Peter, whilst your points about the behaviour/iilegtemacy of the state are well taken, what is our other option?

Assuming that a classic liberal society is a more just society, than a democracy. How can we, Australia, move away from a democracy to a truly liberal society (which I can see the benefits of), without massive social upheaval, more wars, more corruption etc, plus the predation of other states. Because it seems to me, on the surface of things that Churchill had a point when he said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." I'm aware he said gov't, but we could equally use the term 'society'.

Lets say I fully agree its a more correct course. I'm much more in interested in the practicalities of achieving it.

HI PaulL

You seem to have a very narrow view of liberalism. My liberalism is open to all sorts of viewpoints and activities. I don't have a closed or fixated view on anything. I think you might be confusing Liberalism with conservatism as do many of todays left leaning commentators. Fortunately the open minded voters in many electorates across Australia have shown they now don't either.

I think it wise a significant part of health care, for a multitude of very sensible and pragmatic reasons, including aspects influential on costs and research, should be under control of the state.

I also think it wise healthcare be open to private enterprise for very liberal/conservative and competitive reasons.

I think it unwise to have churches running a large part of our health care in a totally separate health system. I'd tend to try to model things as we do with our private schools.

Jewely we don't spend time arguing over our funding to private schools and they run their own agenda's with some control over the cirriculum. We know what would happen if privte schools didn't receive taxpayer susidy ... and I wonder where public healthcare would be without state funding of private hospitals? I do think private health care does contain much more positives than being particularly harmful. It's optional not compulsory to attend and even if you do attend for a say a heart proceedure it's unlikely their negative aspects will get to harm you. You're unlikely to want a termination or to be euthanasised.

You know the system we used to have before Labor Governments everywhere stuffed things with their management meddling that has resulted in the massive inefficient and costly bureauracies would be better.

I and Tony Abbott think we should return to the days of effective local hospital boards.

PaulL
It’s a very interesting question: in short, how to transition to a voluntary society, rather than the one we have now subjugated under big government’s systematic fraud and legalised aggression?

The transition to a free and prosperous society can happen quickly. Slavery – common in virtually all societies for millennia – was almost entirely abolished in less than a century. Germany went from a starving bomb crater two years after WWII ended, under the US army’s centralised controls and ration tickets for everything. Werner Erhard abolished them all, and within 5 years, Germany was one of the richest countries in the world.

The practical problems are the least. The big problems are those of *ideas*. Mediaeval people’s irrational faith in the church has been replaced by modern people’s irrational faith in the state.

Imagine if the church still had power to subject all children to ten years’ compulsory indoctrination, the content of which was entirely dictated by the church. What would we expect, but that the church would inculcate in the whole population an uncritical faith in the church’s moral superiority and indispensability? Well that is exactly what we have now, only with the state doing it, with similar results.

Both church and state are corporations. Both corporations were established by force. And the irrational faith in both is essentially the same:
1. the corporation is presumed to have an inexhaustible supply of moral superiority no matter how gross or obvious its crimes and fraud, and
2. it can suspend the laws of natural scarcity in our favour – the church’s miracles, and the state’s “free” hospitals, schools, cheap credit, etc.

These beliefs cannot withstand critical scrutiny or scientific refutation. They are irrational and faith-based, that is all.

Churchill’s dictum is incorrect. Democracy – perhaps owing to the false belief that “we” are the state and vice versa - has actually resulted in government more intrusive and arbitrary than the absolute monarchies of old.
(cont.)

... Louis XIV never pretended to know what kind of light people can have in their own homes, and the modern democracies’ regulation of every aspect of industry and personal life is far more extensive and intensive than that of the great fascist dictatorships - and getting worse.

Churchill’s dictum tells us only what *is* or *has been*. But the question is, what *can and should be*?

To ask what we would replace the state with, is itself to presume that it provides us with moral and material benefits that could not be better provided otherwise.

The state is a legal monopoly of the use of aggression and fraud. What would we replace it with? What would we replace a house-fire with? With not-a-fire. What would you replace a cancer with? Nothing. Much productive work was done under slavery. What, the slavers might say, would we replace coerced labour with? We would replace it with consensual labour, or nothing.

