Mega Rant On Libertarians, Part 2
Sort-of continuation of the Mega Rant on Libertarians and The Orwellian Documentary Novel rant.
A word about hierarchies, meritocracy, and prosperous inequality
First of all, not every individual has identical demands and capabilities, as well as personal traits - something those fanatic egalitarian types seem to overlook each and every time they ramble about muh inequality. And since those individuals aren't equal, treating them all equally isn't just counter-productive or counter-reasonable - it's a full-blown abuse. Everyone, with the exception of the very tiny amount of population that just happens to match the average standards the most closely, will suffer; those above the standards will be not only heavily restrained in their potential and actions, but might actually suffer degeneration of personality - something worse than death - as they will be denied the exploration and realization of possibilities above their "standard treatment"; the lower beings, on the contrary, will face excessive hardships when provided extra responsibilities beyond what they can reasonably uphold, and granting them privileges beyond their merit will only result in excessive waste of resources and harm to everyone affected by their inability to handle their privileges and rights responsibly.
Right now, the only reasonable alternative to equal treatment and mass psychological mutilation of personalities in order to produce "ideal socialists" is dividing personal treatment standards into groups, categories, procedurally-generated templates, whatever arranges individuals in the best way imaginable. And when performed correctly, such division can - at least theoretically - bring about a prosperous and stable society.
By dividing individuals into distinct groups based on their personal preferences, as well as their capabilities, we basically create a stratified society, which, while not necessarily hierarchical or authoritarian, still functions against the principles of equal treatment and equality in rights and privileges. And if we correctly divide individuals into different classes/groups/correctly arrange personal treatment for each and every one, the society we'll get is expected to be reasonably prosperous and stable - with low amount of malicious elements, or abuse.
We Are The Legion: Building a super-civilization to suit our needs
Individuals who actually do fit the requirements to live in a harmonious, free society where all interactions are done only through all parties' consent - individuals willing to live in such a society - are rare, and they aren't concentrated in any single place - they're all across the world. This, and their relatively-few numbers, are the factors contributing to their extremely low influence; isolated from one another by large spaces, literally thousands upon thousands of "normies" between them and another freedom-loving, strong-minded individual, and - in some cases - authoritarian governments preventing their freedom of expression and often even targeting their very personalities for destruction - makes communication, let alone cooperation, between them extremely difficult.
To add to that, they often believe that humans are their fellows, and thus they often direct their energy, minds and efforts to attempt to create a libertarian society for all people - by attempting to "enlighten" the normies and "show them the fallacious ways of the State" or whatever wording would entail what they're trying to do. Believing that the human beings are innately good (sometimes even after being systematically abused by those "fellows" simply for being different), they try to reason with them as they would reason with a fellow sapient being. And that doesn't work because, well... Homo sapiens is somewhat of an exaggeration.
But if one manages to actually make contact with another truly sapient individual, it becomes evident - for both - that each of them does, indeed, hold a huge potential. Or at least they're smart enough to actually think on their own. Contacting even one such individual usually leads to great enrichment of both persons' mental wealth, and interaction between them is often fairly productive.
Imagine what could several thousands of us do.
An attempt to resolve the conflict of interests between us and other human-handlers
There's one more thing freedom-loving individuals often ignore: the interests of already-established human handlers.
Aside from often ignoring human nature, which leads to them and their ideas being stuck in their libertarian circles, they ignore the fact that those semi-sapient beings called humans were long since tamed, domesticated, herded and farmed by other advanced individuals who've managed to invent various ways to harness the power of human herds. Though not exactly "ignoring" the fact, they rather consider these human-handlers "evil" by default and therefore they don't even try to understand the state of affairs they've got themselves into. So they base their ideologies on that notion - that the "state" is inherently evil and the "rulers" are violent warlords/thugs/parasites and that they must be only removed, not negotiated with.
All the while those human handlers are merely industrious individuals who've managed to farm semi-sapients living besides them. Not really different from farmers handling cows. And if you're from rural America, you probably know well what would a farmer do when an intruder tries to steal/free their livestock.
Hence, the idea of forming a supercivilization.
