Why do we fear Laissez-faire?
I’ve never understood the criticism of laissez-faire. Economic history, if there is such a thing, has invariably been one of statism and state intervention. Fascism, communism, progressivism, socialism—all demand the regulation of the economy, providing posterity with examples spanning the gamut of oppression and exploitation, ranging from annoying to despotic.
So what’s to fear in the separation of the state and economy?
Poverty, overconsumption, monopoly, wealth inequality, seem to me the common objections. Keynes said as much in his essay “The End of laissez-faire”. But all of the above are apparent in all systems, including in those in which Keynes was the architect: capitalism “wisely managed”.
But why should it be managed at all? Why should one serve the interests of the state instead of his own and his neighbors?
Upon thinking about it, Oscar Wilde was at least honest when he said that “Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others”. This attitude, I believe, represents the inherent egoism beneath the fear of the separation of state and economy. Without a state tending to the ills of the economy we would be required to confront that “sordid necessity” and to cooperate with each other based on our own personal initiative and resources. Instead of passively paying a tax or promoting this or that government service we would need to act and to do so voluntarily in order to affect any change. To “let us do” would be to lay bare our conscience and morality for what it really amounts to.
The state wedded to the economy is by now ubiquitous, and state intervention commonplace. It has absorbed all spontaneous social effort, as Ortega Y Gasset once predicted, leaving us to not fear the social ills, which are still with us every day and in every society, but the absence of the state and what we are to do in its stead.
So what’s to fear in the separation of the state and economy?
Poverty, overconsumption, monopoly, wealth inequality, seem to me the common objections. Keynes said as much in his essay “The End of laissez-faire”. But all of the above are apparent in all systems, including in those in which Keynes was the architect: capitalism “wisely managed”.
But why should it be managed at all? Why should one serve the interests of the state instead of his own and his neighbors?
Upon thinking about it, Oscar Wilde was at least honest when he said that “Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others”. This attitude, I believe, represents the inherent egoism beneath the fear of the separation of state and economy. Without a state tending to the ills of the economy we would be required to confront that “sordid necessity” and to cooperate with each other based on our own personal initiative and resources. Instead of passively paying a tax or promoting this or that government service we would need to act and to do so voluntarily in order to affect any change. To “let us do” would be to lay bare our conscience and morality for what it really amounts to.
The state wedded to the economy is by now ubiquitous, and state intervention commonplace. It has absorbed all spontaneous social effort, as Ortega Y Gasset once predicted, leaving us to not fear the social ills, which are still with us every day and in every society, but the absence of the state and what we are to do in its stead.
Comments (473)
If its not the state, its your powerful neighbor. If its not that, its the mob. If its not that, its something else.
Humanities natural state when given free reign is to wage war, kill each other, dominate each other, and have someone come out on top that seeks to control everyone else. The same with unregulated capitalism.
Capitalism's unfettered goal is to destroy itself. This has been tested in games and social experiments repeatedly. Everyone starts off the same, but then winners and losers are determined. Eventually, the winners carve out a path to ensure no one has any way of beating them again, resulting in the death of capitalism.
The best way to regulate a system, is when you have governance influenced by the people involved.
While it is not perfect, as no one ideology ever is, people always have some type of say and influence to minimize the implementation of the winners destroying the playing field for everyone else.
Yes.
It's not like, all of sudden, because of Laissez-faire, everyone's chance of peaceful success becomes equalized. No. Those at a disadvantaged would still be in that situation. Except now, you don't have the government to run to when you got screwed.
Do not believe this bullshit of the inequality of the economy would straighten itself out. It is never designed to be so. The rich would want more because when the prize is the moon, then a 100 billion dollar wealth wouldn't suffice anymore.
Better yet -- this is how things are now. Used to be the playground is the world, the grounded world. Then, we've expanded to the ocean and uninhabited frozen vast of lands. Finally, the space exploration. That's now a vacation dream.
But the state is a monopoly of the kind you describe, destroying the playing field for everyone else, and willing to maintain it with compulsion and violence, with free reign to wage war, dominate each other, and ensure no one has any way of beating them again. Unfettered statism seems to me the greater threat than some entity from a game.
What believers in laissez-faire ultimately are is anti-democracy. Look no further than the way these deluded proponents defend corporate governance (zero democracy) while attacking political governance (some democracy) — all while throwing around words like “liberty.”
Good for a laugh, I suppose.
Yes indeed.
But since “laissez faire” is just a bullshit excuse for plutocracy and is completely anti-democracy, don’t expect anything more than “Government is the problem” — their go-to slogan. The alternative? The magic of the “free” market of course! Bam! Solved.
How does separating the state and economy lead to a plutocracy?
The “state” has never, and will never, be separated from an “economy.” So: how does that fantasy goal lead to plutocracy?
Well, look around. Then compare to other times in economic history. Far higher concentration of wealth and power now than in the 50s and 60s. The shift in pretext (laissez faire) and policies (neoliberalism) occurred in the 70s. Pretty easy to check what has happened since. All in the age of “Government is the problem,” no less.
But to market fundamentalists, I’m sure it’s still the governments fault— and so we need even MORE deregulation and unbridled corporate looting. Heads I win, tails you lose.
:100:
The literal only people who believe in laissaz-faire are idiots who have been sold the fantasy of it and take it to mean: no state intervention that would interfere with capitalists getting their way. Law and legislation, and enormous amounts of it, including huge trans-national cooperation in order to organize and coordinate it, has always been the basis for the artificial and violent 'seperation' of state and economy. What it means in practice is simply: the violent demolition of any democratic control over how people live their lives, turned over instead to tiny minorities of people and entities with enormous amounts of money. Laissaz-fair is a myth, and so is the meme - and it is nothing but a meme - of the fake antagonism between government and economy.
Without massive amounts of state intervention, "the economy" will die. Anyone who hasn't understood this since 2008 in which government intervention has been made obvious to anyone with a pulse with respect to it's role in continually propping up the economy, is either an idiot or a propagandist. As a communist I would really like a heap less state intervention in the economy too: it's the only thing that ensures the continued and continually violent survival of capitalism.
I look around and see competing interests competing for state power. All of them intervene in the economy through the very means you defend, yet we’re supposed to act aghast when they seize and use them. But it doesn’t follow that the absence of those means leads to them seizing them.
:100: :smirk:
Quoting NOS4A2
You're nothing if not predictable.
You could say the same vague thing in the 50s and 60s too. Better economy in those days, however. Odd that the same can't be said for when the "era of big government [was] over."
Quoting NOS4A2
What "means" would that be? I don't recall defending the billions of dollars that the plutocracy -- mostly corporate America -- put into buying government officials (through campaign contributions, lobbying, etc) every year.
Quoting NOS4A2
Is it possible to be more vague? What do the last two "them"s refer to?
Once again you've trailed off into gibberish. An excellent line of defense, I admit.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yes indeed. Again, a telltale sign of said proponents' true feelings about "democratic control" and "freedom": how they react to corporate governance, where there's zero democracy.
I’ll try to clarify. If there are no positions of power for the plutocrats to occupy, it doesn’t follow that the absence of these positions of power leads to plutocracy. We can point to existing state structures and say “that is plutocracy” until the cows come home, but we are no less pointing to the state. Plutocrats can achieve control through democratic means.
What you haven’t done is shown how laissez-faire leads to plutocracy, is all I’m saying.
Depends on how the state is formed. That's where elections come in. When the state is held accountable by the people involved, it must consider the people to some extent as people at the table who must be sated. This is much better than being dinner for the powerful.
Unfettered anything is bad. A pure authoritarian state is no better than rule by a mob boss. And unfettered capitalism does not escape this as well. I'll add to my original statement as well. Unfettered capitalism has no concern for limited resources or long term planning. Why make lightbulbs that last longer when people won't have to buy as many? Strip the forests down today and worry about the long term consequences tomorrow.
A state that is influenced by the people is the only way to ensure there is some accountability by the powerful. Because if there is no accountability, the powerful will not do so on their own.
Well said, agree. Capitalism for the masses. Socialism for the wealthy.
Cite an example of laissez-faire nation-state that isn't, in effect, a plutocracy / oligopoly.
My own view is that the state is formed through conquest and confiscation. I don’t believe in any social contract theory. As such, suffrage is merely a concession to state power, all of it premised on the off-chance that each of us might benefit from the spoils should we get to vote for the exploiters.
StreetlightX is right. The failure of laissez-faire doctrine is that it was never laissez-faire. In practice, the only difference between its proponents and it’s opponents is the incidence of those interventions shifted from one class of beneficiaries to another. The merchants never followed a policy of laissez-faire, and never wished the state to “let it do”, but sought to wield that power for its own benefit.
At any rate, a state that engages in intervention is engaging in exploitation, and does so with the monopoly on violence, whether influenced by “the people”, special interests, or a tinpot dictator.
I don’t think such a regime has existed.
I have no problem with this. The problem is, if its not government forming through conquest and confiscation, its something else. Mobsters, neighbor, etc. Government is not special, it is one off the many long lines of people and institutions that will seek social dominance through the threat and realization of violence.
Laissez-faire capitalism also results in conquest and confiscation. Capitalism needs a third party regulating it. It needs courts and laws. Otherwise the path of least resistance is to get money, murder your competition one way or another, and dominate everyone under you in as close to slavery as you can.
Now if I'm wrong, please point out where. In the absence of government, do people just all get along? You don't think anybody will seek to gain power over other people through wealth, hired cooercion, and dominance?
“No positions of power” is essentially meaningless. Plutocracy is power in the hands of the wealthy.
Quoting NOS4A2
If by the state you mean the government, which I assume you do, then that consists of people. It’s a group of people that make up what we call “government.” These people make laws and enforce laws. These people are susceptible to corruption and bribery and manipulation. In today’s world, the US government is mostly bought by business interests— multinational corporations. They must still be elected by the population, however.
An answer to this problem is to abolish the state. In the very long run, I would like to see that happen. But that’s in the long term.
First I’d like to abolish corporate rule. Your answer, however, is to abolish democracy.
Plutocrats don’t gain power by “democratic means.” They’re a minority, and they fear and despise democracy — they have since the beginning of the country.
Quoting NOS4A2
And what I’m saying is laissez faire doesn’t lead to anything. Because it’s a fantasy.
The IDEA or the GOAL of “free markets” and a “separation of state and economy”, however, while both fantasies, do serve as nice stories for the ruling class— who know very well it’s complete bullshit.
It’s a nice utopian fantasy, though. Too bad it has such awful real world effects by deluding people into defending the corporate takeover of America.
:clap: :100:
Quoting NOS4A2
Well then, at the very least, the correlation between 'laissez-faire' and 'plutocracy' is (almost) +1 and so "how the former leads to the latter" is moot for the purposes of this thread discussion.
[quote=Wikipedia]In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", "General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations.[/quote]
The Balance of Nature
The current zeitgeist of technology has been automation, an exemplar of which is the so-called self-driving car (I don't know why drivers are not protesting à la luddites). In line with this drive to automate, economies, everything actually, should be endowed with self-correcting mechanisms (the human body has a lot of its functions in auto-regulation mode). To get down to the brass tacks, any system that needs external interference (the state for example) is a blot on our escutheon (we're not creative enough). :grin:
If there are no structures of control, the wannabe plutocrats are going to create them. Once you have riches, you want them secured lest the masses come knocking on your door and take them. You can hire a private army but it is much more cost effective to make the public pay for that army. That's how the police and the courts are invented. The state doesn't create capitalists, capitalists create the state.
Perfect, entirely correct.
NOS, I would like to put an example of when a society fails on laissez-faire or laissez-faire fails on society's hopes.
The 1990's were less good for Japan, whose prosperity turned out to be a little too much of a speculative bubble, with a great deal of capital based on inflated real estate values and fraudulent loans. Since almost nobody really believes in laissez-faire anymore, it always takes a long time for the economy to shake stuff like that off.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that 1990's were an economical traumatic event for Japan, they still be the 4th economy of the world... (Quarterly GDP improves in Japan in forth quarter) Is this country an example of social effort no matter the circumstances?
Can you explain what you mean by this, since you cannot give an example? It seems to me that if there is a state at all, it needs an income, and therefore to be part of the economy. If it does not exist,
the problem with an anarchy is that it cannot resist a mafia/government taking control.
If it does exist, it needs to either participate directly in the economy as a player, or else to raise taxes through legislation. The former is very much where the wold seems to be headed governments are losing power to international corporations. The latter is where we have come from and what I assume you object to.
What is it that you advocate?
My dear gracious good god... Where did you grow up? Ah, of course...you're a philosopher!
Ha ha! I suppose I am. But I'm also a person who likes history. History has shown us that what I claimed was true. Wars, monopolies, slavery, etc. I would say about 80% of people are fine just living their lives without bothering others. But 20% of people want dominance, and don't care who they hurt to get it. Did you know that fruit flies like to dominate one another? They only live 8-15 days, but if you put a bunch of fruit flies together, they'll do a dominance fight where they flip each other over to show who gets that space.
The brain of a fruit fly is insignificant, and yet this primitive need for dominance still exists. It is a powerful drive in almost every living creature. In fact, I want to ask what was your motivation when you wrote your reply? Read it again. Was it done to educate me? Reach out and connect with me? Start a deep conversation? No. You did it to for status. To ridicule me and put yourself on top.
Now if you did that on a philosophy forum where there are no stakes, what do you think happens when there are resources involved? Millions of dollars at stake? Tons of land and power? You think everyone is going to resolve their differences for these resources with kind words, reaching out to one another and sharing? You already know the answer yourself.
Well, that's probably my deeply hidden fruitfly brain part talking then. The part beneath the olfactory lizzard part. I smell powerful tendencies here... :smile:
And its ok. We all have do or have done it at one point in our life. Its a shared human struggle. The thing is, all of us lose time to time, and some of us just give in. In a situation of competition in which there is no outside enforcer, one person is going to slip up (or intentionally) not be fair. And that's all it takes. A game cannot be played correctly unless everyone involved follows the rules.
NOS4A2 believes that the state as a function itself is oppressive. Its a common political refrain, mostly because he seeks dominance himself. He sees the state as dominating people, and his lizard brain doesn't like that. He's likely not thinking about all the circumstances or situations that would arrive if the state was eliminated. People will always have to fight others seeking dominance, whether or not they personally seek it themselves. Without some type of societal rules, and an enforcer of those rules (government) someone else will come in, dominate, then set the rules and enforcement up to ensure they retain their dominance. Its an unavoidable part of humanity.
For every man who would exploit his neighbor is another who would not. This is why I have faith in the absence of state fetters. What prohibits a man from exploiting his neighbor is not the state, but a conscience and a reasonable set of moral principles.
Would you seek to dominate others should there be no state?
Simply that the state ought to mind it’s own business, stop regulating the economy, and let people earn their livelihoods as they see fit.
What, then, is the state's business, and how can it finance itself?
In my mind the proper role for government is to defend liberty, or to go extinct. The moral and just way to fund any institution is voluntarily, whether through subscription, donation, etc.
This has always struck me as true. Most government regulation is for the benefit of business. Banks couldn't run without banking regulations, but don't stop me from driving the world into economic ruin. Don't make me pay to provide safe workplaces. Don't make me pay the real cost of the products I manufacture, the chemicals I dump out behind the plant.
When people with money complain how rich people pay more than their share of taxes, I think - with government, rich are rich and poor are poor; without government, everyone's poor. Wealth = property = intrusive government.
I don’t want to abolish democracy, nor do I want to completely abolish the government. I just don’t think the task of government is to meddle in our livelihoods.
The abolition of slavery was fantasy. Perhaps given enough time, the abolition of state control over economic activity would come to fruition.
Please explain.
Would that include my liberty to sit on a street leading to a plant that produces toxic waste so that no raw material can get there?
No. One is not at liberty to interfere with another’s liberty.
Or are you one of those libertarians who are all for the liberties of the corporations and against the rights of the people?
I just don’t think you have a right to interfere in the movement of others. And no, I don’t think a company has any right to pour poison in a river.
Yes, and probably courts.
Correct. But what punishes a man and makes them pay for exploiting their neighbors is the state. I don't think you are so naive that you believe everyone is intelligent and of high moral character? Tell me, how does Laissez-faire handle criminals, brutes, thugs, and slavers?
Quoting NOS4A2
The wrong question. "Would there be people who would seek to dominate others should there be no state?"
Absolutely. There are very real evil people in this world who will lie to your face, pay you pennies, and throw your body quietly in a ditch if it were convenient to them. If people were always perfect NOS4A2, then all forms of economics would work. Socialism and communism in their ideals would end up just as we envisioned. The problem with ideals is they do not factor in evil. I'm sure you would agree that pure socialism or communism does not result in the ideal utopia envisioned. This is because the reality of man is it must always plan with the idea that evil will exploit others if given the chance. Free market capitalism is no exception to this.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't want to pay my taxes this year, is that ok? Can the government properly budget and afford the judges and law enforcement needed to ensure people don't abuse and take advantage of the system?
Quoting NOS4A2
You need to clarify by what you mean by "meddle". You seem to contradict yourself here when you also include Quoting NOS4A2
That's not laisezz-faire. That's regulated capitalism, which is what we have today in America. That takes an enforcer, or in our instance, the state, to ensure this happens.
NOS4A2, instead of defending your argument, for fun and exploration, attack it. Find the holes in it from your perspective. Every idea has pros and cons. If you cannot see the cons in an idea, then you have not thoroughly thought of the consequences of it, and are grasping at something that is emotionally satisfying, and not rationally satisfying.
Quoting NOS4A2
Here again you’re separating that which cannot be separated. Without government — without laws, regulations, patents, even the corporation itself (a legal fiction) — there is no economy. It’s not like the economy is something that exists in pure form if only liberated from laws and regulations.
That’s why laissez-faire is a fantasy. I don’t mean it’s an improbable dream— I mean it’s complete nonsense.
All it ultimately does is justify a version of “small government,” which in practice means: Deregulating big business and providing tax cuts — for the corporate sector (i.e., there capitalist class). That’s what all the rhetoric and slogans about “freedom” and “liberty” amount to. (And, of course, continuing to spend billions of taxpayer money every year on industry subsidies and handling externalities.)
The goal should be taking our production of goods and services out of the hands of a small group of owners and into the hands of workers themselves — i.e., to democratize the workplace. If you’re in favor of democracy and “small government,” this should be the goal. In that case, I’m also in favor of small government— because without the government, the elites wouldn’t be looting America. I’d be in favor of big government if it actually helped people other than plutocrats.
Like the liberty to produce toxic waste…or accelerate climate change…or allocate 90% of profits to shareholders…or bribe politicians.
So goes this conception of “liberty.”
Bingo.
Well, no, protecting human rights is not “regulated capitalism”. Preserving human liberty is not a 1-to-1 ratio with regulating the economy, and it is neither rationally nor emotionally satisfying for me to accept such non-sequiturs. There will be instances where protecting human liberty will cross into the economy, such as in the business of slavery, but abolition is concerned with the freedom and dignity of human beings and not with the regulation of the slave trade.
