Jealousy? Why would I be jealous, I'm in the top 20% of wage earners, I make a comfortable living and can afford the things I like. I don't favor state enforced equality, I think excellence and hard work should be rewarded. It is the scope of the reward I have a problem with, the unfairness of it. No one is worth millions of times what others are worth.
The government doesn't get a 'cut' of everything. Taxes are not a cut taken for the supposed 'risk' of lending money, they are a simple fee for services rendered. If you don't like the value of the service, you are free to shop around: there is a world wide market of styles of governance. That's what you like, right? A free market? That's what you have, then. But what you seem to be demanding is that you get to choose both your location, style of governance, and the amount you must contribute. That is like walking into a store, demanding a product that doesn't exist, and setting your own price.
If there were no rich people, the poor wouldn't be poor anymore. People could fund their own projects. Surplus money does not make one 'rich.' Having thousands or millions of times the property and control that other people have makes one rich. We can decide through democracy what projects we want to fund, and we can own and manage such projects democratically. Then everyone benefits, not just the person with the money to invest. We, the people, invest our labor and we reap the rewards.
It is unfair to profit from the work of others. The concept of 'risking' one's stored labor is silly, stored labor is an abstract concept created through shared agreements. One person, on their own, without a society, would have no real way of storing their labor in an abstract, portable, trade-able form. So it is naturally up to a group decision, not an individual decision, how we value stored labor, how it can be used, and who should benefit. Everyone should be entitled to the direct fruits of their labor. But not the fruits of their stored labor, as it is only through society that they can store it in the first place.
Funny thing that. Why do you suppose the rich support a system where wages need to be paid by them? Did they grow the food bought with those wages? No. Did they build the houses bought with those wages? No. Yet they take a cut of every transaction, the buying and the selling.
You've illustrated the problem with capitalism quite well: no one can do anything significant without capital, therefore, no one can do anything without the permission of a capitalist. The capitalists get much more control over the valuation of things than the laborers who create the things do. Funny that they value their own risking of stored labor (money) over the contribution of actual labor. Yet they are never the ones to go hungry when things fall apart, so what are they risking, really? The workers sure go hungry when the factory closes because the capitalist can no longer make money with it, but the capitalist does not suffer the same fate.
So, "If you don't work for me, I'll prevent you from using MY natural resources and you will starve" is coercion, backed up by the threat of force: "Stop eating the apples that grow naturally on MY land or I'll kill you!"
Property ownership and exclusion of others from using natural resources is explicitly making others worse off than they were without property ownership and exclusion from natural resources.
It's a clear, simple idea that anyone should be able to understand.
If we can agree on that, everything else is just working out the details. You may be surprised at how similarly we think. It's the anarchists curse: we tend to be harder on other anarchists who are almost, but not quite, like us. But to me, the distinctions between individualist and social anarchism boil down to ownership of natural resources, and the source of rights. As we agree on that fundamental, I think we probably agree on far more than you suppose.
Government is just a collection of individuals. Do individuals have the right to own land? Do corporations have the right to kick you off their property? Who gets to decide what 'harm' is, anyway? What if you pollute? Or what if you just build something that ruins my view? You've harmed me (according to me.)
The way I see it, no one person should have the right to keep others from using natural resources, and national borders are just as unjust as other property borders. But we don't live in my world, we live in the land of the resource owners, and if that is the world we live in, then everyone has to play by the same rules.
No land ownership for certain groups of individuals like governments, but ownership for other groups like families and corporations, is unfair and hypocritical.
How about this then? The ability to store labor in a portable form is a function of society, not the individual. Therefore, labor valuation and storage fees are also a function of society, not the individual.
Without capitalist fat cats, we would still have jobs, and things would still get done. There is no real reason why someone rich should get a cut of everything that gets done by society.
Too broad. Social anarchism is a socialist philosophy of ownership. It says nothing about the way markets should work. Individualist anarchy, on the other hand, is NOT a socialist philosophy, and takes a strong stand for individual ownership rights.