Exactly the same arguments apply to replacing taxation.

The belief that institutionalized aggression causes social harmony, peace, and probity, itself exemplifies uncritical credulity in the state. That old joke is our answer: “fighting for peace is like f*kcing for virginity”!

One of the problems with big government is that it creates serious intractable social problems. An example is the unsustainable rate of growth of so-called “welfare” - dependence on government in the western world. There would need to be provision for the aged, whom government have made dependent by confiscating their savings during their working life.

But once there was general agreement as to the immorality of slavery, the transition to voluntary labour was relatively easy.

Similarly with the state. It has *no* moral superiority and does *not* make society materially better off – on the contrary, its function is to benefit those running it, while it makes society in general both morally and materially much worse off.

The state is essentially a criminal organization, that’s all:
http://economics.org.au/2010/11/government-is-criminal-the-paragraph/

An example of a 30-day plan for transition to a free society is here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/30-day-plan.html

Fundamentals of a voluntary society: http://voluntaryist.com/fundamentals/introduction.html

Peter,

Despite the focus of your argument about Churchills quote, he specifically talked of experience of the past, not the possibility of the future.

In fairness, you have turned my question of what to replace the state with, into a rhetorical device to repeat your attack on the state. I have already stipulated that I can see merit in the criticisms of the state. I asked what comes next. What are our alternatives, and more specifically, how would we implement them?

What about those people, who you might reasonably argue are bewitched or indoctrinated, who still choose the state over the alternative. Isn't it fair to say that there is no voluntary society until everyone is ready.

Put another way, can it get up, if its anything other than a universally supported, global movement? Can a geographic society such as Australia go it alone and suceed?

Slavery, by the time it was abolished, was detested in most of the world and only managed to survive as long as it did, because it was the preserve of the wealthy elite, and mostly conducted, in Europe anyway, out of the eye of the public. Slavery didn't exactly die easily, the american civil war was long and bloody and Hitler was still using slaves of war in 1945. Yes I know, the state has been at it for much longer, reinforcing the moral imperative.

The state however, enjoys widespread support, particularly through its redistribution of wealth (yes, I know, stealing and regifting).

The thirty day plan talks about voting, and the legitemate role of the state. Aren't these entirely counter to the spirit of the voluntary society? It seems to me that there is no talk of revoking the whole state, and there is reliance placed upon the constitution and organs of state such as the defence department, who you have been scathing about. Surely there is no possibility of voting, since voting suggests someones rights are going to be violated. And retaining a defence department which surely suggests voting, is an anti competitive monoply on force.

Yes, that's all true. It depends whether one is talking about a 'classical liberal' society i.e. small government, or a voluntary society, i.e. challenging the very idea of government. Mere compliance with the US Constitution would nevertheless produce a classical liberal society.

Where to from here is... smaller government, any way you look at it! The English Whigs between 1750 and 1850 repealed 80 percent of the laws of England enacted since 1215. I'd like to see something like that - a clean-out-the-broom-cupboard-of-state type party.

To me, pretty much any reduction in the state is desirable, reserving provision for those who have been unfairly made reliant on it, such as the aged. I would start with abolishing corporate welfare, abolishing taxes, repealing all restrictions on all consensual activities including industrial relations law and occupational licensing, abolishing foreign aid so-called, so-called "welfare", the regulation of families and consensual sexual relationships, divesting government of lands, abolishing government funding of arts, science, education, hospitals, family breakdown, etc. etc. I could see a 50 percent reduction in 5 years without any major social disruption - apart from outraged opinion from the unweaned, that is.

It is certainly viable for Australia to have a much smaller government, though how small in this state-filled world, I don't know.

However I recognise that the state is not going to get any smaller while ever the vast majority think it's so selfless and indispensable.

And for every person who works his way through the brainwashing to realise that the whole thing is built on lies and exploitation, the state graduates a hundred thousand fresh from their ten years of indoctrination.

At a personal level, I try to heed the words of the ancient Taoists "Do not help on the big Chariot - you will only cover yourself in dust." So I just try to arrange my affairs to maximise my own freedom regardless of the state's meddling, and in my spare time put forward the arguments for liberty.