The Citizens of the World Beyond
Normal civilizations are, roughly speaking, hierarchical/structured social organizations inhabiting certain territorial assets - territories upon which a certain degree of order is exerted. This order largely exists to direct the "human masses" towards certain goals, whether set by the society or some of its actors, or by the handlers - as well as to provide a comfortable and easy life for the "normies" without them solving any complicated problems, to provide a ready-made life of sorts - "just follow instructions and you'll live a satisfactory life".
Thanks to the modern communications, it is perfectly possible to talk to persons half-Earth away. And it is perfectly possible to interact with entire masses of people - while never, ever being seen by them.
It's not like there are way too many individuals who want to live in an absolute libertarian society where there is absolutely no authority, no restraints, and every person bears full responsibility for their conduct - without the society handling any of their affairs, and every interaction happening strictly on voluntary basis. I'd say, there aren't more than a few thousands of us across the entire Earth, for many reasons. Doesn't look that much like a Legion, does it?..
(Well, maybe it does look like a legion. Historically, these were usually formations of several thousand individuals. Not like they were scattered across the entire earth, though.)
However, there are far more than just a few thousand individuals across the entire Earth who are unhappy with the state of affairs in their society. And even though not all of them are willing (or even able) to handle every aspect of their lives and every issue they might encounter alone, they're already considerably above the "sheeple" or the "normies". And should we build productive relationships with them - they'd be excellent allies for us.
According to my observation of various human societies, approximately one to six out of 200 persons have the mental capacity, the moral framework, and/or corresponding personal goals or interests which can, at least potentially, help us find a significant basis to build a productive, cooperative relationships with them. Yes, we can build a very wide community of fairly likely-minded individuals, we can manage to work together, and we can prosper from that. Now that is more like a Legion.
This kind of world-wide supercivilization doesn't require overthrowing any regime (though it might happen that you'll eventually want to leave a country you don't particularly like or particularly hate) and this supercivilization can perfectly co-exist with the "sheeple" civilizations run by the human-handlers, peacefully. Heck, there's a chance we might even openly work together with some of these civilizations - and we won't even need to hide that. Much better than fighting each other because your religion-like ideology dictates they're "parasites", I think.
Ideology Is Bullshit: Building a robust alliance with little (but not no) common ground
Sadly, many individuals who're generally fine persons - and potentially, excellent friends to any of us - are currently associating themselves with various ideological groups, which not necessarily suit their own affairs enough, but have caught their attention - and a great deal of their loyalty - presumably because some of the ideological tenets resonated with their own convictions. And due to this, these individuals are often hostile towards each other - despite having so much common beliefs - all because they've "latched on" competing ideologies.
Even though they don't actually support the tenets of these ideologies and just act "in line" with them, in order to maintain tribal identities/not disrupt those they see as allies/out of respect for whatever ideology that managed to catch their attention with those few matching beliefs.
The Legion, however, is neither an ideology nor a religious alliance: it is a means for us freedom-loving individuals to get closer to one another, work together towards shared goals, and build our own society which'll aid the interests of each of us. And as long as we agree to keeping our communist/socialist/capitalist/conservative/libertarian/Christian/whatever ideals to ourselves and focusing on more crucial goals, those which give us more liberties and power instead of clashing us against each other over bullshit ideals coming from other groups, The Legion will prosper and expand its wealth and might, just as any healthy society - just as any healthy, strong-willed individual.
Think about it. Do you really want to harm relations with your actual allies, those working alongside you and those beneficial for you, over a bunch of ideologies which were invented by people who only managed to drag you into a class warfare you didn't really need?
Do you like being ordered around by those so-called "authorities"? No? Very good. Do you really believe that this socialist government you're trying to create will actually care after its people and not just sneakily (or openly) exploit them, like any other government did - including those socialist ones which were created to "fight capitalism"?
If you don't believe they will be any different in principle - we've probably got a new ally.
Do you really believe that there can be "guaranteed" rights, social aid, or welfare? That something comes from the state, or the community? That there is some "greater good"? Then I don't understand why are you still reading this.
In other words, if you truly believe in your ideology, or religion - please, don't try to push it on the Legion. It's fine to offer ideas. It's fine to peacefully discuss them. It is not fine to keep pushing them if other Legion members disagree with you. Live out your ideals, and let others live theirs.
