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See also An Anarchist critique of Anarcho-Statism

In particular:

"Anarchists have long argued that, as a class, workers have little choice but to "consent" to capitalist hierarchy. The alternative is either dire poverty or starvation. "Anarcho"-capitalists dismiss such claims by denying that there is such a thing as economic power. Rather, it is simply freedom of contract. [10]

Anarchists consider such claims as a joke. To show why, we need only quote Murray Rothbard on the abolition of slavery and serfdom in the 19th century. He argued, correctly, that the "bodies of the oppressed were freed, but the property which they had worked and eminently deserved to own, remained in the hands of their former oppressors. With economic power thus remaining in their hands, the former lords soon found themselves virtual masters once more of what were now free tenants or farm labourers. The serfs and slaves had tasted freedom, but had been cruelly derived of its fruits." [11"]

Anarcho-capitalism turns all power into economic power and then denies that economic power exists.

It's much more difficult to write (and thus, more rare to find) a good story where the enemy is given the same circumstances as the protagonist, and both are given the same life choices.

Check out the sci-fi and speculative fiction of Michael Moorcock - Jerry Cornelius series (including a Dr Who novel), A Nomad of the Time Streams, Dancers at the End of Time series, Behold the Man (nebula award), Byzantium Endures series. He also edited "New Worlds" which was in opposition to the paternalistic and militaristic stories of the John W Campbell "Golden Age" of SF. No one would confuse Moorcock for a right-wing writer, but his fiction is definitely anarchist (and he writes a great anti-hero) which is pretty close to what you are describing as a basis for egalitarian story-telling.

BTW, Moorcock's been railing against reactionaries like the puppies for decades and they've been hating on him for it just like this new generation hates on 'SJWs.'

These people are "libertarians", die hard free-market-is-always-correct folks?

Don't confuse "libertarian" with "Libertarian". The original, and correct, meaning of "libertarian" is pretty much the same as "anarchist" -- a leftist, socialist, (pro-labor orientation. The U.S. right-wing, pro-capitalist "Libertarian Party" and its associated movement deliberately stole and distorted the term in the mid-20th century.

More info here: http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libsoc.html.

And yes, some (though not all, I'm sure) of these bogus "Libertarians" would argue that if a website puts up a contract of adhesion forbidding the use of ad blockers in conjunction with their site, that such should be a binding contract enforced by the state.

I did not know who heinlein was...

Sacrilege! Turn in your geek card.

Teasing. ;-) A quick look at your posts shows English isn't your first language, so you're excused. I don't think I could name a modern French SF writer (Verne not counting).

Heinlein's stuff runs the gamut from juvenile adventure stories to space opera with a good claim to being classic SF to self-indulgent, sexist, authoritarian crap that some say borders on fascism. I recommend reading Stranger In A Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Double Star. That last one isn't as well-known as those others or considered classic but I like it (modulo the sexism, but it's a product of its time). Love or hate his stuff, you ought to read a bit of it.

Only in the US has the word "libertarian" been co-opted by the free-market uber alles, Ayn Rand worshiping, "I've got mine so fuck you!" crowd.

As one of Kim Stanley Robinson's characters put it, "That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."

The typical usage in the U.S. is different because right-wong people opposed to the regulation of big business tried to steal the term in the 1950s. They've managed to bamboozle a lot of folks over the years, but more and more Americans are coming to realize that "libertarian capitalism" reduces in the end to nothing but plutocracy: a state powerful enough to create and enforce so-called "property rights" on the behalf of capitalists, but not to put any leash on those capitalist's exploitation of people or the planet.

This is why we need Libertarians to control Congress and the White House so they will get rid of government (especially Federal government) supporting this kind of theft, and promote a fully Free Enterprise system where anyone can invent whatever they want and not worry about the government stealing it.

Big-L Libertarians -- as in the Libertarian Party -- want to shrink or eliminate entirely the regulatory functions of government, not the wealth-concentrating ones. Their 2008 VP candidate was a patent troll. These right-wing propertarians have little interest in patent reform: patents are just another form of property, and in their view the state exists to create and enforce the "property rights" of the owning classes. (Still, I'll take the Libertarians over the GOP any day, at least they're not trying to bring the state into my bedroom.)

Actual libertarians -- libertarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists, from whom the right-wingers stole the appellation "libertarian" -- want to eliminate the wealth-concentrating functions of government.

(As for Ron Paul, specifically, he's a grade A loon who is disconnected from consensual reality on abortion, evolution, and the separation of church and state, and is a liar who is either a racist or is incompetent to run a 'zine. Please, folks, get over the crush on him.)

Quick-n-dirty how-to distinguish fantasy from science-fiction: It's not about elves vs spaceships. It's about conservatism vs progressivism.

No. The axes are orthogonal. One can have progressive fantasy (Le Guin's later Earthsea novels) or conservative science fiction (most of Heinlein). The best explanation is Moorcocks's famous essay Starship Stormtroopers -- read it, if you haven't:

There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of 'good leadership'; there is Tolkein and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists who constantly sing the praises of bourgeois virtues and whose villains are thinly disguised working class agitators -- fear of the Mob permeates their rural romances. To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world (i.e. bourgeois security) -- the answer is always leadership, 'decency', paternalism (Heinlein in particularly strong on this), Christian values...

