Abolish Police & the State – The Ideas That Will Replace Them

In my last two articles in this series I discussed the reasons that the police state must be abolished and why.

Accountability Is Futile – Abolish the Police

The Police State Is Slavery – Abolition, Not Reform, Is the Only Solution

In this article I will discuss the emerging paradigms that will replace these institutions while granting the individual more freedoms and liberties than the state while also increasing social harmony among individuals and as a whole for humanity. We can break these down into two categories, ideology and technology.

Ideology

Rights- Many believe that governments and their enforcement agencies are necessary to protect our ‘rights’. The assumption that we have rights and that they need protected becomes the justification for the existence of these institutions. But we must ask ourselves, what is a right? Do these rights exist external to human ideas about them? If so, where do they come from? How? Why? What is the ontological source of an objective ‘right’?

The idea of rights is merely a human concept with no analogue in nature. Rights do not exist outside of our belief in them. Just as government is not a part of nature, but a human construct. As I recently explained to someone asking me what I thought about a limited  government that exists only to uphold rights…

There cannot be a limited government. If you study systems analysis you will find that any entity, even an abstract one like a business or the state, has some intrinsic properties. The desire for growth chief among them. Systems which do not experience growth will eventually stagnate, decline and fail. So every system has an innate drive to create growth by consuming more of the resources than other systems. Limited government is not a possibility. It is a fairy tale. It is the happy dragon who lives in our closet and tells funny stories but never ever does dragon-things like breath fire at us or eat babies.

Now consider that, at best, government was a necessary evolutionary structure meant to get us through the industrial era. We are rapidly leaving that era. The new era will produce information structures that replace it. Government will soon be your mom’s basement and humanity will be working part time at a call center and playing WOW all the time (metaphorically) if we do not take the scary risk and go out as individuals.

Those rights you discussed, those are the house rules you grew up with. But they are not an objective constant of the world at large. There are no rights. Those were boundaries for learning social interactions, like bumper lanes are for learning to bowl without bumper lanes.

Rights exist only as a myth used by the state to justify their existence. And who is the first to deny those rights when it limits its own growth? The state.

It is therefore the case that the concept of rights is not an ideological device intended to grant you freedoms and liberties, but to empower systems and institutions which limit them. Rights necessitate the threat of aggression in order to exist. Yet that aggression negates their existence. Forced behavior is meaningless. Civilization is meaningless if it relies on games of barbaric aggression. Building a meaningful civilization requires that we place expectations not on others, but on ourselves. Only when interactions are voluntary are they meaningful in and of themselves. Rather than adopting disciplines to control others, we should focus more on those which bring us self control. If deviant human behavior (crime) is the disease, then we should treat the disease itself in the individual by replacing it with a healthy worldview and self-discipline. The idea of rights is a misleading ideology that causes us to ignore the disease and stay focused on treating the symptoms.

I propose the following idea as a starting point for such self-discipline:

DO UNTO OTHERS AS THEY WOULD LIKE DONE UNTO THEM. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT IS, ASK. IF YOU DO NOT CARE TO ASK OR HONOR THEIR WISHES, LEAVE THEM ALONE ENTIRELY.

Safety- The next fallacy used to support police and the state is that they keep us safe. This idea is patently absurd. Police do not prevent crimes, they show up after like an ambulance chaser in order to profit from them. The number of crimes prevented by police is a statistical anomaly compared to the number of crimes committed by them. Not only do they not prevent crime, they do not deter it. Worse, they prevent natural consequences for crimes, that help to embolden criminals. As if that were not enough, police (and the state) create crime by inventing new categories of criminality, and also by creating a cycle of criminal behavior in individuals who get caught in their system.

The truth about safety is that it does not exist. You are not safe. You live in a reality in which everything from microscopic phenomena to cosmic events (and everything in between) may injure or kill you at any time. Nothing can ever guarantee your safety. Unfortunately, most people cannot (yet) face our uncertainty with courage and maturity. And so it becomes a source of fear, which itself becomes the source of paranoia and all manner of neurotic thinking and behaviors. They then try to rationalize that, because danger to their physical selves exists, attempts to avoid or stop those dangers are a practical necessity of our existence. However, that is delusional thinking, since danger cannot be prevented. The state and its enforcement agencies do not eradicate the basic fact that we are always in peril, they just add another danger. Only instead of just being a danger to only our quantity of existence (survival), they become a danger to our quality of existence (freedom/liberty). The fact that these systems may prevent some small modicum of crime does not make up for the fact that they create a large portion of oppression.

The cult of survivalism has become an increasing problem. When we reduce our lives to mere physical objects seeking continuity, we sacrifice meaning and purpose for function; and in doing so our lives become meaningless and without purpose. Survival alone has no merit. Existence is given meaning by the content of its being, not the length. Once you accept that you will never be safe, that your life could end at any moment, you can release yourself from the shackles of fear and focus on value to your life. Safety is not just a myth, it is a dangerous one that robs us of truly living. Embrace your death, it is inevitable. Only in doing so will you ever truly be alive.