If you really, really wanna push them, push them on ordinary humans around you instead. They're just fine with living lives as someone dictates them - and if you manage to gather some humans and dictate them your rules, congrats.
But if you are just fine with living among people whose views differ from yours, not encroaching on each others' domain without invitation and not hurting or robbing each other... welcome to the alliance, I guess?
Inward focus. The Legion First
Instead of trying to be the world's policeman/advisor (like some of the empires of this world, not necessarily the land of guns and bacon, do), the Legion should first and foremost focus on its own affairs.
It's harsh, it's brutal and doesn't sound too fair to many people, but the cold, hard truth is that, should we pander to every single concern coming from every single contestant/competitor/rival of The Legion, we'll end up like the United States of America: Overloaded with bullshit claims and overburdened with issues coming from every small social group which doesn't feel perfectly satisfied with our society.
Not a single known person is truly satisfied with what they have for a long enough time so we could claim eternal peace and bliss. Once a problem is solved, and the quality of life is improved, many seek even further improvement of their lives - creating new goals, new ideas, starting the struggles anew. And if we will try to address every single struggle of every single movement, we'll end up spending too much attention, and potentially resources, trying to resolve the issues which require investments well above what we can reasonably afford now, without hurting our current lifestyle and degrading our society. The result is, well, not too bright.
As for an example of such a civilization, Cuba, now a socialist shithole, was once among the richest countries of America. And then the small unhappy movements appeared. Thinking about free stuff and universal access to luxuries (or at least food), they didn't analyze the situation calmly, slowly bringing their society towards the point where it could reasonably create enough food and resources so people could be fed and sheltered for free - instead, they allowed the masses to organize a fucking socialist revolution and ruin it all. While they could just ignore/suppress the most aggressive demands and oppress those not listening to anything and just pushing their socialist notions.
Yeah, doesn't sound too libertarian. But if they're unable to perform a reasonable and constructive analysis the situation at hand, then maybe their decisions are too shitty to be allowed to be implemented? And if they're unwilling to listen to other concerns and just push their notion, why should we ever listen to them?..
That's basically it. Should anyone claim The Legion is too... Brutal, violent, oppressive, whatever - "What's it to you, outsider?". As for Legion's reputation - "Well, we aren't pop stars, we don't do it to be loved by all". It's good to be viewed as a force for good by the outsiders, but the first and foremost goal is to keep our own house just like we love it.
Respect for private interests. The Legion isn't an empire
Also remember that The Legion is, essentially, an alliance based around a small set of issues and values shared by all its members - the definitive issues, as I'd like to call them. The autonomy and sovereignty of the individual and their domain; the priority of personal freedoms over community interests, such as safety, comfort, and welfare; complete self-ownership, and ownership of one's domain; and, the right to bear might - which means, to own and effectively utilize all means of power projection in defense of one's own domain and interests. These are the stances reasonably expected to be upheld by every Legion member.
Everything else is to be handled privately, by private individuals.
The Legion's aim is merely to provide the means for individuals with significant respect for personal sovereignty and/or liberties to work together. Since we don't have any common ground with the "normies" - primarily thanks to the "normies" have little to no interest in being free, or sovereign, instead focusing on provisions from the State or the society - it is reasonable to seek association with the likes of us. And that's it.
Instead of the "top-down" prioritizaion of rules, as employed by most modern nations, The Legion should have the "bottom-up" priority. In most modern societies, save for (to some degree) the USA, the rules set by a higher-order social formation (the State or a regional authority) usually assume priority over concerns of private associations, such as local communities, corporations, companies, and private individuals. Everyone is expected to obey whatever rules the State - or any other relevant ruler - sets for them. We would surely benefit from the inverse: making local rules and principles of private individuals and associations more important than anything any higher-order organization, should it appear, will declare. So, a community's rules will only be relevant within that community's domain - which does not include its members' domains - they'll be able to set certain rules and principles on their grounds, but not in the house of a family which is considered to be a part of this community.
And of course, I'm not being a utopian here - there might be attempts to usurp power. And you know what can stop it? YOU. I'm just suggesting a bottom-up organization as a superior alternative. If you like this suggestion, it's up to you to implement it. By asserting your own will and interests on your domain, and by defending it against all external aggressors - or unwanted rulers. With your own power.