What can this stuff have in common with radicals of any persuasion? The simple answer is, perhaps, Romance. The dividing line between rightist Romance (Nazi insignia and myth etc.) and leftist Romance (insurgent cavalry etc.) is not always easy to determine. A stirring image is a stirring image and can be ,employed to raise all sorts of atavistic or infantile emotions in us. Escapist or 'genre' fiction appeals to these emotions. It does us no harm to escape from time to time but it can be dangerous to confuse simplified fiction with reality and that, of course, is what propaganda does.

You mean cue the dishonest scumbags who hate libertarianism but know they aren't mentally competent to make an intelligent argument against it, and as such are willing to settle for implying that it means something entirely different from what it actually is.

'

You mean like the dishonest scumbags who started the Libertarian Party, who implied that "libertarianism" meant some form of capitalism when the term had a long history of use by socialists opposed to both direct government power and state-backed private power?

We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin.

Really? Decades of civil forfeiture in the War on (Some) Drugs; the erosion of First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights under said War; the Waco massacre, where military assets were brought in using said War as a justification; the stolen election of 2000; the illegal invasion of Iraq; the authorization of torture...and it's revoking a couple of domain names that prompts you to comment on "the final nails in the Constitution's coffin"?

I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution.

I really wish that people would learn the difference between federalism and a republic, and that the current incident has nothing to do with either and is all about the denial of due process.

The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.

I'm pretty sure most Texans have no interest in anarchy, more's the pity. Anyway, the fed took on a greater role for a reason -- we tried the "weak fed, strong states" thing and it failed miserably. It's what enabled segregation, and the corruption of the Gilded Age. If you want smaller government, first you have to get rid of big business.

but it can be done. It is a question of WILL.

It's also a matter of money.

There is, to be blunt, no worthwhile investment in putting human beings on Mars. Robots can gather scientific knowledge at a fraction of the cost, and the idea of a Mars colony as some sort of "backup" for humanity is nonsense. Far easier to build a series of enclosed and shielded environments here on Earth; nothing that's going to happen within the next 10,000 years could render Earth less hospitable than Mars is now. I think that by that time we might have some pretty good ways to shield the homeworld from such unfortunate incidents.

And the argument that manned space exploration is "inspirational" makes it just a form of performance art -- let it compete for NEA dollars against your local symphony orchestra or grants to controversial photographers, then.

Manned missions to Mars are a project for another century. We have to get through the 21st first -- that means a focus of resources locally to develop sustainable civilization. That certainly might include near-space operations, like solar photovolatic (or even solar wind power collectors), He3 collection on Luna, or even orbital reflectors to cool a warming planet. But there's just no good reason for manned exploration of deep space at this time. Even the cliched trope of asteroid mining -- which really serves more as a background for the laissez-faire capitalism of certain right-wing SF writers than as a serious approach to meeting humanity's needs -- would be better accomplished by robots.

There are two dimensions economic and personal freedoms. Either you want more state control of economic matters or you want more freedom in economic matters. Either you want more state control of personal matters or you want less.

While the "two dimensional" Nolan chart makes a nice recruiting tool for the Libertarian Party, it's not much more realistic than the two party approach. It completely ignores libertarian socialism for example -- and since the Libertarians pretty much outright stole their name from this movement, perhaps that's no accident.

Deregulating big business and handing power to corporate plutocracy is not "more freedom in economic matters", it actually lets powerful interests decrease your freedom.

There are at least five big questions in politics:

• Should the state dictate, or at least encourage or favor certain personal choices -- family, religion, sex, drug use, etc. -- or should it take a "do your own thing, man" approach?
• How should we deal with criminals -- harsh punishments, or rehabilitation?
• Should the benefits of our economic resources -- the "means of production" -- accrue to a minority (capitalism), or be democratic (socialism)?
• Should decisions about production and consumption be centralized (controlled market) or de-centralized (free market)?
• Should our nation attempt to dominate others, or mind its own business?

That's not even counting the one big issue in American politics today: are you part of the reality-based community, or not? More and more, dialog on the conservative side is dominated by out-and-out nutcases: birthers, creationists, climate science deniers, homophobes, et cetera. Sure, on the left you have the occasional truther or Maoist, but they're not generally being promoted as serious candidates for office. The GOP's been leaving rationality behind since the Reagan era.

That being the case, it's no wonder that the tech sector -- generally more educated folks -- leans left. If and when rational conservatives come back into dominance in the GOP, you might see more techies tilt less to the left.

Heaven forbid the onus is put on the consumer to determine what they should and should not purchase.

Heaven forbid indeed, because a whole lot of people died needlessly back when that sort of "caveat emptor" attitude ruled. Go read The Poisoner's Handbook, which is about the birth of forensic medicine in the U.S. -- and about the many different ways people were being poisoned a few decades ago, often by quite ordinary consumer products .

it's you nanny-state socialists...

Socialism has nothing to do with product safety regulation. It's about an economic system run by, and for the benefit of, the people who actually create value by their labor, rather than a system run by and for a parasitic investment class.

A libertarian idea: strip away all powers not enumerated in the constitution.

Regulating interstate and international commerce is right there in Article I, Section 8. The feds are well within their Constitutional powers to say "you can't import this into the country, or sell it across state lines, unless X, Y, and Z."

