Isopublic is a model of nation-state that I’ve been deliberating since 2011. I’ve read works by notable thinkers and histories. In the table below, I’ve attempted to list the most important sources of influence and a bullet describing the influence.

Getting into details is beyond the scope of this page. The purpose of this page is to give an overall sense of what’s shaped my thinking as a matter of disclosure.

The ranking is in the order of that which I consider having had the greatest to least influence on my thinking.

Respective influences are indicated with the following qualifying symbols:

Guiding influence meaning an aspect of isopublic is based on the ideas of the thinker.

Informing influence meaning that the ideas provide a greater understanding or perspective that in turn influences a related aspect of isopublic.

Danger meaning be aware of threat to isopublic–not that the person was terrible per se though some were.

If a podcast exists related to a given influencer, topic, or reference, there’ll be a microphone symbol () linking it.


Notes:

  • Use the column sort and search functions to manipulate the table.
  • Refresh page to reset table.
RankAuthorInfluenceBiosReferences
1
Herbert Spencer
  • Law of equal freedom.
  • Social evolution via what I call "cultural use-inheritance" and "social Spencerism."
  • Survival of the fittest (properly understood).
  • Complexity of nature, i.e. law of multiplicity.
  • Social organism theory.
  • Reconciles religion and science.
  • Reconciles egoism and altruism.
  • Good parenting.


2
John Locke
  • Primacy of the political individual, i.e. political individualism.
"Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men..." - 2nd Treatise of Government
3
Aristotle
  • Virtue ethics.
  • The "middle state," i.e. the Golden Mean.
  • Electing officials is oligarchic, selecting by lottery democratic.

4
Jeremy Bentham
  • Utilitarian prime purpose--"The greatest happiness of the greatest number."
  • Scientistic moralism.
  • Utilitarianism sans individual rights.
5
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
  • Theory of biological use-inheritance leading to Spencer's cultural use-inheritance and social organism theory.

6
Charles Darwin
  • Theory of natural selection, i.e. descent with modification.
  • Spencer reconciled Darwin and Lamarck with his famous phrase "survival of the fittest." He believed that both natural selection and use-inheritance were factors in biological evolution causing him to consider the more general principle of systems adapting to a multiplicity of natural forces, i.e. surviving in the face of natural complexity, i.e. adapt or die.

7
Athenian Democracy
  • Integrity of state.
  • Democratic methods, e.g. sortition, group governance (i.e. no CEO), nomothesia, paranomon, etc.
  • Dangers of demagogues (e.g. Pericles) and majority rule.


8
Richard Feynman
  • The nature of nature.
  • Appreciation for the immense complexity of the noumenal world.
  • Complexity at the bottom (i.e. the quantum space).
  • Need for humility in science.

9
John von Neumann
  • Game theory (which inspires Dean's "societal prisoner's dilemma" and practical justification for a system of justice to prevent the societal race to the bottom).

10
Plato
  • Dishonorable attack on democracy.
  • Provides intellectual legitimacy for state violence, i.e. the need to rule the People, i.e. intellectual champion of authoritarianism.
  • The noble lie (i.e. the ends justify the means or political expediency).
  • Discredits the ability of the People to rule themselves.
  • The most harmful thinker in history.

11
Niccolò Machiavelli
  • Political and moral expediency.
  • Insight into dark triad personality.
  • Free states must be utterly destroyed when conquered.
  • Defense of national militia.


12
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Historical authoritarian evil.
  • Murderous failure of communism.

13
George Orwell
  • Speculated evils of authoritarianism and collectivism.
  • Dangerous nature of government.

14
Sam Harris
  • Scientistic morality.
  • Scientistic utilitarianism.
  • Natural determinism and denial of free will.
  • Antitheist, not atheist.


15
Immanuel Kant
  • The noumenal and phenomenal.
  • Kant's a priori space-time is wrong. Human space-time awareness is genetically a posteriori, i.e. inherited experience or genetic memory per se.
  • Equal freedom from Kant's duty ethics (versus Spencerian utilitarian equal freedom), i.e.--

    "The Civil State, then, regarded merely as a social state that is regulated by laws of right, is founded upon the following rational principles:—
    1. The Liberty of every Member of the Society as a Man;
    2. The Equality of every Member of the Society with every other, as a Subject;
    3. The Self-dependency of every Member of the Commonwealth, as a Citizen." - "The Principle of Political Right"

16
Jean Piaget
  • Individual constructivist epistemology.
  • Cognitive development theory.
  • Contributed to Dean's "do, learn, teach" paradigm.
17
Frédéric Bastiat
  • Economic fallacies.
  • Impact of regulation, i.e. the seen and the unseen.
  • Legitimate law, i.e. protecting "person, freedom and property."

18
Ludwig von Mises
  • Praxeology and the general theory of human action.
  • Preference and subjective value.
  • Dangers of socialism and the problem of economic calculation.


19
Friedrich von Hayek
  • Spontaneous order.
  • Dangers of socialism and central planning.

20
Lysander Spooner
  • Defense of intellectual property.

21
John Stuart Mill
  • Advocated Benthamite utilitarianism, i.e. obligating the state to produce "the greatest happiness," i.e. happiness by fiat.
  • The harm principle. However, in isopublic the do no harm principle differs in that Mill argued the state should prevent harm while in isopublic the state remedies not prevents harm.
  • The risks of cultural tyranny in a free society.

22
Thomas Hobbes
  • Legitimizing the authoritarian state.
  • Profoundly wrong on the nature of man by conflating the primal and evolved moral sentiments.

23
Karl Marx
  • Labor Theory of Value.
  • "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
  • Opposed private property.
  • Collectivism.
  • State-controlled means of production.
  • Opposed laissez-faire capitalism.
  • Use of violence as legitimate means to social ends.
  • Disregard for state as a moral actor.
24
Karl Popper
  • Verisimilitude and falsifiability of claims.
  • Humility in science.
  • Critical rationalism.

25
Jesus
  • Avoid doing harm.
  • Legitimizes evildoing by the state, i.e. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's..."
  • Christian virtue.
  • Being charitable, i.e. non-judgmental, and doing charity.
  • Non-aggression.

26
Silvio Gesell
  • Demurrage fee to stimulate currency circulation.
  • Freigeld (i.e. free money)
  • Regressive nature of commodity money.
27
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
  • Opposed private property.
  • Opposed laissez-faire capitalism.

28
Peter Kropotkin
  • Mutual aid societies.
  • Opposed private property.
  • Opposed laissez-faire capitalism.

29
Auguste Comte
  • Individual altruism.
  • Positivism.
  • The social "sciences" are extremely damaging to human well-being with scientism masquerading as science leading to destructive public policy.
  • Altruistic collectivism, i.e. forcing people to sacrifice themselves, pure evil.
"The whole of Social Science consists therefore in duly working out [the problem of biological egoism, i.e. the problem with human nature]; the essential principle being, the reaction of collective over individual life."
- System of Positive Polity


For altruism to be altruism, it must be voluntary else it's extortion. Comte got it wrong, Spencer got it right.
30
Ayn Rand
  • Harmful anti-altruism.
  • Reveals sociopathic nature of authoritarians and collectivists.


31
Adolf Hitler
  • Socialist nationalism.
  • Etho-state.
  • Forced eugenics.
  • Political and moral expediency.
  • "Othering" and group guilt.
  • Corrupt understanding of survival of the fittest.


32
John Rawls
  • Veil of ignorance.
  • Greatest equal liberty principle.
  • Difference principle.
  • Equal opportunity principle.
33
Robert Nozick
  • Defense of the minimal state, i.e.
    the night-watchman state.
  • "Experience machine" thought problem.
34
Nassim Taleb
  • Antifragility.
  • Black swan events.
35
David Hume
  • Is-ought problem.
36
The Federalist Papers
  • Legitimizing central government.
  • Demonizes democracy.
  • Example of Machiavellian political expediency.
37
The United States Constitution
  • If a proper compact were a thoroughbred, the USC is a camel, i.e. a horse designed by committee.
  • Liberty was an afterthought, i.e. the Bill of Rights were amendments.
  • Instituted plutocratic oligarchy as supreme political system of United States.
  • Scoundrels lie to get elected then change the laws to pave the way to empower themselves and future scoundrels.
38
Thomas Malthus
  • His historically proven wrong and harmful theory of over-population.
Herbert Spencer refuted Malthus in his essay, "A Theory of Population, deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility." Basically, Spencer argued that as civilization progresses and society becomes more well-adapted, population growth ceases and reaches equilibrium. We see this is true in every modern first-world nation. Thus, freedom is the cure for over-population.

As Spencer concluded, "And after having caused, as [population growth] ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture—after having brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection—after having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete competence for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life—after having done all this, we see that the pressure of population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself to an end."
39
Socrates
  • Anti-democracy.
  • Anti-freedom.
  • Weaponized Socratic Method against fellow Athenians, i.e. asking whys with disregard to increasing complexity. He abused his method to demonize and denigrate democracy and the freedom it produced for the common man.