There won't be any law or constitution declaring a bottom-up organization within The Legion, as these documents simply make no sense - the laws, including the Constitution, can be misinterpretted, re-interpretted, and outright ignored if the need really arises.
And then, it's up to The Legion's members to decide whether their personal freedom is worth defending.
A note about handling social issues, both large- and small-scale
As described in Mega Rant Part One, a truly free society just doesn't need laws, or the police. However, it doesn't mean that any emergent issues shall remain unattended or outright ignored.
Perpetual readiness to handle any emergent issues
To ensure continued prosperity of both the society and you yourself, you should be always ready to handle, or at least address and start working on, any issue that might emerge. That is, if you don't really want to just give up and submit to the authority of the state, which will gladly handle those issues for you - at the price of your sovereignty.
But if you're really on board with the Legion, I guess that's not the case.
As mentioned before, issues will emerge eventually. And if you don't want to live under the tyranny of laws, states, unelected officials, and bureaucracy, then your problems are on you to solve.
The main obstacle to each group having their own practices and their own approaches to their issues is the threat of "the collective danger". Or, basically, the notion that there's something that puts all into danger. This notion is how the climate change fear-mongers, the CoVID-19 fear squad, and the surveillance team are successful in some of their efforts: they convince that those who oppose them are a grave danger and thus they shall be ruthlessly squashed. Because, according to the fear-mongers, they either ignore, amplify, or mishandle the menace, hurting all of us, and therefore it's fine to use violence/coercion against them. Proof of guilt? The need to validate your own statements through rigorous challenging and the possibility of you yourself being wrong? Ne'er heard of that.
So the very first thing a Legion member should be ready to do is to calmly analyze the situation from several different viewpoints instead of pushing ahead with a hasty, and therefore inefficient, solution against an issue which might or might not be there. The second thing, indeed, is to be able to ignore the fear-mongering coming from those who can't do the first. Sometimes, however, a problematic situation can develop much faster than you would be able to develop an effective countermeasure should you start working towards a solution immediately after the problem manifests; for this reason, I divide potential issues into "slow", which, as the name says, develop not rapidly enough to cause irreparable/critical damage before you come up with a solution and implement it calmly; and the "fast" problems which develop too rapidly and cause too much damage before the solution is made and implemented calmly. Therefore, the third thing a Legion member should do is not be afraid to think thins through, analyze the situation around them, and come up with a list of potential problems - and potential solutions against them.
It's always handy to have a working countermeasure for a purely theoretical issue that might come sometimes, even though there are no reasons to be alarmed now.
Last but not least, if there is a logical, consistent model of a situation, then this situation has a non-zero chance of being. So the fourth advice to the Legion is: do not afraid to be a conspiracy theorist. Because if a conspiracy can happen, you'd rather be ready to deal with it than suddenly wake up to the announcement that this vaccine you've received contained enough deadly poison to kill you a hundred times, and that poison could be released into your body with the press of a button so you're now forced to do whatever the vax manufacturer tells you to if you don't wanna poison injection.
Private individuals, private concerns, private solutions
What might be an issue worthy of attention for one person, might not be a concern for another one, or might even be a benefit for yet another person. For example, rampant drug trade might be a serious concern for a moralist conservative, while from a libertarian's point of view, it's free flow of substances and the free market in action. Some overly religious person can complain about things such as videogames and pornography being widely available for the general public, and another person would argue that this is perfectly normal and is done to address a person's desires, improving that person's quality of life.
And for these kinda of conflicts, there are two solutions: reasonable consensus and localized solution implementations.
The reasonable consensus basically means a solution that will sufficently satisfy both interests, without causing any serious harm or inconveniences to the other side. The reasonable consensus is achieved when there is at least one solution which, while not necessarily providing a fully-satisfactory solution to any conflicting party, enables them to reach an agreement without degrading one's quality of life any further than they feel it is degraded now. And the localization of solutions is done in order to reduce the chance of the conflict itself; by restricting a party's scope of solution implementation to their domain strictly, they can still enjoy what they see as the right conditions, while not encroaching on any other person's interests.