Is that how the Founders foresaw this power being used? Probably not. But not only is that legally irrelevant, I don't think it's practical or ethical to limit our solutions to what a bunch of slave-holding members of the landed gentry dreamed about 223 years ago when they thought about the small agrarian nation they had in mind.

Here's a truly libertarian idea, in the original sense: tear up all corporate charters, land deeds, patents, and copyrights, and eliminate rent, the private ownership of capital, and all forms of government-enforced privilege. And when you deliberately sell shoddy products that injure or kill people, I have the right to come over and shoot you in the face.

If the federal government had limited powers as it did at design, what would they be lobbying for (maybe excise taxes)? They would be forced to lobby to individual states who now hold more of the power

You can probably buy about 50 state legislators for what a Congressman goes for, no problem. Part of the reason that the original Progressives sought to expand federal power was because the state governments had been thoroughly corrupted. Again, this right-wing view that everything would be ok if we devolved regulatory authority back to the states is ahistorical, as well as impractical -- some large corporations turn profits (not reciepits, but profits) that are greater than the gross state product of smaller states.

At least with corporations there's a choice to trust them or not; what choice does federal coercion and many times, outright extortion leave you?

No, you don't get a meaningful "choice" when a handful of mega-corporations take over a market. "Gee, will I buy my Kraft food products grown from Monsanto seeds at Wal-Mart or at Target? So many choices!"

Corporations are creations of government -- they exist only because of government-issued charters. It's not only fair, it's essential the government leash the immortal sociopaths to which it gives birth.

These sound like the words of a COMMUNIST or a TERRORIST or the dreaded LIBERTARIAN!.

"Dreaded" libertarian? Right-wingers like the word so much they stole it from the socialist anarchists.

Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act. Democrats were for continued segregation

I mentioned neither Republicans nor Democrats. Progressivism, both big- and -small p versions, cuts across party lines: Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat.

However, you're simply wrong about the major parties and the Civil Rights Act. Democrat LBJ pushed the 1964 Civil Rights act through Congress, after Democrat JFK introduced it, and a majority of both Democratic and Republican Representatives and Senators voted for it. The split was strictly a North-South one. ("South", here, being states once under the control of the terrorist group that styled itself the "Confederate States of America".)

Both Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans were opposed to it, and Northern Democrats and Northern Republicans, in favor. (Though a slightly greater percentage of Southern Republicans opposed the bill, and a slightly smaller percentage of Northern Republicans supported it, than geographically comparable Democrats.)

I invite you to check your facts before you accuse someone of "Fail!" Because now you look like a total ass.

If you mean "progressive" (small "p") as in describing an individuals' attitude or outlook, then yes. If you mean Progressives, as in the movement that's been around since the '20s and counts Socialists and Communists as ideological brothers then you, sir, are incorrect.

You need to stop getting your history from Glen Beck, friend. The Progressive Era -- big P -- was from the 1890s to the 1920s, it didn't come into being in the '20s. And if you want to label Theodore Roosevelt a commie, well, good luck with that.

The rest of your post is a class-warfare mini-rant along with the "social justice" and "economic justice" buzzwords that Progressives use as cover for the fact that what they propose is socialist/communist/fascist-style redistribution of wealth by a powerful central government.

I just love the way that right-wing loons have started lumping communists and fascists together, despite the fact that one of the primary attributes of fascism was anti-communism -- fascism was the right's counter-move to the Russian Revolution. It's almost as much fun as the way they complain about people talking about class warfare, while promoting the actual practice of that warfare.

And if you think socialism necessarily implies a powerful central government, you need to read this. (And also have a look at this.) State socialism is not the only form of socialism.

It's capitalism that requires a strong government, to create and defend artificial property rights. Many socialists believe in a small government -- Marx himself, wrong as he was about so much, believed that under his philosophy the state would eventually wither away, unneeded.

yes you get property rights through the government, but again, hardly a lot.

All property rights rest on government action.

Ownership of any physical object rests on ownership of the materials from which it's made, which rests on land or resource deeds issued by the government. Take, for example, this pen on my desk. Why can I say I own it? Because I traded money that I owned, to the local branch of Office Depot for it. But if Office Depot didn't own it, then I don't -- you can't legitimately buy stolen property.

So did Office Depot own it? They traded money that they owned, to Bic for a bunch of pens. Did Bic own them? Bic (we'll pretend) made the pens out of plastic that they purchased from SomeBigPetroChemical, Inc. And how did SomeBigPetroChemical come to own that plastic? Why, they made it from oil they bought from Amalgamated Oil. And how did Amalgamated Oil come to own that oil? They dug it out of ground to which they had oil rights. And how did Amalgamated Oil come to have those right? Some government stole the land from whoever used to live there, and eventually gave Amalgamated Oil a piece of paper giving them the right to sink oil wells.

Take away that deed, and those whole chain of ownership falls down. The same applies to any material object: trace back the chain of ownership, and you'll find government.

All that, of course, is ignoring the fact that Office Depot, Bic, SomeBigPetroChemical, and Amalgamated Oil are all creations of some governments, brought into being by the issuance of a government charter. Why should such a fictional creature even be allowed to own property, if it is not in the public interest?

You could have an economic system with no land ownership, no corporations, no copyrights or patents, none of the ways that government enables the aristocracy to skim wealth off the top; a system where ownership rests on use, one that rewards those who do productive labor rather than the aristocracy that owns the tools and materials. But it sure wouldn't be capitalism. You'd have some sort of libertarian socialism.

