My Tao - Natural Arrangements

Modern society, with all its complexities, are powered by energy. Complicated arrangements of all sorts are set up for our convenience. Factories produce products available to us through a complex web of logistics. Behind every convenience of everyday life lies an expansive machinery in need of energy.

The complexity of society can, at least in part, be judged by the amount of energy that it consumes. Primitive societies consume less energy than more complex ones. When we see energy consumption drop, it indicates a drop in complexity. When it rises, things are likely becoming more complex.

Seen in this light, its interesting that worldwide energy consumption has dropped by 20% so far this year. This indicates that complexities that we have relied on in the past are being dismantled. Much of this is probably confined to production and logistics, including air travel and tourism. But other complex structures may be dismantled as well.

There are plenty of complex structures in modern society that are in fact superfluous. They only exist due to a perceived convenience that may not even be real. While their existence may be vital to many, they can be completely removed and replaced by something simpler. Examples of such superfluous structures include:

1. government
2. welfare state
3. police
4. paper assets
5. derivatives
6. fiat and crypto currencies

All of these things are artificial artifacts that serve to replace naturally occurring phenomena. The natural alternative to the points listed above are:

1. family and voluntary associations, instead of government
2. charity, instead of welfare state
3. private security, instead of police
4. physical assets, instead of paper assets
5. capital equipment, instead of derivatives
6. gold and silver, instead of fiat and crypto currencies

Should some or all of the items in the first list disappear, corresponding items in the second list will take over. The second list contains elements that are naturally occurring. While some may seek to suppress or trivialize elements in the second list, they cannot remove them. Furthermore, the top list requires more energy in order to be sustained. Any attempt to replace the second list with the first will drain a society of resources, as happened in Soviet Russia and other places where Communism has been tried.

From this, its clear that anyone relying on elements in the first list are in a more precarious situation than people relying on elements in the second list. The first list can be removed in its entirety. There is not a single item that holds any kind of permanency.

With energy consumption now down, there's a real chance that at least some of the items in the first list will be reduced or removed. The current push to remove or severely limit the police may well succeed. Those relying on the police rather than private security may soon find themselves exposed and in need of rapid rearrangements.

But it isn't only the police that's currently under pressure. Tax revenues have plummeted together with the drop in energy consumption. Not a single one of the state's many projects are sufficiently funded to remain in operation. Welfare checks may be reduced, or their purchasing power will be curtailed through price inflation. Either way, welfare dependency will become increasingly painful and ultimately impossible. Things are going to get ugly for those invested in or dependent on the first list.

While this may sound like the end of the world to some, it's a good thing for most. A full replacement of the first list with the second will lead to more prosperity, even as energy consumption goes down. A great beneficiary will be liberty. Without the state, we will no longer need to register with government officials before seeking gainful employment. There won't be any taxes either. We can do our own charitable work with our own money. Rather than letting the state take care of this for us we'll do it ourselves according to our own priorities and values.

In the absence of a state, things will revert to something simpler and better:

• Gold will be money
• House rules will be law
• Arbitration will be voluntary
• Security will be private

Every man and every woman will be a sovereign. Without the state to enforce laws of oppression, anyone trapped by an evil sovereign will have the option to escape. Instead of going from one country to another in search of liberty, we can go from one household to another. This is not to say that the natural state of things will be Utopia. There will always be evildoers, and even gangs of evildoers. But they will be few and far between because of their inherent inefficiencies.

Good sovereigns will far outnumber evil ones because the oppressive, intrusive and disruptive behavior of evil is inefficient. This is why good always triumphs over evil. This is also why poor but safe states, such as Portugal, are less oppressive and insistent on conformity than prosperous states. The Portuguese state simply lacks the resources to keep a lid on people's freedoms.

A consequence of this is that most Portuguese people are likely to go through the coming crisis relatively unscathed. They are well connected to the natural order of things and therefore more likely to find their way through a simpler system. However, welfare recipients in the US and other wealthy nations are going to suffer, especially in big cities where things have become highly artificial. Riots, violence and unrest will become increasingly the norm as the current order of things come unglued.

It may take decades or even centuries for the coming unwind to come to its conclusion, at which point we'll have a minimal or non-existent state. Then, as things improve, someone will come up with a way to do things better through artificial means, and there will be a new cycle.

By Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov - http://lj.rossia.org/users/john_petrov/166993.html, Public Domain, Link