And for that one to work, it is important that the issue can be reasonably contained with the implementation of local solutions. For example, if you don't like pornography or drugs in your community, you can wall your Internet off with special filters, and inspect in/outbound traffic for any illegal substances - instead of a Legion-wide ban. But if someone set up a factory spewing up tons upon tons of clearly poisonous byproducts which clearly negative affect your health, or your crops, or your environment in a way you can't just ignore, then you've got to file for a reasonable consensus: to make the owner of that factory either handle those toxic byproducts so they aren't released into the environment you use, (for example, recycling them somehow or stashing them somewhere where they can't hurt anyone who matters) or they shut down that fucking factory altogether, or at least build it somewhere very far away.
Warfare is inevitable, but can be minimized
Once again, I'm not being an utopian who believes that everyone will find a way to live peacefully forever - after all, when a set of old issues is resolved, the new ones emerge... giving birth to new conflicts and disputes. And in some cases, it just so happens that the conflicting parties can't just find a reasonable consensus, nor they are wishing to localize their solutions.
As with the example of the factory: it can be, indeed, solved with processing/storing those toxins away so everyone would be reasonably satisfied. But what if modifying a factory so it would not spew toxins into the environment will be excessively costly? And the owner of the factory have spent way too much effort and resources into that factory, so closing it would be simply too much of a loss for them? In that case, they're significantly less likely to just give it up and start something new. Neither those affected by the factory are expected to just accept living in an intoxicated environment.
There is no solution for everything, so of course, conflicts are going to persist. However, it doesn't mean they can't absolutely be reduced with reasonable investments and measures.
First of all, if we can only change our approach to conflict resolution, many useless wars, struggles, and bloodshed will be totally avoided. The tier-list of own interests is a great tool; in a conflict situation, it might be very important to arrange one's interests in order of importance/value, so it will be possible to compare the benefits of enforcing one's position to the losses expected from a violent confrontation, as well as compare the losses suffered from surrendering own interests or implementing a consensus to potential gains from asserting own interests and enforcing them. Many religious or ideological issues can be resolved just like that. Instead of pushing the one true vision, one can consider practicing it in peace, and instead of crusades, just reducing their contact with the "infidels" to avoid religious contamination or undermining of their beliefs. Of course, in a normal human society, the violent and blood-thirsty side of humanity eventually takes the upper hand at least somewhere, but in the Legion, it is more expected to have a population capable of using violence in a controlled manner, and abstaining from it when alternatives are more beneficial in the long run.
Planning ahead and studying your potential affairs in depth, and evaluating possible issues before engaging into any activity is one of the more obvious solutions, but is apparently rarely done. Many, many conflicts are a result of a narrow, linear approach to... basically mostly anything. A great example would be the comparison between a the war on internet piracy, and the subsequent solution in form of streaming services and online videogame stores.
Remember SOPA/PIPA, and the massive harassment of people downloading stuff as well as closure of many pirate websites somewhere in the early 2010s? At least the apparent goal was to force people to buy music/movies/games instead of downloading them via Internet for free. And the solution to the problem at first was narrow and primitive: whip up a bunch of Internet-related anti-privacy/censorship bills and harass random people. This was supposedly done in an effort to curb Internet piracy. This have resulted in both driving a large portion of public into the dark net, and a huge surge in privacy awareness among the general populace. Meanwhile, the warez is still there and the pirates thrive as ever.
And then, at some point, those streaming services/game stores appeared. And as the industry developed, it became evident that pirating movies/games off the Internet is, actually, a less-preferred option for the masses - simply from the point of convenience. Streaming services can give their customer whatever movie or music they want to see/hear, in almost whatever quality they choose, for a modest subscription price; the game stores such as Steam are selling videogames for acceptable prices and come with both tech-support forums and the mods' repository, as well as an easy way too install said mods. At this point, pirating movies and games is simply more expensive - the pirate has to look for suitable options manually, search for the one they need, risk having no tech support (well, they've got a cracked product, don't they), no ability to play online (unless the game either doesn't care much about pirate connections or has pirate servers set up), and if they want to install a mod, they'll have to do much more than just enter a query in Steam and go. (I was actually surprised to know that several people find it highly inconvenient and problematic to just download a mod archive, and follow simple installation instructions - which more often than not are just sorting their files by type and then unpacking them into their corresponding directories. But that was a real headache for them.)
All in all, the lack of concern for public interests - which competed with the corporate ones, to push people towards buying their movies - resulted in these companies hurting themselves (and their fellow enterpreneurs who thrived on the general public's privacy ignorance) instead of achieving the goals.
Sure thing, it's not very likely that The Legion will try to make people buy something against their will. But then again, dude, learn about the local population's attitude to smog before installing that damn factory near their town.
And if you don't want a conflict to appear in the middle of an affair, make sure you learn the damn conditions of the mutual agreement well - and express yours coherently and exhaustively, so you won't find yourself complaining about your contractor being an asshole for dutifully following their part of the bargain which just didn't account for something that should be there, according to the "common sense", but isn't there because it wasn't explicitly stipulated in the agreement.
A good example would be Facebook/YouTube users getting butthurt over surveillance and censorship which is explicitly laid out in the Terms of Service and the Privacy/Content Policy. Not bothering to read the documents even when prompted to before registration of an account, they just agree to the deal - and then get all butthurt when the service suddenly kicks them out for saying "NIGGER" or "The vaccine will kill you!". I mean, it's fine to be upset over an unfavorable ToS change, and it's fine to publicly express the dissatisfaction and urge others to change the platform. But demanding that the government will regulate Twitter/Facebook and prohibit censorship of the users "because of the 1st Amendment" even though the 1st Amendment is to limit the government and not private entities in their censorship?
Which leads to a sub-advice: do not act like you're entitled to anything unless your agreement explicitly stipulates that and you've done your part, too. Many conflicts are a result of one party thinking the other owes them something or no reason and the other one defying the claim.
Actually, it's useful to ditch the "I'm entitled to..." notion in many cases, save for the exceptional ones where there is a good reason for entitlement. Not only it saves you the numerous conflicts and misunderstandings and excessive headache, it also stimulates you towards striving for the goals on your own (or through a mutual and purely voluntary agreement with certain parties).
Do not mistreat those around you, especially fellow Legion members. Instincts which work towards secure an individual's dominance in their pride/tribe are expected to be present in sapient persons, too (and they require a conscious effort to suppress them), but it's, in many cases, much better to control that instinct consciously than to let it run amok, abusing your fellows as you go, and end up with everyone feeling something between slight displeasure to extreme hatred towards you - and not actively looking to work alongside you, or even seeking to get rid of you It might be especially tempting to let some of those instinct loose when you think you've secured a staple upper-hand position over those in your custody/in an agreement with you, and start abusing them thinking they won't be able to do shit due to these social binds they have with you. But then you wake up to know that those you've abused are no longer dependent on you. And they quite dislike you.
As for examples of what happens, you can take a look at the history (and culture) of Russia, where feudal mentality lives to this day: normies are mostly just fine with kissing asses and licking boots of their superiors while taking all sorts of shit from them long as those superiors ensure their continued prosperity, or at least an acceptable life standard. But anyone with a more developed personality, or intellect, or simply significant pride, is extremely unhappy with such ass-kissing mentality - which impacts their general perception of Russian society, as they believe (righteously) that Russian society harms them, and instead of looking for ways to prosper in Russia, they often leave the country. And in the end, Russians are whining about the "brain drain" but can't do shit against it. The worthy Russians are leaving the feudal shithole.
The whole country thinks it's entitled to the very minds and souls of every their citizen, and then treats them like they're its property - and then finds a lack of patriotism, if not outright opposition and hatred, especially among those who matter the most.
And, last but not least: take extreme caution while dealing with the outsiders. That is, with non-Legion members.
While you expectedly have a very slim chance of offending Elon Musk or someone who rules the WEF and your nation's agencies, simply because they aren't likely to deal with the Legion member - at least directly, dealing with an expectedly-competent and responsible Legion member will be radically different from dealing with normies. Actually, dealing with the normies is significantly more risky than dealing with an oligarchy member - primarily because the normies are utterly irresponsible, completely unorganized and extremely capricious. And they suck at both holding their part of the bargain, and recognizing the responsibilities and obligations of the other party.
