Text Interview with Kaiser Basileus about Libertarian Fascist Socialism

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Briefly introduce yourself and your views

Kaiser Basileus ( yes really )

I don't like to discuss myself much.  I've had one of those ridiculous lives you hear so much about but really i'm irrelevant.  Only the ideas matter.  My views are, i believe, necessary and sufficient for all related topics on the metaphysics/philosophical side.  On the side of Practical Wisdom, which is where your questions lie, huge caveat - Practical Wisdom is always contingent on priorities, so they're going to be a lot more speculative.

What is the significance of consciousness and how should it be addressed philosophically?

Consciousness is synonymous with awareness, being, self, existence, perspective, on various ways.  It's the metaphysical center of us-ness.  There's no technically specific understanding so it's best understood as an analgum of various areas.  

Neuroscience is the front lines at this point because we don't have a solid mereological framework within which to understand it... yet.  When they narrow down the particular neural correlates we'll have someone better to get a handle on.  In the meantime, we can be pretty sure it's something to do with basal ganglia and the default mode network, and i believe Global Workspace Theory is the best functional understanding so far.  It's definitely not Integrated Information Theory which contains a metaphysical category error in the guise of Phi.  I'll leave it as an exercise for your readers to look into those particulars. 

Anthropologically it's a feedback loop in our theory of mind.  I'm most familiar with Julian Jaynes' Bicameral Mind theory which has to do with how we understand our inner voice/subconscious.  Anyhow, this is where philosophy is currently best able to participate bc there are ways we can narrow down what it must be and can't be and how it most plausibly evolved into what we commonly understand now.  For instance, we must have had an idea of other beings having a similar cognitive capacity as ourselves to develop a theory of mind before we could turn that introspection inward.

And phenomenologically is an awareness fairy, which is to say that it's singular - one thing at a time, and we don't control it; no free will.  Both psychology and neuroscience have something to say about other technical aspects of consciousness that seem to apply. 

Back to the question, i think philosophy must forbear for the most part.  We can talk about how consciousness works but until we have some better mereology and the vocabulary to match is effectively speculation.

What is ethics and what is morality? 

Morality is ( best understood as ) a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures.  Ethics is a formalized, usually shared. version of morality.  It's not from nature bc in nature the only pseudo-ethical rule is that might makes right.  Divinity is no more or less than "wouldn't it be cool if..." and can be disregarded.

Ethics is contingent on priorities and there are necessary universals: survival, truth, sustainability, and reciprocity.  Group meaning is only meaningful to the extent we share priorities and those are prerequisites for everything we generally consider meaningful.  For instance, Truth is necessary to the extent your desired outcome is non-arbitrary.

Given that most people have no rational, much less formally organized priorities, ethics remains an uphill battle.  But by focusing on that which we can be most certain of we can progress.

Society at large has stumbled into some necessary aspects of the moral universals and is strictly limited by the default pragmatism of working within the system as it is by those who pull the strings of that system.  In other words, you cannot fix a broken system with its own broken tools and to have an ethical society, what we have now must be subverted.

What should the role of religion be? Are you a spiritualist, atheist, or Satanist? 

I am igtheist first, which is for those who don't know, that the very idea of god is too ineffable to discuss rationally.  Atheist second, which is to say that there is no evidence to support that any version of god of possible, much less plausible, much less likely, much less actual.

The only rational understanding of spirituality must be separated from woo ( untestable forces claimed to have discernable physical effects ).  Spirit makes sense as the most centrally meaningful aspect(s) of a thing.  The spirit of Marxism is that workers own the means of production.  The spirit of an individual is self - the story they tell about how they fit into the world and society.

Spirituality is meaningful as a metaphor for the patterns in the brain, such as; thoughts, ideas, opinions, preferences, desires, fears, priorities... and in that sense everyone is a spiritual being.  Religion goes a whole different direction. 

The spirit of religion is dogma, which is an instance of faith, which is belief without appeal to evidence - the polar opposite of knowledge.  As such, all religions are intellectually regressive.  However, i've cobbled together a non-dogmatic, secondary version which cannibalizes all the psychologically meaningful aspects of all religions with none of the dogma.  I call it The Inner Journey. 

The role of any typical religion is epistemologically supplanted in the modern world.  There's nothing available through religion that isn't better available in some manner that's compatible with truth.  Satanism, for instance, is non-dogmatic in its guise as The Satanic Temple, and their tenets are a better foundation for morality than most i've seen.