I consider capitalists, even the "less correct ones" like, say Bill Gates and his monopoly, infinitely more moral (even if perhaps not 100% intentional) than even what you'd call "center" socialists.

I don't know who or what I'd call "center" socialists, I don't think I've ever used the term.

I find it pretty remarkable -- nonsensical, even, bordering on insane -- to claim that Bill Gates is infinitely more moral than socialists like Peter Kropotkin, Eugene Debs, Carl Sandburg, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, or George Orwell, or the anarchists at your local "Foot Not Bombs" chapter.

The Joker was about chaos and anarchy which is so far away from Socialism that the juxtaposition just strikes me as ludicrous.

It depends what kind of socialism you're talking about. Of course, though Obama isn't a socialist of any sort, he's even less a libertarian socialist than he is a social democrat (which I think is what people mean when they accuse him of being a socialist).

If you don't like it, you can leave and shop around for something better.

I was born here. I have every right to live here and be free. You have exactly the same right to coerce me as I have to coerce you; none.

The so called 'free market' is the real instrument of coercion. You either work for those who have unilaterally decided they own all the natural resources, or you starve. That is coercion.

I agree. Anarchism is a socialist philosophy.

I think its very, very telling that Heinlein was influenced by the patriotic crap he was pumped with in training, whilst Haldeman actually saw war first hand, and was wounded in action. Its a point Starship Troopers fanboys should spend some time contemplating: one writer was informed by what the state wants you to think war is, and one writer was informed by actually getting shot what war is.

Fans of Heinlein who profess political beliefs other than Fascism (as the majority of them do I reckon) would also do well to read this essay: http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html

How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ? (and note: I'm not talking about land and capital goods, specifically. Even my daughters owns capital - clothes, toys, cash etc.).

I'm sorry that you don't know what capital is. Clothes and toys are finished goods, not capital; cash is capital only when invested.

The capitalist class is the class that controls capital: controls the money, and owns the land, the factories, even (thanks to copyrights and patents) the very ideas, that workers need access to to produce goods and services. Should the workers attempt to access this capital directly, the capitalist class's government backers start shooting people; so workers are forced to tithe to the capitalist class in order to be productive.

(Obviously, I am tremendously oversimplifying, ignoring the small business owner, the petit-bourgeois, whose capital needs are small.)

(You'll have to elaborate because "democratic control of capital" reads as being another way to say "state control of capital".

No, it doesn't. Capitalism is, in the end, state control of capital - who issues land deeds? Who charters corporations? Libertarian socialism can get along without the state, capitalism can't.

You said "state-backed minority class of 'owners'". Thus you know damned well that what you are describing is not laissez-faire capitalism.

Because there's not such thing as "laissez-faire capitalism". Capitalism requires a strong government to create and defend the property rights that make it possible.

Take away all those government issued land and resource deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, and the like, and tell me what sort of "laissez-faire capitalism" you have left.

That doesn't mean that people don't have to work to survive, but that will be the case in any system. Every single human being prefers leisure to labour. So in a make-believe system where no one has to work production and technological progress will grind to a halt.

The amount of work that actually needs to be done to support humans is pretty small: hunter-gatherer societies had a lot more leisure time, as did the societies of ancient Greece and Rome -- even medieval Europe.

We say "money doesn't grow on trees" -- but did you know that food does? Food actually does literally grow on trees! As does fuel, and a great material for making shelter.

It's only when you have to pay some king or landlord for the privilege of occupying part of the Earth's surface, or when we overbreed the sustainable carrying capacity of the land and force each other into marginal areas, that leisure becomes a rarity.

the reality is that Socialism leads to a strong central government

Certainly Marxism does; even though Marx pictured the eventual abolition of the state, he didn't understand that once workers form an almighty government, they're not workers anymore but dictators. Bad on Marx for that one. But Marxism is not all of socialism.

A historical example of libertarian socialism in action can be found during the Spanish Civil War.

that takes away your money

Hmm. Whose money? Who created it? Do you have a printing press in your basement?

All governments tax. When we use the state's marbles as counters in the game, it's hard to see we have much right to complain when the state demands some of those marbles back.

Capitalism (at least, capitalism as we know it) requires a strong government to create money; charter corporations; issue and enforce land and resource deeds, copyrights, and patents; and all the other infrastructure that makes possible the concentration of wealth. You want to talk about a smaller government, let's talk about removing or restricting those powers.

they banned religion in china, you know, and replaced it with the teachings of socialism

In point of fact, the Chinese government officially recognizes Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, and in recent years has organized international forums on Buddhism and Taoism.

Socialism is an economic practice which is orthogonal to religion. Some forms of socialism (the state socialism of Stalin and of Mao) were authoritarian systems which restricted religion; but there is are various forms of "religious socialism". And certainly libertarian socialism would place no limits on religious liberty.

The original libertarians were based around freedom. But a party that upholds an economic system based on government policies that concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a minority, backs a funny sort of "freedom".

So wait, that would be different from the current state of things how exactly?

I'm quite serious. Please, enlighten us as to why the current system isn't screwing over anyone who isn't already rich? Do you get a 7%-10% raise every year? No? Then you're not even keeping up with true inflation. And don't throw CPI at me, that doesn't include food and fuel costs and is not representative of actual inflation.