Non-materialist Science- I suspect that the reason we reduce ourselves to objects has to do with many assumptions and dogmas in our ideologies. Science has taken on some critically erroneous ideas about reality and those ideas have leaked into our cultural consciousness and become the premise for new belief systems sometimes called physicalism or materialism. Those beliefs state that only the physical world really exists and that our conscious and subjective perception of it is false, illusory or meaningless. Yet those assumptions have no rational basis. Those ideas are becoming increasingly under fire by a new generation of scientists who are beginning to demonstrate the falsehood of those beliefs while implying that the nature of our existence/reality is based in consciousness, not physicality. Check out these videos to understand the problems of materialism and to see the brilliant thinking that will soon make physicalism/materialism look like the belief in a flat earth or geocentrism.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with abolishing police, so let me explain. First of all, understanding our reality can be helpful in decloaking ourselves from the existential angst and fear we suffer from, which in turn causes us to seek desperate solutions to problems that may in fact not even be problems at all. Only when you view your physical survival as the whole of your existence do you become willing to accept restrictions to protect it. However, when the doorway of death becomes less frightening, fear has no power over you can instead live with purpose, not just continuity.

Secondly, if reality is a product of consciousness, then it is entirely possible that consciousness can change reality. The assumption that police and the state are necessary is based on an invalid belief that human deviance is an objective constant that will always be with us. Yet if our consciousness is primal to our existence, and not physical constants or laws of nature, then we may be able to eradicate deviancy where it begins- in the human mind. This could be accomplished without invasive acts against individuals. Merely gaining a greater understanding of our existence could eradicate the cognitive dissonance that manifests deviant behaviors. In short, perhaps crime is related to an illness, an illness caused by the nihilism suggested by models of reality predicated on materialist dogmas.

If, as Bernardo Kastrup implies, our physical reality resides in consciousness and not the other way around; then any problems we face should be addressed as issues of consciousness, and not the objects found within it.

What we consider possible is based on limitations imposed by our beliefs. Non-materialist science is advancing our beliefs and will soon show the limitations of humanity to be imposed, not inherent. The future is unwritten.

I suspect that the reason we have come to place so much trust in scientific reasoning, to the point of culturally absorbing its assumptions and dogmas is because we credit it with being the source of the technologies that enhance our lives. While science and technology certainly go hand in hand, we have mistakenly come to believe that technology is a product of science. Technology precedes science by millions of years, and even our own species. Technology is not a scientific outcome, but an adaptive tool of evolution. And modern technology more often than not has its origins in the arts. The device you are reading this article on was first conjured up in literature, film and other mediums. Science merely adapted these inventions from theoretical outcomes to products. Science without art is a laboratory full of equipment and assistants that has nothing to hypothesize, test, theorize, falsify and formulate into practical knowledge.

You might even view this very article as a piece of art from which new technologies could possibly emerge.

Technology

Much of our deviant behavior has historically been based on practical issues that arise from limitations in nature and social systems. But what if we were to remove those limitations?

Non-Scarcity & Automation- Scarcity is the recognition that there are natural limits on resources and labor. If not of abundance, then in distribution and control. Because of scarcity we are forced to compete for resources and labor (both as workers and employers) in order to survive and prosper. What would happen, then, if we were to remove those natural limits?

Today if you want an apple you either have to find an apple tree or someone who has a supply chain leading back to an apple tree. There are only so many apple trees so if you are not near one you must hope that somebody has figured out how to get one or more of the limited amount of apples in existence closer to you, without having incurred more expense in doing so than they could recover and profit (experience natural systematic growth) from in distributing them at a price (a correlate value) that apple consumers deem acceptable.

This is the idea that agrarian and then industrial economics were based upon. While the model above resembles ‘capitalism’ in its pure (but certainly not practiced, thanks to the state and its enforcers) form, you only have to change a few words to derive socialism, communism or any other economic political ideology from. The basics remain. Resources and labor are problems to be overcome by centralized systems. Systems like police and the state who must control individuals and their interactions are a consequence. This is often called ‘the greater good’, although it has so far only demonstrated great goodness for the very few in power in some form or another.

If there were an infinite number of possible apples available anywhere at any time, this would not be a problem. This would be simple to accomplish if apple trees did not have a monopoly on apples. It may very soon be the case that they won’t. An apple is more than just an outcome of an apple tree. It is object in reality with the distinctive qualities of apples. Those distinctive qualities have reductive properties in apples and everything else. A coral reef and a chunk of iron can be reduced to these same reductive properties. It is the arrangement of these properties that separates apples, coral reefs and chunks of iron. Yet these properties are present everywhere, all of the time. If we could arrange these infinitely abundant properties into apples at any time or place, then we would not be reliant on apple trees (resources) or limited by their distance/ability to produce (labor). We would have overcome scarcity. And when we overcome scarcity we will overcome the innumerable limitations and hardship it has placed on humanity and its environment. And when we overcome those, those systems that were predicated on those limits and their consequences will become irrelevant. Police and the state are just a product of scarcity, and scarcity is about to disappear from our lexicon of limitations as a species. Soon you will be able to create apples out of thin air using the unlimited free energy all around us.