I do believe people can be evil and that people can be good, and that the latter should learn to defend themselves from the former, with violence if necessary. One can and should do that without a state because, if history is any indication, the state is often incompetent in that regard and violates those same rights. According to author RJ Rummel, the body count for which the state is to blame in the 20th century is 262,000,000, and this is only acts of genocide.
I think it is morally wrong to tax people just as it is wrong to steal the fruits of someone’s labor. I think you are morally justified in refusing to pay taxes. That system is little more than a protection racket. The problem is the state disagrees with you, and because they have the monopoly on violence and you are but a serf to their power, you probably won’t get away with it.
Sure, “the economy” isn’t a useful term or idea, and we can quibble about it forever. But the usefulness of the term doesn’t automatically justify regulatory behavior, nor does it negate minding your own business. Anyone can mind his own business, refuse to regulate another’s economic activity, refuse to be an interloper, so I don’t think the principle is as nonsensical as you make it out it to be.
It’s true that many people espouse principles that they refuse to abide by, and it is probably true that they do so in order to dupe others, to achieve power, to benefit themselves and their friends, and so on—this is the history of America—but again, none of these objections justify regulatory behavior, nor do they negate the idea that the state should mind its own business.
Protectionism, mercantilism, subsidies, corruption—this is state intervention in a nutshell. I could be wrong but it appears that you are more concerned about who benefits from state intervention rather then the behavior of state intervention as such. Speaking of nonsense, how many years and how many votes have you spent waiting for a return on your investment?
The problem I have is I haven't heard your well thought reasons for Laissez-faire, but talking points that are generally spouted in pop-culture. I'm unaware of your education background, so I think before we continue, we need some outside references. Laisezz-faire is not an untested ideology, and throughout history, it has often failed.
Quoting NOS4A2
In Laisezz-faire capitalism, the state gets out of the way of corporations as much as possible. No monopoly regulations. No laws mandating that the vats the company pass scientific sanitary standards. No laws mandating zoning, buy outs, minimum wages, health and safety standards, etc. This is tied directly with what many consider the rights of individuals. Plenty of people don't like their water and air polluted. Here are a few examples to check.
Forbes evaluation of the 2008 crash. https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/18/depression-financial-crisis-capitalism-opinions-columnists_recession_stimulus.html?sh=45acd8d22ef2
When you introduce government regulation, Laissez-faire is over. And you agree that government regulation is needed to preserve the rights and liberties of individuals. Maybe you don't really believe in Laissez-faire, but perhaps a minimal level of regulation? If you believe at times that the government has overregulated, I don't think anyone would disagree with you there. But the moment you allow laws and regulations that business have to follow to preserve the rights and liberties of individuals, the only question is, "How much?"
Here's an article in Forbes 2008 about how Laissez-faire, allowing markets to regulate themselves failed.
https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/18/depression-financial-crisis-capitalism-opinions-columnists_recession_stimulus.html?sh=45acd8d22ef2
"To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments."
If you're more interested in a video, this one should explain why regulation is needed to defend human rights and liberties. Of particular note, check the section where leaded gasoline was invented and see what the "free market" did with it.
Finally, there's Upton Sinclair's famous exposure of the meat packing industry. https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-the-meat-packing-industry.html#:~:text=Upton%20Sinclair%20wrote%20The%20Jungle,emerged%20in%20the%20United%20States.
Fairly famous, but you might not be aware of it. Essentially food factories were unsanitary, dangerous, and risky for both employees and consumers who had little alternative.
Quoting NOS4A2
Have you compared to the body count of entities that are not the state? The number is irrelevant if you don't. Ever studied the death count in collapsed states where its warlords run around? Have you also compared the good that state has done? Developed infrastructure, roads, sewage handling?
Barring that, have you ever studied any society that did not have a tribe, chieftan, or some type of laws and rules? The idea that you can ever live a purely free person from "state" influence only happens if you find a cabin in the woods somewhere and go off the grid.
I would just read for now. To make a fully educated judgement, you must engage in all sides of thought. I think you've seen the pro Laissez-faire side, but its imperative that you see its anti. Now after reading and thinking on these, if you still think Laissez-faire is good, come back and talk. You can use some of the examples I gave, or more of your own. But I feel until you are aware of these other facts about free market and its politics, its more a discussion of faith then one of thought.
As for taxes...we can come back to it after this.
What principle? The pure fabrication of laissez-faire?
Can individuals choose to "mind their own business"? Sure. Can individuals choose to work cooperatively together? Of course. So what?
I'm concerned with looking at the real world -- how the government/the economy/the corporation or any other abstraction functions in the real world.
As I said before, I'm in favor of small government -- because the government has been captured by moneyed interests. I'm in favor of democracy -- including democracy at work.
Quoting NOS4A2
No, I'm interested in a healthy society. A government "for the people" -- a democracy -- is one way to go. I'm more in favor of that, yes. I'm in favor of people being able to control the major decisions that affect their lives, at every level. So yes, if society as a whole benefits -- rather than the wealthiest .01% of society -- I think that's relevant. Especially when it's claimed we're a government "for the people."
Currently the state "intervenes" for the wealthy. It is owned by capitalists. Capitalism/plutocracy should be overthrown long before government is. There's no reason why governments can't work for people.
Quoting NOS4A2
What investment? You're quite right: this is indeed nonsense.
Quoting NOS4A2
Nice to know you're anti-capitalist.
Happy International Workers' Day. :victory: :flower:
My reasons for preferring it are moral. I think it is wrong and unjust to control people, to confiscate the fruits of their labor, or to impose someone’s will upon another’s if they do not deserve it. Anything else is tyranny, injustice, oppression, exploitation, slavery. If you or I or any group of people acted as a state official or agent does, they’d be rightfully dragged through the street.
The same applies to matters of trade and enterprise. If anyone rigged the game in their favor as much as states have done—skimming, stealing, exploiting, extorting, racketeering, money laundering—he’d be thrown in jail.
Because of this, and because the state increases its own power in proportion to the decrease in the power of the people it rules, it is an anti-social institution worth opposing.
As for roads and government services, no government is required to flatten earth and lay asphalt. No government is required to tell me which products I should buy, or with which group of people I should engage in common enterprise with.
No laissez faire regime has failed because no such regime has existed.
So I’ve read your objections and still prefer the idea of separating the state and economy.
What all the “laissez faire” talk is cover for. A cute story to tell the masses you’re fucking over at every turn.
Lmao you don't give a shit about any of this. Libertarians like you simply want to make sure these actions are privatized, nothing more.
Who's going to enforce that though? If there's not a government what is the replacement? That's the question I keep asking. The world is not shaped through good intentions and an emotional desire that we all get along. If there is no government, I posit, as has happened throughout history, that a bunch of gangs and warlords are going to rape and pillage your property for themselves. They will not be swayed by your moral objections. You alone will not be able to stop them.
Quoting NOS4A2
But the state is the one who throws people in jail. Absent the state, no one gets thrown in jail. People who do these things to others just don't disappear if the state is gone. What do we have to stop them if the state is gone?
Quoting NOS4A2
And yet this is despite the theory being around for over 100 years. Why is this? If its such a successful theory that is obviously to the benefit of mankind, why hasn't this happened anywhere in the entire world?
Quoting NOS4A2
I would have preferred you explain why you think its better for a company to inject lead into gasoline knowing full well the dangers to health and society, and lying about it for profit. Maybe explain why its more beneficial to have meat packing plants with unsanitary conditions and horrid working conditions. Do you think zoning should be done by businesses? That they should be able to dump chemicals in rivers or land fills that cause harm to people who live in nearby homes?
Finally, you didn't address the point I made that often times business steps on the rights and liberties of other people in pursuit of profit. Government regulation can help minimize this. Without government, what is going to help this?
It would really help if you address the potentially negative sides of laissez-faire. If you only insist on seeing the positive, can you really say you've thought about it? No. Here on the philosophy boards we cannot love our own ideas. We put them to the test, try to prove them wrong, and see what comes out at the end of it all.
And you're too obtuse to recognize that the latter "idea" is invalidated by the former "fact". :sweat:
I’m pretty sure you can enforce your own behavior, as can most adults. If you need an official caste of moral busybodies to govern how you treat and cooperate with others then you are no different than the warlord or gang member.
I don’t care for your points or your hypotheticals. Your system is fundamentally immoral, little different than the warlord or a gangs you describe, except you promote one form of despotism because it is preferable to the other. I’d rather take my chances and have none of it.
Nonetheless, despite our disagreement, your examples of why you fear of laissez-faire is all I really wanted to know. So thank you.
I would think so.
I'm with you so far.
Quoting NOS4A2
And here we may depart. Who do you think "the state" is?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yep.
Quoting NOS4A2
True again. But if you want to have roads, someone has to build and maintain them. We usually give that task to people who we think they know what they are doing and who we think they are impartial.
Quoting NOS4A2
The way you formulated it, I can agree 100%. Keep money out of politics!
It all comes down to the question I asked in section 2. Who do you think "the state" is? And you seem to have a diffuse antipathy towards a group you have, in theory, elected yourself. How do you think "the state" got the power it has? Where is the evidence for your image of "the state"?
My theory of the state and state formation is the so-called conquest theory of state formation, as written by Franz Oppenheimer. In his formulation the state is the organization of the appropriation of the labor of others. It forms to maintain the power of the victors over the vanquished. The ISIS caliphate is one recent example which supports my image, but empire is another.
The state has no power or wealth of its own. It confiscates power and wealth. Exploitation is its means of subsistence, violence the means of maintaining it. One can try to keep what he has earned from his labors to feel the force of this. And voting is merely a concession because the transient power of our representatives is always negated by the absolute power of the institution itself.
Laissez-faire: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
[Laissez-faire] is an economic theory from the 18th century that opposed any government intervention in business affairs. The driving principle behind laissez-faire, a French term that translates to "leave alone" (literally, "let you do")
Quoting NOS4A2
Then I suppose you don't want to have any further discussion.
Quoting NOS4A2
As long as you have received other view points and considered them, that's really what's important. At the end of the day, people are going to believe what they want to believe. Here in these forums, we hopefully push ourselves to consider that the world is bigger than those beliefs. I appreciate the engagement up to this point.
Not much to it, in general it means "leave it be", "don't do anything on the matter", tending towards anarchism in political contexts, "none of your business", sometimes perhaps "live and let live" in social contexts, something like that.
Querying google with "define laissez-faire" gives:
I was using the phrase “separation of economy and state” to describe the fundamental principle, much like the separation of powers and the separation of church and state. Some have implied that such a separation is not possible, or that the fact of state intervention invalidates the philosophy of state non-intervention, though one has to struggle to find reason in these objections.
:lol: No -- you struggle to find reason.
It does, and it does so poorly and unjustly. So maybe it shouldn't.
The argument made no sense. There is no economy without government therefor laissez-faire is nonsense. Not a strand of bubble gum can connect the premise to the conclusion.
In this current corporatocratic, post-mercantile era, NOS, advocating "separation of state and economy" – pure ideology (Žižek) – is no less delusional than the notion of "separation of structure and dynamics" in engineering (or no less incoherent than "separation of mind and body" in theology / metaphysics). No amount of rightist-libertarian sermonizing can change this political-economic fact (vide A. Smith, K. Marx ... J.M. Keynes ... D. Schweickart).
Even with that hypothesis (which I don't ascribe to), you haven't justified your preference for economic liberties over civil liberties. In fact, for most states it describes how the already rich and powerful conquered the masses and keep them down. The system is already working in their favour.
As with all such arguments, yours is flawed by a fundamental contradiction over the management of communal resources. If you posit that communal resources will be managed sustainably because people are fundamentally moral, then you've no legitimate concern about government (the people constituting it will not "steal" anything since to do so would be immoral).
In order to collectively manage communal resources, we can rely, either on using collective power to force solutions onto all users, or we can rely on the goodwill of all users to voluntarily engage in fair use.
If you assume the latter is possible, then you've nothing to fear from government since they will, by their goodwill, voluntarily use the power they have only in a fair way.
If you don't assume goodwill, then you clearly need some other mechanism for the fair collective management of communal resources.
So what mechanism do you propose which does not rely on goodwill?
I'm pretty sure other forum members may have said similar things to what I'm about to, but I wanted to put my two cents in anyways.
Whatever you call it whether it be laissez-faire economics, objectivism, libertarianism, etc. there are people out there who want the state to be there for their needs but to stay out of their way when they are committing crimes, taking advantage of others, and/or abusing the environment around them.
It is kind of funny that it is is almost always the "haves" and not the "have not" that are arguing for less government interference since it is a given those who are already taken care of are in a position that they need less help and/or protection from the state then those who are not as well off as they are. Because of their status it is easy to see that their argument is not really about state power but more about maintaining a type of status quo where the "have nots" have less of a chance bettering their position because the state can not interfere with those with power/wealth/position from taking advantage of those that do not have any of this.
IMHO, things like laissez-faire economics and objectivism are really just mickey mouse versions of Machiavellianism, might make right, and the end justifying the means. The only difference between the two is that those that believe in the former and not the latter are just kidding themselves that such beliefs don't lead to the super rich having all the power (such as in a plutocracy) and/or incredibly wealthy families or members of such a country dictating what is and isn't accepting for a society while at the same time not being accountable to any authority themselves (such as Trump, the Koch brothers in the US and Russia's Putin and China's Xi Jinping).
It is almost a given that any time you have rich/powerful people preaching something like the "state shouldn't interfere in this" and/or "corporations and businesses can regulate and police themselves" it is really about such people wanting to dismantle any checks and balances in place that may lead to prosecution if they break certain laws or run into trouble for other reasons.
The state isn't a perfect entity, but it is one of the only things that can at times protect the the people that are not part of the elite %5 or %1 of the population who have their own private army of bodyguard, lawyers, etc. Don't be fooled into thinking that if there wasn't any government interference that you would be better off than you are now. History has shown that it is a given that those who are no supervision and no accountability in a very short period of time are willing to do awful things to others if it may make their life a bit easier. And of course the truth is there are examples of this going on today in Russia, China, and in the US.
Yes. Laissez faire is nonsense because "free markets" don't exist and cannot exist. Period. So the very idea is nonsense. So to is trying to separate "economy from state."
The state is always involved in the economy.
Thus, getting the state "out of" the economy is nonsense.
That you're struggling with this is telling.
"Free market" is a reference to the way prices are set. So there can be quite a bit of government intervention in an economy that still has free markets.
"Free market" would only refer to the kind of markets that existed in medieval times if medieval history was the context. Just a heads up.
The state isn’t the only agent acting in any economy. There are black markets that actively work to avoid state interference and involvement, for instance. The delusion lies in believing the state and the economy are somehow the same or inseparable, as if all trade, production, consumption, and enterprise would stop should a bunch of bureaucrats suddenly stop going to work.
I don’t prefer economic over civil liberties. In fact I think the proper role of government is to protect human rights and civil liberties. I just don’t think the proper role for government is to meddle in the economy, and for the reasons I stated.
I get a similar feeling about statists. Since there are ways to care for others that do not involve state authority, I lean to the belief that those who are dependant on the state to care for others don’t really care for others. It’s just that they’d much rather have someone else do it for them. This isn't a liberal or objectivist critique of statist charity, as far as I know, but a Marxist one. As I mentioned earlier, the absence of a state would lay bare your compassion for what it really amounts to, and so far it’s not looking pretty.
I don’t think people are fundamentally moral, only that they have the capacity for it. I believe the moral conscience is latent in everyone, just not fully developed in everyone.
I posit that the communal resources can be managed sustainably because it is in their self-interest to do so. I believe it because I’ve seen it first hand in a local anarchist community. No rules, no management, no authority, no mechanism, just a community of people engaging in common enterprise on the land they loved. Their economy consisted of fishing and foraging, tourism, trading trinkets with other communities, and believe it or not, professional surfing. All of this occurred out of the prying eyes of state interference…or so they thought. As soon as the state caught wind of their dealings they were forced to leave and their dwellings were burned to the ground.
I don’t believe this goodwill extends to government because it is a fundamentally immoral and anti-social institution. Anyone who occupies a position in it, moral or not, will nonetheless be perpetuating immoral and anti-social behavior. They couldn’t do otherwise.
But what you wrote is a good argument, and I agree with it. It works both ways, though. If one rejects freedom on account of the capacity for evil and greed of man, one should repudiate government power for the same reason.
I think both are possible. Whether good or evil, I only wish that I could deal with them all on my own terms, and associate with whomever I choose. I neither need nor want any collective management to determine which actions I or others take in any given situation, and I don’t think others need it as well, no matter how dependant upon they may have become in the meantime.
Poverty itself is not the traditional criticism. It's that poverty of the kind created by laissez-faire in the 19th and early 20th Century created volatility that resulted in social upheaval and war all over the globe.
Calming the world down was the motive behind embedded liberalism. As memories of those times fade, we return to conditions that gave rise to that volatility once again.
There's no point in being all tense and nervous about leftism. There is none to contend with.
I'm nervous and tense about statism, which is both left and right.
It's no strange wonder that Roosevelt praised Mussolini, and Mussolini praised the New Deal. In a review of Roosevelt's book he said "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices, having recognized the welfare of the economy is the welfare of the people". The Nazis also praised it. And it's no strange wonder that Mao Zedung and Lenin praised state capitalism.
There never was any laissez-faire. The state caused much of the poverty, and the state caused all of the wars. It was the Inclosure Acts in England that forced people into the hands of the factory owners, for example. Having their property taken from them by the State, it was either work in the factories or starve to death.
I think the problem is not the end goal, but the means. I'm on board with the whole individual freedom thing, perhaps more than most here. I raised both my children without any rules at all, they were not required to go to school, attend lessons, no bedtimes, nowhere out of bounds etc... I take individual freedom very seriously. But the fact is that we are where we are. Individuals have not been brought up with any idea of responsibility, repressed, beaten, and stupefied. We have a disgusting level of inequality, in both power and wealth, we have massive problems with pretty much all of our communal resources, most of which have been caused by the ones who are now rich getting themselves that way.
So if we want our anarchist utopia, how do we get there from here? Government backing out of economics seems like a terrible first step. It's just going to magnify the inequality and worsen the problems with communal resource management because nothing has been done about the system of power relations that exist as a result of living in a non-anarchist system for ten thousand years or so. You can't just undo that kind of damage by walking away. Certainly not by just walking away in one aspect (economy).
The problem here is historicism. You agreed there never has been any properly state-free system, so all you can show is that when the state are the most powerful weapon around, the rich use them to further their goals. If the state were not around, the rich would simply use the next most powerful weapon available (private armies, monopolising essential goods, private taxation etc), which may well be worse.
I'm with you on that. To destroy it or walk away from it would be cruel. The only way such a state could be achieved, I think, is if people simply stopped thinking in those terms, like the decline of Catholicism. That could take forever, for all I know. But in the meantime one needn't participate in it, and as you have done, lead by example.