How important is reciprocity and how much is it underserved in politics? 

Reciprocity is nothing less than the necessary ethical prerequisite for civilization.  "No one left behind" isn't just a fancy motto, it's a mandatory mandate for any legitimate state.  As long as anyone's best interests are ignored or denegrated, they are suffering oppression or tyranny and have an absolute right to work to overcome it by whatever means necessary, which actively works against the best interests of the collective. 

Reciprocity is no less than the cornerstone of legitimacy, and civilization, and the peace and stability and moral progress built upon it.  That doesn't imply equity or equality, it means equivalence.  We all want and need different things and caring for the best interests of every individual requires centralising that understanding; the value of diversity.

Social justice is meaningless because prioritising group membership over actual individual interests always leaves someone behind and sometimes leaves someone behind always.  Justice can only be individual and specific, but because justice is after the fact, fairness is the benchmark, which includes no less than equality of opportunity - to fully explore one's world and develop one's personality.

The discussion of politics goes all the way back to the ancient Greek arguments about poetry and rhetoric.  In other words, it's mostly bullshit, prioritising convincing over Truth.  In technical terms politics is ethics plus scale, but because scale typically means ignoring the individual, politics is typically unethical.

What are some concepts and ideologies that need to be totally disregarded?

no-isms

When deconstructed to their most central element(s) many of the most accepted ideas simple logically fail, such as democracy, in any form, which ignores the necessary universal reciprocity.  Gun control merely shifts power to the government; it does nothing to reduce violence and much to prevent the universal right of self-defense, which is most important against tyranny.  Age limits are an ethically abhorrent distain for each individual's actual capacity, agency, and personhood.

Can you explain your ideology of Libertarian Fascist Socialism and the pros and cons of each ideology?

First, i'm using the spiritual center of each ideology; 

fascism as ultimate government control over whatever's most necessary, libertarianism as a requirement for the state to be efficient and unobtrusive, and socialism as care for every individual rather than special interests ( group dynamics ), and in that sense they're perfectly compatible. 

To be legitimate, a State must have legitimate management districts rather than, for instance, imaginary lines based on ancient historical malfeasance, ie. national borders.  Therefore Earth level issues require an Earth level State to manage, both effectively and legitimately.  That means fascism in the given sense.  In particular, protection of environment and human rights, access to truth, and elimination of weapons of mass destruction can Only be accomplished at that level of management. 

An efficient and unobtrusive libertarian government overcomes the historical precedent of fascism as authoritarian, despotic, and so forth.  And socialism requires that no one be left behind, at least by ensuring access to the fundamentals, both negative and positive.  Negative rights are those which prevent interference because receive has a natural right to do anything which does not harm another creature.  Positive rights are necessary because life itself is meaningless without a substantial quality of life relative to everyone else.

Given these understandings of each, the historical negatives are mostly overcome, but i have other ideas about the structure of a libertarian-fascist socialism that add additional checks and balances.  The US Constitution may well be the most ethical foundation for a government that was ever devised, but it was quickly subverted and has become entirely captured, so it clearly wasn't sufficient.  I don't know that LFS couldn't be captured, but it does a great deal more to prevent that eventuality, mostly in terms of insisting on core legitimacy.  Whatever we end up with that doesn't have solid fundamentals is guaranteed to fail and cause much externalised damage to innocents in the race to the bottom.

Can you give examples of policies on your platform you would put forth and examples of stances that are rightwing, leftwing, or libertarian? 

I'll dig some up if you like but off the top of my head, just a few relative to the basic functions of the State; there needs to be a body of independent devil's advocates who have carte blanche to examine and public-facing activity, whether individual, corporate, or government, to expose and root out inefficiency and any potential for corruption.  And public servants of High Office must live as monks to prevent special interests and any opportunity for capture or malfeasance, and all their public facing activities must be fully transparent to enable full accountability.

