# The Veil of Democracy — Money and State
**URL:** https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [16 May 2024 18:23 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632 "2024-05-16T18:23:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)
#### Post date: [16 May 2024 18:23 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/1 "2024-05-16T18:23:03Z")
> **[The Veil of Democracy — Money and State](https://moneyandstate.com/blog/the-veil-of-democracy)**
>
> Ponder it and realize that Democracy—the “consent of the governed”—is a shallow veil indeed.
Let the people in eastern Ukraine decide Russia or Ukraine?
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### Author:  [@civilwestman](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/civilwestman)
#### Post date: [16 May 2024 20:21 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/2 "2024-05-16T20:21:17Z")
After the WHO “Pandemic Preparedness Treaty” - democracy? What democracy? Rights? What are those. Consent? Are you kidding? It is OVER. Our rulers WANT this.
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### Author:  [@Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Gavin)
#### Post date: [16 May 2024 21:28 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/3 "2024-05-16T21:28:22Z")
There are different forms of “democracy”.
There is Direct Democracy where the citizens actually vote on specific narrowly focused items – Shall we tax ourselves to send a whole pile of money to Zelensky?
Then there is Representative Democracy, where the citizens choose one of their members who learns all the details and then gets a single vote on a compendium of issues – Shall we borrow money to send it to a diverse slew of shady characters?
That leads to Unrepresentative Democracy, such as we have now in most of the West. Most “Representatives” are representing only themselves, which is why (for example) Congress is held in contempt by the vast majority of the citizens who elect them.
And then we have “Ukrainian Democracy”, where the rulers dispense with the whole messy business of pretending to have elections. Now that is the kind of “Democracy” that it is worth dying for! Sadly, it is the wrong people who are dying.
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### Author:  [@civilwestman](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/civilwestman)
#### Post date: [17 May 2024 12:37 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/4 "2024-05-17T12:37:35Z")
Back in 2001, I became aware of Hans Hermann Hoppe, a most scholarly libertarian. Also a charming fellow. Back in those pre-coronary artery stenosis revelation times, I was a smoker and we inhaled together during a break in the conference where he spoke in Zurich. Then the propaganda I had imbibed all those years of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, etc. was still in full effect. There was no doubt I lived under a system of democracy.
Hoppe’s new book that year was _Democracy the God that Failed_. I wasn’t quite ready for it. After all, the past 23 years hadn’t yet driven home the correctness of his theory. There is no doubt in my mind that my former beliefs as to the true nature of our state, in no way actually resembles “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. That, like “consent of the governed”, “it’s a free country” (still applies, but only to illegal aliens) or “the rule of law” is nothing but a tired slogan.
In the former Soviet Union, in an effort to retain a shred of sanity, cynical slogans were elevated to rococo proportions. For example “In the Soviet Union, the _past_… is very hard to predict”. Or, “I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me”.
A case of convergent evolution at the level of nations, no?. Is there any form of government which does not evolve to tyranny? It took clever lawyers a mere 200 years to undo even the “structural” components of the Constitution (not to mention the mere meaning of words) which were thought to prevent centralization of power - eroded as sure as eternal water over boulders, now reduced to grains of sand on which our civilization now rests.
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### Author:  [@eggspurt](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/eggspurt)
#### Post date: [17 May 2024 15:04 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/5 "2024-05-17T15:04:23Z")
Can this ‘decentralized’ American democracy can even survive in a competition with hyper-centralized powers of Russia and China? But I can definitely see how Russia and China might want more Americans to call for decentralization 🙂
It’s pretty typical for systems to decentralize in peaceful times and centralize in problematic times, this goes back to [slime molds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelium_discoideum).
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### Author:  [@Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Gavin)
#### Post date: [17 May 2024 20:33 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/6 "2024-05-17T20:33:19Z")
> [@eggspurt](#):
>
> Can this ‘decentralized’ American democracy can even survive
Respectfully, that is the wrong question. The intended US democratic republic has evolved into what is economically a neo-fascist state – government controls essentially everything, right down to the low-flo toilet we must install in our bathrooms, but private ownership is allowed as long as it kisses the Political Class’s ring. Frankly, this is not wildly different in character from the neo-fascist states which have evolved out of Communism in China and Russia.
The appropriate question about survival is – _Are our neo-fascists more competent & smarter than their neo-fascists?_ Given the evidence of China’s recovery from Mao and Russia’s recovery from the collapse of the USSR, I think the answer is obvious.
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### Author:  [@gms](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/gms)
#### Post date: [17 May 2024 20:41 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/7 "2024-05-17T20:41:47Z")
> [@civilwestman](#):
>
> In the former Soviet Union, in an effort to retain a shred of sanity, cynical slogans were elevated to rococo proportions. For example “In the Soviet Union, the _past_… is very hard to predict”. Or, “I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me”.
How about “no one died working, but why take a risk?”
Or “we are not afraid of working because we know how to avoid it”
And countless other Radio Yerevan jokes…
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### Author:  [@jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jabowery)
#### Post date: [17 May 2024 23:53 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/8 "2024-05-17T23:53:01Z")
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### Author:  [@civilwestman](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/civilwestman)
#### Post date: [18 May 2024 14:26 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/9 "2024-05-18T14:26:04Z")
> [@eggspurt](#):
>
> goes back to [slime molds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelium_discoideum)
What a fascinating (group of?) organism! It must be a fascinating life form to study in various aspects, at the margin between unicellular and multicellular organisms. There are a few scanning electron microscopic images. I didn’t find any EM sections, though, showing internal structures of junctions. As part of that transition between uni- and multi-cellular organisms, it would be interesting to see the ultrastructure of the junctions which form between these cells and compare them to known junction types in other multicellular organisms. Thanks for linking this. (do you suppose the left are studying these to refine their never ending strategy of ‘divide and conquer’?)