You're right. They'd try to become a state. But I think it would take them a while to achieve the monopoly on violence, and a group like the Regional Defence Council of Aragon could hold them back.
Ok. So to limit state intervention, you'd have to restrict the ability of the people to vote for state intervention. That requires far reaching state power.
I don't think you can get there from here.
Quoting NOS4A2
Everybody has a narrative. Each one is self-serving.
Anyone who defends this system, directly or indirectly, doesn't give a damn about "liberty".
Ditto for anyone who is against democracy at work.
Anti-politics: hating government, while ignoring private power.
"The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. Therefore, you want to keep corporations invisible and focus all anger on the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500."
Laissez faire is just another form of this.
I wouldn’t propose to restrict anything. It would be interesting to see what would happen in no one voted, though. Maybe we should start a “Don’t Vote” movement. But then they’d make it compulsory, no doubt.
Then what follows is going to be some state intervention. There's no way around it.
:clap:
:up:
I agree with your post since I couldn't put it better myself.
From what I'm reading from your post you are saying isn't doesn't help against why we shouldn't have the state have control or regulate anything but seems more to support it. If the people who have money/power to make sure that are adequate resources for those who either work for them and/or beneath them then it is a given that a third party needs to be created in order for that issue to be taken care of.
If you know a bit about history you would know before the industrial age it was a given that the aristocrats (or their equivalent) in any given area where not only in charge of the lands and businesses they controlled but also the wellbeing of the towns or whatever the presided over. Therefore it was in their best interest to try and do something about poverty, homelessness, etc. in the areas they had influence over. In a way it isn't really that different then a farm taking care of his land in that if they overtax the earth they are growing crops (ie growing crops that use to much nutrients and/or water) that they will likely have trouble growing more crops in the future.
However, during the industrial age things changed in that those with money and power no longer really had to care about the towns, factories, or people that were used to make money for them. Instead of people like a aristocrats managing the people working for the the people investing in things like factories or railroads instead hired supervisors who's main task was to pay as little as possible for work done or maintaining whatever resources they where in charge of and/or extract as much money/profit as possible. And because more often than not those that invested in such businesses had little to no concern for the communities their businesses resided in, it became more important for some government agency to do this instead since it was a given that the idle rich had no desire to do this themselves.
In a nutshell since it is a given that may wealthy individuals have no interest in trying to help communities that their businesses or corporations operate out of, it has becomes a responsibility of the city, state, or government. If there are places where a large business or corporation actually is responsible for helping their local community then it is a given that the state doesn't have to interfere with what they are doing. However when they don't, that is when someone has to step in and of course that is some government agency since it is a given that no other party has the resources to do so.
And if you are someone who is "unhappy" about the state interfering with how either people and/or businesses want to do things than I guess that is just too bad. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that people with wealth more often abuse their power than the people in some state or federal agency abuse whatever power they have. You may not believe this because of some propaganda you have read but the reality is in the US and much of the western world live in a plutocracy, and in a plutocracy the people with wealth and power have even more power than those running government (and/or the two are basically the same).
Democracies require checks and balances which often come in the form of some kind of government oversight. In a way it isn't much different than a community requiring police to watch over a community. While in many communities the people are civilized enough to not require the police to have constantly be involved in anything/everything, it is a given that when something does happen a community requires at least some kind of arbitrator to help deal with an issue. People that think a communities or society doesn't require things like cops to watch over it from criminals (and/or other people misbehaving) or other people to also act as arbitrators for when a corporation/business chooses to misbehave are either naive or foolish or both.
As the old saying goes "power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely". One only has to see what is going on in Ukraine/Russia right now in order to understand this issue.
The wealthy don’t posses the monopoly on violence. The state does. The state, not the wealthy, can murder you in the street with impunity, throw you in jail, or confiscate your wealth. Slavery is still legal in the United States constitution, for example, so long the slave is the property of the American justice system. But if you’re fine with being controlled by politicians and bureaucrats, and those politicians and bureaucrats turn out to operate in the service of the wealthy, I guess that’s just too bad.
I’m not sure why any community requires the wealthy or the state to help them. It’s not “a given” that this should be so. But I can go to any large city in North America, wherever the state is at its most powerful, and look around to see what your state help amounts to. Not a whole lot.
This is hopelessly naive. Human rights are (obviously) deeply interlinked with economic dynamics.
What are human rights and civil liberties, to your view?
Obviously? Then it should be easy to say how this is the case.
It is.
You must have missed the word "hopelessly," above.
Because?
For the hundredth time: they OWN THE STATE.
They also ARE the state. More than half of those in congress are millionaires. The rest have to go through the wealthy to be in congress in the first place. There are very, very few exceptions.
But keep trying to separate the two. Good compartmentalization -- anything to avoid reality, I suppose. Impressive.
How many people are we talking here?
(I guess Michael Poole's make-shift sheds on the West coast, and the A-Zone in Winnipeg, have some folk, sometimes fewer, sometimes more; nothing to go all "Eureka" about though.)
1. Human rights include the right to life.
2. Life requires food.
3...
You love to play the fool. But you only fool yourself.
Remember the Enlightenment?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...."
:up:
Those who whine about the state without having anything to say about who controls the state - who will remain when it is abolished - simply want direct, unmediated, overlordship by capitalist rulers. Which not even capitalists want. The state doing their dirty work is good for them. Which is why dupes like NOS are nothing more than tools employed to abolish just those parts of the state the wealthy find most inconvenient, and nothing more. Hence his hilarious dick sucking for alleged billionares like Trump even as he pretends to be anti-statist.
Nah, I don't think it's Trumpism. It's idealised anarchist socialism and I'm glad it's still alive even if only as a dream. The roots are not in industrial capitalism but in rural protest, people like the Diggers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrard_Winstanley.
Quoting NOS4A2
Amen. Now let's get back to paying our taxes and keeping the gas pipes open. Or not.
I might have it wrong but I think this is the spirit of the OP and subsequent debate.
Herein lies the problem. NOS appears to want to retain some mechanisms - the one's by which he's recompensed for his labour, the ones by which he continues to own his property, the ones by which he can continue to make free use of communal resources like the air and water... whilst doing away with others. That's not "idealised" anything, it's just bog-standard right-wing politics wrapped up in new bow.
Absolutely. So any meritorious discussion of the topic must begin with the matter of how to prevent the former and encourage the latter.
Any discussion which begins with "I don't want to pay taxes" (paraphrasing) is deeply suspect in its integrity.
NOS is a die-hard Trumpist. He exists to apologize for him and people like him and nothing more.
Funny place for a rabid right-winger to be hanging out.
Quoting NOS4A2
Strange example for a 'let me profit from your disadvantage' capitalist to choose.
I think you noticed it too @Isaac:
Quoting Isaac
I rest my case.
Indeed.
Quoting Isaac
That much of our oppressive system has been installed and maintained by the state is an irrelevance unless one can show that they did so uncoerced and against the will of all of the remaining population. Otherwise they are merely the tool de jour, not the cause.
Recipe for a Mafia. 'Voluntary' contributions to 'protection'.
But I suggest to you that market regulation is also important. For example, border control and health and safety. Thanks to https://www.caa.co.uk for example, I do not have to worry much about either getting on a plane, or a plane falling on me, because unsafe operators are banned from the country. Recently, under the influence of small government advocates, building safety regulation has been relaxed. The result is freedom for builders, and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
And that is why I for one fear laissez-faire. It results in abysmally low standards in everything, and pollution, exploitation and death. I want doctors to be regulated, electrical equipment to be safe, food to be fit for consumption and so on. I want government to deal with the mafia and the snake oil salesmen as well as protecting me from the Mongol hordes.
The idea that someone owns the state and has the monopoly on violence as soon as he hits a certain net-worth isn’t worth thinking about. Not even Moses could come up with a sillier scapegoat. I cannot be convinced that this monopoly will disappear as soon as a goatherd comes to power.
The state is not a social institution run anti-socially, just waiting about for some moral vanguard to bring it to its teleological purpose—no greater leap of faith can be found—it is an anti-social institution running exactly how it was designed to run.
Any hand-wave that excuses the appropriation of wealth through taxation is incredibly obsequious. Clearly a desire to benefit from it inheres in these remarks?
Thanks for the honesty.
Protection rackets aren’t known for their voluntary association. But the underlying practice is extortion, which is exactly how the state funds itself.
It is my understanding that Grenfell Tower was the product of British “social housing”, the landlord being the the borough Council—the State.
Just to be clear, no laissez-faire has existed, so the “results” are difficult to come by. Virtually every activity occurs under the jurisdiction and oversight of a state.
You want the State to be the sole arbiter of safety. I do not. How can we reach a moral resolution to this impasse?
Health and safety needs funding and it needs coercive power. If there is some way this can be provided other than by the state I'd love to hear about it. ???
I agree that the state is in many ways just like a mafia, that is why I bring it up. However, I like to think that a democratic government is somewhat less corrupt, somewhat less arbitrarily violent than a Mafia would be in the absence of governmental opposition. I could be wrong...
But what I see happening, that I think you will probably disagree with, is that governments of nation states are losing their power to multi-national corporations, which are largely immune from government regulation. Far from fearing the strength of the state, I fear its weakness and its vulnerability to complete subversion and take over by corporations with agendas entirely at odds with those of ordinary people.
Of course it has. It's the law of the jungle.
I disagree only slightly. Multi-national organizations are certainly growing in wealth, many of them having a GDP greater than many nation states. But power, to me, is different than wealth. Corporations can only beg and bribe for privilege, and regulatory capture and rent-seeking behaviors arise only when there is an institution willing to provide such privileges. Ordinary people, too, must engage in the same behavior to affect any end that satisfies their own needs, and there’s no shame in it. In my mind, the organization that has the final say in the matter, whether to follow the agenda of a corporation or ordinary people, has the power.
As for health and safety, it seems to me that if one doesn’t want its services he shouldn’t have to pay for it. So maybe something like a subscription or membership program could work. Whether it would work or not, I’m unsure, but it would at least be an ethical relationship.
And of course it's not a recipe for everything.
And...that's basically it. End of story.
:up:
You mean a sillier straw man, which is all this is. "As soon as he hits a certain net-worth"? What kind of idiocy is this? Is this truly where your mind goes when you hear that the wealthy "own the state"?
So it's designed to be run by plutocrats? Maybe. Certainly looks that way.
Actually, what you're really describing is the corporation. Take a look at how that functions. I assume you're even more against them, yes? No, I forgot -- they don't have the "monopoly on violence." They're complete tyrannies with zero democratic participation, but at least they don't have the "monopoly on violence."
So let's turn all our rage to the one institution that's potentially democratic, and away from the institution that's unabashedly anti-democratic (which also happens to own and run the state).
"Abolish the state!" Fine. Oddly enough, I share that goal in the long run. But I also like to face the current reality.
The wealthy absolutely adore people like you. "Useful idiots" indeed.
Abolish the state. Why? Because they allow the corporate sector to own and run it. No state, no plutocracy.
It's democracy's fault, ultimately. So don't blame the corporations or the corporate sector -- who are totally unaccountable; they're just representing their interests along with all other interests, including the "little guys." Rather, blame the existence of the state, where leaders are somewhat responsible to the demos.
I realize now that NOS is a Rothbard wannabe. Too bad. Anarcho-capitalism is a sick, preposterous joke.
He's about as anti-statist as a pair of horse balls.
If this is what you believe then your really naïve since it is pretty much a given that those who have enough wealth/power can often commit murder (or more likely get someone else to do it for them so they don't have to get their own hands dirty) and violence just as much as the state can. Often the people running the state are mere puppets of those who are already wealthy and who have power and will start wars, jail, and/or prosecute those who cause problems that are wealthy. While it might sound like a "nice" idea for people who share your views to get rid of all state and government entities and just let the uber rich just do what they want, but that would merely make matters worse and turn such countries/governments into autocracies or neo-feudalism which is basically what has happened in China and Russia where the uber wealthy/powerful can arrest people for whatever reason and/or confiscate whatever wealth anyone for merely being labeled a terrorist/enemy of the state.
If there is absolutely no separation between the wealthy and those who run government then it merely means those with money and influence run/control EVERYTHING and they can do ANYTHING they want without fear of any prosecution.
Quoting NOS4A2
While slavery may be illegal in most Western countries, there are still many uber wealthy people that still have enough resources to buy and have slaves. Without any governments to make it illegal to have slaves the uber wealthy can easily turn anyone they want into slaves if they wish to do so.
Most politicians are one way or another in the pockets of those that have money or at least very influenced by them. It is you who are fooled into thinking that the politicians/state want people to be mindless and obedient plebs an not the people who are themselves in control of the politicians themselves.
Quoting NOS4A2
I guess then you have never be poor and/or out of work and have had to try and find a way to make ends met. Or have ever be rob, ever have had to drive a car, go to a public school, or have ever had a medical issues that was too expensive for you to pay for. Without a income there are many elderly, disabled, etc people that can not survive without some kind of subsidy to help them pay for what they need and you have to be incredibly dumb (or incredibly insolated from the rest of the world) not to understand that they many of the most wealthiest people out there would rather see such people die than have to spend money to help them.
The wealthy ARE the state.
Read War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler to dispel some of this naivete.
"I spent most of my [33 years in the Marine Corps] being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."
You appear to have no clue about the historically obvious cahoots wedding big business to government.
The revolving door? - does that ring any bells?
In short: DUUUUDE. READ SOME HISTORY. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer is a great place to start, a valuable overview. United Fruit figures large: a de facto branch of US government. ETCETCETCETC
States create and control corporations. Corporations, like you and I, are considered legal entities, largely subject to the same state laws. Corporations, like you and I, are subject to taxation. You and I can create a corporation. We cannot create a state. We can run a corporation to beneficent ends. We cannot run a state towards beneficent ends. You and I can engage with a corporation on a voluntary basis. We cannot engage with a state on a voluntary basis. So you have it all backwards.
If by "potentially democratic" you mean we get to vote for another mammal to control how we live and to steal the fruits of our labor, I want nothing to do with it.
Sorry, I’m not going to pretend the State is a one-to-one ratio with a single socio-economic class, especially one so amorphous, fuzzy and stereotypical as The Wealthy. Every private citizen, wealthy and poor, is under the jurisdiction of The State and its laws. That these laws often favor the wealthy or are not applied equally is not due to the wealth of the beneficiaries, but to State malfeasance, incompetence, and greed of state officials.
The implication of all this “the wealthy are the state” talk is that you’d rather be governed by The Poor. But we’ve seen all these so-called proletarian revolutions and what they amount to: usually genocide.
We can compare our naivety. If I’m so naive on the topic it should be easy for you to name a wealthy person who has committed murder and violence “just as much as the State has”; or name one wealthy person in Russia or China who has arrested someone and confiscated his wealth. I can give countless examples of States engaging in such behavior.
It’s a good thing there are compassionate, not-so-wealthy people such as yourself out there spending your efforts to help the elderly, disabled, the poor etc. to compensate for the lack of wealthy concern. But in effect you’re not helping, but advocating that the state and the wealthy—others—should help the poor wherever you refuse to. Equating compassion with tax-paying and statism is one of the greatest evils in the history of mankind, in my opinion.
This doesn't make sense.
Sorry, states authorize corporations. I appreciate the quibbling.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Read a fucking book.
Quoting NOS4A2
Here we have a ludicrous, ad hoc leap of unreason.
Have a nice wank.
Sit and spin. You have nothing.
I have the facts. You have the fantasy. Enjoy.
What is the state exactly? Could we have rule of law without one? Do we want rule of law?
I’ve defined it as the organization of the means of appropriation of the labor of others, basically a system of exploitation. It’s known as the so-called “conquest theory of state”, which contrasts with the notion of the social contract. Voltaire said it best:
“The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other”.
But states also provide defense for the community, a sense of identity, merchant law, incarceration of criminals, social services, etc.
Why would you boil it down to just exploitation? That's seems pretty skewed.
And what about rule of law? Are you for or against it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
"This theory gained a new level of importance in the United States, following the 2008 crisis, when prominent government figures insinuated that previous and future hirings in the financial sphere manipulates the decision-making of eminent government members when it comes to financial matters.[2]
Governments hire industry professionals for their private sector experience, their influence within corporations that the government is attempting to regulate or do business with, and in order to gain political support (donations and endorsements) from private firms.
Industry, in turn, hires people out of government positions to gain personal access to government officials, seek favorable legislation/regulation and government contracts in exchange for high-paying employment offers, and get inside information on what is going on in government.
In fact, the regulator while in office takes actions and makes decisions enabling him to cash in later when joining a firm he has regulated. These actions are termed as bureaucratic capital. It is essentially inside knowledge of the system, including any loopholes that might exist. ‘Bureaucratic capital’ consists also of good relationship with the lower-level bureaucracy. ‘Bureaucratic capital’ therefore enables the bureaucrat to cash in later thereon, after exiting the public sector and joining a firm in the sector he previously regulated. Thus, the bureaucrat can abuse the previous position to increase income in a legal way.[3]
The lobbying industry is especially affected by the revolving door concept, as the main asset for a lobbyist is contacts with and influence on government officials. This industrial climate is attractive for ex-government officials. It can also mean substantial monetary rewards for the lobbying firms and government projects and contracts in the hundreds of millions for those they represent.[4][5][6]
Consequences of the revolving door movement
Scientific papers have demonstrated the consequences of the revolving doors practice and the side effects of those movements are numerous. These can be beneficial either for the companies or for the regulatory bodies.
Authors, such as David Miller and William Dinan, have claimed that there are risks when going in and out of revolving doors.[7] The consequences of this movement can be conflict of interest or the loss of confidence in the regulating institutions. Another possible side effect of the revolving door practice is that regulators could give away confidential information held by the financial institutions.[8] which would give companies the possibility to get access to information and people involved in the decision-making process of regulating authorities.[9] Revolving doors can also lead to unfair competition advantage as well as an unfair distribution of influencing power.[10] Economic distortion can be explained through the fact that so-called too-big-to-fail firms generate their power in the market through the mechanism of the revolving door and not through salient choices. This is due to the fact that big companies have more money than smaller ones and can thus allow themselves to hire more revolvers.[10]"
Note that while you referred to "big business" the hypothesis under examination is about financial institutions. "Big business" historically refers to private industry, not finance.
Since the financial sector is unusually prominent now, it doesn't seem odd that talent would go back and forth between government and financial institutions, just as the early to mid 20th century talent usually had military experience, so fostered military-private sector relationships which weren't always kosher.
Suppose that there are two means with which man can satisfy his needs. One is the application of labor and voluntary exchange; the other is the appropriation of someone else’s labor and voluntary exchange—theft, robbery, extortion, exploitation. The state, having no wealth of its own, chose the latter. Whether it provides services or not, the underlying mechanism of exploitation remains. Adding on top of that the monopoly on violence, the regulation of its citizen’s livelihoods, and its jurisdiction over all land and properties in its dominion, we have a relationship that is tantamount to the master and slave.