Anyone seen the M3 money report that gives the total increase of dollars in circulation? No? Oh that's right, that's because it was so horrifying that they (the Federal Reserve) stopped releasing that information.

At least the Libertarian party supports the Constitution. Show me a D or R who actually does.

The voting system needs to change before there will be real political change, until then people will still just vote for the lesser evil to keep the greater evil out of office, when really we should be voting all the evils off the ballot.

Not really. It's moreso simply a party centered on freedom.

...for certain definitions of "freedom", perhaps.

The original libertarians were based around freedom. But a party that upholds an economic system based on government policies that concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a minority, backs a funny sort of "freedom".

Nice straw man.

It's not a straw man, it's a counterexample, showing that a nation with low taxes and low government spending can still suck when it comes to freedom.

We advocate a society heavy on social and financial liberties, not a communistic/socialist society.

A society heavy on liberty is one where the people who do the work control the means of production, not one where parasitic capitalists backed by the government control wealth. It won't look much like what the so-called "Libertarian" party advocates; it would be more of a libertarian socialist system.

Now you do. Spend some time on flag.blackened.net, it's enlightening.

As opposed to Socialism, which uses the power of the state to concentrate economic power into the hands of the state leaders.

State socialism, yes. The point is that state socialism is not the only form. Libertarian socialism opposes the concentration of power by any means. (Libertarian socialism is a.k.a. anarchism - it's the original "libertarianism", before some capitalists tried to appropriate the term.) It stands opposed both to Big Government and to Big Business.

The term "socialism" has been so demonized in the U.S. since the Red Scares of the earth 20th century, that most Americans think socialism, Marxism, and Stalinism are all the same thing. They're not. There are many different type of socialist thought.

TRUE libertarians are both. That's kinda the whole point of, you know, calling them 'libertarians'.

Actually TRUE libertarians are libertarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists.

Capitalists attempted to steal the term in the 1950s, but capitalism requires a huge amount of state intervention and control of the people - land and resource deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, everything that creates and supports the control of economic resources by a minority owning class. A system based on the exchange of labor - i.e., socialism - can do with much less intervention, approaching zero as non-coercive social forms or organization grow.

You'll note that right-wingers who like to identify as "libertarian" and talk about "smaller government", never mean reducing any of these state powers that funnel control of weath into the hands of a few. In fact most believe that turning land, natural resources, and even ideas into "property", and protecting the control of that "property" by the owning class, is the prime function of the state. Their idea of "smaller government" is ripping the governors off the engine of the state that enables capitalism, not shrinking the engine.

Can we declare a draw?

  Depends. I'm an anarchist, and I can distinguish my enemies from my friends with a simple hypothetical: A family is behind on their rent, yet they have no place else to go. Do you support the landlord kicking them out and leaving them homeless, or do you support the family? If you side with that family, we're cool.

Capitalism is about buyer, seller, and marketplace.

  Well, maybe when you're speaking about it in general, but "buyer, seller, and marketplace" do not characterize capitalism as opposed to socialism. When comparing the two, the primary difference is that capitalism permits the exploiting of labor, while socialism forbids it, so it's rather pointless to talk about "buyer, seller, and marketplace" in such a discussion.
  To use the ubiquitous car analogy, it's like comparing Fords to Chevys, and saying "well I like Fords, because they have four wheels and an engine." Under free market socialism, a carpenter buys his tools from a factory syndicate, and his lumber from one of the timber syndicates, and sells (or barters or exchanges) his works to any others who are interested, competing with other carpenters and perhaps a furniture syndicate or two. There's no difference on that side of things.

...socialism leads to a) relatively limp economic performance, and/or b) largely authoritarian states.

  To point a): Most "socialist" satellites of the Soviet Union utilized a 'planned economy' which is not at all socialized. This was originally justified by pointing out that they were on a war footing. However, they never dropped this 'war footing' system, precisely because it gave the Party incredible power and privilege.
  Their poor economic performance had nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with agency problems and corruption.
  An example: a factory would be rewarded based on its stated potential capacity. Managers were thus given incentive to their superiors to exaggerate their capacity to gain favorable status. Their superiors, in turn, exaggerated further to gain prestige and power over their rivals. Eventually the numbers get to the top, who say "look, we can meet our production demand for Product X with just two factories! Switch the others to producing something else." Then, when things came down to it, the factories produced far less than they predicted they could, and mass shortages ensued.
  This may sound familiar, as it has similarities to the business practices of Enron and other modern companies, they just extended it to a whole country.
  Socialism demands there be no such top-down structure sitting above the workers, so these inefficiencies don't appear. The state socialists just thought the 'top-down structure' would only be temporary. Heh.

  To point b): Authoritarianism is orthogonal to socialism. There were plenty of arguments as far back as the mid-nineteenth century concerning the utility of a powerful state for implementing socialism, but it's apparent now with hindsight that a powerful state always comes to serve itself first*, and is thus useless for implementing anything other than the window-dressing of socialism.

  Here's a quick read on the implementation of non-authoritarian socialism: The Spanish Civil War:
Anarchism in Action

* (Actually, it was obvious to many even then, but some people just really want an excuse to wield power over others.)