•Copyright is a crime against humanity.
•Enclosure is a crime against humanity.
•Every citizen gets 100 votes.  These are used in an advisory capacity on issues, for the housing lottery, the luxury lottery, and similar things.
•All land is publicly owned, privately controlled.
•You may spend your votes at any time in a housing lottery.  Apply them all to one property to maximize your chance of getting exactly what you want or distribute them to maximise getting something in an area.  Votes are weighted so that everyone has a better chance of moving somewhere close to where they are :stability.
•One duty of the government is to randomly choose one person at a time and work out all systematic problems they face.
•People are required to maintain, customise, and improve their residence.
•Old buildings will be refurbished before new ones are built.
•All ruins will be restored or recycled, except showing the layers of a Roman road and so forth.
•Repurpose as many empty buildings as possible.
•Zoning is only as necessary for health and safety.
•New buildings must be prettier than the ones they replace.  People who have to look at it most have the most say.
•Old folks' homes, elementary schools, and animal shelters will be the same place.
•Education is free for all at every level in every subject, forever.  It is a public good.
•Public transportation must be sufficient and free.  It is a public good.
•There will be Virtue Sects, not religions.

What is the role of nationalism and thoughts on replacing nationalism with guilds and ethnic enclaves?

As to the geophysical structure of a legitimate government, i believe it must be semi-autonomous city-states with an encompassing libertarian over-state.  The two primary ideas there are first to enable people to meaningfully opt out of society, without which they're a slave, and to provide a bunch of experiments in governance both to accommodate a variety of cultures in support of the value of diversity, and a variety of experiments in governance from which to derive the best best practices.

People will naturally congregate with like minds and the value of diversity requires we accommodate that.  What's more important in that regard is that there's a place for everyone, a clear understanding of the criteria for belonging one place or another, and a clear, rational, and meaningfully accessible way for everyone to find a place they fit.  She the libertarian free zone will accommodate a broader range of those options.

How to deal with the tyranny of the majority, and failures of classical liberal approaches? 

Democracy can only be advisory.  The rules and structure of government must enable everyone's best interests but that does not imply everyone has an equivalent right to participate, only to be heard and accommodated.  The people in charge must have some minimum level of expertise to legitimately make decisions that effect others.  That also requires that High Officers' primary duty is delegation to push power outward and downward to where those experts are in local circumstances. 

This question is a morass.  Any version of government that has yet been tried has been insufficient in mandate, rationale, and effects, so we must begin again with a grass-roots parallel society based on logical best practices, and resist any version of what has come before.

What makes a law legitimate?  

The "pillars of procedural justice" establish legitimacy in law.  On a practical level they are fairness, voice, transparency, and impartiality.  But on the theoretical level they must comport to the ethical universals.

You say that AOC should factor in the individual’s circumstances, traits, and psychology. Explain?  

The important point here is that ages of consent are legal fictions and legal fictions are always incompatible with justice.  It's particularly sadistic to say that something is such an important big deal that it really must be controlled, and yet fail to make an accurate accounting of someone's actual abilities and the actual dangers faced.  

To use sex as the example, if it's that big a deal then not only should every individual be tested for their actual intellectual understanding and emotional maturity, but they should be taught those things by mature others who do exhibit those qualities and can actively and conscientiously guide them through the process of discovery rather than leaving it to happenstance, likely with someone else emotionally immature in some back alley or other arbitrary circumstance rife with potential problems.

And of course the same kind of problems are implicit in access to weapons, alcohol, driving, etc.

You posted that penalties for r-pe should factor in circumstances and acts. 

That particular post was intended only to illustrate that there are known factors which are distinctly problematic relative to the alternative.  Not all rape is created equal and statutory rape may not even be rape in an ethically meaningful way.  Once again legal fictions are a blunt force instrument that treat the actual particulars of harm or not with contempt.  

Justice can Only be individual and specific and that requires an actual balance of the actual facts with no assumptions whatsoever.  If someone actually consents, and no actual harm is done, it's not actually rape and to treat it as such is ethically abhorrent.

What should the role of eugenics be, as far as what traits to select for and how to implement it?  Also, what is your response to moral arguments against it?

Eugenics is not only the forced whims of an authoritarian government as it's typically taken to be.  Wearing a condom is also eugenics.  I don't have a handle on all the particulars but we must at least take seriously the facts that low IQ and a predisposition to generic disease is something that must be actively worked against by a legitimate society.  The particular means is doing so, to what extent, by what methods... well, the devil's in the details.

Eugenics can be either negative, the removal or negative traits as mentioned above, or positive, enhancing the likelihood is positive traits.  The negative version is practically obvious and the positive version is fraught, but neither need be done in an intrusive or authoritarian way.  Both can be accomplished by attrition, by simply creating a culture that values intelligence or in which cousins are discouraged from marriage, for instance.