And the examples are too ubiquituous to pick out a single good one. They work somewhere, they become unhappy with their terms/conditions of employment, even though they themselves have fucking signed the God-damned contract, and then they complain about their boss being an asshole. Well, their boss is sometimes an asshole too, but a lot of these complaints often come from their bosses exploiting them according to their contract. Their solution? Learning another set of skills or discovering other capabilities so they could end the unfavorable contract and get employed somewhere else. Naw, that's what a Legion member would do, and the plebs instead demand the Daddy Government to introduce more workplace regulations.
Then those normies fucking buy a product, often exploit it way past its nominal capacities, and then they complain about the manufacturer fucking them over. Or use it in an unsafe way and then complain they've managed to hurt themselves somehow, and then they demand a fucking compensation. Or they expect the product to have way more features than declared, and when it turns out it doesn't, they start whining about manufacturers fucking them over.
The corporations have strong legal defense against these kinds of customers, and a strong guarantee of normies' continued custom (in form of these normies not willing to ditch their old habits, look for a new product, and stop patronizing the company they don't like) - because for them, sucking shit up is more comfy than actually finding an alternative. Or creating one and then selling it for profit. There are even cases when those customers intentionally maintain an environment where the "bad exploitative corporation"'s dominance in the market is guaranteed - the Linux community being a great example. Instead of opening their community to commerce, which would allow software manufacturers to market their product for Linux users, increasing the quality and amount of Linux software which, in turn, increases the usefulness of Linux itself, they stick to their bullshit communist policies and pretend that "you can just use Wine" (it doesn't work quite well). And so they end up with a very limited selection of software, and, consequently, a very limited user base as compared to the "evil" Windows, which flourishes thanks to being open to commercial products.
Bottom line, dealing with normies is a huge pain in the ass. You don't even need to make that one wrong step to earn a bad reputation among them - and unlike huge corporations, you don't have an oligopoly so your customers will have little choice, nor you have a huge media and legal apparatus working for you to ensure whitewashing in case something happens.
A few words about violence
This issue is important enough to have its own subsection.
The world's attitude towards violence is basically "it's bad so it should be avoided" - unless we're talking about dealing with criminals people who smoke weed in peace, manage sites like Silk Road, peacefully protest, etc. Or unless you wear the three-arrows-oriented-southwest or some other symbolics which'll identify you as a member of the clan which is authorised to use violence (for a limited time) to terrorize the population. Or if you use the wrong pronouns. Basically, the more authoritarian a country is, the more "but"s and "unless"es it has.
The truth, however, is that violence itself is neither bad nor good - it's a tool. Crude, primitive and fairly powerful. Still a tool. Kind of like a hammer. And just like with a hammer, it is suited for certain purposes and is bad for mostly everything else: if you need to nail something (or someone) to the wall or crush them, then it's a fairly good choice - but if you try to use it for anything more delicate, you'll likely end up ruining stuff instead of creating something good.
And that's basically it.
The entire "violence is bad" notion is fairly new, and (unsurprisingly) is only widely accepted in advanced, Western civilizations. And even there, it is fairly poorly adapted, as many small conflicts are still being resolved with fists or weapons. After all, humans are very violent beings, since having evolved from hunters and then attaining semi-sapience doesn't usually end up in a peaceful species which resolves their conflicts with constructive dialogue and reasonable consensus.
On the other hand, however, there are good reasons to abstain from violence in many cases. First of all, because it doesn't actually solve most problems, especially problems which are complicated and require a very careful approach. Come to think of it, if you beat the crap out of someone who says the Earth rotates around the sun, you don't actually prove geocentrism right and nor you set the Earth as the center for the sun and the moon - instead, you prove yourself a dumbass moron who can't prove your point and gets butthurt every time someone says something different. Or you prove yourself a liar who is afraid of anyone else proposing a different viewpoint because your point's defenses suck so much, it only survives when there are no alternatives.
When working with theories, discussing issues, and developing/engineering stuff, beating the kid with a different point of view is not only useless, it's harmful. Though your butthurt/desire to cover your ass might be solved (for a limited time), the actual problem at hand will be not.