Yeah. The economic failure of the Soviets was largely due to the idea of a centralized "command economy" -- the Party took power away from the soviets (whom they had promised would be given power, during the early days of the revolution.. It was yet another illustration of why you should never trust authoritarians. Power and freedom must necessarily be claimed from below, it will not be handed down from above.) and 'primitively accumulated' it in their own greedy hands (lol), creating an effective monopoly in every area of their economy.
  There was nothing magical about Marxism that said it had to be done that way, nor is there anything magical about capitalism that prevents the same problem -- ask anyone old enough to remember the Phone Company in the 1970's, or just watch the old SNL rerun with Lily Tomlin banging on the control board with her elbows.. "We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company."

  The "free market" in the west is an illusion -- the current order was shaped by governmental power as an upgrade for mercantilism, which was a replacement of the dying feudalist state of affairs. A truly free market wouldn't look much like anything we've got today. I recommend "The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand - Corporate Capitalism as a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" by mutualist anarchist writer Kevin Carson.

I don't know why everyone has to be in everyone else's business like a busy body homemaker peering over the neighbors fence.

Agreed.

I am not a socialist by any stretch because I just see that as economic terrorism and extortion.

Probably because you don't know what socialism is.

Socialism is an economic system in which the workers control the "means of production" - economic resources, capital. Its opposite is capitalism, in which economic resources are controlled by a minority of government-designated and backed "owners".

Worker's control may be direct (libertarian socialism) or indirect (state socialism). Just as with capitalism there are libertarian and authoritarian forms of socialism, planned-economy and free-market versions. It is not the case that socialism implies a planned economy and capitalism a free market. Let me recommend again this page on libertarian socialism - if nothing else, to see how the right stole the term "libertarian" from its leftist roots.

The fact that a generally intelligent fellow like you has been conditioned to associate an economic system based on labor rather than capital, with "economic terrorism and extortion", is an indicator of firmly the right controls the dialog on economic issues. If there truly was a left wing media bias, "socialism" would not be a dirty word in American discourse.

You mean like NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, NPR, Various Publishing Houses

The New York Times and Washington Post have been reliably conservative on foreign policy. They're reliable supporters of Israel; they've were unquestioning of the Iraq war until recently (if they'd done their jobs and revealed Bush's bullshit before we were up to our necks in it, the war wouldn't have happened). The front section of the Post always has a bunch of ads for fighter planes and weapons systems, after all; a bit of war is good for their sponsors business. They feature conservative voices on their editorial pages, and their reporting on economic issues skews center-right.

I don't know so much about the LA Times. CNN is also full of conservative voices. NPR is not a for-profit corporation, but has a conservative bias in its sources. "Various Publishing Houses" is vague and meaningless.

The way I figure it, 1/2 is left wing, 1/2 is right wing, and 0 represent Libertarian position.

Libertarian capitalism - which is usually what's meant by "capital L" Libertarian, the position of the the Libertarian party, is a right-wing position. Properly speaking, left and right are economic positions, being in favor of labor and capital respectively.

(It is of course possible to be a leftist or socialist libertarian, but that's "little l" libertarian.)

The Wall Street Journal is often libertarian capitalist in its bias; certainly there are a number of smaller publications, such as Reason.

"Yes, I'm saying that conservative social positions correlate with provincialism and ignorance."

That is your opinion, and is based on the kind of elitism I detest.

No, it's not just my opinion.

It's long been clear that urban areas are more social liberal than rural ones. It's harder to maintain prejudices in a more densely populated area where your neighbors are diverse.

The more educated the population of a state, the less likely that state was to vote for Bush in 2000; college graduates are much less socially conservative than people with less education.

If being in favor of education and diversity means "elitism", then I will proudly call myself elitist.

How about this, I leave you alone, you leave me alone, I won't take your money for things you don't like, and you won't take my money for things I don't like. Deal?

The leave each other alone thing is fine. The "not take my money" has the complication of figuring out just what is my money, since money - like many forms of property - a creation of the state.

Libertarian capitalists like to talk about getting the government out of "meddling" in economic matters, but when I suggest revoking government issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, patents and copyrights, all the government interventions that make capitalism possible, they blanch.

Tom, thanks for reminding me of the cranks and loons that one meets on the Internet.

Let's see here. You quote Thornley paraphrasing Lao Tzu - a philosopher whose works have endured for thousands of years, an man whose work is one of the great influences on Chinese culture - and then accuse me of being a crank because I used a completely different quote from Thornley.

Hmm. Sorry, but that's one of the greatest non-sequitors I've seen on line in at least the past year, and would seem to be indiciative of great confusion. Let me see if I can help.

If you want to dismiss Lao Tzu as a crank, you at least owe it to him and to millions of people influenced by Taoism to understand it enough to recognize it when you see it. I highly recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's interpretation of the Tao Te Ching and Raymond Smullyans' book The Tao is Silent . (Those aren't affiliate links or anything, by the way.)

Thornley may have been a crank on some subjects, a medium to heavy conspiracy theorist, but given that he got caught up in the weirdness vortex of the JFK assassination I think he deserves a little slack on that. His concept of Zenarchy is an inspiring application of Taoism and Zen concepts to politics, showing the connection with libertarian socialism (a.k.a. anarchy).