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### Author:  [@eggspurt](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/eggspurt)
#### Post date: [18 May 2024 19:06 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/10 "2024-05-18T19:06:45Z")
I’ll answer with a chart, which doesn’t just explain the systems but also the weakness of Russia in Eastern Europe:
> [@Gavin](#):
>
> _Are our neo-fascists more competent & smarter than their neo-fascists?_
> [@civilwestman](#):
>
> do you suppose the left are studying these to refine their never ending strategy of ‘divide and conquer’?
The trouble with the Left is that they’re in denial of human nature and biology. [All ought, no is](https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/is-ought.html).
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### Author:  [@Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Gavin)
#### Post date: [18 May 2024 19:43 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/11 "2024-05-18T19:43:17Z")
> [@eggspurt](#):
>
> I’ll answer with a chart, which doesn’t just explain the systems but also the weakness of Russia in Eastern Europe:
Notice that the fall of Communism on that chart is placed at 1990 – which is 34 years ago, two generations in the less salubrious parts of Chicago. Time flies!
The fact that Communism fell back then makes it a reasonable premise that the generation of the likes of Ronald Reagan was smarter & more competent than the generation of the likes of Gorbachev. But time flies. The question today is whether the likes of “Joe Biden” are smarter & more competent than the likes of (their fellow fascists) Putin and XI? To ask the question is to answer it.
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### Author:  [@jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jabowery)
#### Post date: [18 May 2024 21:09 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/12 "2024-05-18T21:09:51Z")
Has anyone read “[Take Back Your Government!: A practical handbook for the private citizen who wants democracy to work](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15075591W/Take_back_your_government)” by Robert A. Heinlein?
I’ll get around to reading it eventually if for no other reason than that toward the end of his life he must have seen the Reagan Amnesty for what it was bound to become. It’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have had something to say about when politics is hopeless as a remedy and arms must be taken up.
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### Author:  [@eggspurt](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/eggspurt)
#### Post date: [19 May 2024 20:36 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/13 "2024-05-19T20:36:23Z")
> [@Gavin](#):
>
> The question today is whether the likes of “Joe Biden” are smarter & more competent than the likes of (their fellow fascists) Putin and XI? To ask the question is to answer it.
That’s why we have wars – to establish who was right and who was deluding themselves. 😉
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### Author:  [@jdougan](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jdougan)
#### Post date: [25 May 2024 04:47 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/14 "2024-05-25T04:47:23Z")
> [@jabowery](#):
>
> Has anyone read “[Take Back Your Government!: A practical handbook for the private citizen who wants democracy to work](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15075591W/Take_back_your_government)” by Robert A. Heinlein?
While a fascinating book, and completely worth reading, it is more a time capsule of a past era in US retail politics, having been written in 1946. RAH was unable to find a publisher for it then. It was published in 1992, allegedly hurried to coincide with the Ross Perot campaign.
edit: It was written in response to changes in politics post war. He is trying to promote what he sees as the 1930s approach and against the machine politics.
For more recent RAH political statements, _Starship Troopers_, _Expanded Universe_ and _Grumbles from the Grave_ are informative.
> **[Take Back Your Government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Back_Your_Government)**
>
> Take Back Your Government!: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work was an early work by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. It was published in 1992 after his death in 1988.
> Originally entitled How to Be a Politician, the book was written in 1946 but never found a publisher, perhaps due to excess candor. Like so many of Heinlein's works, he wrote what he knew. In this case, he based the work on his experience in California politics in the 1930s, particul...
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### Author:  [@BlackPrince](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/BlackPrince)
#### Post date: [25 May 2024 16:43 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/15 "2024-05-25T16:43:01Z")
> [@jdougan](#):
>
> Starship Troopers
I’m a massive fan of Heinlein, but I just can’t stomach Starship Troopers like I once did knowing what I now know about war (or rather the BS reasons governments give for going to war). I will never trust anything any government tells me ever again.
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### Author:  [@jdougan](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jdougan)
#### Post date: [25 May 2024 22:14 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-veil-of-democracy-money-and-state/4632/16 "2024-05-25T22:14:37Z")
The important part of _Starship Troopers_ from a political perspective is the History and Moral Philosophy class and the history of the book’s timeline. Read it carefully and you’ll see that _ST_ is a cautionary tale in the _If This Goes On…_ vein. This was confirmed later by RAH in ~~(I think, I don’t have it handy) _Grumbles_~~ _Expanded Universe_. It is also instructive to compare it to _Glory Road_ and Scar Gordon’s discussion of his experiences fighting a jungle war.
Edit: the confirmation is in _Expanded Universe_, not _Grumbles…_, though there is a bunch of relevant material there.
In _ST_’s timeline, there is an international revolt by military veterans against the various governments that badly mistreated them, particularly after the conflicts. They succeed because they were better at cooperating than the corrupt govts. I leave it to you to determine how much this could possibly apply in 1960 (or now) in our timeline.
_ST_ is also a transitional work. It crosses the period between the juvies (_Have Space Suit, Will Travel_) and _Stranger in a Strange Land_ and it shows. He originally wrote it to have some chance of being published by Scribners (Who had published almost all of the juvies), but they turned it down. There are stylistic elements that perhaps do not match our expectations for a war story, and you can argue that the HMP class and some other elements were not as obvious as they could be [1]. OTOH, RAH never forgot that his first job was to entertain, and this book is him working out how to present more of moral topics without losing the reader.
(As a general rule, assigning any particular view to RAH based solely on the content of his fiction and characters is a suboptimal position.)
[1] [_The Nature of “Federal Service” in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers_, James Gifford, pdf](https://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf)