If you’ve never considered the state’s monopoly on identity or the idea of separating ID from the state the way we advocate separating money from the state, read “The ‘unregistered Americans’: because of their parents, they do not exist” before answering.
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Separating government identification from the state would be the correct solution, but it faces a fundamental dilemma that decentralized money does not. While money can function effectively on a peer-to-peer basis, an independent ID is useless unless it is accepted by governments -- and a sufficient number of them -- to be viable.
Unlike currency, where a state cannot dictate or effectively enforce what private individuals accept as payment, governments maintain total control over which forms of identification they recognize. Because they hold the power to decide what is "valid," they will never voluntarily give up their monopoly on identity.
Same could have been for is being born with red hair a curse or a blessing?
There's no right or wrong, curse or blessing... we made up such things ourselves. a wrong curse when we hate it, when we do not accept what we got. a right blessing when we fully embrace the gift this world provided.
Either case, sometimes our values do not match the environment we live in or the people we share life with, and that is what makes plenty of difference.
The only few things I take out of this article are:
and
For the rest, the article seems like another useless attempt to spread misinformation about the sovereign shitizen oximoron. Would not have expected anything different from such a publication, making men and women outside the system look like aliens missing up to the privilege of hidden slavery cost.
People like this are all over the world; they don't even know they are free, and despite the gift received at birth, they continue pursuing false benefits due to induced beliefs. Whatever truth we believe is true, one thing is for sure, the sun will rise tomorrow too :)
This discussion triggered a memory about a story I heard on Radio Lab.
I think you’ll find it interesting.
http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/invisible-girl/
You really start to see how dystopian things are when you realize how much you can't do without government ID
this is all about the downsides, but i'm thinking about the upsides, won't anybody think about the crime!
Reminds me of the kuno/xmrbazaar dev. I wish there was some way to help the guy. Is he still working on bazaar?
a lack of identity sounds amazing for a split second and then you realize that the state's monopoly on it means that every simple action in society becomes an obstacle if not a complete non-starter dead-end.
Yes, exactly… and of course he’s still working on bazaar: he built the whole thing from scratch, it’s his baby, why wouldn’t he? :)
You nailed the trade-off though: a lack of state ID does sound freeing for a second… until you try to do almost anything that involves other people outside of your community or civilized infrastructure. Living fully outside society in the woods or off-grid can work. But if you want to travel the world, or even see a doctor, open a bank account, rent somewhere else, or just move around freely, suddenly every door has a lock on it that only the state has the key to...
I know someone (not personally, through other people) who actually chose this as an adult. She’s the daughter of anti-communist political refugees from Vietnam. She’s (was?) a professor in France, and she deliberately refused French citizenship because she didn’t want to swear allegiance to any state. Same basic conclusion I reached (just ~ half a century earlier, lol): every state (whether it's officially totalitarian/communist or not) is the same evil wearing a slightly different mask. She uses her original status so she could officially work, but she has no passport = no travel: e.g. she couldn’t attend her son’s wedding in the US or visit her grandkids later. Even while being part of the intellectual establishment, she runs into constant practical obstacles, not because she’s some wildling in the woods, but because the states simply won’t let her move without their permission.
TL;DR: the state’s monopoly on identity is even more evil than its monopoly on money. At least with money we have Monero. With identity, we still have no real solution... which is also why “some way to help the guy” is very, very tricky...
Fascinating dilemma. The state really screws everything up.
Government makes the world a gordian knot.
shit. i would prefer to be invisible to the system. but i have ok parents. so it only works if you got lucky with fine ones. if they are abusive or religious retards you are fucked big time. maybe worse than the state they have full control while you are most helpless. and since you officially do not exist they know they can kill you anytime.
both are traps. there should be a third way. not state monopoly and not family monopoly. independent identity on an immutable ledger or something.
i searched and found more people like that. so if it is not unique and there are lots of people like this, and also people who want to be stateless like @OldNorseAnarchist, why is there no third alternative yet?
So, if you read in between the lines, you can probably have a kid in states that have a good procedure for dealing with this. Then you can prepare all documents and proof required that way when the kid is of age you can hand over the documents and give them the choice. You basically begin with a plan to facilitate them getting documented status anytime they want.
This is probably a bit hyperbolic. Besides look at the status quo, in the current legal system as a woman you can kill your kid and claim temporary insanity and then a bunch of women will call you a hero.
People are working on this and have made decent progress from what I recall. That being said, the hardest part of identity isn't what is possible, it's the state.
Honestly, I think the biggest detriment of all of this is not being able to travel outside the country easily or fly in a traditional airline as an adult. You could probably get someone who pilots a smaller plane to take you within the states, but that's it. You would have to have a pretty good agorist network to get around outside of those bounds. Driving is actually not that hard, you would just have to borrow a car and then be extra careful not to give the cops a reason to pull you over. Working can be done under the table.
yes that is what i mean by winning the parent lottery. but if you did not and they are drug addicts or a religious cult that bans kids from leaving, like the whole apostasy thing in islam, or just sick mothers like you said, then you are fucked. "they can kill you anytime" is not that hyperbolic if the parents are the wrong ones and you have zero paper. the state at least has to pretend. abusive parents do not. i think you are looking at it from the perspective of a parent, and a potentially good one. i just projected from a kid's perspective. what if my parents are psychos. it is not just travel. it is everything. like @mongoose said. i would not even be able to rent a place with roommates if my parents did not agree to be cosigners on the lease.
The unfortunate reality is that if you have shitty parents (and close relatives), you will probably be fucked regardless. Instances of child abuse and predation in the foster system are high. It's unfortunate, but I'm not sure there is a reliable way to save kids from their shitty family. State intervention or not, it's just a really hard problem to solve unfortunately. If they exist, I could probably think of some solutions if I thought hard about it and looked into it, but I haven't done so.
Damn, this article is dripping with such a thorough extent of bias and contempt that it's honestly surprising even for journos. Didn't know "sex offender" was a type of libertarian. "The Failed Free State Project" they seem to be mostly succeeding to me. I'm sure they worked hard to find the most abused man on the planet for their story too. I'm sure they performed a detailed comparison of infant mortality in their slanderous comments too. Several hundred thousand sovereign citizens is way more than I expected. I don't think they really explored the benefits side. I would be curious to see how a fleshed out analysis and comparison would fare.
Yeah, I despise official journos too )) there are just too few other published discussions or real examples to post.
nah. Trust me, the most abused people on this planet won’t talk to anyone, let alone journos...
Make no mistake, it was an interesting article worthy of reading.
How do you know? Are they in your basement?
"Trust me youse won't be hearing a peep out of them"
lolololololollolol