Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Voici en avant-première le tout dernier article de François Guillaumat et Georges Lane sur la fameuse Loi de Bitur-Camember.

Pour rappel, La loi de Bitur-Camember fut originellement publiée dans le Tocqueville Magazine du 21 mai 2002. J'en ai fait l'exposé dans le billet de mon blog: Redistribution = Dissipation. La BD de Christophe d'où provient le nom est aussi disponible sur mon blog: On ne pense pas à tout.

Pourquoi la loi de Bitur-Camember

François Guillaumat et Georges Lane

In a previous post, I told you of a door hack one of my colleagues did, and what social concepts it illustrated. Mind you, when I was younger, I also did my own door hacks. My former clubmates from the Club Informatique of Lycée Louis-le-Grand may remember one that I did long ago, back in High-School. In retrospect, I realize this anecdote too may illustrate a number of interesting social concepts.

Khodorkovski: réquisitoire contre la réussite en Russie, par Christian Michel, dans l'agefi. (Ouch, l'accès est restreint et bug me not ne connaît pas de mot de passe. Y a-t-il un P2P pour de tels articles?)

Mon commentaire: Cet article vous permettra de comprendre par l'exemple qu'en-deçà des problèmes institutionnels (notamment soulevés par Hernando de Soto), le problème des pays pauvres est un problème culturel: une culture qui exècre ceux qui s'enrichissent par la création économique, et célèbre ceux qui s'enrichissent par la prédation politique, aboutira à l'oppression des uns, et au règne des autres. Sans la bonne culture, les institutions coercitives seront mauvaises (et corrompues); avec la bonne culture, les institutions coercitives sont inutiles (et corruptrices). Encore une fois, la liberté commence dans votre tête.

Note: j'adore la plupart de ce qu'écrit Christian Michel, maintenant président de Libertarian International, et qui est après tout celui qui m'a converti à l'anarchisme. Il est pour moi un grand philosophe contemporain. Nos différends théoriques, relativement mineurs, portent notamment sur la notion de Police; en découlent des conséquences pratiques sur les actions les moins nuisibles que l'on peut attendre de l'État tant que dure son règne.

PS: le verdict est tombé: coupable!

I had submitted a variant of my Black Magic text to the essay contest conducted by The Better-World Project. The results were just published on Build Freedom, and I only got a consolation prize. That was well deserved: the other texts were much more inspiring. I invite you to read the actual winners! Thanks again to Frederick Mann for being such a source of inspiration, through his many sites and projects. Few people in the world know the road to freedom. He does, and he leads the way.

J'interromps vos programmes habituels pour vous rappeler qu'aujourd'hui, nous commémorons la façon dont l'Etat nous protège de la mort violente par des criminels. Dieu-L'Etat notre sauveur. C'est clair, sans l'Etat, ce serait l'anarchie.

The guys from the Libertarian Party, including their presidential candidate, and those who follow their line of non-interventionist nightwatchman government fail to be libertarians in quite an important way.

Some people, including many libertarians, argue against the principle of "Preemptive Strike". To be just, you should never strike first, they say, for justice is about doing to culprits according to what they've actually done, and not according to speculations about what they could have done. Yeah, right. With such a principle, you should wait for the suicide bomber to kill hundreds and more, before you may punish him? I hope you can put together the bits to which he was the first to be blown. And a woman should wait for the rapist to rape her, before she may react? And then what, for a perfect reciprocal justice, what she gains is the right to rape him in return? How utterly stupid! Sure, Justice never strikes first. Judicial prosecution against innocents is a bad joke; it isn't Justice to kill a menacing criminal, or to put to jail a burglar who failed at his burglary, or a would-be rapist who was arrested before he could have his ways, or a fraud who failed to deceive his target. No it ain't Justice, and those who claim it is are morons or frauds indeed. But there is such thing as Police, and Police is exactly what these things are: preventing villains from doing harm.

Voici le deuxième de ces dialogues avec Raymond qui étaient trop longs pour publication dans Choc-Info.

You are an Anarchist. You think that capitalism is evil, that the "market" is a subtle dictatorship, that wage labor is but hidden (or softened) slavery, that consumership is an illusion to manipulate minds, that the State is the institution of this system of exploitation. You want to promote human life, natural beauty, liberty, and things well and good. That's why you oppose all the above evil things. OK.

Now you face wierd people who say they are anarchists, yet who promote those evil things you associate to the State you hate. How can that be? Are they hypocrites? Spies paid by big corporations to instill confusion? Are they crazy people incapable of coherent thinking? No, we're people just as sincere as you are; we also despise the current state of affairs and hate dictatorship, slavery and mind manipulation; and we're also motivated by our love of human life, natural beauty, liberty, and all things well and good. But we just have a different interpretation of what is evil.

How slight or how big is this difference? How much of it is a matter of a cultural gap in terminology and how much of it is actual irreconcilable ideas? Can we find a common pattern by which both of our groups may legitimately claim to be anarchist? Can we identify and circumscribe the root of our disagreements? Is it possible to find a peaceful way to resolve our disagreements, or will we have to kill each other before either or us may have his way? Well, if you'll allow me to argue my case, we can enter a sincere debate. And maybe we can find a resolution to settle our conflict in the anarchist way: through peaceful discussion.

Voici un joli texte publié en 1850 par Anselme Bellegarrigue, dont une version OCRisée vient d'être publiée par nos amis de Contrepoison.