Why do you think being born in a place gives you the right to dictate to others how they should run the place? If you are free to leave and find something better, there is no coercion. I mean, if you go to a store, and they don't have what you want at the price you want, do you feel entitled to demand it from them, or do you shop around for another store that delivers the value you want? How can government be coercive if the store is not coercive? If the government or the store does not provide what you want, go someplace else. At least with a democratic government, you have the right to petition the government for what you want by voting. With a free market system, you have no choice: you get the value offered to you or you leave. I hate the double standard people have around governments and free markets.
Yes, it is. Look at the word 'anarchy.' Does it mean 'no government?' No, it means, 'no rulers.' Our collective action in the USA is entirely voluntary. If you don't like it, you can leave and shop around for something better. What you don't get to do is dictate to the rest of us how we want to run this country, based on some idea that you are being 'coerced.' You aren't, that is simply the selfish man's excuse for his desire to obtain a free ride at our expense.
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.
'Provide work for others' is a clever way of saying, 'profit off of the labor of others.' You make it sound as though, before capitalism, nothing ever got done.
What YOU don't understand is that many small government advocates DO want to do away with all government, especially regulation of business and all social programs.
America is not necessarily the best at anything, your unsourced claims to the contrary hold no water. what you are doing is simply rah-rah patriotic bullshit boosterism.
If you don't like the socialism that we the people decide to enact in America, you are free to leave and go to someplace without it. Might I suggest Somalia? It is the very definition of 'small government' and aptly illustrates what 'small government' advocates really hope to achieve: the freedom to be gun toting, slave owning warlords, accountable to no one.
Only if you deny the fact that everything DOES affect everything. Especially owning non man made things, like natural resources. The coercion comes about because non-owners have no stake in respecting the owning classes claims to ownership of natural resources. They are not a party to property rights agreements that only impact owners. But owners band together to use force to uphold their so-called rights against those who are not a party to the ownership contracts.
There are no natural rights. Without society, there is only power. Rights derived from agreements between individuals, nothing else. They are simply those things we all agree to protect for each other.
Any attempts to describe 'natural rights' are simply an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy designed to get non-owners to uphold ownership rights they do not benefit from.
No. That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying, they don't know whether you are worth $100,000 or $50,000, so they have to treat you as if you are worth $50,000, and so does everyone else who is hiring. It isn't one particular employer, it is a systematic devaluing of labor due to an imbalance of information. You may want to look up a famous old paper on economics entitled, "The Market For Lemons."
We're on the same page as to what capitalists do...
Who is forcing you to join anything? If you don't like our system, no one is stopping you from leaving. You may complain that there is no place you can go, but this is untrue. Take Somalia, for instance, no big bad government there! It is a libertarian utopia in action.
Perhaps you think you deserve a better choice than any the world-wide free market in governance offers? Then create one.
The problem I see with operating socialist collectives in a free market system is that of free riders. Those hierarchical corporations reap the benefits of the socialist programs without contributing to them. Having no poor, desperate humans around is a positive externality that the free market is incapable of compensating the providers for.
Welcome to Slashdot, home of bitter libertarians. As they don't have the wits to debate you, they mod you troll and hope nobody reads your post. Cowardly, domineering, and lacking in common sense, they are like libertarians everywhere.
Some governments may be that way, but only if the citizens let them. Even if all governments were that way, doing away with governments would only let the corporations rule openly in their place.
In every historical case, lack of collective action has lead to oppression of the working class by the owning class. What choices does a poor, non-owning class person actually have in a purely free market system? There are significant barriers to keep the poor from acquiring enough resources to become independent from the major resource holders. And as I mentioned, the labor market systematically undervalues labor. When all resources are owned, a non-owner has no way of being productive without an owner's consent. The owning class then owns the labor of that person. Slavery is the end result of anarcho-capitalism.
There are situations where the free market works much better than government currently does. It fails where there are significant externalities, imbalance of information, or the good/service is a natural monopoly.
Economic coercion is force. Stored labor's only use is to coerce others to give their labor to you. When the choice is, 'work for me (or someone else rich like me) or starve,' then that is coercion. In an anarcho-capitalist system, non-owners are at the mercy of resource owners.
