lies expose the truth they attempt to conceal when they are themselves exposed. I appreciate the opportunities you offer me to make that exposure facile. Please continue!
my bad, there is a worldwide conspiracy to lie about the safety of vaccines, is that better? To be fair you have often claimed that vaccines are not effective either.
All hail the potential liberating power of technology
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i guess its in the air i just wrote, not as eloqently, the same thing! :)
You're so right, technology not the enemy, it's the institutions who misuse it against us. "Everything meant for good, is being used for evil. Flawed technology, universal dichotomy...everything used for evil, satan's world is equipped." - K Rino, Flawed Technology
sorry i'm not giving you a better comment on the overall article, b ut the part about drones kind of focused me on a discussion about drone warfare by ISIS on /k last night
[a moment while I see if the link is up]
http://boards.4chan.org/k/thread/39006118
tldr?
ground troops are already carrying around jammers keyed into drone command frequencies...yes, that can be got around...until the EW folks pick up the new freqs
warfare is constant evolution ;>
all free men fight
all fighting men are free
I fail to understand how anarchy and chaos will be an improved condition for men to exist. Men need to be governed, otherwise human civilization will collapse into fragmented, starving, mindless prides of beasts with the only capacity to destroy everything they touch. Grant power to the muck, and within six-months, mankind will witness the rapid degeneration of human civilization into piles of rubble, as the ill-educated, over-emotional, ungoverned rabble burn and consume everything in their aimless path. Slaves make for poor masters, and freedom for the untrained is more a curse than a blessing.
Two weeks ago tomorrow I was confronted by an armed assailant. Folks visiting family dissuaded the assailant from executing an attack, multiple personal surveillance systems captured the confrontation, and satisfied the landlady that the assailant needed to be banned from the park.
Government did not become involved at all, and no muck were injured in the preservation of my life and all our freedom. I submit you dramatically underestimate free men.
Here, in Pacific City, we are already making the transition from 'muck' to sovereign and independent people. I am confident this is happening all over the world, and is not confined to my little village.
I dispute your speculations based on my experience, and am glad my own life is a testament to the beneficence of freedom to members of society.
What you describe is nothing more than fragmented tribalism, under which system, personal/family vendettas continue on for generations. The so-called "freedom" illustrated above results in nothing more than fractured humanity living in tribal isolation. African tribalism has resulted in the mismanagement of once prosperous regions of that unfortunate continent; how can such future be ever preferable to the current nation-state institutional system that has provided security and luxury for its subjects?
From whence does your "landlady" derive the privilege of disbursing "her" property, if not from the state/crown? Without the state/crown to enforce and legitimize property "rights," there can not even be such concept as "private property." Can a man claim "rights" to earth that he did not create, resources that he did not embed, creatures that he did not quicken? Without the power of the state/crown to enforce its arbitrary legal matrix of property disbursement, no man has any legitimacy to any property. Men ought to give credit where it is due, and dues when it is demanded.
You either fail to grasp what I report, or misconstrue it. The relationships treated aren't familial, tribal, or political. The results are simply natural consequences of nascent technological development empowering individuals to protect themselves from oppression, and demonstrate the fallacy of your subsequent commentary.
I hope that minor correction dispels your misapprehension.
Thanks!