The fact that I may quote Thornley on some topic, because I like the way he explains something - or that I might similarly quote Lao Tzu, the Shakyamuni Buddha, Thomas Jefferson, Emperor Norton, Hunter S. Thompson, or whoever - does not mean I agree with the quotee on everything. That one may quote a crank, is non-informative on one's own crank-ness or lack thereof.

HTH. HAND.

It looks like you're posting an anarcho-capitalist complaint on slashdot.
Would you like to:
  A) Ignore that the market is not free, and has not been for centuries?
  B) Forget that government exists to serve the powerful, including business?
  C) Dismiss the fact that powerful business interests, with the aid of government, erect massive barriers-to-entry to protect themselves from competetion? (See A)
  D) Just shout "GOVERNMENT BAD!" so you don't have to think about where their power really comes from?

  This message has been brought to you by Real Anarchism. Don't be fooled by any other brand!
  See the FAQ at http://flag.blackened.net/ , and bring home some Anarchy today!

Don't "snap". It's useless on a larger scale and means one less person around who can see the injustice of society. This country's heading itself towards revolution, and if that day comes, we could sure use your help.
  http://flag.blackened.net/

It's not an awesome idea because as much as it has it's good use there is also the darker side with pedophile, snuff and other crap that should not be tolerated.

Snuff films are not real. And the problem with pedophilia isn't the transmission of images of the sexual abuse of children, it's when actual sexual abuse of children goes on.

Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.

But if you believe in freedom, you're very very wary of the state getting to define who the "wrong" guys, the "terrorists", the "bad guys", are. Consider that Martin Luther King Jr. was a target of COINTELPRO; consider Nixon's "enemies list"; consider the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott decision, the Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans...

you cant have a place where you can bend the rules forever, that's anarchy!

And? "Anarchy" means no ruling hierarchy. Some people think that's a good idea, especially when it comes to communication. As Robert Anton Wilson put it, "A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of `monopoly in the means of production.' Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain."

Libertarianism, regardless of the clueless palitical parties who espouse it, was on the left wing of the spectrum teh last I checked.

The terms "left" and "right" as applied to politics originally meant the commoners and the nobility. As used today, they're best applied to the workers and the owners or "capitalists" - like the nobility of old, the owning class is defined and backed by the state (which issues corporate charters, land and resource deeds, patents, copyrights, etcetera).

"Left" and "right", "worker" versus "owner", should not be confused with social liberalism or conservatism, or with command economies versue free markets, or with interventionism versus isolationism in foreign policy. Politics is multidimensional, and one could very well be a leftist with conservative social views who favors a free market and an interventionalist foregin policy, or a right-wing backer of command economies with a tolerant social attidude and a yen for isolationism. Of course, some combinations of these views are statistically more common than others.

The term "libertarian" originally refered to the sort of libertarian socialism generally known today as anarchy. Libertarian socialism is decidedly leftist, i.e., aligned with the concerns of workers over owners.

"Libertarian capitalists", of the sort you'll often find in the American "Libertarian Party", attempted to appropriate the term in the mid 20th-century. Libertarian capitalists are decidedly to the right, i.e., aligned with the concerns of owners, putting property rights as primary. (Indeed, many hold the view that a persons body is their "property" and thus arguing that all other rights flow from property rights).

Heinlein was clearly socially liberal, a free-marketer, and a supporter of war as legitimate foreign policy. Beyond that, I'm not familiar enough with his work to attempt to characterize him.

It's crap like this that makes me want the public school system abolished and replaced with something more privately run, where competition can weed out this kind of stupid behavior.

Yes, privately run companies are famous for repsecting peoples rights.</sarcasm>

(Actually, I'm sympathetic to some parts of the charter school movement, and to school choice amoung public schools in a district. But let's not pretend that the same sorts of companies that routinely trample workers would treat students any better.)

Socialism doesn't work.

Socialism - the control of economic resources by workers, as opposed to capitalism's rather than by a government-backed minority of owners - can work, though of course every time it rears its head those in power do everything they can to quash it. It is a shame that so many people confuse socialism, Marxism, Stalinism, social democracy, and regulated capitalism.

Public schools have fsck-all to do with socialism.

All of your other conclutions I can understand, but this confuses me. To me, capitalism means "a system where people have the liberty to trade".

That's a market economy, which (while imperfect) is generally a positive force (provided that there are no external costs or monopolies, and the buyers and sellers meet with equal power and full knowledge). Markets vs. command economies is an independent question to capitialism versus socialism: the first question is "what can we do with property", the second is "what sort of things can become property, and how".

Capitalism is an economic system based on private control of resources (capital); as I've been arguing, this necessitates state force to initially create, and then enforce, that control. And the concentration of power into the hands of this state-backed minority of owners is corrosive to liberty, causing a slide into plutocracy.

It contrasts with socialism, an economic system based on the exchange of labor. Both can be found with or without centralized command of the economy; the US during WWII would be an example of a capitalist command-economy, while libertarian socalists point to voluntary collectivisation in some regions during the Spanish Civil War.

Recommended reading: Libertarian Socialism, a little jargon filled ("fetters of capitalism") but informative about the topic.

All of your other conclutions I can understand, but this confuses me. To me, capitalism means "a system where people have the liberty to trade".