I do believe in something like the rule of law, that all people and institutions should be subject to the same laws, principles, customs, whatever, but that’s just another reason why it bothers me that states can get away with theft, murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, but anyone else would not.
It's just an intro-post. You'll have to fill in the blanks with your own research.
From United Fruit to Rex Tillerson (read: Exxon) et al, big business is very much a part of the revolving door.
:lol:
I was just commenting that "big business" usually refers to manufacturing, not finance.
Are you going to evolve into one of those brain dead leftist pit bulls? That would be a shame.
No, the left is just as nutty as the right.
It wouldn't surprise me if Sting got it right: there is no political solution.
Oh good.
Schopenhauer said there's no solution period. I think that's correct.
But then you've never understood justice.
Our cardinal consolations are not to be sneezed at: literature, music, visual art, mythology, meditation, stoicism, dialectic, philosophy...
But no, no Final Solution short of a nuclear inferno - or, let's say, a genocide of the Other.
On the other hand, we'll always have Pascal's pseudo-solution: cultivating the ability to sit quietly in a room.
Talking about the US government and industry, in 2001 there was an anti-trust case against Microsoft which echoed another such case in 1984, which famously broke up the "Bell System.". The fact that nobody today even knows what a Bell System is testifies to the occasionally extremely antagonistic relationship between the US government and American corporations.
In other countries, like Japan, that relationship is totally different, with government doing its utmost to protect and accommodate industry.
The situation in America reflects a bloody labor movement and an astonishingly successful American left. Those days are gone, though.
Today, financial institutions are at the core of the US economy, not manufacturing. The story is all about Wall St.
That's my 10 second phone history. :razz:
Interesting. The more you know...
I'm no expert, but I've read enough history to know NOS4A2 hasn't.
Quoting frank
Yep, labor has lost its power. The left has lost its mind.
:up:
What?
You don’t know what I understand, but assert it anyways. You are not just.
We can make inferences from your comments. Notions of justice and equity do not loom large therein. The criticism of laissez-faire that you claim never to have understood centres on the continuation of inequity. Anything goes means everything stays, or more likely, gets worse.
States do not control corporations. There’s no law telling boards of directors to distribute 90% of profits to shareholders. Corporations are gifts from the state— and they are run by the people who own and run the state: the wealthy.
Quoting NOS4A2
There’s no reason either cannot be run for beneficent ends.
As it stands, corporations are not generally run for beneficent ends. They’re run for owners. The state, which they run, also functions this way. Neither are inevitable.
Quoting NOS4A2
We can vote in our neighbors for board of selectmen. We can vote for people who are decent— potentially. On the national level, where both major parties are owned by the corporate sector, there’s little choice.
Compare to the function of a corporation. Where’s the democracy there? They too steal the “fruits of our labor,” and give 90% back to their shareholders. Oddly you don’t seem to care much about this. You’d rather first go after the institution with even a modicum of democracy.
Great logic.
So the wealthy individuals who make up the government, who pass laws that favor their class or their donors, are to blame. True. It’s also the greed and malfeasance of those who bribe said officials.
I guess the axiom is: “state bad.” Forget nuance, history… or reality.
Yes…States are bad seeds. I once saw a State rob a convenient store downtown. Can’t say I ever saw a wealthy guy do that.
Germany killed lots of people. Germany has always been a real asshole. The United States too — a huge dickhead.
I would list the names of every common laborer maimed or killed without recompense in a factory or slaughterhouse accident from the incipience of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, but a list that long might crash the site.
"Industrial Revolution working conditions were extremely dangerous for many reasons... particularly for reasons of economics: owners were under no regulations and did not have a financial reason to protect their workers."
https://www.historyonthenet.com/industrial-revolution-working-conditions
I think of Walmart's peasant insurance.
Let me see if I can anticipate: it’s the State’s fault.
Never mind that the “state” is an abstract entity and doesn’t “do” anything at all. It doesn’t think or feel or act any more than “county” or “city” does. Thus, very easy to blame for the looting of America and exploitation of workers by capitalists.
They want everyone blaming the state, while simultaneously controlling the state.
Yeah, good point. He may be over-abstractifying and, in a manner of speaking, depeopling the state. That the folks who run the United States are age-old bedfellows of big business should be common knowledge by now. Pro-big-business, but anti-state: ignorance is the only way to get there.
:smirk: :up:
:clap: :100:
Quoting Banno
:fire:
Quoting Streetlight
Libertarian capitalists. :eyes:
Well NOS is just a simpleminded person. Barely coherent. If you want someone much more serious and infinitely more influential, look to Friedman. Still completely wrong, but gives a better sense of what’s used for cover.
There is no mechanism or force in the principle of laissez-faire that prohibits justice, though, nor does it entail “anything goes”. I just happen to be writing about inequities and injustices you remain silent about. Since your understanding of justice is so keen I must infer you avoid them for unscrupulous or bad faith reasons.
If corporations are so powerful then you ought to start one, at least to fight back. You can start one by filing articles of incorporation with your state. It’s often pretty cheap, like $100. No doubt you’ll immediately achieve some sort of power. You’d control the state; you’d have the monopoly on violence; you can liberate workers; and you’d be able to use all that power for good!
You’d compare a list of workplace accidents to genocide, war, and empire.
Where’s the state there?
There's gold in them thar hills.
How does it feel to draw a line between violations of human rights you care about and violations of human rights you don't care about? It's a recipe for self-corruption, and now you're a monster. NOS4A2 indeed.
I made no comparison.*
The accumulated crimes of state and big business can't be teased apart and rubricized. State and big business - those are nearly synonyms.**
*You see a comparison because you want to win an argument. Not because you care about the truth.
**You'd see that if you took some time to read about it - but you won't read about it because the facts would compel you to recant a philosophical position that justifies a grotesque egocentric pleasure.
Here you belittle the sufferings of the common laborer. That's what monsters do.
Here you whitewash the cultural significance of the dehumanization of the common laborer. That's what monsters do.
:roll:
I’m talking about multinational corporations — what is often called “big business.” Apologists love to be disingenuous about this— as if we’re talking about mom and pop stores.
Anything to distract from the fact that corporations are the way capitalists currently organize, that they’re run undemocratically, and that they currently own and run the government (i.e., PEOPLE in positions of power).
But yes, I’ll automatically be catapulted to power by filing articles of incorporation.
I don't know if you have access to jstor, but there's a good article on there called The Post-Modern State, by James Kurth
First it’s The Wealthy, then corporations, now it’s multinational corporations. Now it’s IKEA, Johnny Walker, and Starbucks who are our overlords.
Will you compile all the accidents that occur on state-built roads and shift the blame accordingly? You monster!
There’s no difference— the capitalist class, the “owners,” are the “wealthy” class that own the corporations. It’s fairly obvious — provided one wants to face reality rather than defend plutocracy as you do. In the latter case, I’m sure it’s all very perplexing. “Corporations” now become any small business, any incorporated co-op, etc. — so confusing! How can they be a problem!
You can run for President or Senator if you wish. In the same way as one can “start a corporation.” The difference is that one is democratic and the other undemocratic in its function. Since you’re unwittingly pro-plutocracy and anti-democracy, I can see why you want to minimize the power and tyranny of the one while highlighting the problems of the other (which no doubt exist).
Abolish the state. Replace it with individuals freely cooperating in trade. Privatize everything. The only laws should be establishing and protecting private property.
This is actually considered the goal to strive for, and has been thrust upon working and middle class Americans as an ideal by intellectuals working in service of capitalist plutocrats.
NOS is one such brainwashed advocate, and a poor one at that.
Perhaps my ignorance is a result of my experience and tastes. I have had no relationship with a corporation that was not voluntary and premised on mutual agreement. If I were to come across arraignments that were not to my liking, I’d not sign any contract. If I don’t like their product or service I don’t buy it. If I wanted a raise or some privilege I’d much rather retain a space of negotiation than to let some majority decide how I ought to associate with others,
I just don’t see where the tyranny is.
Corporations are not run democratically. Elections (which is how officials, who make up the “state”, obtain their positions) are democratic.
Thus people have some say in the latter decisions. Workers have no say in the decisions of the board of directors.
Avoiding corporations is nearly impossible. In terms of employment, it’s nice to know you stick with the age-old “just quit and work somewhere else” mantra, despite it being explained to you numerous times just how mindless it is. Way to justify an anti-democratic, plutocratically-run institution while railing against “exploitation” of the state!
Let me give the equivalent response to your whines about state power: move to an island somewhere. No one is forcing you to interact with a state. It’s totally voluntary.
Corporations are not governments, though. If a group of people start a corporation it makes no sense to me that others, by virtue of them accepting a job there, should have control over it. It makes no sense to me that the people who conceive of, fund, build, accept the risk, and who are responsible for its operation from its conception until its demise should not get to decide how it should operate. You haven’t offered a single reason why this should be so.
I would say “just quit” because it is a far better course of action than attempting to force others to give up control of their creations so that Xtrix might feel better.
True. They're stilled governed, and governed by people. People who make decisions which many others have to live with. True, you could argue workers, the community, the planet, etc. don't really "have to" live with them -- but again, if that explanation satisfies you - so be it.
Quoting NOS4A2
Notice I didn't mention worker control. That's another discussion worth having. All I mentioned was the fact that most multinational corporations (the fortune 500, etc.), are not governed as co-ops -- they're top-down structures. The decisions are made by a board of directors -- a handful of people -- and the CEO/top executives, also a handful of people. The thousands (or millions) of workers get no say. The workers are certainly included in generating profit, yes? Yet it's a handful of people who decide what to do with those profits. If that's not exploiting the "fruits of one's labor" I don't know what is.
If one wants to argue that this is somehow the result of the state, there is of course a shred of truth in it -- e.g., corporations couldn't exist in their current form without the law, without legal personhood; owners couldn't get away with abuse if it wasn't allowed by the state, etc. But in my view that's a shallow analysis. And here I'm being as generous as I can.
Quoting NOS4A2
Walmart could exist just fine without the Waltons. It's the workers that keep Walmart running, not the owners. The owners don't manage, run, stock, and maintain any of the Walmart buildings. That someone starts a business doesn't grant them the right to exploit people. Our economy shouldn't be structured in this way. Private ownership is not grounds "anything goes" -- otherwise slavery could still be around (and, in some forms, still is).
Good luck "building, accepting risk, and operating" a business alone. If others have a crucial role in generating profits (as workers at Walmart do), they should at minimum have some input into how those profits are allocated. As it stands now -- unsurprisingly -- 90% go back to shareholders. I seriously doubt workers would vote for this, if given the opportunity. But since it's an anti-democratic institution, that's off the table. And thanks in part to apologists like you, it'll stick around for a long time yet I'm sure.
This is why your railing against the state's "injustices" is such a joke. You're able to see injustice on the state level...yet ignore or minimize injustice at the heart of our economy. What would be respectable, or at least consistent, would be to condemn the fundamentally illegitimate system of corporate governance. That you can't bring yourself to do so -- or simply aren't capable of recognizing it -- is telling.
Quoting NOS4A2
No one said anything about giving up their creations.
Also, I would say "just leave" rather than subject others to a ridiculous "laissez faire" system to make NOS feel better. An island awaits you.
Your reasoning and snark have not convinced me that workers should “get a say” in a venture that is not theirs, nor that this relationship is anything like a state and subject, which has the monopoly on violence, systems of taxation, and armed control and jurisdiction.
If I want to risk starting a business, funding it, operating it, I should not have to give you a say just because I hired you to pour lattes. If you want to negotiate the terms of your employment you’ll just have to put on your big boy pants and learn to negotiate.
You really don’t deserve a “say” in the government, in that case. You can always leave the country if you don’t like paying taxes. You shouldn’t get a vote just because you happen to be born here.
So Walmart workers should get no say in what happens to the “fruits of their labor” — to the profits which they generate. Got it. Seems perfectly fair. Fuck those people. Also fuck the Starbucks employees, those “latte pouring” peons.
This coming from a guy who whines endlessly about the injustices of the state. Magnificent.
Quoting Xtrix
:love:
NOS4A2's view in a nutshell. Compassionless. Classic Randianism. Fuck the looters and moochers.
"I made a company. It's mine. If you don't like your starvation wage, go find another company."
All well and good - until you accept that nearly 50% of jobs are unskilled, and a comparable proportion of laborers are unskilled - interchangeable - and have zero negotiating power.
NOS and his ilk will come back with: So go get some skills!
Fine. I can do that. But can the entirety of unskilled labor just "go get some skills" and secure a skilled position with a living wage? The notion is absurd.
There will always be millions of unskilled jobs. And suppose every unskilled laborer went out and got some skills - would that magically eliminate all unskilled jobs? Of course not. Millions of laborers, skilled or unskilled, would be compelled by necessity (food, shelter) to serve as unskilled laborers with zero negotiating power.
The only human response to this tragedy is a compassionate wage for unskilled labor.
Quoting NOS4A2
A starvation wage for unskilled labor across the market - that's the tyranny.
It isn't. The objections to Laissez-faire are ethical, not economic. My guess, in answer to your puzzlement, is that you have not considered Laissez-faire from an ethical point of view.
Now I might be wrong about that, you may have some ethical structure that justifies non-intervention. For the rest of us the state remains as a muddled, cumbersome attempt to come to terms with our dealings, one with the other. Leaving things to take their own course is tantamount to ignoring the issue. Perhaps you are right, and that is what one ought to do. Can you defend that?
I’m curious about this community. Some island, I assume, but where???
Btw, states have always had a tendency to take over.
Right.
You have the choice. Don’t want to work for someone else for meager wages? You have the right to quit. Because life is that simple.
These are the same people who cry endlessly about unemployment benefits and who despise social security and Medicaid— or social welfare programs generally.
So it’s not as if they say “hey, you can quit— I’m in favor of strong social safety nets so that people can choose to leave shitty job conditions more easily and increase competition.” That would at least be SOMETHING. Maybe that would warrant some serious attention. But no … they want to abolish all of that.
Reminds me of these “pro lifers.” They’re pro life until the baby comes out, then you’re on your own. As George Carlin put it: “pre-born you’re fine; pre-school, you’re fucked.”
When it comes to jobs, it’s even worse— you’re fucked either way. The subtext: shut up and do your job, you lazy, freeloading welfare queen.
That’s all it boils down to— behind all of the talk about liberty and laissez faire and “fruits of one’s labor,” etc: utter contempt for working people, for democracy, for majority vote, for unions, for social programs, for worker participation. Basically for anything “social” altogether. What’s left? The individual; namely, “me.”
It’s an anti-social and even sociopathic view. Which is evident by how NOS and his cadre can be counted on to arrive at the worst possible conclusions time and again. Literally if you knew nothing else about a topic, just read what he says and you’ll know that thinking the opposite is the correct move.
If only I could find someone like this in the world of gambling - I’d be a billionaire.
Workers didn't "just go elsewhere", they revolted, went on strike, started unions and broke machinery to enforce fairness.
:joke:
Quoting NOS4A2
I'd urge both of you not to think purely of companies as an abstraction.
Cooperatives can be quite effective. Some of the largest companies that dominate the retail market in my country are cooperatives. They're not at all somehow weaker than other corporations. Furthermore, a lot of the issues here, like how much say do workers have in the company, come for other institutional factors: what is the role of labour unions? How are the labour laws in country? Corporations adapt easily to this environment and you can notice easily the difference of their actions let's say in Nordic countries compared to some exclusive zones in Third World countries.
They're also economic. Anti-competitive practises as a direct result of deregulation lead to less efficient use of resources and more expensive goods. Efficient free markets only exist where buyers and sellers have equal bargaining power, information is freely available and the market is mature and unlikely to be disrupted by new entrants. Those markets you can leave alone.
You are wrong because I’ve criticized the ethics of state intervention, questioning how passively paying a tax or promoting this or that government service could be considered ethical. Delegating ethical conduct to others is not itself ethical conduct. It’s self-serving conduct.
I said poverty, wealth inequality, overconsumption, and so on, is apparent in all present systems. And I suggested that state interventions only serve to provide mechanisms by which the statist gets to relieve himself from the sordid necessity of living for others, as Oscar Wilde admitted. From this I reason that an interventionist might fear laissez-faire because it would expose his conscience and morality for what it really amounts to.
Laissez-Faire does not entail leaving things to their own course or ignoring anything. It is a fairly simple notion that unlike mercantilism, fascism, communism, modern liberalism, the state should probably mind its own business.
:100: :up:
Free markets need a lot of institutions to remain free.
I'm not excusing it. I've just given a perfectly clear argument justifying it using foundational principles you and I have just agreed on. We agreed on the need to manage common resources and we agreed that the current crop of humanity (for whatever reason) cannot be trusted to manage those resources voluntarily.
If you want to go back and dispute one of those points then do so.
It's not passive. As has pointed out. Just as you can change corporations if you don't like their service, you can change countries if you don't like their deal. The government of the country are the legal owners of the legal entity and they offer a deal to anyone born into (or moving into) their country. If you don't like the deal, move out of their country.
Yes it is. Monstrous.
Yep, utter contempt for the unskilled laborer. "Fuck those parasites."
You didn’t justify taxation.
Deal? With which official did you make a deal with on the date of your birth?
I have changed services, changed corporations, and changed countries. One was significantly more difficult and life-altering, taking years to become official and involving much effort and zero negotiation. There was no deal. It was as if running from one plantation to the next. The rest were easy.
It’s interesting that in the age of “Government is the problem,” of small government— getting the state out of the way through deregulation — not only has wealth inequality soared, but consolidation/monopolization has increased. There are less corporations in various markets, not more. (E.g., telecommunications, meat, agriculture, energy, retail, entertainment.)
Apologists want to convince us not to believe our lying eyes. The results of neoliberalism are right in front of us. This is what comes of approaching “laissez faire.”
The closer you get to that “ideal,” the shittier everything becomes.
“I can do whatever I want with my slaves — they’re private property.”
Exactly.
Laissez faire takes us back to the jungle.
I fear laissez faire because........ there are people like NOS4A2. :lol: :lol: :lol:
With which point do you now disagree?
Quoting NOS4A2
Whomever the Prime Minister was, Harold Wilson in my case.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't see how the amount of effort is someone else's problem. Can you explain why the rightful owner of a country should make arrangements to make it easier for you to enter/leave?
Quoting NOS4A2
When was the last time you negotiated on your gas bill? For Christ's sake, you're clutching at straws here. The company says "here's the terms, here's the price - take it or leave it", that's it. You don't get to fucking negotiate the terms and conditions of your utility bill.
Quoting NOS4A2
Which is exactly how it feels for someone dissatisfied with all of the available utility companies, for example, or all of the available banks.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, explain why the owner of a country should make it easy for you to enter/leave.
:up:
“State bad.”
I mean if I were American I would also think paying taxes is a rort because it all goes to builidng bombs to kill childen in Palestine or Ukraine anyway, but that is not the libertarian issue.