If you want to build long-term relationships with your neighbors, violence isn't the best means either - yes, you theoretically can be the meanest, strongest bastard in the 'hood, and have everyone bow before you. Until you get poisoned. Or stomped by a rival who's even stronger (and who wasn't going to fight you in the first place, but you just had to be a belligerent little kid). Or even better - have your "subjects" leave you at the first opportunity, or even actively working against you and then stomping you when the time is right. I'm telling you, the British did try this with their colonies some 247 years ago, and these colonies now have far more land and far better society (and economy) than those British fucks.
By being too violent, you threaten the others around you - who're sure to react with resistance and at least want to get rid of you ASAP - and reduce their well-being, which also causes them to want you to be gone. Examples of Russia and China, as compared to a far less violent (and a far more prosperous) USA, show that a violence-based approach yields far less benefit and stability than a more tempered one.
The other side of extreme, however, isn't any better: being a wimpy pacifist who is just unable to protect themselves and solely relies on words won't do any good against violent actors who care little about words. The best example for that is, well, any state where citizens are disarmed. Did you know Russia have had a surge of libertarian movements by the end of 2010s? Most of these movements have had some decent ideas, and were quite popular; however, they didn't achieve shit - simply because the Russian government had far more guns than those libertarians. If any of them had any guns. So, their ideas were good, but... so what? What good are those ideas against a government which is ready to just stomp those idealists if it feels like doing it?
And this is just one of the more recent examples. If you know about the Tiananmen Square massacre, you already know a more direct evidence of what happens when you are either helpless or decide to abandon your might in favor of peaceful discussions.
With all that said, there is indeed merit in being oriented towards peace, voluntaryism, and harmony. Reducing violence as much as possible means reducing losses caused by violent activities, which is sure to improve one's wealth and security. Your economy will surely benefit from having your domestic industry untouched, your people unmolested and happy, and you trading with your neighbor instead of sending bombs and armies across the borders. But.
Having lots of guns, your people ready to defend themselves and able to do so fairly well, and a way to ensure that whatever nation tries to attack you will taste lots and lots of firepower from your side, ensures that those belligerent humans will decide to stay put (if they don't wanna face annihilation, that is. The history shows they usually don't).
Come to think of it, the United States of America is known to never have had any invasion because the country is full of armed persons ready to defend themselves. And why do you think countries such as China or Japan have an interest in disarming American people? Maybe for the same reason their own bureaucrats want them to give up their guns.
And in the same United States of America, places with the most strict gun control happen to be the most riddled with violent crimes of all sorts, while places where civil armament and self-defense stay strong enjoy some of the highest safety levels in the entire world. All because robbing/raping/killing someone is not worth risking getting shot in most cases.
It's not like The Legion must be a bunch of gun-toting rednecks waving confederate flags and showing off their gun collections, next to a Gadsden flag - but it is important to remember that, if you want to keep peace, be ready to fight a war.
Conclusion... uhh... finally
The division of individuals into groups, and separation of these groups from one another, is a very old - and a very effective, if handled correctly, tool to address personal differences. Even in non-sapient animals, a certain degree of division exists: they know how to differentiate between a friendly and a hostile pride member; between a harmless animal, an animal that is best to be left alone, and a hungry predator that should be either destroyed or avoided; between a potentially strong rival, and a weakling who might be reasonably crushed. Traits such as skin/hair color, size, or smell, are being used by animals to group - or separate - individual beings into different prides/herds, or different layers of hierarchy. (Yes, animals have that, too - and not just hive-mind creatures like bees and ants.)
And with the advent of sapience, there are even more reasons and ways to divide separate beings into different classes and groups. When many, many individuals happen to have a certain trait, and that trait holds large enough significance, it can be used as a way to single the trait-holding individuals from the rest - and for grouping them into a single set.
It is individual traits which determine whether one fits or does not fit in a group - not the groups which set personal traits for individuals. And consequently, it is possible for different individuals to purposefully create a group to separate individuals with certain traits, and assign them a different treatment - and within that group, if necessary, create sub-groups for further refinement of treatment, ideally up to treating each person individually.
Whether you want it or not, humanity can never, ever be handled as a monolith effectively. Personal differences will always get in the way of that utopia where everyone can leave under the same regime, and treated roughly the same. What's good for one is bad for another, indifferent for someone else, and there are other different attitudes everywhere.
Bottom line: there is no single one thing which will make all happy.