The labor market suffers from a fundamental free market flaw, imbalance of information. A prospective employer knows less about the true value a potential worker brings to the endeavor than that worker does. Therefore, all potential employers must assume that each worker is potentially lying about their value, and must undervalue that worker's potential contribution, to make up for all the dishonest workers. A free market will never value labor fairly in relation to capital.
Is there any level at which collective action (otherwise known as 'government') is a good thing? What is wrong with city jobs? Would you have the private sector take over all functions of government, on all levels? I would think, at the very least you would be in favor of a public police force to protect your property. No matter how many guns you have, someone has more, and is more willing to use them than you are. Fire departments are nice, too. As are public roads. In fact, I can't think of many things that city governments currently do that the private sector could do better. The private sector exists to give you as little value for your dollar as you can be convinced to accept. The government is an agent working on your behalf.
Well, those private conspiracies have the advantage over regular folks. They are exactly the kind of group that has a greater ability to collect and act on information than the average individual. The question is, without the notion of privacy, what protects the individual from such groups?
The question then becomes the opposite, not 'how do we ensure that powerful groups don't collect and misuse information about individuals,' but, 'how do we ensure individuals have access to information about powerful groups?' The real problem is one of access to information. Without any sort of regulation, the imbalance remains: individuals have limited power to gather and act on information. How do we ensure that all individuals know when groups are gathering information to use against them? Just abolishing privacy will not correct the imbalance, so what is your solution?
Privacy is a stopgap measure for preventing oppression. When some people have greater access to information and ability to act on it than others, they have an unfair advantage. The right to privacy is an attempt to combat this unfairness. If everyone had equal access to information, privacy would be unnecessary, because no on could use information against you unfairly without the attempt being known. The real problem with the notion of privacy is that it requires people to give up their natural ability to sense their own environment for a negotiated right not to have their information used against them.
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Jealousy? Why would I be jealous, I'm in the top 20% of wage earners, I make a comfortable living and can afford the things I like. I don't favor state enforced equality, I think excellence and hard work should be rewarded. It is the scope of the reward I have a problem with, the unfairness of it. No one is worth millions of times what others are worth.
The government doesn't get a 'cut' of everything. Taxes are not a cut taken for the supposed 'risk' of lending money, they are a simple fee for services rendered. If you don't like the value of the service, you are free to shop around: there is a world wide market of styles of governance. That's what you like, right? A free market? That's what you have, then. But what you seem to be demanding is that you get to choose both your location, style of governance, and the amount you must contribute. That is like walking into a store, demanding a product that doesn't exist, and setting your own price.
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
If there were no rich people, the poor wouldn't be poor anymore. People could fund their own projects. Surplus money does not make one 'rich.' Having thousands or millions of times the property and control that other people have makes one rich. We can decide through democracy what projects we want to fund, and we can own and manage such projects democratically. Then everyone benefits, not just the person with the money to invest. We, the people, invest our labor and we reap the rewards.
It is unfair to profit from the work of others. The concept of 'risking' one's stored labor is silly, stored labor is an abstract concept created through shared agreements. One person, on their own, without a society, would have no real way of storing their labor in an abstract, portable, trade-able form. So it is naturally up to a group decision, not an individual decision, how we value stored labor, how it can be used, and who should benefit. Everyone should be entitled to the direct fruits of their labor. But not the fruits of their stored labor, as it is only through society that they can store it in the first place.
Funny thing that. Why do you suppose the rich support a system where wages need to be paid by them? Did they grow the food bought with those wages? No. Did they build the houses bought with those wages? No. Yet they take a cut of every transaction, the buying and the selling.
You've illustrated the problem with capitalism quite well: no one can do anything significant without capital, therefore, no one can do anything without the permission of a capitalist. The capitalists get much more control over the valuation of things than the laborers who create the things do. Funny that they value their own risking of stored labor (money) over the contribution of actual labor. Yet they are never the ones to go hungry when things fall apart, so what are they risking, really? The workers sure go hungry when the factory closes because the capitalist can no longer make money with it, but the capitalist does not suffer the same fate.