Senate votes:
78-17 for a $10 billion bailout to Jeff Bezos
90-5 for a $125 billion corporate tax break
87-6 for $53 billion to corporate outsourcers
88-11 for $780 billion to war profiteers
58-42 against a $15 minimum wage
So yeah, there is absolutely a problem with taxes but that's what happens when a state is a corporate subentity with a military.
I’m not sure I’ve seen your justification for taxation in this thread, or I have forgotten. If you wouldn’t mind reiterating it or linking to it I can provide a response.
I don’t think you made any deal with Harold Wilson, but such a thought brings new meaning to the phrase “cradle-to-grave”.
I don’t think anyone can own a country and I have given no group of people or any institution the right to dictate how I conduct myself. The opposite is true when I sign employment agreements. One dictates my behavior by threat and force, the other by agreement. Do you think both are similar?
I have never negotiated a public utility bill because I am not allowed to. I am unable to negotiate or find a competitor because the state has a monopoly on such utilities.
I don’t think a government should make it easier for me, and never expressed anything like that. I have only said the relationship is immoral, employs compulsory cooperation rather than voluntary cooperation.
I gave it in the quote - there's a need to manage common resources, experience has shown that in our current hierarchical society people do not do so voluntarily. You agreed with both of those principles. Hence it follows there's a need to manage common resources without relying on spontaneous voluntary action.
One justification among many, but the one whose premises you agreed with.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course I did, same deal you made when you buy a phone, open a bank account, drive over a toll bridge, get on a train... Not every deal is in the form of a signed contract, not every deal is made with the relevant party's agreement (those involving children, for example).
Quoting NOS4A2
Neither do I, I'm following your logic. If no-one can own a country then I shouldn't have to pay for any property, right? Since no-one can own it? Why do you think no-one can own a country, but people can own a factory?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, you have. You're living in their country and those are the rules. If you don't like those rules, move. How is this any different to employment? Say your boss changes your working hours, you didn't agree to that change, you no longer like the new working hours, so what do you do?
Quoting NOS4A2
No it doesn't you're completely free to leave. They're not using any threat or force to compel you to stay. Of course, if you do stay, then you're agreeing to their rules, one of which is that they can throw you in jail if you break any of the rules. If you don't like that rule, move.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yet the only counter-argument you offered to the suggestion that countries are no different to corporations is that it's hard to leave. If you're now saying they're under no obligation to make it easier for you to leave, then what remains?
Your argument fails because you cannot invoke any substantive reason why a government should not own a country that doesn't also apply to a corporation owning a utility (or land, or mining rights, or whatever...). Absent of this, it is exactly as legitimate for a country to specify the rules you must abide by to make use of it's land, air, water etc, as it is for a corporation to. If you don't like those rules, move.
Quoting NOS4A2
There's no compulsion at all. You're free to leave any time you like.
Exactly.
NOS is (willfully?) confused about the power hierarchy of the modern world. Horns for the state and halos for the corporations. What a mess of illogic.
He is not confused. He likes corporate power. He sees no issue with it. Do not be charitable with fucks like him.
While I agree he's a fuck, I think ignorance is at the heart of it. He wholeheartedly hates the state. That's correct, to my view. If he would pick up a (fucking) book on the subject he would see that...
Quoting Streetlight
...and expand his hate to the corporate sphere.
Quoting Streetlight
He sees no issue with it because he doesn't understand that...
Quoting Streetlight
He doesn't understand it because he's been careful not to read a book about it. There's no excuse for his ignorance, as he's apparently capable of educating himself. That's why I agree he's a fuck: His ignorance is willful. But I still chalk it up to ignorance.
It's possible I'm being too charitable. I think Hanlon's razor is a pearl:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by [ignorance]."
You may be right. I've called him a monster above, and I stand by that. What you see as my charity aligns neatly with Nietzsche's caveat:
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...”
It doesn’t follow for me that a compulsory tax or compulsory cooperation is required to manage common resources.
By and large people come to own a factory by legitimate means, states do not acquire a territory by legitimate means. Factories deal with their employees through legitimate means, utilizing contract and voluntary cooperation, states do not, and utilize force and compulsory cooperation.
I feel I shouldn’t need to compare immigration to changing jobs, but this is quality of argument we’ve resorted to.
I don’t require a passport to leave a job and find another. I don’t need to pass through a border and have my motives questioned if I leave a job and find another. I do not need to sell my property and sever ties with the people I know to change jobs. I do not need to become an immigrant and go through any immigration process to change jobs. I do not need to learn new languages, customs, laws, just to fit in a new job. I do not face deportation if I find a new job. The comparison is so outlandish as to be false.
Cringeworthy. You lot have resorted to fashioning fantasies in your head. But I love reading you guys seethe about it.
Something only a monster would say.
Take care.
Enjoy your thraldom.
OK. How else?
Quoting NOS4A2
You're just using 'legitimate' here to mean 'means I agree with'. On what grounds are the means by which factory owner come by their factories 'legitimate' which then excludes the means by which, say, Queen Elizabeth came by England?
Quoting NOS4A2
They do not. You are free to leave.
Quoting NOS4A2
You've not answered why the state should care how difficult you find it to emigrate. If you don't like the rules, move. If you find moving onerous, how exactly is that my problem, or the state's problem, or anyone's problem but yours?
If I personally find emigration a breeze, but am terrified of job interviews, do I get to claim corporations are immoral for making move jobs every time they change my employment terms?
Also monstrous.
Monstrous corroboration.
I thought you were going to justify taxation.
This is turning into an interview. I feared as much.
There are two means by which man can satisfy his needs, through one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, or through robbery and confiscation. The private citizen, whether factory owner or factory worker, engages in the former, the state engages in the latter.
You’re comparing immigration to finding a new job. It’s a false equivalency. And that’s to say nothing about states where emigration is or was illegal.
I am. X needs doing, there are no alternatives. That's a justification for X.
Quoting NOS4A2
So you'd rule against inheritance then, which is neither "one’s own labor" nor "the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others". That's a good start, but it doesn't differentiate Queen Elizabeth from most factory owners.
Quoting NOS4A2
Just saying it's a false equivalency doesn't make it one by magic. It's harder. That's all you've given me so far. If I find emigration easy but moving jobs hard does that make my employer immoral for changing my contract to terms I don't like?
Taxes need doing. That’s a justification for taxes. Doesn’t compute.
I would not rule against inheritance, and never implied any such thing.
A monarch is the head of state, a factory owner is a subject of the state.
I’ve given reasons why they are not equivalent, all of which were not addressed. You haven’t given reasons why the are equivalent. Moving to another country is not equivalent to moving to another job.
This seems more accurate to me:
X needs doing. Y is the only way to do X. That's a justification for Y.
The form given was... (Although, see )
...is there some reason you missed out the most important part?
Quoting NOS4A2
So, if the Queen inherits England, she legitimately owns England.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yep. Because his factory is on the Queen's property. Her property, her rules.
Quoting NOS4A2
I did address them. You just ignored it. Your list makes emigration harder than moving job, no other difference is given than the difficulty. If I find emigration easier than moving job, is my boss immoral for changing my contract unfavorably?
Or, put another way, if states made emigration easier, would they be off the hook?
Yes. That works better.
I just want to know the justification for why taxes need doing. I was arguing that they don’t need doing, that they are immoral, that there are voluntary alternatives such as community organization.
If you found emigration easier than changing jobs I’d say you were insane, for one.
Yes, I get it, a boss may act immorally towards an employee just like a state can act immorally towards a citizen. Yes, one has the option of quitting a state just as one has the option to quit a job. People do both all the time, for economic and moral reasons, at least when they are not fleeing because they fear for their lives. Yes, if one doesn’t like one state he should move to another.
But that’s an oversimplification because one isn’t compelled, by threat of force, to deal with anyone in the private sphere, corporate or otherwise, save for perhaps in criminal endeavors like robbery. He can liberate himself from the jurisdiction of his overlords and work as he sees fit. He can become a boss himself, start a collective, and so on. All of it, of course, under the beck and call of the state.
In a state you are compelled, by threat of force, to deal with it, just like with any criminal enterprise. The immigrant and refugee cannot liberate himself from its power and oversight no matter where he goes. Even those deemed stateless have been subjected to some of the worst state privations from states.
The relationship, the risks, the effort, the power imbalance, the scope, the coercion, the effect—none of it is equivalent between the two.
It is absolutely clear that people will not volunteer to deal with common resources, the idea is utterly ludicrous. There are homeless people in every city, people dying from poverty in every country, pollution and habitat destruction on an apocalyptic scale... All of which people are perfectly free to voluntarily solve and yet they do not.
If some pie in the sky Utopian fantasy of a global love-in is all you've got...
You think finding emigration easier than moving jobs is insane, but apparently the idea that Jeff Bezos will, overnight, for no reason at all, decide to spend his money alleviating the plight of the starving in Africa, is sane?
Quoting NOS4A2
Nor are you compelled by force to deal with anyone from your government. You are free to leave at any time. We've been through this. What threat of force prevents you from leaving your country?
It’s not as ludicrous as you make it out to be, I'm afraid. People help the homeless everyday. People organize to protect the environment. Volunteers, churches, philanthropists, charities, still operate despite your panacea. They have to because delegating these duties to a state only minimizes this activity by taking the responsibility out of their hands and placing it in another's. Paying a tax is tantamount to doing nothing to resolve those issues.
I'm still unsure what any of this has to do with anything. "If you don't like it, just leave" is a fallacy. Why do you keep evoking it, and why should I answer these questions?
Nonetheless, the risk of leaving a country, his home, his family, his support networks, is more than enough to convince one to remain in his country.
It's clear it's all he's got. His pie-in-the-sky over-abstractification is tantamount to dehumanization. Strange twist, that.
"People help the homeless every day."
"...is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound [ ]
Signifying nothing."
Where would we be with out your passive aggression?
And I don’t think anyone can own electricity…or a building…or a corporation. So I guess it evens out.
I give corporations no right to dictate how I conduct myself. I don’t have to deal with them just as you don’t have to live in a state. Difficult to move? Terrible choice? Tough shit— it’s difficult to avoid corporations too.
Quoting Streetlight
Why don’t you just admit that this is an accurate description, NOS? At least be honest. Put down the laissez faire and liberty bullshit. If you have no interest in democracy or liberty at work, you have no interest in democracy or liberty.
It's why libertarianism is essentially the ideology of bosses. Working people are well familiar with the everyday tyrannies of the workplace, from Amazon employees who pee in bottles or sick workers held hostage by employer issued insurance. Bosses, who are not labor, only ever feel their own freedom limited by the state in the form of regulation and taxes, and then take this as the model of opression that should be generalized to all of society. It reflects nothing other than an inability to excercize unlimited tyranny, which they will cry about because they can't willy nilly force labour to scramble for whatever scraps they deem worthy at throwing downwards.
One can be both ignorant and horrible simultaneously.
Quoting Isaac
Right. Plus laws are made by congress, who are elected by the public. You’re welcome to organize more voters or run for office yourself and change those laws. Or you can just leave.
Leaving a country is harder than quitting a job…yeah, most of the time. But not always. In any case— tough shit.
Your ranting about states would be perfectly fine were it not for the fact that you refuse to condemn illegitimate private power.
If abuse is private, it’s fine — if it’s done by democratically elected officials, it’s evil.
You’re just an inconsistent hypocrite. That’s why you’re so nauseating.
Indeed.
Yet it’s fine for you to use regarding jobs. Not only is it fallacious, it’s simpleminded.
Glad you finally see that.
…
It’s a neat trick. Capitalists are absolutely in favor of big government. They hate only the aspects you mention. Yet they rally the angry NOSes of the world against the evil state. Anything happens, blame the state.
Have to admire its effectiveness. Gets the attention off of them, and promotes “small government” in all the ways that are beneficial to their interests — like deregulation and tax cuts. While still taking their $800 billion a year in defense contracts and billions in bailouts, of course.
Libertarianism: liberty for private capital, tyranny for workers.
The problem with most economic talk and liberation (whether Libertarian or Communist), is that it doesn't get at the root of the problem. It sets up a proxy and then thinks this is going to fix it.
As a counselor-psychotherapist in training, I'm glad NOS4A2 is around. It's a rare opportunity to probe the mind of a monster. Vampires - anti-logical compassionless bloodsuckers - we have a lot to learn from them - about ourselves, about mental illness and about the powers that be.
The same reason I spent time in dialogue with Garret Travers during his brief tenure here. Randians are fascinating case studies.
Then why have those problems not been solved? There's enough money in the hands of the wealthy to house, feed and clothe everyone. There's sufficient available solutions to the environmental crisis for it to be, at least, patched up. The government is neither preventing, nor even discouraging people from acting. Jeff Bezos could feed most of Africa tomorrow if he so wished. The fact is that charitable efforts are currently below what is required. It's therefore ludicrous to argue that such efforts would be adequate to deal with state-funded management tasks too.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's your argument, not mine.
"Employment does not need regulating because if you don't like it you can just leave" - your argument, not mine.
"Corporations are not tyrannical because of you don't like their deal, you can just find another" - your argument, not mine
So
"Governments are not forcing anything on anyone because if you don't like it, you can just leave" - exactly the same argument.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, why is the risk and difficulty anyone else's problem? Your argument is that the government are forcing you, with threat of violence, to comply. They're not because you can leave. Your argument is simply wrong on the same grounds you want to use to argue corporations are not forcing anyone to comply. Either both are using a kind of force (the difficulty of finding an alternative), or neither are.
If you want to start using the difficulty of the alternative as an argument, then fine, but that then draws most corporations in too. If I, for example, wanted to use alternatives to Black Rock- or Vanguard- owned companies, where would I turn for my insurance, or my banking? If I want an employer who'll give me a three day working week and twice the minimum wage, where do I look?
The corollary of your absurd 'freedom' of employment choice is that people actually freely chose to work in warehouses requiring a a 700 package an hour throughput rate, a 60% risk of serious injury per year's work and of which one former employee said “I would rather go back to a state correctional facility and work for 18 cents an hour than do that job,”
Does that, in any way at all, sound like a job someone chose of their own free, un-forced, will to take?
Are these children doing a job they chose, of their own free will, to do?
Most everyone just repeats the same thing again and again, and you barely ever change anyone's mind by rational argument. NOS is no different there. People simply don't arrive at positions by some kind of logical process and they certainly don't change them by it.
Take a glance through the political threads (even most of the non-political ones) do you see a flurry of mind-changing going on? Think of the regular contributors here. Is anyone going to offer long odds on what they'll have to say on any given topic?
Defiance is an act of solidarity, not a mathematical proof.
:fire: :heart: :fire:
I don’t know the answer. Much of it is probably ineradicable. It’s comforting to know good people and good organizations are doing the best they can.
What presently concerns me is the injustice and imbalance in power in the relationship between the man and the state, and the effect it has on our livelihoods.
I never made such arguments, though. You’re pretending I did. The closest I came is saying that if I don’t like a product or service I don’t buy it, which is a statement of fact and a description of my own behavior. Instead you took someone else’s mischaracterization and wasted a lot of time on it.
I differentiated the state from the corporation with the monopoly on violence. States actively seek, require, and/or hold that monopoly. Corporations do not (though state corporations such as The Crown Corporation do). It is the monopoly on violence that entails compulsory cooperation. If and when corporations possess this monopoly I’ll oppose it, but until then I can deal with them or not without the looming threat of that monopoly being set against me. When I purchase a product or service from a business I do so voluntarily. When I purchase a product or service from the government I do so involuntarily. I use wealth to purchase services and products from business. The State takes my wealth to purchase its services and products.
Is there no such difference in your mind?
You lied and pretended I said it.
A lot of these good people work directly for the state using the tax dollars you would refuse them if you could. So your statement is pure hypocrisy.
Quite the social visionary.
This is the self-soothing slogan of the apathetic.
Let alone that back in the day we had a lot less government, we had no poverty whatsoever. Right?
How should we interpret that other than "you can quit your job"?
So you're advocating demolishing the state on a hunch that everything will be just fine?
Quoting NOS4A2
It's your entire argument because without it, this...
Quoting NOS4A2
...makes no sense.
Quoting NOS4A2
You do not. We've been through this. No one is making you accept any services from the government. Just move country. I asked you (but you've so far refused to answer), what threat of force prevents you from avoiding taxes by simply moving out of the country in which they are the rule.
It's no different to employment. If you don't like the terms of your employment, leave. If you don't like the terms of your using a country's resources (air, land, water), then leave. If you don't agree that such ultimatums are fair (and I'd be with you there), then no such ultimatums are fair - including those of the corporation.
There is no difference between the rules a corporation sets for your employment and the rules a country sets for your use of their services. Both are mandatory whilst you use their service, both can be freely left of you don't like the terms.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course not. To think so would be absurd. Why would I even have a job, or pay for a service with no threat of violence. I'd just take the stuff I wanted (to the extent that I thought it rightfully mine). Corporations rely entirely on the threat of violence to enforce working conditions that no-one absent of such a threat would agree to. As such, the threat of violence (and the monopoly on it) is absolutely integral to the functioning of the corporation. All the while they can control the state, they control the monopoly on violence (by proxy). Take away the state and they'll have to obtain the monopoly on violence some other way. They need the monopoly on violence because without it they cannot set a price on products that people could otherwise just freely take from them.
Ahh, the good old days of the church-run workhouse. Happier times!
I told you directly that to destroy or walk away from the state would be cruel. So no, that is not what I'm advocating. What I have argued is that what we fear in laissez-faire is not poverty, wealth inequality, or ecological destruction as such—these are present in all systems—but what we are to do in the absence of state authority. I do not fear this because I believe in the capacity of human cooperation; if the state was to collapse tomorrow I wouldn't start stealing from my neighbors simply because there was no law against it.
When I buy a loaf of bread, the government skims 7% of that transaction, with neither mine nor the seller's consent. A certain amount is taken from my income without mine or my employer's consent. The government steals a portion of my capital when I sell my home, taxes my home just for living in it, or extorts its share from an inheritance. All of us must obey because it is illegal to do otherwise. That money funds everything from state propaganda to state monopoly to the politician's wardrobe to wars to vaccination programs, all without my consent.
I can do as you suggest and not buy food, not work, become homeless, move to another country, because no one is forcing me to consume food or live with a roof over my head, but knowing that all of this is being used to avoid the points of my criticisms leaves me with little choice but to ignore it.
The human capacity for cooperation, I believe, serves us all better then than his capacity for evil and greed. Perhaps you'd learn to provide for yourself and pay for services rendered because it is the right thing to do. But despite my anarchist leanings, it is this sort of attitude and the inability of some people to govern their own behavior that I haven't taken the full plunge.
You can start by reading the rest of what I wrote.
I see. Well then you are wrong (insofar as I am such person who fears laissez-faire). I fear what other people would do. People like you, who seem to think more of their wealth than they do the welfare of others. As I said before, we haven't come to this point with a blank slate.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, this is simply not true. You need not obey. You can move. You only need obey if you choose to remain in that country. Just as if you choose to agree to a contact of sale you must obey the payment terms (under pain of exactly the same threat of violence).