That's a market economy, which (while imperfect) is generally a positive force (provided that there are no external costs or monopolies, and the buyers and sellers meet with equal power and full knowledge). Markets vs. command economies is an independent question to capitialism versus socialism: the first question is "what can we do with property", the second is "what sort of things can become property, and how".

Capitalism is an economic system based on private control of resources (capital); as I've been arguing, this necessitates state force to initially create, and then enforce, that control. And the concentration of power into the hands of this state-backed minority of owners is corrosive to liberty, causing a slide into plutocracy.

It contrasts with socialism, an economic system based on the exchange of labor. Both can be found with or without centralized command of the economy; the US during WWII would be an example of a capitalist command-economy, while libertarian socalists point to voluntary collectivisation in some regions during the Spanish Civil War.

Recommended reading: Libertarian Socialism, a little jargon filled ("fetters of capitalism") but informative about the topic.

Libertarianism holds that you own yourself and your labor. Socialism holds that you and your labor belong to the state.

No. Socialism advocates an economic system in which labor is primary. It comes in libertarian and authoritarian forms. Its opposite is capitalism, an economic system based on private control of capital; i.e,, a system in which economic resources are controled by a state-backed privileged minority.

The word "libertarian" originally refered to libertarian socialism and was highjacked by the the right (capitalists) in the 1950s.

The defining characteristic of government is that it has a monopoly on force. It is entirely possible to concieve a system based not on the use of force, but by voluntary agreements.

If I get together with my neighbors to do mutual defence, or to agree who gets to tend which fields, that's also government.

That is not government, because no coersion has taken place. Since you seem unfamiliar with basic anarchist theory, may I direct you to flag.blackened.net

I am a Centrist according to 'standardized' polls like this one.

There's nothing "standardized" about the Nolan chart. It's Libertarian (i.e. libertarian capitalist, not the original libertarian) propaganda.

It does have the benefit of introducing multi-dimensional considerations into standard left-right thinking, but its specifics are useless.

So long and thanks for all the fish is the most likely reason for any dolphin related scenes.

Look, if you can't compete with third-world technical labor, that's YOUR problem. Nobody owes you a thing in this country.

Corporations owe their existence to the state. Capitalists owe their ability to own such artifical property as copyright, patents, and resource exploitation rights, to the state.

In a democracy, the state owes its existance to the people. (Not individually, obviously, but en masse.)

Therefore, corporations indirectly owe their existance and capitalists indirectly owe their riches to the people.

If we're going to allow our government to funnel economic power into the hands to a few and to create legal monsters that are capable only of seeking profit, it's sensible for us to demand that it keep them leashed. That includes demanding employment practices that are not a race to the bottom.

(The better alternative, of course, would be to altogether get rid of the state's power to enrich capitalists and charter corporations.)

I love it when geeks slam capitalism. Since high tech equipment of all kinds can only be affordable via mass production and massive R&D, it's pretty fucking hypocritical to say anything about capitalism while you're typing away on a product that took MASSIVE capital investment by the largest companies in the world.

Both the microchip revolution and the Internet have their origins in publicly funded research.

There's nothing to prevent mass production and massive R&D from occuring outside of capitalism. The USSR had all sort of mass production of arms, and enough R & D to put the first human into space.

(No, I'm not endorsing state communism; I'm a Zenarchist on good days and a libertarian socialist on others. I have little use for any system where a minority holds power, be it the state directly or a state-backed class of "owners".)

There's been quite a bit of unmoderated dissing of the flag admin over his practice of maintaining logs at all, let alone the very short periods of time he does maintain them for purposes of security against malicious hackers.

It turns out that this practice has provided him the only out he could possibly have for keeping the web service viable. If he had had no IP evidence to relinquish to the Feds on demand (according to prescribed procedure), they would likely resort to the remaining option available to them, viz., confiscate the server.

The fact that the people whose IP addresses were turned over to the Feds, brought this grief on the admin through their abuse of the privilege of being hosted on the server, is a very excellent reason for coöperating with the Feds, moreover.

The point is, if he had not been keeping logs at all, he would have been facing the prospect of losing the entire server along with the chaps who were the source of his troubles. If the Feds are after flag and not the troublemakers, their gambit to provoke resistance from the admin as a pretext for seizing the server, failed utterly. Perhaps they were surprised he'd kept logs, as well. Maybe they were hoping he hadn't. Who knows at this point?

We can assume for the moment till the picture changes, that this is all the Feds are interested in as far as flag goes. Surely they must have bigger fish to fry, but maybe not.

I recommend that those who are genuinely interested, read through the entire thread here.

She still looks like a socialist.

Conservatives like to throw that word "socialist" around. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

Or is Hillary working for a democratic society and economy run to meet the needs of all instead of the profits of a few? For the worker's democratic ownership and/or control of the means of production? For the end of capitalist oppression and exploitation?

It is ALWAYS a result of government mucking things up again with taxes, tariffs, onerous rent-seeking regulations, monopoly franchises, or other abuses of free enterprise.

Ah, knee-jerk libertarian capitalism. Almost as much fun to watch as knee-jerk religious fundamentalism, and based largely on the same idea: the infallibility of some invisible higher power.

The irony is that the capitalism they love so much is completely a product of the state they deride; the artificial property rights (land right, copyrights and patents, et cetera) and the corporations themselves are state creations. If we truly "got government out of the way", the result would not be some capitalist utopia, but libertarian socialism.