So, "If you don't work for me, I'll prevent you from using MY natural resources and you will starve" is coercion, backed up by the threat of force: "Stop eating the apples that grow naturally on MY land or I'll kill you!"
Property ownership and exclusion of others from using natural resources is explicitly making others worse off than they were without property ownership and exclusion from natural resources.
It's a clear, simple idea that anyone should be able to understand.
If we can agree on that, everything else is just working out the details. You may be surprised at how similarly we think. It's the anarchists curse: we tend to be harder on other anarchists who are almost, but not quite, like us. But to me, the distinctions between individualist and social anarchism boil down to ownership of natural resources, and the source of rights. As we agree on that fundamental, I think we probably agree on far more than you suppose.
Government is just a collection of individuals. Do individuals have the right to own land? Do corporations have the right to kick you off their property? Who gets to decide what 'harm' is, anyway? What if you pollute? Or what if you just build something that ruins my view? You've harmed me (according to me.)
The way I see it, no one person should have the right to keep others from using natural resources, and national borders are just as unjust as other property borders. But we don't live in my world, we live in the land of the resource owners, and if that is the world we live in, then everyone has to play by the same rules.
No land ownership for certain groups of individuals like governments, but ownership for other groups like families and corporations, is unfair and hypocritical.
How about this then? The ability to store labor in a portable form is a function of society, not the individual. Therefore, labor valuation and storage fees are also a function of society, not the individual.
Without capitalist fat cats, we would still have jobs, and things would still get done. There is no real reason why someone rich should get a cut of everything that gets done by society.
Too broad. Social anarchism is a socialist philosophy of ownership. It says nothing about the way markets should work. Individualist anarchy, on the other hand, is NOT a socialist philosophy, and takes a strong stand for individual ownership rights.
Why do you think being born in a place gives you the right to dictate to others how they should run the place? If you are free to leave and find something better, there is no coercion. I mean, if you go to a store, and they don't have what you want at the price you want, do you feel entitled to demand it from them, or do you shop around for another store that delivers the value you want? How can government be coercive if the store is not coercive? If the government or the store does not provide what you want, go someplace else. At least with a democratic government, you have the right to petition the government for what you want by voting. With a free market system, you have no choice: you get the value offered to you or you leave. I hate the double standard people have around governments and free markets.
Yes, it is. Look at the word 'anarchy.' Does it mean 'no government?' No, it means, 'no rulers.' Our collective action in the USA is entirely voluntary. If you don't like it, you can leave and shop around for something better. What you don't get to do is dictate to the rest of us how we want to run this country, based on some idea that you are being 'coerced.' You aren't, that is simply the selfish man's excuse for his desire to obtain a free ride at our expense.
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.
'Provide work for others' is a clever way of saying, 'profit off of the labor of others.' You make it sound as though, before capitalism, nothing ever got done.
What YOU don't understand is that many small government advocates DO want to do away with all government, especially regulation of business and all social programs.
America is not necessarily the best at anything, your unsourced claims to the contrary hold no water. what you are doing is simply rah-rah patriotic bullshit boosterism.
If you don't like the socialism that we the people decide to enact in America, you are free to leave and go to someplace without it. Might I suggest Somalia? It is the very definition of 'small government' and aptly illustrates what 'small government' advocates really hope to achieve: the freedom to be gun toting, slave owning warlords, accountable to no one.
Only if you deny the fact that everything DOES affect everything. Especially owning non man made things, like natural resources. The coercion comes about because non-owners have no stake in respecting the owning classes claims to ownership of natural resources. They are not a party to property rights agreements that only impact owners. But owners band together to use force to uphold their so-called rights against those who are not a party to the ownership contracts.
There are no natural rights. Without society, there is only power. Rights derived from agreements between individuals, nothing else. They are simply those things we all agree to protect for each other.
Any attempts to describe 'natural rights' are simply an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy designed to get non-owners to uphold ownership rights they do not benefit from.
No. That is not what I am saying at all. I am saying, they don't know whether you are worth $100,000 or $50,000, so they have to treat you as if you are worth $50,000, and so does everyone else who is hiring. It isn't one particular employer, it is a systematic devaluing of labor due to an imbalance of information. You may want to look up a famous old paper on economics entitled, "The Market For Lemons."
We're on the same page as to what capitalists do...
Really? Got any data to back up your assertion? I can say for a fact, as a state employee, that isn't true where I work!
Who is forcing you to join anything? If you don't like our system, no one is stopping you from leaving. You may complain that there is no place you can go, but this is untrue. Take Somalia, for instance, no big bad government there! It is a libertarian utopia in action.
Perhaps you think you deserve a better choice than any the world-wide free market in governance offers? Then create one.
The problem I see with operating socialist collectives in a free market system is that of free riders. Those hierarchical corporations reap the benefits of the socialist programs without contributing to them. Having no poor, desperate humans around is a positive externality that the free market is incapable of compensating the providers for.
Welcome to Slashdot, home of bitter libertarians. As they don't have the wits to debate you, they mod you troll and hope nobody reads your post. Cowardly, domineering, and lacking in common sense, they are like libertarians everywhere.
Some governments may be that way, but only if the citizens let them. Even if all governments were that way, doing away with governments would only let the corporations rule openly in their place.
In every historical case, lack of collective action has lead to oppression of the working class by the owning class. What choices does a poor, non-owning class person actually have in a purely free market system? There are significant barriers to keep the poor from acquiring enough resources to become independent from the major resource holders. And as I mentioned, the labor market systematically undervalues labor. When all resources are owned, a non-owner has no way of being productive without an owner's consent. The owning class then owns the labor of that person. Slavery is the end result of anarcho-capitalism.
There are situations where the free market works much better than government currently does. It fails where there are significant externalities, imbalance of information, or the good/service is a natural monopoly.
Do you have any data to back up your fire department efficiency anecdote?
The police force protects your property by their existence. Potential criminals know there will likely be consequences, and this deters crime.
Economic coercion is force. Stored labor's only use is to coerce others to give their labor to you. When the choice is, 'work for me (or someone else rich like me) or starve,' then that is coercion. In an anarcho-capitalist system, non-owners are at the mercy of resource owners.
The labor market suffers from a fundamental free market flaw, imbalance of information. A prospective employer knows less about the true value a potential worker brings to the endeavor than that worker does. Therefore, all potential employers must assume that each worker is potentially lying about their value, and must undervalue that worker's potential contribution, to make up for all the dishonest workers. A free market will never value labor fairly in relation to capital.
Is there any level at which collective action (otherwise known as 'government') is a good thing? What is wrong with city jobs? Would you have the private sector take over all functions of government, on all levels? I would think, at the very least you would be in favor of a public police force to protect your property. No matter how many guns you have, someone has more, and is more willing to use them than you are. Fire departments are nice, too. As are public roads. In fact, I can't think of many things that city governments currently do that the private sector could do better. The private sector exists to give you as little value for your dollar as you can be convinced to accept. The government is an agent working on your behalf.
Well, those private conspiracies have the advantage over regular folks. They are exactly the kind of group that has a greater ability to collect and act on information than the average individual. The question is, without the notion of privacy, what protects the individual from such groups?
The question then becomes the opposite, not 'how do we ensure that powerful groups don't collect and misuse information about individuals,' but, 'how do we ensure individuals have access to information about powerful groups?' The real problem is one of access to information. Without any sort of regulation, the imbalance remains: individuals have limited power to gather and act on information. How do we ensure that all individuals know when groups are gathering information to use against them? Just abolishing privacy will not correct the imbalance, so what is your solution?
Privacy is a stopgap measure for preventing oppression. When some people have greater access to information and ability to act on it than others, they have an unfair advantage. The right to privacy is an attempt to combat this unfairness. If everyone had equal access to information, privacy would be unnecessary, because no on could use information against you unfairly without the attempt being known. The real problem with the notion of privacy is that it requires people to give up their natural ability to sense their own environment for a negotiated right not to have their information used against them.