Quoting NOS4A2
The profit you provide to a corporation for goods is spent on whatever the corporation wants to spend it on, also without your consent. Why a different rule for them?
Quoting NOS4A2
It's addressing your points directly. Your points try to distinguish corporations from governments on the basis of freedom to choose. You are simply wrong about the difference. You are no more or less free to choose the rules of your government than you are the rules of your employment. Both can be left, both are difficult to find a genuine alternative, both monopolize authority to reduce competition, both engineer circumstances to reduce choice compelling you to accept pecuniary terms. There's no difference.
Quoting NOS4A2
This has absolutely nothing to do with the difference between government and corporation. Both can exhibit greed or cooperation. Neither are more or less likely than the other. Raytheon is responsible for no less death and destruction than the US government. The largest genocide ever was perpetrated by British American Tobacco. Governments are leading us to war, fossil fuel corporations are leading us to a global climate catastrophe.
This difference you're trying to paint in is fantasy.
You did say it.
Quoting NOS4A2
#1. Your relationship with the state is also voluntary. You can leave. Isaac has now pointed that out repeatedly. The onerousness of leaving can be discussed, but I'll remind you that leaving a job is also not always so easy -- nor is simply "not signing any contract" (mostly there is no contract, and jobs are at-will) -- which you would know if you read anything mildly contradictory of "state=bad."
#2. The state does not have a monopoly on violence either, really. That's another bullshit slogan.
#3. The state does not exclusively exploit the "fruits of one's labor" either. Corporations do so all day every day. But that's okay because it's "voluntary" (see #1).
Whatever readings your political outlook is based on -- who knows. But try new material, because it's feeble.
:100:
Quoting NOS4A2
When a corporation expands their profit margins by charging 4X the cost of producing a loaf of bread, instead of 3X or 2X, etc., I never consented to that. When a corporation pays me $35,000 a year (for producing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of output) while paying the CEO that amount in a day, I never consented.
If it's "voluntary" simply by being at the corporation, then it's voluntary simply by choosing to continue to live in a state with a certain tax rate. Don't like it? Move. Your choice. All "voluntary."
In fact, you have much more say in what the state does than what a corporation does.
Quoting NOS4A2
90% of the profits I help generate are distributed to shareholders; to CEO bonuses, to exaggerated advertising, campaign contributions, and lobbying. I consented to none of this, and had no say in it.
At least in a state like the US you have a vote. Not so at Exxon and Google.
Maybe you really are just too dense to get the point being made, so I'll bite and state it explicitly:
Corporations are run undemocratically. Unlike the government. To argue the former is OK and the latter not because the former is associated with "voluntarily" is simplistic, in the same way that arguing one is "voluntarily" associating with a state is also simplistic.
Millions of people have to work, otherwise they starve and become homeless. When you're poor, you take a job anywhere. This is why Amazon moves their facilities to places like Bessemer, Alabama or to a poor country. Paying people meager wages, giving them no say in what happens within the company, and hoarding 90% of the profits they all help to generate is unjust. At least on par with an income tax.
The problem is that you're too sick to see any of this, and find a way to bring it back to the state or ignore the problem outright.
I was only confirming to my interlocutor that it is true I can leave the country if I do not like it.
What you claim I said:
“In terms of employment, it’s nice to know you stick with the age-old “just quit and work somewhere else” mantra”
What I said:
“ I have had no relationship with a corporation that was not voluntary and premised on mutual agreement. If I were to come across arraignments that were not to my liking, I’d not sign any contract. If I don’t like their product or service I don’t buy it.”
One is a fallacy, the other is a description of my own behavior.
I don't fully agree. Why? Because in a state where you can vote in representatives/officials, that's your say. In a corporation, you don't even have a vote. You don't vote in your boss or your board of directors. You simply accept what they decide.
True, it feels as if we don't have any say in the federal government because it's so remote. But we really do. And when it comes to the state and local level, we have a lot of say -- if we choose to leverage it.
Really this makes NOS' position even less convincing, and exposes just how absurd it is to rail continually and exclusively against the "state" while ignoring the far worse injustices of corporations.
Ohh, I see. So it's just a description of your behavior and your feelings.
Well I appreciate your personal experiences, but unfortunately that doesn't mean shit to this conversation.
But good to know you admit that "just quit" is a fallacy. So given that you acknowledge this, finally, your position is even more weak. Since one cannot "just quit," just as one cannot "just leave" a country, neither are truly "voluntary." And since you predicate the rest of your argument on exactly this, you once again have sunk into incoherence.
Corporations are little tyrannies. As much as you feel the "state" is. The real difference is that you have some say in what a state does. Yet you rail exclusively against only the latter. :chin:
Your complaints about corporate structure and governance do not mean shit to this conversation, and is little more than a red herring. Further, your false equivalency between the two is bonkers, in my opinion. I’ve entertained it because I appreciate your input, as snide and hilarious as it might be. We can leave it at that, take it up in a different thread, or discuss the merits and demerits of laissez-faire.
The main problem is that it tends to fail. 2008 is an example. A lack of regulation leads to the explosion of a speculative bubble and everyone suffers.
Lol. So you have no argument.
Let's go over how this is relevant yet again. (Remember I'm not writing for you -- you're hopeless. Go back to sleep, it's irrelevant. Skip it.)
For anyone else:
* Laissez faire is complete nonsense. You cannot have an economy without some governance.
* The impossible goal that is laissez faire serves one purpose: to convince those who are not in the ruling class to cheer "small government," when in reality it's just a cover for maintaining big government for the corporate sector while cutting taxes and deregulating industries (the part they want "hands off").
* The state has democratic participation. Corporations do not.
* The corporate sector owns and runs the state.
With all that fairly well understood, this thread is absurd from the start. It's a cover for the state, nothing less.
The congenital deformity of economics is that it thinks of itself as amoral.
Seeking efficiency is an ethical choice. But if it be granted then you are right that @NOS4A2's economics is naive.
"Living for others" is the very nature of the body politic, and what ethics is about. Expecting the state to "mind it's own business" is a demonstration of Greek idiocy.
I can see your point, but we can, in theory, 'vote with our dollar' on corporations too. If we all refused to buy from Amazon, they'd be gone in a day. The problem is, as I'm sure you know, that corporations create de facto monopolies (in both resources, and employment), and control the means of production to create a constraint on choice. The problem I see in modern democracy is that political institutions are barely any more limited in their ability to similarly monopolise and so create constraints on choice. I know we can all vote for a better politician, but there needs to a) be one available, and b) be a sufficiently mobilised, informed, and care-free fellow electorate to join with us to elect them.
Existing political power structures can limit (a) by restrictive requirements for financing, access to media, access to intermediate institutions.
They can limit (b) by simple gerrymandering, but more nefariously by creating conditions of scarcity which limit political activism (simple poverty, association laws, etc) as well as conditions which limit access to information.
I suppose the limits to (b) are mostly surmountable - they make political power difficult, not impossible, to wield. I'm not convinced of the extent to which the constraints in (a) don't simply render the opportunities of (b) obsolete.
It may be that there are certain political systems in which we can wield power, but then there are some consumer and employee interventions which work too - strikes and boycotts, for example.
So I agree they're different enough to make the case complex, but personally, I still don't see a lot between them.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, I agree here. Even if one accepts my more jaded view of politics, the very existence of a voting system makes the idea that one only has a say in the system that has none utterly absurd.
I don't think so. The state isn't the only entity that can guarantee the community's moral expectations. If you think the state has to take that role, you need to explain why. And that's not a moral question.
What do you mean? As an example, I recently had peripheral dealings with a woman who was homeless and apparently suicidal. I knew of three entities in the community that could help. It was a matter of determining which one could do it immediately. All three are religiously-based groups.
What kind of sanctioning does the state do for these kinds of organizations?
You were able to do so because your state permits the existence of religious institutions. If they were persecuted into obscurity you would not have been able to make use of them.
No policy of laissez-faire has existed in the United States. As far as I can tell, Federal regulations have only increased. (https://www.quantgov.org/regulatory-accumulation)
https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/reg-stats
So the fact that the state forebears waging war on religious organizations means the state helped that woman?
The 2008 crisis is widely known to have resulted from a gap in regulation of the financial industry.
One little gap led to the disappearance of 55 trillion dollars and an impending global economic catastrophe that was forestalled by a handful of states.
Ok. So the state, just by allowing people to help one another, is actually doing the helping.
:up:
Despite the accumulation of regulation, they failed at their one duty, and then used the public purse to bail out their friends.
Statist morality in a nutshell.
No. There was no regulation of derivatives.
The story is that Greenspan was warned that this pocket of confusion was brewing and he refused to do anything about it based on his belief in the virtues of laissez-faire.
He later admitted to Congress that he was wrong. Laissez-faire is dangerous. It causes catastrophes. That's why we don't do it.
Why?
...and so we are doing ethics, not economics.
No policy of laissez-faire has existed. The American government has had its hands in the economy since its inception. The second federal law ever passed in the US was a tariff. All economic catastrophes since then have occurred under the supervision and regulation of the US government.
Well, no. I just gave you an example of how a lack of regulation creates chaos which requires state intervention. The Great Depression is obviously another case of that.
I gave you evidence that there is no such thing as a "lack of regulation", and in fact there is a massive accumulation of regulation over time. The causes of the crisis were myriad, but to pin it on a system of laissez-faire when it has occurred in a highly-regulated mixed-economy is a bit out of bounds.
This argument is just a denial of facts that are readily available.
You need to try the moral hazard argument.
Do you believe the United States had a laissez-faire system until the 2008 crisis?
I don't think the United States would exist if it had earlier had a laissez-faire "system"
Little something for you:
Why share your own behaviour if it is meaningless to this discussion? What's the point?
Sometimes we use examples to give force to arguments. What’s the point of loaded questions?
That is easy, In 2003, Putin arrested and froze Mikhail Khodorkovsky assets. In order to keep the same thing from happening to them other Russian oligarchs handed over a large sum of their own assets to Putin himself. This single act made Putin one of the richest/powerful people on the planet and few people even know the entire sum of what he really owns.
As far as I can tell you have not given any examples in our conversations
Here is an example of the wealthy people (in the US) and/or companies starting wars/killing people in order to help their bottom line.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not any more "compassionate" or whatever you think I am than other people (I actually believe/follow Machiavellianism due to what I know about the world). The only reason I'm "advocating" for more help for the working poor/middle class is that if all there is is very poor and uber rich people, there is little to nothing in the way of oversight of those in power since the very poor have nothing in the way of time/energy/resources of resisting those in power.
I think a part of the problem with your thinking is that you believe the uber wealthy and the "state" are two completely separate things when instead they are really two sides of the same coin. It is pretty much a given that the uber wealthy will ALWAYS have enough resources to make sure their needs are taken care of and that the laws are written in a way that allows them to more or less do whatever they want and for the state to be there to keep the plebs beneath them under their control. It is only through your own folly (as well as people that think like you) to think that it is the "state" is the "bad guy" when in reality "the state" (and those who work within it) are mostly just a puppet of those with wealth and power. While it is possible for someone in the state (such as Stalin) to not always "obey" the uber wealthy/powerful, that only becomes possible when those with money and power put them in such a position and/or they screw up so badly that they lose power in an uprising.
It is the uber wealthy/powerful that more or less create the state to take care of their wants and needs (at least the authoritarian states that you are taking about), it isn't "the state" that creates the uber powerful/wealthy.
Putin is the leader of a state. Yours is an example of an agent of the state getting away with such activity. But the phrase “the wealthy” also applies to people who are not agents of the state. Elon Musk, for example, doesn’t have the monopoly on violence, and any middle-class cop can toss him in jail should he break a rule.
If the richest man in America and the poorest cop in America were to draw guns and point them at each other, which one could shoot the other and be applauded for doing so?
It’s true, I do not equate the wealthy with the state because there are plenty non-wealthy, middle to low-class people who are agents of it. Similarly, not every wealthy person is an agent of the state.
You keep telling me things are a given but on closer examination we find they are not, and are in fact the opposite of the case. It makes all this condescending language about my thinking and naivety all the more precious.
You are misinterpreting my posts. Pretty much every time I talk about the uber wealthy doing whatever they want, I'm careful to include those who also are also in a positions of power. The simple reason is power that comes through wealth or power that comes from other means isn't really all that different. While you may think they are different or think that I consider them different, it is not what I believe. It is kind of moot how one obtains power once they start abusing it compared to the fact that they are abusing it.
And "No" I don't have problems with people who have wealth and are not abusing the power that comes with it and your constant insisting that I'm saying ALL wealthy people are abusing their power and/or are "evil" merely because they are wealthy is a strawman because it is NOT what I'm saying.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your incredibly naïve if you actually believe that any middle-class cop in the US can easily throw someone like Elon Musk in jail. For one thing, people like Elon Musk have something like an army of lawyers to help get him out of jail for whatever reason and if a cop trying to arrest him does anything wrong it could likely end his career.
It is pretty much a given that the law applies differently between those that are wealthy and those that are not. A few years ago a teenager while drinking and driving crashed into another vehicle and killed several people inside. However his rich parents (and their lawyers) made it so that he didn't have to serve any real jail time and only had to wear a monitoring device on his leg and not get caught drinking again. If someone else did the same thing it is pretty much a given they wouldn't been given such kid glove treatment.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm having trouble imaging why one of the richest men in the US would want to try to have a shoot out with any cop as well as why any cop would want to shoot at such a person. Is it because you think cops have too much power because they are allowed to carry and use guns if need be or is it because you think that too many cops are just sociopaths that join the police force in order so they can get a chance to go out and shoot people.
In any case I'm pretty sure who does and doesn't have power really doesn't have much to do with whether or not someone can carry a firearm with them on their job. As to your imaginary scenario with who can get away with and/or applauded for shooting who, there are too many variables to such an event to consider that you have left out that it is impossible to comment on who is right or wrong in such a situation.
Quoting NOS4A2
Big deal, so there may be many people that work for the government who are merely pencil pushers that are not wealthy and are not that wealthy. Do you think these people have some kind of power that the rest of us have or are they merely underlings of people who either have more power and/or wealth then themselves.
For me, most of these man and women who are only there to put in their 8 hours and earn a paycheck have little to nothing with this seemingly omni-powerful "State" you keep talking about. If anything they are merely drones like the rest of us trying to do whatever they can do to survive.
If you believe there is some kind of "collusion" going on between such government plebs that allows them to be as or more powerful then the ultra-powerful/uber wealthy that seem to control everything that please show some proof to support such beliefs.
As far as I can tell, those with the top 1% of the wealth and those that get into political positions because they are supported by those people have FAR more power than them.
Quoting NOS4A2
I hate to say it but you all arguments/posts do seem incredibly naïve to me since your talking about some kind of imaginary "State" which supposedly has all the power to do anything they want, and that the uber-wealthy/ultra-powerful people who get their wealth/powerful from somewhere else are as powerless as the rest of us to do anything about it.
I don't know if you have been just reading too many of Ayn Rand's books or similar non-sense but your arguments suggests that what your view the world to be and what it actually is are two completely separate things.
:up:
What was your argument for why the state should intervene in the economy?
1. The state (in my case, the USA) has undertaken to safeguard some set of human rights
2. These human rights include the right to life
3. Life requires food
4.....etc, too tiresome to spell out the rest of it; if 1., 2. and 3. don't convince, then the argument fails.
What do you think of it?
You can question 1., question whether it's the place of the state to safeguard human rights. To which I would reply, if not the state then what or whom? Or you can deny the legitimacy of the concept of human rights. Both of these rebuttals seem problematic to me.
If the argument convinces, it follows that the current interventions in the US economy are inadequate to safeguard the right to life and an increase in intervention should be assayed. With 17 million children going hungry every day, it's safe to say at least one child has been denied the right to life due to inadequate intervention.
The right to life is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. I don't think it shows up anywhere in the Constitution. We would need a group of judges to rule on what it means, but that probably won't happen because though the Declaration is definitely an expression of American ideals, it's not a law. It was just a notification to the British that they could shove it.
There's a passage in the Bible somewhere that says if a person doesn't work, he shouldn't be allotted food. I'd say that expresses a common and customary attitude in the US. "Get a job."
But as it happens, if a person is starving there are numerous options. There's probably a local food bank, probably run privately.
And even if the state did start giving out bread to everybody, that doesn't argue for taxation for other things. Or regulation of the economy. Or things like the EPA, OSHA, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Dept of the Interior, etc.
Why should the state do any of that?
The reason The Wealthy purchase or influence power is because the people with power are selling it. If the state didn’t have that power The Wealthy wouldn’t be able to purchase it. The Wealthy do not have the power you claim they do until the people with power afford it to them, and even then it’s just the promise that the state will use its power to benefit The Wealthy.
The Poor, with no wealth, can only purchase or influence power through less-costly means such as voting or protest.
Both seek to influence power, actual power. Both desire the same ends: to use state power to benefit their preferred group of beneficiaries.
A police officer has the legal right to use force against you. The bureaucrat has the legal right take your children, your home, your wages. They can put you in prison. I don’t think any other class of people has that sort of power in the statist system.
To my view, because it creates a more connective social experience. It makes my country more civilized and more humane.
But I don't have an economic argument. Economics is exceedingly complex and I've only taken 101.
I agree, the right to life isn't codified. But, to my view - and I consider it a no-brainer (correct me if I'm wrong) - there can be no human rights without first acknowledging the right to life.
So your argument appears to question the legitimacy of the notion of human rights.
Not sure why you're invoking the Bible. Not a lot of human rights in Yahweh's eyes. Thank god for Christ.
Do you think it's that simple?
Is it your argument that there are 17 million children going hungry in the US every day because their caretakers choose not to pick up some groceries at the food bank?
That's a psychoer flag than I ever waved.
I already gave NOS my own brickhouse of an argument for government intervention. I just noticed you were continuing to rag NOS, so I wondered what your argument is.
You don't appear to have thought one through. And instead of taking the opportunity to put your ideas in a form that makes sense, you just resorted to calling me a sociopath.
Good grief.
Can you link me to it?
You see, for most Americans, there are government agencies on three levels that provide money for food. How is it that you don't know that?
So they can continue to do nothing about it themselves. It achieves the greatest effect with the least possible exertion, no matter if it is an unjust relationship.
Moral hazard, NOS. That's the argument you're missing.
The idea behind @frank and @NOS4A2's approach is similar. Completely unreasonable propositions are set within rhetoric mimicking academic inquiry, detached interest. When challenged the resort is to journalism "I wasn't advocating anything, just reporting how things are...".
I’ll look into it.
:up:
If you express a paucity of empathy, I'm justified in calling you sociopathic no matter how much you dislike it.
Actually I was just asking for your argument. You interpreted that as a lack of empathy.
Shadow.
Only insofar as I think the state should defend human rights, which you just claimed yourself right before you implied it should offer people food and a living.
My advice is to use words that can't be interpreted as expressing a paucity of empathy. If you care about empathy, that should be important to you.
Or you could look within yourself for why you read a lack of empathy into the things people say.
The US state does give food to kids. So do state governments and city and county governments.
Exactly. It treats adults as unweened.
C'mon, frank. Be honest. There's a paucity of empathy in that sentiment. If it was just carelessly posted, no prob, my apologies for siding with Isaac (who, it should be noted, interpreted it in a similar way).
It's just nutrition assistance. Nothing drastic.
This would take us back into discussing what's really going on with nutrition assistance in the US.
Why don't you research that topic?
If you know something about it, apart from the guesswork you posted above, I'm all ears. My own research is underway.
I'm in grad school for an MSW (to be a psychotherapist) so I should know more about this anyway. Also locked in with COVID - hence my increased engagement here for a few days.
All of it at the cost of justice. It cannot differentiate between just and unjust distribution of wealth.
Imagine actually believing this.
Put yourself in these shoes and consider it.
Frightening, isn’t it?
It's food stamps NOS. Cheese. Milk. Hamburger.
Buns to put the hamburger in. It's not going to turn the world upside down.
It’s unjust, Frank. It’s an unjust system. It seeks to arise at a just state through unjust means. Not only that but it does so inefficiently, wastefully and poorly.
Laissez faire, baby.
What happens when you assume your conclusion. You draw funny rigid senseless lines.
I think most people are OK with having their taxes go to WIC or their state and local food aid organizations. They don't think of it as unjust.
That's why we have human rights. To protect everyone. Even stupid cowards. (Not saying you're a stupid coward xtrix :smile: )
Human rights are for the weakest, stupidest, most cowardly among us. Yes, and even the "moochers and looters." Everyone, no matter how unworthy.
It’s nice to have such an amorphous, abstract term like the “state” to blame as the root of all evil. Never mind the fact that the state consists of real people who have real beliefs and real values — and who make real decisions.
The “wealthy” is also general, but much easier to define. The wealthy are those individuals with wealth.
It’s a nice story to believe the State is the devil. If only the State were less of a weak-willed asshole susceptible to bribes by the wealthy. How can we blame the wealthy for lobbying the State the way everyone does?
:lol:
That’s right. And freedom of association implies anyone can quit a relationship with the state should they choose.
Are you arguing for human rights now? Freedom of association as a human right?
Is that more or less fundamental than the right to life, the right to a living wage, the right to humane working conditions - all of which have, historically speaking, required state intervention?
I'm talking about actual history, not your abstract fantasy.
This thread in a nutshell.
Always have been. But no, you have no right to demand I provide for you.
Yes it is more fundamental and just than demanding others provide for you.
I can't wait to hear it.
The difference between negative and positive rights is pretty well established that anyone can spend a moment to learn the difference and come to his own conclusions.
Just as I suspected. No argument. Crickets.
It’s essentially the difference between expecting others to respect your ability to make your own way in life and demanding others to provide for your way of life. One involves voluntary association the other demands compulsory association.
Got it:
"The belief in a distinction between positive and negative rights is generally maintained, or emphasized, by libertarians, who believe that positive rights do not exist until they are created by a contract."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
Again:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Again, what?
You should probably double check what that word means.
That is what it means.
Well, to start, there needs to be a central currency. Unless you think some sort of barter system can work in today's age.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure, but the presumption is that under a truly laissez-faire economy it would be worse than it is now.
Quoting NOS4A2
It might not be just to tax people, but it might also not be just for a government to let the population starve. We then have to decide which injustice is greater and act accordingly; as you say, we must "lay bare our conscience and morality." And most people with a conscience and a sense of morality would side with feeding the people, and so the necessity of tax-funded welfare.
You seem to be intentionally ignoring what is being said. All of these are true:
1. The United States did not (and does not) have a laissez-faire system, and
2. The economy was (and is) highly regulated, and
3. The 2008 economic crisis was caused by unregulated business practices
So perhaps rather than asserting the red herrings which are the first two you could actually address @frank's claim which is the third. To back up his claim, see The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report:
This is why a laissez-faire economy can't work. Contrary to your naive idealism, people are greedy and selfish and make many bad decisions. A democratically-elected government is the best tool we have to protect ourselves.
That is the fatal flaw in my arguments: it serves no utilitarian purpose. It won’t just work out. I do not believe laissez-faire or free markets results in some sort of market equilibrium. I do not believe it will work or function that well, especially in a culture crippled after centuries of state rule and intervention. It doesn’t aim for the greater amount of happiness for the greater amount of people.
The best laissez-faire could ever do is provide a space for humans to figure it out on their own, absent absolute power, the hard and soft despotisms and the game-rigging of a coercive and exploitative institution.
Most people probably are utilitarian and would side with letting the state take their money on the promise it would do charity wherever others refuse to. But an unjust transfer in wealth never results in a just distribution, let alone a just state of affairs. We cannot use injustice to reach justice. No matter the efficiency, no matter who gets what, it’s injustice all the way down.
All I know is that there are more causes, as I said. And it’s not clear to me that the absence of regulation can accurately be said to cause a certain activity. That’s why the conclusion of the dissenting statement in that report sounds more reasonable to me.
People are greedy and selfish and make many bad decisions, and that’s one of the many reasons why I do not want to give them power over others. It’s a faith of mine, but one founded on experience, that in the absence of state power a majority of free people will not resort tyranny, theft, murder, and they should have the means and ability to defend themselves against those who would. They will be free, at least.
What happens if people wanted to ban together to form hunting-gathering societies that are not based on private property but on shared property, like humans did for thousands of years before agriculture? What of the tyranny then? Whence the origination of private property? That sounds like a tyranny to me.
[quote=Bizarro NOS] in the absence of[s]state[/s] (private property)a majority of free people will not resort tyranny, theft, murder, and they should have the means and ability to defend themselves against those who would (take away their communal rights to live as free citizens in hunting gathering lifestyles). They will be free, at least.[/quote]
Who should stop them?
And of course the violence of corporations manifest in a myriad of ways: the destruction of environments - oceans, forests and urban ones - the ruination of living standards though the suppression of worker's rights and safety, the continued commodification of basic living necessities which lock people out of things like housing, healthcare, and even baby food, cancerous monocultures of food that fuck up people's health, the global division of labour that prays on poorer nations and keeps them in poverty, etc.
Corporations don't exert violence on bodies (except of course in developing countries where they freely assasinate environmental activists and so on). They exert violence by destroying everything that allows those bodies to sustain themselves. The violence on bodies they leave to the state.
So your argument is either pointless whinging or lacks foundation.
The issue is what is just, not why people fear laissez faire. People fear laissez faire because they think it unjust. It's only sociopaths like you who think hoarding all the capital you can get your hands on is 'just'. The rest of us think justice is about what people deserve to get, not what people can get.
Ha! Great comment! :grin:
Laissez faire: a great principle for those who want to produce, produce, build more to produce more, and more, and even more, freely ordering the loan slaves for as small salaries as possible, to gather even more and more and more. Until lost at the boundary of heaven.
In a laissez fare system, the land, the resources, etc belongs to private entities and not a group. It’s not all shared like the HG arrangement. Private property prevents the sharing. In that model, economic freedom is only had through working as a community. State-enforced private property or anarcho-capitalist militias would use unjustified force to allow individuals to accumulate resources and not allow it to be open for everyone to use as see fit by the community. It would be state sponsored theft. Notice all the same language is used but with a different value system.
Sadly, get enough of these Randian corporation-humpers in a room and they do have a fleeting, covenous semblance of legitimacy.
:up:
Yeah, basically they say laissez faire nous, let us do as we please.
Yes, that's the reality. As I said, we just have to decide which injustice is greater and do what we can to avoid that. I (and may others) would say that poverty and exploitation are greater injustices than taxation and regulation.
Quoting NOS4A2
Absence of regulation doesn't cause bad behaviour, but it does allow for it. The entre purpose of regulation is to prevent such bad behaviour. The majority opinion of the report was that the activities that caused the financial crisis were things that should have been regulated precisely because of their risk and likely inevitable consequences.
Quoting NOS4A2
What experience? You admit yourself that there has never been a truly laissez-faire economy. And if we just look to individual issues we can see the fallacy of this view, e.g. the only reason we have laws that prohibit dumping toxic waste into rivers and child labour is precisely because without such laws these were practices that businesses engaged in. Regulations are a practical necessity to prevent even greater injustices.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think this answers your own question. We fear a laissez-faire economy "because it will [not] work or function that well."
Quoting NOS4A2
All you'll do is replace one coercive power (the government) with others (big business and the very wealthy). We either have a government that regulates the rich to better protect the poor or we have the rich exploiting the poor to enrich themselves even further. I'd rather have the former.
It's not a presumption. We have historic evidence that where people are left to their own devices their greed will lead to limiting consumer choice through anti-competitive behaviour. No EH&S regulations would directly lead to deaths due to contaminated foodstuffs because it's cheaper to make. The absence of labour law will increase the exploitation of labourers, which in the US is already bad enough as it is.
No one disagrees with this NOS4A2. Its the word "most" that everyone is pointing out. That does not negate the existence of "the rest". The "most" have to come up with some system to handle "the rest", or "the rest" will ruin what "the most" have.
No one is also saying you can't have a group of people where all cooperate nicely for some time. This is usually if resources are plentiful and times are good. But when famine, disease, or intertribal conflicts come into play, you're more likely to have a few bad apples that will cause massive destruction for everyone else.
The problem everyone is repeatedly trying to point out to you, is that you present only the situation in which everyone is good in your laissaz faire world, and those who aren't good, are outside of it. Laissaz faire lets in "the rest" as well. You've been shown facts and history that prove this to be true.
Ignoring or dismissing this comes across to others that you are being dishonest. And if you are dishonest in your dealings here, how can anyone believe your world where everyone is honest and good?
That’s right. Little prigs like yourself would authorize stealing so you can give it to people you want.
Appeals to the population are not that convincing. Most people once thought the world was flat.
Yes, and “the rest” will not have the monopoly on violence.
Your dishonesty is proven because you left out the one sentence in your quotation of mine that directly contradicts what you said here. Compare this surreptitious quote-mining to the actual one.
Quote-mining
Actual:
Why would you do that?
This is just more of the same Ayn Rand type BS you have already been spouting.
You think that the State itself decided to allow itself to manipulated and made into a puppet because it thought that it was a "good" thing to do without anything to make it so in the first place? Are you not aware of the fact that since the beginning of the creation of the State there have been wealthy plump older white men siting behind their little desks writing up the rules that everyone else have to live by in effect making it virtually little to no difference those who run and control the the State (who are again most wealthy plump older white men) and the wealthy people that wrote the rules in the first place? Have you never even heard of the Skull and Bones secret society as well as other similar secret societies with similar agendas to have most if not all the power in a small handful of uber wealthy elites? Have ever noticed or wondered why most Americans have to pay between 50%-66% of their income on rent while most of the rest of the developed world pay around 25%-30% of their income on rent or is that something that has never crossed your naïve mind?
Skull and Bones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones
Quoting NOS4A2
Which is really no power. The only time the poor has real power is when things are so bad that they start working together collectively and stop relying on those with money or in the state to tell them what to do. Of course I imagine someone like you would call that socialism which of course is even a bigger evil then your so called "State"
Quoting NOS4A2
What conveniently forgetting with your Ayn Rand type rhetoric is the uber wealthy elites already have immense power over the plebs and wage slaves that serve them and with their easy access to money it is much, much easier for them to influence politicians then it is for the poor.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, I don't know what you have against cops but whatever it is it is likely unfounded. Police officers are mostly there to act as arbitrators in whatever disputes or crimes in the communities they serve and have to work in and obey the law just as much as the citizens they are there to serve and protect. Without their service (just as many ways the soldiers in the US military) you wouldn't have the freedom right now to speak your mind and spout your anti-cop nonsense and insult them.
I suggest you watch a movie called "Crown Vic" in order for you to get a better understanding of what it is like to have to be a cop since apparently from your comments you or pretty ignorant of what they are like and what they have to put up with on a day to day basis.
Crown Vic
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4558200/
Thin blue line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line
Also you might want to know about one of the quotes used in the movie:
"People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf"- George Orwell
While you might think that "cops" are only brutes there to take advantage of you whenever they feel like it, you forget that without their presence that there would be other brutes to take advantage of you in every way possible without you being able to do anything about it. If you had any brains about you, you would rather have to deal with the former than the latter.
As with your rant about bureaucrats, it is just more BS sine they too have to obey certain set of rules just as citizens and cops do and can't not just take people stuff whenever they want to.
In this world the best we can hope for is that the majority of people who are either rich, poor, work for the State, or whatever do their best to work within the rules of society and when they don't that the law and other checks and balances that are in place are able to do something about it. The main difference between how I see things and what you see is that I'm well aware most of the working poor, bureaucrats, cops, and similar people have little to no choice but to try and work in society or have their world turned upside down at the drop of a hat where as you tend to think that this is not the case.
Again I have no idea what kind of Ayn Rand or Ayn Rand like nonsense you read to think that the little people have formed some kind of secret cabal and created the State in order to abuse and control "poor", "defenseless", and "helpless" uber wealthy people who really only want to help everyone else, but such beliefs are not in line with how things really work or how the state of the world really is.
:up:
I'm not sure exactly what it means but I like it. :grin:
No, stealing is taking something which doesn't rightfully belong to you, you've yet to establish that the taxed part of your wage doesn't rightfully belong to the government. It's not sufficient to just say that you don't like it, this is a discussion forum, not a blog, we're not interested in your idle opinion.
To argue against government intervention on grounds of injustice you need to say why it is 'just' for you to retain your gross wage and unjust for the government to take it's taxes. The simple fact that it resides for any period of time in your bank account is not a measure of justice.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting Xtrix
:up:
Laissez faire and Ayn Rand Objectivism are just BS/fantasy world for the uber rich (and the idiots they have brainwashed to think like them) that talks about how and why the government/State should only be there to keep the working poor/middle class in their place (ie taking care of and serving the rich) and protecting the uber rich.
It is almost a given that the uber rich are at least smart enough to know that if the State/government wasn't there to protect them there would be little to nothing to prevent the plebs that serve them from taking up arms and going against them. So they create the enough of a State to at least protect them, but do everything in their power to prevent said institutions to protect individual and human rights for the rest of us.
It is pretty much a given that countries that believe such non-sense devolve into little more than plutocratic or autocratic societies filled with cronyism, corruption, and other issues. Of course people like NOS4A2 think it some "evil" people in the State (such as the bureaucrats and cops that are in it) that cause these problems to happen and not the uber wealthy that buy and sell favors to the politicians they put in there, nor the politicians that sell their souls to said uber wealthy individuals.
IMHO at least with ideologies such as Machiavellianism, at least they are more honest with the manipulation/deceit that happens and they accept the fact that it is a dog eat dog world. With doctrine like Laissez faire/Objectivism, they like to cover up the fact the the uber rich are exploiting everyone else and that any given moment that the repressed might rise up and violently overthrown and/or punish those who have been abusing them. Arguments for Laissez faire type thinking like to just white wash that this kind of issue/struggle is constantly going on and when such doctrines are used for social policies, it increases the class divide and the odds that society will descend into violence between the haves and have nots.
So in a nutshell, your statement that Laissez faire beliefs are mere dogma/propaganda for the corporations and the uber rich that own them is right on money.
Excellent points, all.
In a rational world, that so many people of such divergent views can recognize how silly an argument is would give the proponent pause — and perhaps be inclined to open his mind to new vistas.
I’d like to think an old dog can learn new tricks. I’m proven wrong again and again.
Not only that. Yes they exist with the aid of the state, and are protected— but the state also serves as the fall guy. A nice distraction. When you can divert the (legitimate) anger and discontent to a source other than your class, that’s valuable indeed.
In case I was too subtle:
Arguing that the wealthy “purchase or influence” people in government is like arguing Sean Hannity says what he does because Murdoch bribes/influences him. Completely wrong.
If this strikes you as weird, that’s understandable. But then it’s a good idea to perhaps re-examine such a fundamental belief.
Your peculiar conception of “state=bad” crumbles with this belief, incidentally.
Yeah, when I read that it kind of made my head spin as well. It looks like NOS4A2 is willing to blame people in the State for being willing and going through with the selling of political influence to the uber wealthy while at the same time thinks that the uber wealthy are blameless in such transactions because it is merely what the wealthy "do".
With such logic one can justify almost any crime (at least where more than two are involved) if one frames one of the people as the "evil" criminal (in this casethe State) and the other person as someone somehow "coerced" into doing it. I don't know much of the law but I believe there is a difference between being merely tempted into a crime and someone being threatened and coerced into it, and the fact that the wealthy are merely tempted by the fact that they can buy influence doesn't mean that they are not criminally liable for the wrongful act that they are doing.
I might be missing something in the argument but I don't see how he can claim that only the people selling political influence are committing a crime and not those that trying to buy it. IMHO at least both are equally wrong but from a moral point of view it seems like those buying the political influence are worse since it is likely they they will commit further criminal mischief once they have said political influence and the act of "buying" political influence is just part of a bigger criminal plan to commit other crimes (often with the hopes of getting away with it). Of course since I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if such reasoning has any part in judging the significance of such crimes although part of me says they should.
I worked for that money and acquired it through the voluntary consent of all parties involved. The government did not work for that money nor did it acquire that money through the voluntary consent of all parties involved.
And?
There's no argument in there linking to justice. Why is it just that you should keep all of the wealth you have the potential to acquire?
Notwithstanding the fact that it's a lie. You did not acquire it with the voluntary consent of all parties involved. Did your employer specifically say that the taxed portion was yours to keep, or did the employer have an implicit understanding that part of your wage would be paid to the government in taxes? Unless you have something to the contrary in writing it'll be the latter. So you keeping the taxed portion is most likely against the will of the parties involved, who fully (and rightfully) expected it to end up in the hands of the government at the time they negotiated the terms of your employment.
Had the terms of your employment been negotiated in a state where the government did not pay for healthcare, unemployment benefit, roads, waste collection, education etc, your employer would have to pay for those things instead and he would therefore offer you a lower wage. You keeping it, against his wishes, is theft.
And that's the end of it. Just means, just transactions, just acquisition. If you want to read about different theories of distributive justice be my guest. This isn't philosophy 101.
I did acquire it through the voluntary consent of all parties involved. Employer offers me a wage, I agree to it.
Yes, everyone is well aware that the government will skim from this transaction, and expect they will take it, so it needn't be implicit or explicit in any contract. The expectation that a thief will steal an unlocked bike is not enough to make the thief's appropriation of that bike a just transaction.
Yes, the employment occurs in the state where the government gets to dictate the rules, and they have dictated they have a right to my income and use it as they see fit. But states dictate all sorts of unjust rules all the time. So the fact that it dictates that it has the right to my income and that they get to use it as they see fit doesn't make the transaction just.
