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My original citation was to John Gatto's work. You'd said that you thought "the other coward" was fabricating a statement "about [factory] labor 'drying up' quickly". My original post was to provide a resource that confirms "the other coward's" statement.

No. Your source was not even trying to support that statement (about competing capitalists inadvertently drying up the labor pool and being unable to staff their factories profitably):

"I'm generally unfamiliar with the early years of industrialization and factories, but John Gatto does say in his Underground History of American Education [johntaylorgatto.com] that modern factory schools were established to provide workers for industry, and to train free people to become obedient 'consumers'."

It tried to support a subtly different statement, that modern schools "were started" for all kinds of heinous purposes, but NOT as a result of a general conspiracy of corporations. As I pointed out before, the original claim -- that corporations organized through some kind of gentlemen's agreement to pacify generations of otherwise independent-minded youth -- would force us to reject the bulk of anti-corporatist ideology by holding that corporations look 15+ years ahead, and that they use their own children as sacrificial lambs.

Remember, it's not enough to cite reams of sources -- they have to actually support a relevant claim you made.

The sobering truth is that the public school system, in each state, exists because it has phenomenal voter support predicated on all kinds of FUD about homeschooling, declining property values (for those who bought a house JUST to be in a good school district), and discrimination by privately-run schools. It's comforting, but wrong, to believe that it's just the evil rich behind this.

This bit about school being created to provide a labor force for early industrialists is crucial to the whole debate. Because, if it's true, then there is no such thing as a "free market" in America, as most of the market's participants have been mind-fucked without their even realizing it. Without their indoctrination in the government's schools, individuals would make substantially different choices in their lives, and the economy would be totally different...

Extreme overstatement. It merely means that the actors *within the market however free it may be* have different values. Perhaps they would have a higher preference for self-employment. But no proponent of capitalist considers emergent, common self-employment within an unregulated market to be "not capitalism" or "not a free market".

I'd much rather read original sources for your position

I wasn't providing a position; I was providing a reality-check for some extreme statements made by some ACs. As for the claims made here (and confining it to free internet stuff):

Regarding the claims from Carson's work, check out this issue of the JLS, specifically this one, which makes a lot of the same arguments I made here with citations.

For a summary of the environment-related points, Reisman again provides a good summary, starting on page 76 of this. (Huge file, but free.)

Ah, but socialism is totalitarian.

I am now finished with work.

I agree. But some of President Bush's programs seem more classically liberal in nature than following the ideal of "personal responsibility".

Hmm. Equality of opportunity. I found an interesting article that argues not for Equality of Opportunity, but for Freedom of Opportunity. By using the phrase Equality of Opportunity your are assuming that someone (the government, I presume?) will be defining what is "equal".

Even so, I can't just trust a random web site from someone who may be more libertarian than conservative. So, with some reservations, I'll give you the equality of opportunity line as a "conservative value".

And exactly how does that differ from what a "liberal" believes?

OK. But again, is that "conservative value"? That's just basic economics. It is accepted that small business provides most of the jobs in this country. How can that be a "conservative value"?

While there have been economic arguments in favor of tax cuts, I still do not understand how those tax cuts work in balance with huge budget deficits. Under budget deficits, someone has to pay, eventually. And, making our children pay is not a "conservative value".

I would disagree that is a conservative value. Why? here and here. Also, AFAIK, the first President to try to spend his way out of an economic downturn was FDR. Not exactly a conservative icon.

This is smelling like a troll, and I'm just giving the reader fair warning that I'm caught ;-)

Property is a creation of human beings, ultimately of the human mind. If you take someone's handiwork, you deprive them of the physical object; but even more fundamentally, you have appropriated from them the results of their productive efforts and hard-won skill. Intellectual property differs from physical property only in that there is no physical limitation -- there is no object to steal. The skill and effort that goes into the act of creation exists still, however; moreover, in most cases a substantial financial investment is made by the creator.

This is what property rights seeks to protect. The right of the creator of that property to receive full benefit from it. When you "help yourself" to the invention of another, at his expense (his skill, effort, and time), it is stealing.

Try George Reisman for your economics, and Ayn Rand for the philosophical underpinnings.

Regards!

The author's analysis of capitalism made a few major errors that are unfortunately all too common.

First and foremost, capitalism is not founded on "the greatest good for the greatest number". Who is "the greatest number"? What is its "good"? Various political/economic systems have answered with "the People", "the Nation", "the followers of God", or "the Race". In practice, this approach to anything always results in the rights of individuals being trampled by whatever gang happens to be in power at the time. A "group", as such, does not exit--the concept is just an easy way to think about a collection of individuals.

Capitalism is the social system based on the recognition of individual rights, specifically the rights to life, liberty, and property, where all property is privately owned. (Pursuing happiness is, in practice, impossible without these.) Practially speaking, this means that the government acts only to protect its citizens from physical force and its derivatives (e.g. fraud), staying out of the realm of economics. In personal interactions, this means that men must act on the principle of trading the best they can offer with the best that others can offer, which is exactly what the hacker culture does. It is not a "gift culture". People do not get respect simply for giving their work away, but by providing something that other hackers find useful or interesting. (Really, how much "props" do we give to the five thousand authors of open source text editors? I thought so.)

Rather than being antithetical to capitalism, hacker culture is more an exponent of it than most businesses, who clamor for more government intervention to destroy their competitors or make entry into markets virtually impossible. Hacker culture rewards the best--those with intelligence and skill. Dismissing political pull of any sort, hackers insist on trading value for value, which may take the form of respect, money, or a better piece of software. Despite the noise, good hackers are not altruists--they gain a very selfish value from their work: joy. Those who don't, don't remain hackers for very long, or don't get very good at it.

It's time we got past the FUD surrounding capitalism and recognize what it really is--the best system under which to write great software. For references, see capitalism.net, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman, and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand.