Everyone is both a seller and a buyer, and therefore should desire a mechanism that arrives at a fair price, which the free market does not. And I am not talking about MY definition of Anarchy, I am talking about THE definition of anarchy, that is, the things that all anarchists have in common, not what my branch of anarchy is all about. And it's not communism, though it's close. Anarcho-syndicalists believe in private property, just not individual control of natural resources.
What made you think I'm against "companies?" You are reading too much of your anti-commie paranoid fantasies into what I write. The free market has a place, it works well where it works. It just doesn't work everywhere. For instance, any sector with low barriers to entry and healthy competition should have as little regulation as possible. Only regulate the failure cases, like the natural monopolies of utilities, or the externality of pollution.
Look at all the privatization of socialist or communist countries in the last two decades. What worked, and what didn't? Privatizing factories, and especially commodity production, increased efficiency overall. But privatization of utilities decreased it. The free market works for some things, but not for others.
We all stand to gain by using the right tools for the job. Libertarians see everything as an economic nail, because all they have is the hammer of the free market. They dislike government because they do not have the tools to govern.
Unfortunately for you, science is on my side. And you don't understand what I'm saying at all. Money is an extrinsic motivation, but it is a motivation. The studies show that money does not add to intrinsic motivation, it replaces it. And most extrinsic economic motivation. Here is a link to a neutral-to-negative critique of Motivation Theory to get you up to speed and give you a few actual, you know, educated arguments against it. Sigh.
With government regulations and mandated transparency, companies couldn't lie as easily as they do now. And if they did, we could more easily stop them and punish them. Besides, who said anything about mandating ONE company? People use straw man arguments when they can't think up real ones.
Oh christ. I am a long time anarcho-syndicalist, and you are a fellow who doesn't know what libertarian OR anarchist means. Libertarians are anarchists. Specifically individualist anarchists. 'Anarchy' doesn't mean what you think it means. It means, 'no tyrant' not 'no government.' Please, go read some basic introductions to anarchy.
Libertarians do not want ANY government regulation. US Libertarians, that is. In the rest of the world, libertarian is just a synonym for anarchist. In America, it means a member of the Libertarian party.
When the market is guaranteed to fail, you need regulation or democratic control.
Socialist utopia provides better choices by removing the incentive to lie about choices. If you aren't trying to prop up crappy products and business practices in order to make a buck, you will get better choices.
The $10 for sex was just an example. There are plenty more. For instance, my brother is an artist, but he hates making art now that he works for an ad agency doing it for money. The basic premise is that, once you offer money for something, it becomes all about the money and any original reasons you may have had for doing it become moot.
Prove that competition makes people want to do better. If that were true, companies would internally organize as multiply redundant departments competing against each other. They don't.
Five and six are similar, but not identical. The work alluded to in five is not necessarily research, but may also refer to economies of scale that are not achieved in a competitive market.
So, you admit competitive free markets aren't as efficient as dictatorships. Therefore, the government should dictate to companies what they should do. A democracy of the people can still be a dictator to corporations.
The flea market is a great example of market failure. Few sellers gets a truly fair price because of unbalanced market forces. Specifically, information asymmetry. Sellers know more about the real quality of items than buyers do, therefore, buyers must systematically undervalue the merchandise to protect themselves from dishonest buyers, resulting in lower prices across the board, even for honest sellers.
Mmm, ad hominems ARE fun! I love trolling libertarians. Not even socialists are as self righteous and uptight. Religious fundamentalists come close. The only people who are more self righteous and uptight are Apple fanboys. If I ever get a chance to troll a religious fundamentalist libertarian who loves Apple, my life will be complete.
First, the free market has well known failure modes: natural monopoly, where the marginal cost of entry into the market increases dramatically after the initial entry. Roads, sewers, electric and phone lines are a great example. Information asymmetry is another, and externalities are the third.
Second, money is power, and power can be used to oppress. A free market is a similar choice mechanism to a democracy, except that in a free market, it is one dollar, one vote. The more money you have, the more you can use your money to change the parameters of the market.
Third, choice. A free market does not provide real choices. It provides the illusion of choice. And where it does provide real choice, it seeks to hide the real differences in those choices, making picking the better item or service difficult.
Fourth, Destruction of intrinsic motivations. A competitive market destroys intrinsic motivation to do something. For instance, go to a bar and ask all the women if they will sleep with you. You may get lucky. Now, same thing, except offer to throw in ten dollars. You will strike out every time, because you have destroyed intrinsic motivations.
Fifth, duplication of effort. A competitive market requires duplication of effort where a socialist system does not. Each company must repeat the efforts of all other companies in a given market, instead of sharing effort.
Sixth, closed communication channels. In a competitive market, innovations aren't shared as freely as they could be in a socialist system, because that would be giving away advantage.
Seventh, waste and mismanagement. A competitive market develops its own special kinds of parasites, who add nothing of value to society yet make a lot of money. Advertisers, for instance. Or the insurance industry. These people are professional manipulators, con artists, gamblers and frauds, yet they are richly rewarded in a capitalist system.
Eight, real world examples. No company is set up internally as a free market system. None. If the free market is so great, why don't companies organize themselves that way internally?
There's plenty more where that came from, but lets see if you can refute even one of these points before I bring out the big guns.
If they can't refute your arguments, they will try to stop you from arguing. Most anti-libertarian arguments on Slashdot get modded down. Libertarians aren't smart enough or educated enough to argue their case, so they mod you down in the hopes that no one sees how badly their philosophy fails. Most libertarians are only capable of parroting back other people's arguments, so when you present them with an argument they haven't seen before, they don't know what to do. I think libertarian indoctrination must cause brain damage, because very few libertarians can actually think for themselves.
Government regulation of markets is essential. Even Adam Smith knew that markets need regulation to stay free. Without regulations, markets quickly devolve into oligopolies.
From the first article: "In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers."
Okay, so the BANKS were putting the pressure on Fannie Mae to make more sub-prime loans. Weird. Why would the BANKS do that?
All the GOVERNMENT did was to require banks to use the same standards for everybody. Government didn't set the standards, they just required that the standards were the same for everyone. Reading comprehension FAIL on your part.
You may have to leave your home, or learn another skill to get another job. Weak argument, doesn't address the main point.
Those riots were back in 2005. We've had worse in America.
You are SO wrong about the Pinkertons, and labor history. I've studied labor history extensively. I'd like some citations, please, because I don't know WHAT you are talking about.
Way to play semantics. Social democracy is exactly what I've been talking about all along. What kind of 'socialism' have you been talking about?
Libertarians can not claim trading as their own invention, sorry!
Buddha was once asked a series of question by a respected holy man of another religion, such as 'Is there a God,' 'Is there an immortal individual soul,' 'what happens after we die,' and so forth. He wouldn't answer, because the answers are utterly unimportant to Buddhist philosophy.
Later Buddhist thinkers attempted to integrate the well accepted Hindu idea of reincarnation into Buddhism. To do so, they expressed it as a psychological process. Sense impressions happen all the time, but do not usually pass the 'gate' into consciousness, as they are not noteworthy. When they do pass the gate, they go through a series of transformations. These transformations are based on 'past life karma.' Your past life is just your personal past, your past life karma is the sum of the value judgments you have placed on your experience. Your past life karma determines the value judgment, if any, you place on this moment. That value judgment is your current life karma. Your current life karma is added to your past life karma to determine what you are in your future life. You can step off this wheel of reincarnation by ceasing to make value judgments. By letting go of all judgment of the present moment, you are not creating the mental formations that cause you to be attached (drawn towards or repulsed from) things or thoughts. You are at peace, and free. This is known as 'enlightenment.'
Self is a sense, like the sense of smell. When your model of the world needs a reference point, it consults the sense of self. Consider your life to be a movie. Movies have a sound track recorded next to the visual track. Our life-movie has many other tracks, such as smell and touch. The sense of self is simply one of them. 'You' are not the man watching and directing the movie of your life. There is nobody watching and directing the movie of your life. 'Watching and directing' are tracks in the movie, not separate from it.
So "self awareness" is simply a feedback loop integrating other sense awareness. It is not a separate thing, it is a process. Your soul is in your brain, just like love and honesty. But you could pick apart your brain, down to the tiniest molecule, and you would never find anything resembling a soul, or love, or honesty. They are not parts of the brain, but emergent functions of the whole brain in operation.
Consent is vital. I really am an anarchist that way. I feel that governance should be consensual, with most matters handled at a local level. Above that, I feel that local areas should be free to buy into one or more plans, each administered by a separate group. For instance, if citizens feel free trade is important, they could join a group that promotes and monitors such trade. If they felt that everybody should have access to health care, they could join a group that promotes and monitors that. Part of joining such a group might entail not trading with countries that do not support such rights. And all polities should be free not only to join larger groups working towards their aims, but to leave groups that no longer do.
The problem I have with the free market is that in some instances, it can become non-consensual. That is, if you agree that 'work for what we'll pay you or starve to death' is non-consensual. Money is power, and power can be used to oppress.
The latter, of course. Because of several issues. The rich can use financial methods to keep the poor under control. In an entirely free market based solution, what would keep the rich, that is the 10% who own 90% of the world's resources, from forming a labor monopsony? There is also the problem of information imbalance. Employees will always know more than prospective employers about their actual value to the company. Therefore, employers must assume the potential employee is overstating their value, and they will systematically undervalue labor. -- The free market needs regulation in order to remain free. Adam Smith himself said that. He also said, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." Which is a fairly cogent argument against libertarianism. -- Good points about the corner cases, and the difference between political and economic systems. The main difference that I see is that in politics, leveraging your power is much more difficult. In economics (which is NOT a hard science!) the more money you have, the more power you have, which makes more money in an out of control positive feedback loop. There are no real checks and balances in a free market.
Yes, this is an argument that I like to use with free market radicals, hoping they will make the counter-argument you just did. It shows the inherent oppression in any free market system, for those without money. I mean, you DO recognize that your counter-argument applies equally to a free market as it does to governments, right?
Does your argument against people shopping around for a better country also apply to shopping around for a better job? If so, then by your argument, the labor market is absolutely unfair. If not, why not?
France is not on the edge of a social explosion. When was the last time you were there? I was there last summer, and I don't know what you are talking about. You are just making things up!
The reason you don't see the poor fighting the rich in highly capitalist societies is, surprise, surprise, the rich make use of the police and armed services we all pay for to prevent that.
An organized system of cooperating individuals IS a government. What else is government besides that?
You make a bunch of assertions without backing them up, claiming that individuals will always be able to protect themselves, and that private security forces would work. I suggest you read more history. Bad guys work in teams, and an individual, even with guns, is just screwed. And private security forces are ALWAYS used for oppression. Always. Look up the history of the Pinkertons.
While you are at it, look up how the Scandinavian countries are governed, and tell me how they are failing. You may also want to look up the Mondragon Collective, a huge, industrialized cooperative society in Spain that does socialism right, right in the middle of capitalism. Almost all countries that rate highest in citizen happiness are socialist.
In short, what arguments you have managed to make are stale and cliched libertarian claptrap that has been shown to be spun out of pure fantasy time and time again. Libertarianism works great in theory, but because you guys never manage to actually, you know, DO anything in the real world, your theories are never tested. When they are proven by actual situations both historical and present day to be absolutely unworkable, you guys always claim that the situation simply wasn't libertarian enough, and had this that or the other thing been different, it would have worked. Funny how it never, ever does, though.
In the state of nature, there are no rights, only power. You, as an individual, do not have the power to hold your land against a group that would take it. If you decide to hold land individually, the rest of humanity has no reason to agree with you. Well, perhaps they do but you haven't said why yet.
Drinking water from a river is not theft. You are using a resource, not claiming it. Same for catching fish. It is precisely because everything anyone does in some way impacts everyone else that collective decision making is the only fair and equitable method we have.
In any case, this discussion is getting bogged down in definition. I had hoped to show that this kind of reasoning is specious. It simply doesn't matter. You define rights one way, I define them another. What matters is which definition benefits the greatest number, because the only way that either of our definitions has meaning is when they are agreed to by individuals that can see the benefit of agreement.
So, one last time, I ask you. What benefit do the non-owners gain by agreeing with your definition of ownership? I have shown the dangers they face by agreeing, the danger of tyranny from the owning class. My definition of property benefits more people than yours does, and that is why people should agree to it and uphold my definition over yours.
I your moon example, if I have the power to build a spaceship, fly to the moon, and kick you off it, what would stop me? You simply took something, and now I am taking it from you. Your claim to property rights is simply a bunch of noise. Oh, I'll let you keep everything you made, it would be unfair of me to take it. But you have to remove it from my moon. Without a society backing up your claims, they are only as meaningful as your ability to enforce them. Again, why should I agree to uphold your claims?
You probably think rights derive from a person's 'ownership' of themselves. But those are just words, why should I agree? What benefit to all individuals, not just the property owning minority, does your philosophy possess?
You can't just claim that everyone should follow your code because of some made up moral authority. You have to show the benefit, which you have completely failed to even attempt to do. You are still arguing definitions, hoping to get people to agree with you without saying what's in it for them.
Based on your example, it seems the original owners, or one presumes their descendants, should get back all the land that was stolen from them, and the original thieves, or their descendants, should pay the current owners. That sounds neither fair nor achievable.
My argument is that all human dominion over land was originally collective, and that all useful land in the world was used by collectives before it was taken by individuals. Therefore, all land properly belongs to collectives and was simply stolen by individuals.
Finally, let me just add that I respect you and your rhetorical skills, and thank you for this conversation so far. We may disagree on some things, but by discussing those disagreements, we improve our ideas and theories. At least in theory.
A car is a thing produced entirely from the labor of individuals. Land is not. You have a right to things you produce, like a car, including the rght to sell them. You have no right to exclude me from land. You have a right to the products of your labor, certainly. But you must have land to labor on, and that land could be used by all before you took it. Whether it was improved or not is immaterial. All land on the planet was being used collectively for hunting and gathering and whatnot before individuals took it.
By what authority was land being used collectively taken and improved by individuals? You provide no reasons. You simply say, "Well, wasn't the improvement of the land worth it?" No. Because the land could be improved by collective ownership and control just as much as by individual ownership. Remember, the Tragedy of the Commons does not apply to collectively managed resources, only to unmanaged ones.
I would never say, "We are taking your harvest." That is the product of your labor. The land is not. The improvements to the land are, sure. But they are their illegally. Say you bought a stolen bike. Paid for it, even bought new tires. The original owner sees that you have it and says, "Hey! That's my bike!" And you say, "No, I bought it and I paid for these tires, so that makes it mine." Who should retain ownership of the bike?
Oh no. You quoted Rand. Ayn Rand is bubble gum philosophy. She is perhaps the wordiest, most boring and unoriginal author I've ever read. Ugh. She is totally ripping off Proudhon here.
Real property is land and natural resources. Personal property is things. Ownership of real property is freedom for the one who owns it, and theft from those who don't own any. This is because, before someone claimed the land or resource, everyone could use it.
If ownership of property derives from work done on it, then no one can own property because they do not own it before they work it. By working the property and claiming ownership, they are denying everyone on the planet the use of something they could have used before. That is theft.
How can someone who does not own property obtain ownership of said property when all property is owned already? They must work for an owner. Owners collude to ensure that workers have a difficult time acquiring the wealth to purchase property. Therefore, the owners always have a source of cheap labor, the non owning class.
Why should the non owning class respect the owning class' claim to property? All of society boils down to contract, individuals agreeing to something in exchange for something. The owning class take something away from the non-owning class when they claim property. What does the non-owning class get in return that they should respect that claim? The theoretical ability to own property themselves? The potential opportunity to become a part of the owning class and oppress non owners?
Property is the tyranny of the owners over the non owners. Property is the control of the means of production by a small group. They decide who eats and who doesn't, and if you don't own property and you want to eat, you do what the owners tell you.
Have you ever read 'Property is Theft!' or anything else by Proudhon? Maybe you should. Have you ever read Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations?' Here's a quote of his that I like: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
I don't advocate a complete lack of property rights. I think people should own and control natural resources and the means of production collectively. But houses, clothes, personal effects, things like that should be privately owned.
I leave you with several other Proudhon quotes in the hopes they will inspire you to read his works. I don't think you understand the argument being presented against property. You can neither agree with it nor refute it if you don't understand it.
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, â" they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
And another quote, clarifying his idea that property is theft.
In my first memorandum, in a frontal assault upon the established order, I said things like, Property is theft! The intention was to lodge a protest, to highlight, so to speak, the inanity of our institutions. At the time, that was my sole concern. Also, in the memorandum in which I demonstrated that startling proposition using simple arithmetic, I took care to speak out against any communist conclusion. In the System of Economic Contradictions, having recalled and confirmed my initial formula, I added another quite contrary one rooted in considerations of quite another order â" a formula that could neither destroy the first proposition nor be demolished by it: Property is freedom. [...] In respect of property, as of all economic factors, harm and abuse cannot be dissevered from the good, any more than debit can from asset in double-entry book-keeping. The one necessarily spawns the other. To seek to do away with the abuses of property, is to destroy the thing itself; just as the striking of a debit from an account is tantamount to striking it from the credit record.
How can you claim my arguments are tires? You didn't read even my whole post, or you would know that we agree on what anarchy is. If you care, we actually agree on quite a bit. I give individualist anarchists a hard time because I am a social anarchist and I think strong property rights are a sure recipe for tyranny. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the father of anarchy, have both said the same thing.
Even social anarchy concedes all power back to the individual, as shown by my Rainbow Gathering example. I pro anarchy, I am just not pro property rights. As Proudhon, (you know, the fellow who coined the term 'anarchist') wrote, 'Property is Theft!'
Anarchy does not require a complete moral society. It simply requires that all participants agree to attempt to live up to a set of moral ideals. What it requires is a society where individuals are educated in their own best interests. Anarchy does not work because people are good (though most are). People are good because being good is an effective strategy, and anarchy works because it is an effective strategy.
Some degree of control, eh? What about Antarctica, or the middle of the Amazon rainforest. There are plenty of islands for sale as well, in Vanuatu, the Seychelles, and plenty of other places. But that really doesn't matter. Your country offered you a deal. If you don't like the deal you were offered, shop around and find a better one. The fact that the deal you desire is not available in the world free market of governance does not mean that the deal your country offers is coercive.
You don't really want to go homestead someplace. Which is why places like desert islands, the Antarctic, and the middle of a rainforest don't appeal to you. You want all the benefits of society without paying for them. Luckily, we have laws and police to keep thieves from stealing our stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone is both a seller and a buyer, and therefore should desire a mechanism that arrives at a fair price, which the free market does not. And I am not talking about MY definition of Anarchy, I am talking about THE definition of anarchy, that is, the things that all anarchists have in common, not what my branch of anarchy is all about. And it's not communism, though it's close. Anarcho-syndicalists believe in private property, just not individual control of natural resources.
What made you think I'm against "companies?" You are reading too much of your anti-commie paranoid fantasies into what I write. The free market has a place, it works well where it works. It just doesn't work everywhere. For instance, any sector with low barriers to entry and healthy competition should have as little regulation as possible. Only regulate the failure cases, like the natural monopolies of utilities, or the externality of pollution.
Look at all the privatization of socialist or communist countries in the last two decades. What worked, and what didn't? Privatizing factories, and especially commodity production, increased efficiency overall. But privatization of utilities decreased it. The free market works for some things, but not for others.
We all stand to gain by using the right tools for the job. Libertarians see everything as an economic nail, because all they have is the hammer of the free market. They dislike government because they do not have the tools to govern.
Unfortunately for you, science is on my side. And you don't understand what I'm saying at all. Money is an extrinsic motivation, but it is a motivation. The studies show that money does not add to intrinsic motivation, it replaces it. And most extrinsic economic motivation. Here is a link to a neutral-to-negative critique of Motivation Theory to get you up to speed and give you a few actual, you know, educated arguments against it. Sigh.
With government regulations and mandated transparency, companies couldn't lie as easily as they do now. And if they did, we could more easily stop them and punish them. Besides, who said anything about mandating ONE company? People use straw man arguments when they can't think up real ones.
Oh christ. I am a long time anarcho-syndicalist, and you are a fellow who doesn't know what libertarian OR anarchist means. Libertarians are anarchists. Specifically individualist anarchists. 'Anarchy' doesn't mean what you think it means. It means, 'no tyrant' not 'no government.' Please, go read some basic introductions to anarchy.
Libertarians do not want ANY government regulation. US Libertarians, that is. In the rest of the world, libertarian is just a synonym for anarchist. In America, it means a member of the Libertarian party.
When the market is guaranteed to fail, you need regulation or democratic control.
Socialist utopia provides better choices by removing the incentive to lie about choices. If you aren't trying to prop up crappy products and business practices in order to make a buck, you will get better choices.
The $10 for sex was just an example. There are plenty more. For instance, my brother is an artist, but he hates making art now that he works for an ad agency doing it for money. The basic premise is that, once you offer money for something, it becomes all about the money and any original reasons you may have had for doing it become moot.
Prove that competition makes people want to do better. If that were true, companies would internally organize as multiply redundant departments competing against each other. They don't.
Five and six are similar, but not identical. The work alluded to in five is not necessarily research, but may also refer to economies of scale that are not achieved in a competitive market.
So, you admit competitive free markets aren't as efficient as dictatorships. Therefore, the government should dictate to companies what they should do. A democracy of the people can still be a dictator to corporations.
The flea market is a great example of market failure. Few sellers gets a truly fair price because of unbalanced market forces. Specifically, information asymmetry. Sellers know more about the real quality of items than buyers do, therefore, buyers must systematically undervalue the merchandise to protect themselves from dishonest buyers, resulting in lower prices across the board, even for honest sellers.
Thank you! Trolling libertarians is my favorite pastime.
Mmm, ad hominems ARE fun! I love trolling libertarians. Not even socialists are as self righteous and uptight. Religious fundamentalists come close. The only people who are more self righteous and uptight are Apple fanboys. If I ever get a chance to troll a religious fundamentalist libertarian who loves Apple, my life will be complete.
Okay! That was trolling, this is arguing.
First, the free market has well known failure modes: natural monopoly, where the marginal cost of entry into the market increases dramatically after the initial entry. Roads, sewers, electric and phone lines are a great example. Information asymmetry is another, and externalities are the third.
Second, money is power, and power can be used to oppress. A free market is a similar choice mechanism to a democracy, except that in a free market, it is one dollar, one vote. The more money you have, the more you can use your money to change the parameters of the market.
Third, choice. A free market does not provide real choices. It provides the illusion of choice. And where it does provide real choice, it seeks to hide the real differences in those choices, making picking the better item or service difficult.
Fourth, Destruction of intrinsic motivations. A competitive market destroys intrinsic motivation to do something. For instance, go to a bar and ask all the women if they will sleep with you. You may get lucky. Now, same thing, except offer to throw in ten dollars. You will strike out every time, because you have destroyed intrinsic motivations.
Fifth, duplication of effort. A competitive market requires duplication of effort where a socialist system does not. Each company must repeat the efforts of all other companies in a given market, instead of sharing effort.
Sixth, closed communication channels. In a competitive market, innovations aren't shared as freely as they could be in a socialist system, because that would be giving away advantage.
Seventh, waste and mismanagement. A competitive market develops its own special kinds of parasites, who add nothing of value to society yet make a lot of money. Advertisers, for instance. Or the insurance industry. These people are professional manipulators, con artists, gamblers and frauds, yet they are richly rewarded in a capitalist system.
Eight, real world examples. No company is set up internally as a free market system. None. If the free market is so great, why don't companies organize themselves that way internally?
There's plenty more where that came from, but lets see if you can refute even one of these points before I bring out the big guns.
If they can't refute your arguments, they will try to stop you from arguing. Most anti-libertarian arguments on Slashdot get modded down. Libertarians aren't smart enough or educated enough to argue their case, so they mod you down in the hopes that no one sees how badly their philosophy fails. Most libertarians are only capable of parroting back other people's arguments, so when you present them with an argument they haven't seen before, they don't know what to do. I think libertarian indoctrination must cause brain damage, because very few libertarians can actually think for themselves.
Government regulation of markets is essential. Even Adam Smith knew that markets need regulation to stay free. Without regulations, markets quickly devolve into oligopolies.
From the first article: "In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers."
Okay, so the BANKS were putting the pressure on Fannie Mae to make more sub-prime loans. Weird. Why would the BANKS do that?
All the GOVERNMENT did was to require banks to use the same standards for everybody. Government didn't set the standards, they just required that the standards were the same for everyone. Reading comprehension FAIL on your part.
You may have to leave your home, or learn another skill to get another job. Weak argument, doesn't address the main point.
Those riots were back in 2005. We've had worse in America.
You are SO wrong about the Pinkertons, and labor history. I've studied labor history extensively. I'd like some citations, please, because I don't know WHAT you are talking about.
Way to play semantics. Social democracy is exactly what I've been talking about all along. What kind of 'socialism' have you been talking about?
Libertarians can not claim trading as their own invention, sorry!
Buddha was once asked a series of question by a respected holy man of another religion, such as 'Is there a God,' 'Is there an immortal individual soul,' 'what happens after we die,' and so forth. He wouldn't answer, because the answers are utterly unimportant to Buddhist philosophy.
Later Buddhist thinkers attempted to integrate the well accepted Hindu idea of reincarnation into Buddhism. To do so, they expressed it as a psychological process. Sense impressions happen all the time, but do not usually pass the 'gate' into consciousness, as they are not noteworthy. When they do pass the gate, they go through a series of transformations. These transformations are based on 'past life karma.' Your past life is just your personal past, your past life karma is the sum of the value judgments you have placed on your experience. Your past life karma determines the value judgment, if any, you place on this moment. That value judgment is your current life karma. Your current life karma is added to your past life karma to determine what you are in your future life. You can step off this wheel of reincarnation by ceasing to make value judgments. By letting go of all judgment of the present moment, you are not creating the mental formations that cause you to be attached (drawn towards or repulsed from) things or thoughts. You are at peace, and free. This is known as 'enlightenment.'
Self is a sense, like the sense of smell. When your model of the world needs a reference point, it consults the sense of self. Consider your life to be a movie. Movies have a sound track recorded next to the visual track. Our life-movie has many other tracks, such as smell and touch. The sense of self is simply one of them. 'You' are not the man watching and directing the movie of your life. There is nobody watching and directing the movie of your life. 'Watching and directing' are tracks in the movie, not separate from it.
So "self awareness" is simply a feedback loop integrating other sense awareness. It is not a separate thing, it is a process. Your soul is in your brain, just like love and honesty. But you could pick apart your brain, down to the tiniest molecule, and you would never find anything resembling a soul, or love, or honesty. They are not parts of the brain, but emergent functions of the whole brain in operation.
Consent is vital. I really am an anarchist that way. I feel that governance should be consensual, with most matters handled at a local level. Above that, I feel that local areas should be free to buy into one or more plans, each administered by a separate group. For instance, if citizens feel free trade is important, they could join a group that promotes and monitors such trade. If they felt that everybody should have access to health care, they could join a group that promotes and monitors that. Part of joining such a group might entail not trading with countries that do not support such rights. And all polities should be free not only to join larger groups working towards their aims, but to leave groups that no longer do.
The problem I have with the free market is that in some instances, it can become non-consensual. That is, if you agree that 'work for what we'll pay you or starve to death' is non-consensual. Money is power, and power can be used to oppress.
The latter, of course. Because of several issues. The rich can use financial methods to keep the poor under control. In an entirely free market based solution, what would keep the rich, that is the 10% who own 90% of the world's resources, from forming a labor monopsony? There is also the problem of information imbalance. Employees will always know more than prospective employers about their actual value to the company. Therefore, employers must assume the potential employee is overstating their value, and they will systematically undervalue labor.
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The free market needs regulation in order to remain free. Adam Smith himself said that. He also said, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." Which is a fairly cogent argument against libertarianism.
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Good points about the corner cases, and the difference between political and economic systems. The main difference that I see is that in politics, leveraging your power is much more difficult. In economics (which is NOT a hard science!) the more money you have, the more power you have, which makes more money in an out of control positive feedback loop. There are no real checks and balances in a free market.
Yes, this is an argument that I like to use with free market radicals, hoping they will make the counter-argument you just did. It shows the inherent oppression in any free market system, for those without money. I mean, you DO recognize that your counter-argument applies equally to a free market as it does to governments, right?
[citation needed] and not some right wing blog, either.
Does your argument against people shopping around for a better country also apply to shopping around for a better job? If so, then by your argument, the labor market is absolutely unfair. If not, why not?
France is not on the edge of a social explosion. When was the last time you were there? I was there last summer, and I don't know what you are talking about. You are just making things up!
The reason you don't see the poor fighting the rich in highly capitalist societies is, surprise, surprise, the rich make use of the police and armed services we all pay for to prevent that.
An organized system of cooperating individuals IS a government. What else is government besides that?
You make a bunch of assertions without backing them up, claiming that individuals will always be able to protect themselves, and that private security forces would work. I suggest you read more history. Bad guys work in teams, and an individual, even with guns, is just screwed. And private security forces are ALWAYS used for oppression. Always. Look up the history of the Pinkertons.
While you are at it, look up how the Scandinavian countries are governed, and tell me how they are failing. You may also want to look up the Mondragon Collective, a huge, industrialized cooperative society in Spain that does socialism right, right in the middle of capitalism. Almost all countries that rate highest in citizen happiness are socialist.
In short, what arguments you have managed to make are stale and cliched libertarian claptrap that has been shown to be spun out of pure fantasy time and time again. Libertarianism works great in theory, but because you guys never manage to actually, you know, DO anything in the real world, your theories are never tested. When they are proven by actual situations both historical and present day to be absolutely unworkable, you guys always claim that the situation simply wasn't libertarian enough, and had this that or the other thing been different, it would have worked. Funny how it never, ever does, though.
In the state of nature, there are no rights, only power. You, as an individual, do not have the power to hold your land against a group that would take it. If you decide to hold land individually, the rest of humanity has no reason to agree with you. Well, perhaps they do but you haven't said why yet.
Drinking water from a river is not theft. You are using a resource, not claiming it. Same for catching fish. It is precisely because everything anyone does in some way impacts everyone else that collective decision making is the only fair and equitable method we have.
In any case, this discussion is getting bogged down in definition. I had hoped to show that this kind of reasoning is specious. It simply doesn't matter. You define rights one way, I define them another. What matters is which definition benefits the greatest number, because the only way that either of our definitions has meaning is when they are agreed to by individuals that can see the benefit of agreement.
So, one last time, I ask you. What benefit do the non-owners gain by agreeing with your definition of ownership? I have shown the dangers they face by agreeing, the danger of tyranny from the owning class. My definition of property benefits more people than yours does, and that is why people should agree to it and uphold my definition over yours.
I your moon example, if I have the power to build a spaceship, fly to the moon, and kick you off it, what would stop me? You simply took something, and now I am taking it from you. Your claim to property rights is simply a bunch of noise. Oh, I'll let you keep everything you made, it would be unfair of me to take it. But you have to remove it from my moon. Without a society backing up your claims, they are only as meaningful as your ability to enforce them. Again, why should I agree to uphold your claims?
You probably think rights derive from a person's 'ownership' of themselves. But those are just words, why should I agree? What benefit to all individuals, not just the property owning minority, does your philosophy possess?
You can't just claim that everyone should follow your code because of some made up moral authority. You have to show the benefit, which you have completely failed to even attempt to do. You are still arguing definitions, hoping to get people to agree with you without saying what's in it for them.
Based on your example, it seems the original owners, or one presumes their descendants, should get back all the land that was stolen from them, and the original thieves, or their descendants, should pay the current owners. That sounds neither fair nor achievable.
My argument is that all human dominion over land was originally collective, and that all useful land in the world was used by collectives before it was taken by individuals. Therefore, all land properly belongs to collectives and was simply stolen by individuals.
Finally, let me just add that I respect you and your rhetorical skills, and thank you for this conversation so far. We may disagree on some things, but by discussing those disagreements, we improve our ideas and theories. At least in theory.
A car is a thing produced entirely from the labor of individuals. Land is not. You have a right to things you produce, like a car, including the rght to sell them. You have no right to exclude me from land. You have a right to the products of your labor, certainly. But you must have land to labor on, and that land could be used by all before you took it. Whether it was improved or not is immaterial. All land on the planet was being used collectively for hunting and gathering and whatnot before individuals took it.
By what authority was land being used collectively taken and improved by individuals? You provide no reasons. You simply say, "Well, wasn't the improvement of the land worth it?" No. Because the land could be improved by collective ownership and control just as much as by individual ownership. Remember, the Tragedy of the Commons does not apply to collectively managed resources, only to unmanaged ones.
I would never say, "We are taking your harvest." That is the product of your labor. The land is not. The improvements to the land are, sure. But they are their illegally. Say you bought a stolen bike. Paid for it, even bought new tires. The original owner sees that you have it and says, "Hey! That's my bike!" And you say, "No, I bought it and I paid for these tires, so that makes it mine." Who should retain ownership of the bike?
Oh no. You quoted Rand. Ayn Rand is bubble gum philosophy. She is perhaps the wordiest, most boring and unoriginal author I've ever read. Ugh. She is totally ripping off Proudhon here.
Real property is land and natural resources. Personal property is things. Ownership of real property is freedom for the one who owns it, and theft from those who don't own any. This is because, before someone claimed the land or resource, everyone could use it.
If ownership of property derives from work done on it, then no one can own property because they do not own it before they work it. By working the property and claiming ownership, they are denying everyone on the planet the use of something they could have used before. That is theft.
How can someone who does not own property obtain ownership of said property when all property is owned already? They must work for an owner. Owners collude to ensure that workers have a difficult time acquiring the wealth to purchase property. Therefore, the owners always have a source of cheap labor, the non owning class.
Why should the non owning class respect the owning class' claim to property? All of society boils down to contract, individuals agreeing to something in exchange for something. The owning class take something away from the non-owning class when they claim property. What does the non-owning class get in return that they should respect that claim? The theoretical ability to own property themselves? The potential opportunity to become a part of the owning class and oppress non owners?
Property is the tyranny of the owners over the non owners. Property is the control of the means of production by a small group. They decide who eats and who doesn't, and if you don't own property and you want to eat, you do what the owners tell you.
Have you ever read 'Property is Theft!' or anything else by Proudhon? Maybe you should. Have you ever read Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations?' Here's a quote of his that I like: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
I don't advocate a complete lack of property rights. I think people should own and control natural resources and the means of production collectively. But houses, clothes, personal effects, things like that should be privately owned.
I leave you with several other Proudhon quotes in the hopes they will inspire you to read his works. I don't think you understand the argument being presented against property. You can neither agree with it nor refute it if you don't understand it.
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, â" they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
And another quote, clarifying his idea that property is theft.
In my first memorandum, in a frontal assault upon the established order, I said things like, Property is theft! The intention was to lodge a protest, to highlight, so to speak, the inanity of our institutions. At the time, that was my sole concern. Also, in the memorandum in which I demonstrated that startling proposition using simple arithmetic, I took care to speak out against any communist conclusion. In the System of Economic Contradictions, having recalled and confirmed my initial formula, I added another quite contrary one rooted in considerations of quite another order â" a formula that could neither destroy the first proposition nor be demolished by it: Property is freedom. [...] In respect of property, as of all economic factors, harm and abuse cannot be dissevered from the good, any more than debit can from asset in double-entry book-keeping. The one necessarily spawns the other. To seek to do away with the abuses of property, is to destroy the thing itself; just as the striking of a debit from an account is tantamount to striking it from the credit record.
So property is also freedom. Interesting, yes?
But look at all the pretty beads they got in return!
How can you claim my arguments are tires? You didn't read even my whole post, or you would know that we agree on what anarchy is. If you care, we actually agree on quite a bit. I give individualist anarchists a hard time because I am a social anarchist and I think strong property rights are a sure recipe for tyranny. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the father of anarchy, have both said the same thing.
Even social anarchy concedes all power back to the individual, as shown by my Rainbow Gathering example. I pro anarchy, I am just not pro property rights. As Proudhon, (you know, the fellow who coined the term 'anarchist') wrote, 'Property is Theft!'
Anarchy does not require a complete moral society. It simply requires that all participants agree to attempt to live up to a set of moral ideals. What it requires is a society where individuals are educated in their own best interests. Anarchy does not work because people are good (though most are). People are good because being good is an effective strategy, and anarchy works because it is an effective strategy.
Some degree of control, eh? What about Antarctica, or the middle of the Amazon rainforest. There are plenty of islands for sale as well, in Vanuatu, the Seychelles, and plenty of other places. But that really doesn't matter. Your country offered you a deal. If you don't like the deal you were offered, shop around and find a better one. The fact that the deal you desire is not available in the world free market of governance does not mean that the deal your country offers is coercive.
You don't really want to go homestead someplace. Which is why places like desert islands, the Antarctic, and the middle of a rainforest don't appeal to you. You want all the benefits of society without paying for them. Luckily, we have laws and police to keep thieves from stealing our stuff.