Clarke’s Three Laws are three “laws” of prediction formulated by the British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. They are:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

As resources become locally available, we will then be able to use them to produce goods where they are needed or desired. The tools by which we will do this have already been in development for quite some time. 3-D printing technology will allow us to create complex objects that once required long supply chains, industrial processes and extensive labor. As we develop even more complex forms of automation and local production, labor itself will become largely a thing of the past, at least in the terms of scarcity in which we know it. Rather than laboring for the objects of necessity, convenience and desire in a competitive manner, we will be able to obtain them cost-free through technological means. And so the structures that supported the old model and were used to redistribute the wealth in ways that created deviant human behaviors that the structures then had to deal with will become irrelevant. Police and the state exist as tools for redistribution of limited wealth, a consequence of scarcity of resources and labor, from the many to the few. A basis which is about to be destroyed.

Reputation Economics- We sometimes think of technology as a collection of objects. But technology also includes things like language, art, social systems, politics and economics. And these intangible technologies are largely predicated on the limitations of, and those exceeded by, technological objects. So as our tangible technologies overcome the limits of scarcity-based economic technologies, new economic paradigms will emerge.

Scarcity has been the basis for value since the first agrarian societies began  trading. Even when we conquer the ability to meet our objective needs, we will still have subjective desires. These desires will be based on a new kind of scarcity- uniqueness. So humans will still create and trade unique objects in the pursuit of happiness. Post-scarcity will not end trade and the economic systems necessitated by trade, it will just radically transform it. Since uniqueness is a quality of the individual, the basis for the new economic system will be derived from the value of the individual. The value of the individual is known as reputation.

All value has always stemmed from the individual. Currency was just a way of marking that individuals productive capabilities for means of determining trade potential. Currency is just a highly abstracted version of how that value is derived and represented. Yet the failure of currency is the the production and management of currency has become more valuable than the trade of goods and services it is used to facilitate. Reputation economies will not be based on competitive behaviors seeking markers of wealth. It will strive to create real wealth by directly rewarding the individuals who made it at no cost to others. Because currency is either limited and scarce or meaningless altogether, it means that value must always be transferred from an individual or sets of individuals to others. This creates inequity. A reputation score, on the other hand, will not require a diminishment of the value of others.

A reputation economy will be much like a gift or barter economy. But with the caveat of allowing trade non-locally with strangers who can only determine your value by having a reasonable estimation of your reputation. The reputation economy can already be seen blossoming in areas where open discussion of past trades are allowed. Amazon’s review system or sites like Rate My Professor have already shown us how we will be able to create a reputation score for individuals. The problems to be overcome are just technological, and those too are already under development. While some literalists believe the value of crypto-currency is that it will replace national fiat currencies, they are missing the point. That would be like believing the point of the internet is pornography, rather than seeing pornography as a tool that spurred the development of the internet. In much the same ways, the technologies created by crypto-currencies will allow us to create safe networks of encrypted information regarding the reputation of the individual. A reputation score might take the form of an actual number which has been derived from reviews of your past interactions with others. These reviews will be non-tamper-able and subject to arbitration by third parties consented to by reviewers and reviewee in cases of disagreement. Or it may just be a history of those interactions and of your personal characteristics, accomplishments and talents, which can be interpreted by those wishing to determine your value for trade purposes. The point is, nobody knows what a reputation economy is, yet. But we can forecast possibilities based on current human paradigms.

The effect will also be that reputation economies will create natural consequences and deterrents. Those whose values and actions create negative social consequences will suffer low reputations and become economically nonviable. In short, deviant behavior will make you socially irrelevant. There will be no need for police or the state, because the actions of the individual will be rewarded and punished by the underlying source of value- reputation. As it is you can gain, maintain and monopolize power, control and wealth through deviant behavior. The reputation economy will fundamentally change that aspect of our existence. Deviance will be pointless, and as a result, so too will be the police and the state and other systems and institutions we have perhaps misguidedly erected to address deviant human behaviors.

Click here to read the selected favorite works of this articles author.Click here to read the selected favorite works of this articles author.

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This future I speak of is not just a distant possibility, it is a near-future likelihood. This is why the state and police have become desperate. They must now be the deviants they are supposed to protect us from in order to validate their own existence and insure their survival. The increasing violence of police and the state can be seen as desperate unconscious attempts to avoid their own extinction. The closer we get to abolishing them, the more pronounced their instinct to fight will become. And that instinct is now so great police are often a greater threat than the deviants they exist to address and the state has become a risk to the existence of humanity through increasing escalations of violence on a global scale. So even though the near-future I have predicted is likely, it is not guaranteed. The police/state could destroy us all in its own death knells. All that is needed to avoided that is for enough of us to remove our consent for those institutions. If they had only force to maintain their existence, they would lose in a numbers game. That is why they require consent, because it gives them the numerical advantage. Remove consent and they are powerless. Remove their power and we can be free in ways that no humans before us could ever have imagined. The choice is clear. Abolish the police/state.

Joshua Scott Hotchkin

Source Article from http://www.copblock.org/147362/abolish-police-state/

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