Here's a short article by H. L. Mencken on Democracy: Last Words (1926). I'm sure that among others, my friend Turion Lugol will appreciate, since he's writing (in French) a piece on Democracy. Thanks to Catallarchy.net for the pointer.

Un jour que j'avais le privilège de discuter de visu avec François Guillaumat pendant quelques minutes, il m'expliqua cette intéressante loi de l'économie politique, que tout potentiel de redistribution sera quasi entièrement dissipé par des activités de lobbying destinées à capter ce potentiel, avant même de pouvoir aider quiconque. Voici comment redémontrer cette intéressante loi économique...

La constitution, loi première censée donner une légitimité aux lois légiférées, n'est qu'une façade juridique pour la violation du Droit. Comme toute prétendue cause première sortie du néant, elle se contredit du fait même qu'elle suppose l'existence d'un monde antérieur et supérieur à la cause prétendu première, tout en niant ce monde qu'elle prétend dorénavant remplacer totalement. Mais qu'est-ce qui donne légitimité à la Constitution? Une méta-constitution???

As a follow up to What Is Anarchy? by Butler Shaffer, Stephan Kinsella has published an enlightening article, What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist. Here is my take on the basics of Free-Market Anarchism.

Since I don't escape the current events, but only report them late, here is the inevitable Tolkien entry for my blog.

Drieu Godefridi, fondateur de l'Institut Hayek Institute, est un garçon que j'aime et que j'admire. Nous avons beaucoup en commun, et je suis fier d'avoir marché à ses côtés à Bruxelles dernièrement; sur le plan humain, j'aurais beaucoup à apprendre de lui, de même que de la plupart des libéraux que je connais. Cela n'empêche pas qu'il y a des divergences intellectuelles entre nous: il s'est notamment fendu en son temps d'une Critique de l'Utopie libertarienne (il veut dire par là de l'anarcho-capitalisme), qui par delà les choix contestable des correspondances mots-définitions, repose à mon sens sur une erreur d'attitude. Pour moi, Drieu est une victime profondément atteinte du Ghost Not phenomenon: trompé par les mots parce que voulant être trompé par les mots.

Information protectionists and other corporate fascist try to sell us software, goods or services under the terms of shrinkwrap licences they unilaterally define, and that they claim to bind you by your merely opening the package. Well, as a reply to such juridic abuse, I hereby introduce a solution to all these problems. Indeed, I have no less right than these fascists to impose unilateral terms that apply to people who want to do business with me. So I hereby solemnly declare that anyone who undertakes to have any business whatsoever with me is bound by the terms of following contract, therefrom known as the end-seller license.

Voici quelques variations sur le thème classique de la blague "comment se tirer une balle dans le pied", en fonction de l'idéologie politique en vigueur.

In a private email, my friend gustavolacerda, tells me that he begins to realize how people see Government as a magic provider of goods for free, that turns whims into reality simply by pronouncing sacred words. (They dub such pronouncements enacting laws -- but, as Frederick Mann remarks, that is but an instance of the Ghost Not phenomenon.) He asks me if that was what I was trying to tell in my essay Government is the Rule of Black Magic. It looks like he's beginning to see the fnord!

Vous connaissiez sans doute tous le site de Hervé de Quengo qui publie en français des classiques du libéralisme. Vous pouvez aussi trouver de nombreux autres textes sur les autres sites que je référence sur ma page Libres Livres. Eh bien, aujourd'hui un éditeur, eventura, réédite sur du papier des classiques essentiels.

Ouvrage vedette, les Soirées de la Rue Saint Lazare, défense de la propriété, de Gustave de Molinari, qui prend la forme de dialogues entre un conservateur, un socialiste, et un économiste (ce qu'on appelerait aujourd'hui un libéral). Le texte est en-ligne chez Hervé; vous pouvez maintenant l'acheter en bois mort, pour vous-même, ou pour offrir.

The Democrats cry, "The emperor should subsidize the poor!", Republicans argue, "No, the emperor should subsidize the rich!", Libertarians respond, "The emperor wears no clothes", while Terra Librans ask, "Why do they call that naked man emperor?"

Googling my way and chasing links to find stuff related to my article on Government and Black Magic, I had already discovered this excellent article on the Nature of Government by Frederick Mann (well, actually, I had found an older version on the site of the APFN -- see my post below about the hallowcinotion that is government). Well, it's only one in a vast body of interesting documents from Terra Libra (the homepage of which I located thanks to the links from libertocracy). There seems to be a gold-mine of documents to Clear Your Mind from the statist pollution. As for the quote above, it's from an article named the Terra Libra Shift. Another site I found along the way is Revolution, ammo for freedom fighters, but I much prefer the name of the site Build Freedom -- because it makes it obvious that Liberty is a paradigm of creation and harmony, whereas talking about fight is already buying into the paradigm of destruction and conflict of the enslavers.

In a private discussion, a statist reader of mine argues against my claim that really religious superstition is the universal basis for trust in government. He says that the state demonstrably EXISTS, whereas god doesn't. Wrong metaphor.

If you want to look at it this way, God doesn't exist, and neither does Government. The personal entity to which people pay tribute, of which people say the Government should do this or the Government shouldn't do that, or this is thanks to the Government or this is because of the Government -- this entity doesn't exist, it is a hallawcinotion.