I think part of the issue is that it is nearly impossible for someone to change their point of view even when they are faced with information that shows contradictions in one's thinking. In fact it is usually only possible after they have faced the same or similar contradictions several times and only then if they are opened minded enough to question their own thinking. I helps to understand that it often takes months or years for someone to become indoctrinated with any given view so it is more or less a given that in order for someone to overcome it it would take a process that is almost as time consuming
It is one of the reasons misinformation and propaganda can be so dangerous, those in power can choose what thoughts and messages are available to the plebs who listen to the mass media. In don't know if the term is still used but supposedly a professional and skilled spin doctor often create any kind of narrative one wants the people to believe as well as dismiss information that contradicts or undermine the narrative is trying to achieve.
As far as I know, the process often begins when one is young and gradually built piecemeal as one gets older. Part of the success of such gradual brain washing requires constantly being fed information that kind of fits together (facts tend to accepted/remembered better when they already fit in with what one believes) as well means for such person to ignore that which contradicts such beliefs (which usually happens because they don't "fit in" with their already accepted world view). Obviously some people are more susceptible then other but it is a given that nearly everyone is susceptible to such methods to some degree.
In it's most basic form it is done with a kind of shotgun mentality where any given message is spread out to as many people as possible (as well as being the cheapest way possible) with the hopes they at least just stop for a minute to listen to it. It is kind of like how corporations use commercials to make you think Product A is better than Product B merely because you have at least heard of Product A in a commercial if nothing else. You would think that the average human beings today would be smart enough to notice this argumentum ad populum type fallacy and wouldn't buy it just because they have seen commercial(s) about it, but we usually don't and therefore we are susceptible to such easy manipulation. To be honest I don't really know how effective such tactics are, but I think it is safe to say they are effective enough in order to make corporations and others pay to make and air them; which is kind of a scary thought when one realizes how expensive things like the commercials played during the super bowl.
The most important thing to note is that the tactics used in commercials to make people buy any given product can more or less be used for many other things such as what political views they have, who they vote for, or even what one thinks about. It is kind of like a blacksmith forging a tool or weapon on top of the anvil, it takes many blows for him to get any piece of metal to take the shape he needs but once it gets there and it cools it almost never changed unless a incredibly powerful force that is beyond it's ability to handle.
I hope that this helps explain why it is hard to change people's view once they have been indoctrinated with beliefs/narratives that can be faulty and they are either teenagers and/or adults. With kids I don't know how easy it is to indoctrinate them since some of idea that may be presented to them may be beyond their understanding. My guess would be is there are still professional spin doctors around, I'm pretty sure they would know the ins and outs of such things better than me.
We’re the same age.
This is a passage from the Old Testament. Samuel was a judge and the people asked him for a king. This is his response.
"He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.
12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.
15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.
16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.
17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.
18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day."
1 Samuel 11-18. :smile: It's an old problem.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't see how this response addresses anything I said above, which is the post you linked to.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm 40. I thought you were in your 60s or 70s. Regardless, it reflects even more poorly on you.
Thanks for letting me know. I linked to the wrong post.
Thanks for that. I agree with him, of course.
Well if we accept the belief that the wealthy essentially bribe government officials, we can talk about who bears more of the responsibility: the wealthy briber or the weak-willed official. Again, the key word there is "if." In that case, I would tend to agree with you. At the very least, they're equally to blame.
But I don't accept that belief. The wealthy don't have to bribe officials any more than Murdoch has to bribe Sean Hannity. Rather, you don't get to be a high ranking government official or a media pundit with a wide audience unless you've already internalized certain beliefs and values -- the beliefs and values of the ruling class. There are few exceptions.
This is a crucial distinction.
You don't just make it so by saying it. If that's all you've got I suggest you get yourself a soapbox, you're in the wrong place.
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
These are two objections to the claim that your taxes are thus rendered just, but that's not the claim. The claim I'm asking you to justify is that your full, untaxed wage is just. Why is it just for you to keep that money? Why is the amount you negotiated with your employer a just amount for you to keep?
The neoliberal era for you. Neoliberal policies all approach laissez faire, and use the concept to justify them.
The attitude shows up in the slogans. "Free markets." "Government is the problem." Etc. This is the era we're currently living in, and the above is but one sample of what's actually going on -- and that was back in 2014. It's continued.
It always helps to take things from the abstract to the specific. So taking this one specific issue, the question (for laissez-faire proponents) becomes: is the state to blame?
In a sense, yes. These neoliberal policies are implemented through government, after all. Deregulation among them -- like the rule that the SEC instated in 1982 that allowed for this behavior to go unchecked. All justified on "free market" principles, of course.
The point is -- according to the laissez-faire perspective, wasn't the government (the state) doing the right thing back then? Isn't deregulation the right move?
I wonder if anarcho-capitalists or "conservative libertarians" even care about this. Probably not, since it's out of the realm of the abstract, where any ol' person can bullshit in circles from their armchair.
Meanwhile, it's had truly awful effects on the United States population and transferred trillions in wealth to the wealthiest people (according to RAND, around $50 trillion).
Link to the Lazonick article.
But there is no other agent in the contract. You claimed it was a lie and then claimed the government is implicitly entitled to a portion even if there is no explicit mention of it. In other words, through a feat of imagination you assert your belief into an agreement and pretended it is binding. Soapbox.
That was the payment for services rendered. That’s the money they wanted to give me and the amount I accepted. The amount isn’t just—it might be a poor wage—but the transaction is just because it was made between two consenting parties.
Why is it not just?
I claimed no such thing. You said your gross wage was agreed as yours by consent. That's a lie. You employer has full knowledge and expectation that you will give the taxable portion to the government. He never consented for you to keep that portion in return for your labour.
Quoting NOS4A2
Because it is not all yours. Your ability to earn it comes partly from your education, partly from your health, partly from your clean air, water, refuse collection, coworkers, laws, trade deals, security, policing... The taxed portion is you paying for all that. If you take it all you are stealing those benefits which you did not pay for.
If what is 'just' is just what is, then what does the word 'just' even mean? If the 'just' amount of wealth is simply 'all the possible wealth' then there's nothing the addition of the word 'just' is even doing.
It’s the same thing for corporate taxes. They want to conveniently forget this part. Since the state is always evil, taxation is seen as theft.
Yet these are the same people who are fine with government subsidies, bailouts, patent protection, etc.
It’s an oddly circular, contradictory, and mostly incoherent view.
Well, that’s even more absurd. It’s no business of the other party whether I pay my taxes or not, and it matters not one bit what he implicitly expects me to do with my payment. If a client expects me to spend his payment on food or rent it makes little sense to say I am violating his consent if I flush it all down the toilet.
It is all mine because I earned it and did not agree to pay for any of things you mention. There is no voluntary and consensual agreement between both parties, I have zero say in what I am buying, and finally I am relieved of my money through coercion. That is why I say it is an unjust transaction.
I use "just" in the common sense to describe behavior that is fair and equitable between all parties involved in any one interaction.
... enforced on pain of state intervention, as with every contact ever, on whom both parties rely.
Sounds like projection to me.
Oh dear, are we speaking in questions again?
Apology accepted.
Absolutely, yes. If anything it's worse for corporate taxes because they not only used those services, but made a profit from them.
Quoting NOS4A2
I didn't say it was his business. Your claim was that he consented. He did not. The amount was negotiated under an expectation.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course it does. That's exactly what you're violating. If I give you my bike on the condition you don't sell it, and you sell it, you're violating my consent.
Quoting NOS4A2
When you board a train, or stay on a train past your station, you are agreeing to buy a ticket, you're using a service. Lots of agreements and contracts are made this way. Your phone, your electricity, your tab at the bar. You use the service, then pay.
By remaining in the country, you're agreeing to the terms under which your use of that country is offered. You had 18 years to decide. If you don't agree to those terms, stop using the service.
You can't claim you didn't know what the terms were, they're quite publicly available.
You can't claim you didn't agree to those terms. You did, by continuing to use the service, just like a train ride, a bar tab, a phone call.
It's theft to use a service and not pay for it.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yet you've given nothing in support of the assertion that you gross pay is either fair or equitable. The only argument you've offered so far is the entirely tautologous one that your gross pay is your gross pay.
It could be possible you and your employer agree to net pay where you live, which might explain my confusion—but then your agreed-upon wage would be subject to shifts in taxation, going down should your taxes go up and vice versa, thereby violating the wage you both agreed upon. It just doesn't make sense to me.
One minute it's an "implicit understanding", the next its a "condition". I won't assume bad faith but I don't think I can keep arguing on such shifting sands.
I have not agreed to any terms, figuratively or literally, implicitly or explicitly. I’ve never shook anyone's hand or bowed or signed anything. "Remaining" isn't a gesture of agreement in any language. But it’s no surprise you’d keep using the language of agreement and contract even if I have never agreed to any of the above. It’s intuitive, even if in your case it doesn’t reflect reality.
It is fair and equitable because it was willingly given to me in trade for something of equal value. I deserve payment because that is what we agreed to, and the employer deserves my work for the same reason.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/missokistic/status/466416327666974722[/tweet]
Are you saying that taxation is a secret where you live?
Quoting NOS4A2
I literally gave you the example in the fucking quote you're replying to, if would be hard to get more disingenuous. If you board a train you agree to pay the price of whatever journey you took. If you have a bar tab you agree to pay the cost of however many drinks you accumulate by the time the tab is due.
At no point in either arrangement did you shake anyone's hand or bow or sign anything. Remaining on a train definitely constitutes an agreement to pay for the excess journey.
Quoting NOS4A2
You've not linked agreeing with deserving. If a prison guard agrees to help a prisoner escape, do they thereby deserve to escape?
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
Although I imagine for libertarians the number of sex offenders going up is not a negative.
:fire:
Every day a new transparent dodge.
No, taxation is not a secret. When you accept a job, do you agree to the gross or net wage?
You gave me a false analogy. You’re using an example of voluntary exchanges as analogies for compulsory taxation, services I agree to pay for and willingly seek out as analogies for services I do not. Utter trash.
I thought we were talking about why I am entitled to the gross wage, now it’s offers to escape from prison.
Both. Unless taxation is a secret, both parties are fully aware of the legal implications of providing a gross wage in terms of taxation and resulting net income.
Quoting NOS4A2
Taxation is voluntary. If you don't want the services and products offered, stop using them. Move.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. The argument you gave was that your reward was agreed on by some other party, therefore you deserve it, if you provide no further factors, then whatever reward is agreed on is deserved. So the prisoner deserves to escape because that's what was agreed on.
Quoting NOS4A2
Here in the UK it’s the employer that pays their employees’ income tax/national insurance/student loan repayments/pension contributions. They only pay us what’s left.
Not having to deal with that hassle is a great benefit over being self-employed.
Why would there be legal implications if the tax is voluntary?
If the transfer and acquisition of the exchange was voluntary and consensual, it would be a just exchange, sure.
The business is forced to deduct taxes from the gross wage and sends it to the government on the employee's behalf, leaving the employee with what is left over. The state sure has streamlined the process, haven't they?
Yep, it’s very efficient and saves me from having to do tax returns and make all these extra payments myself.
This picture is missing one important piece: provided we get rid of capitalism first. Since it's precisely capitalism that is at the heart of most awful modern human behavior to begin with, it's laughable to want to abolish or minimize the state while keeping capitalism intact. Show me nearly any problem today (obesity, drug abuse, climate change, environmental degradation, social media-driven division, poverty, low wages, debt, poor healthcare, inflation) and I'll show you terrible behavior justified by capitalist principles at the core.
It's like fighting the system of slavery by abandoning government...while ignoring racism.
I agree in principle with this statement, but it is an oversimplification I think. It is not capitalism, per se, that is the corruption point, but rather the elevation of corporate over individual rights, and the over-concentration of capital. In principle, a "restricted free-market" economics could realize the best of both worlds. I'm currently reading John Rawls' analysis of the inherent equilibrating capacities of the free-market (which I assume underlies whatever rational appeal the laissez-faire argument holds) and he is quite right, I think, in pointing out that it can be a tool of either a private or public ownership society:
It is evident, then, that there is no essential tie between the use of free markets and private ownership of the instruments of production. The idea that competitive prices under normal conditions are just or fair goes back at least to medieval times. While the notion that a market economy is in some sense the best scheme has been most carefully investigated by so-called bourgeois economists, this connection is a historical contingency in that, theoretically at least, a socialist regime can avail itself of the advantages of this system. One of these advantages is efficiency. Under certain conditions competitive prices select the goods to be produced and allocate resources to their production in such a manner that there is no way to improve upon either the choice of productive methods by firms, or the distribution of goods that arises from the purchases of households. There exists no rearrangement of the resulting economic configuration that makes one household better off (in view of its preferences) without making another worse off. No further mutually advantageous trades are possible; nor are there any feasible productive processes that will yield more of some desired commodity without requiring a cutback in another. For if this were not so, the situation of some individuals could be made more advantageous without a loss for anyone else. The theory of general equilibrium explains how, given the appropriate conditions, the information supplied by prices leads economic agents to act in ways that sum up to achieve this outcome. Perfect competition is a perfect procedure with respect to efficiency. Of course, the requisite conditions are highly special ones and they are seldom if ever fully satisfied in the real world. Moreover, market failures and imperfections are often serious, and compensating adjustments must be made by the allocation branch (see §43). Monopolistic restrictions, lack of information, external economies and diseconomies, and the like must be recognized and corrected. And the market fails altogether in the case of public goods. (Rawls, A Theory of Justice)
The final sentence highlights the critical concept. The notion of seriality in application of the principles of justice says that certain principles of justice must be satisfied first, before others can be applied. In particular, public goods, such as equality of liberty and opportunity. Therefore, when it comes to the general social welfare, economic considerations must be subordinated to social welfare, basic human needs and rights cannot be economized. Once this simple principle is understood and accepted as a 'prime directive,' the legitimate benefits of a free-market system can be reasonably enjoyed.
Yes, somehow.
Capitalism has raised the standard of living mightily in the West so its positive outcomes have to be included in any account of its virtues and failings. But with the progressive concentration of wealth - and therefore, of power - in the hands of a tiny, apparently soulless, certainly apathetic, minority, and with the (unconscionably) vast majority of citizens growing progressively more penniless - yes, even those who work their piss-poor-ass asses off - some revision to the capitalist credo ought to be undertaken.
The details I leave to the economists. I hope there are some smart, powerful and empathic visionaries faithful enough to work it out. Not too hopeful though, with so dark a storm on the horizon: the decline of democratic aspirations worldwide, the anticipated havoc of climate change and the resultant displacement of millions - a fearful fateful future will likely ride it out with capitalism at the helm.
I don't know, being compulsively driven to plunder and exploit doesn't seem to fit "apathetic" to me.....
Certainly there is an apathos in it. A lack of feeling for others.
There is a "pathos" in it, as in pathology, I'll give you that! :lol:
Which is a natural consequence of capitalism left to its own devices.
I'd like to think I'm realistic -- I realize that capitalism isn't going to be overthrown in my lifetime. I would like to at least see a move away from the more "laissez faire" side of the spectrum (neoliberalism) to a system that we had in the 1940s-70s, the era of "regimented capitalism." But that really isn't going to solve this issue long term.
The issue, ultimately, is whether private ownership and private profit should be at the core of our economy. A society based on greed and personal gain will not only be an ugly one -- as the United States is -- but will potentially destroy the human species, as we're seeing with environmental destruction, global warming, and the war industry. I see no reason why replacing monarchy with plutocracy, which is what has happened, is the way to go -- even regulated plutocracy.
The solution is democratizing the economy, and that starts with corporations. Other countries organize this much better than the United States. (I mention the United States over and over not only because I'm a citizen, but because it's the most powerful country in world history, and what it does has wide ranging effects.)
Why a handful of owners -- a capitalist class (also the ruling class) -- should be given the power over economic (and political) life is the question. I don't think they should.
If that's too abstract, take one S&P 500 or Fortune 500 company, public or private, and see how it functions -- and that's essentially the economy writ large: a handful of people (boards of directors) and executives (CEOs, COOs, etc) make all the decisions, and all do the bidding of the "owners" (usually major shareholders). The more shares you own, the more votes you have for board seats; executives' compensation is made up mostly of stocks, as well.
People who defend such a system have very poor arguments, based on poor values and even poorer beliefs about human beings and human nature. Self interest, greed, and gain become "natural" -- as if these are the only human characteristics that matter. That's capitalism. I don't think it's oversimplifying things to say this needs to go.
And I don't think that anyone seriously disputes that, because it would be a rationally indefensible position.
So the question really is, how can an institution in such bad faith be so meticulously maintained? Either they have the best propaganda in existence, or the each and all of downtrodden masses secretly nurture aristocratic aspirations....
No question.
The collusion of PR and psychiatry-psychology from circa. Edward Bernays to Century 21 is, to my view, the most heinous betrayal of trust since Judas's kiss.
All about the crowns and the Benjamins.
Rawls’ theory of justice is what Nozick called an “end-state” theory of justice. Such a theory proposes that redistribution must lead to a just state, in Rawls’ case, that distribution should be arraigned in a way that we achieve the Difference Principle.
Nozick contrasts this with his own “entitlement” theory which is a “historical” theory of justice. Distribution is only just if the transfer and acquisition of the goods were just. Further, all historical transfers of any certain “holdings” must be just, from its initial acquisition until its most recent.
In my mind, one advances just outcomes, the other just behavior. It’s no surprise that I’m with Nozick on this one. I fear end-state theories of justice because unjust behavior can (and has) been used in an attempt to reach a the desired state, which may or may not be achievable.
Anyways, Nozick’s chapter on Distributive Justice is a great companion to Rawls and makes for great debate.
If you focus on the mechanics of realizing justice, but you can also read Rawls from the more theoretical perspective which analyzes justice as fairness in the context of Kantian-contractual theories. Establishing a mechanics of justice is complicated, but IMO it would be simplified if we could agree upon some theoretical pillars, such as "social goods" as Rawls calls them. The point I think is that social goods ought to be removed from the mechanics of redistribution altogether, and just treated as universal rights. De-economized.
I have bookmarked the chapter for later consumption. Rawls is already a super-dense read.
Which they aren't and weren't. So his proposal is procedural rather than historical.
Historical. The question of whether a distribution is just depends upon how it came about, so one has to examine the history of the transfer and acquisition of any “holding”.
In the USA, at any rate - good luck locating the tiniest morsel of capital with no link to slavery or the pilferage of land from indigenous peoples.
Your notion of "historical justice" is a lavish gift to your antagonists.*
*So - thank you! :smile: Let's see if you can walk it back.
If you think such transactions are unjust, how can you be indifferent when the state does it?
It’s either unjust or it is not. The cognitive dissonance must be painful.
As to just or unjust - that's just too boggling to even ponder. Especially after the (crucial?) introduction of historical (in-)justice.
I appreciate your opinion.
I don’t think it’s too difficult to ponder. If my chicken lays eggs and I give you a dozen that sounds to me like a just exchange.
If your chicken coop is built on land pilfered 300 years back from an indigenous tribe we now have a mind-boggling justice conundrum.
By the same token, if your eggs are delivered to your client via a national highway system constructed under Eisenhower and funded by tax dollars of citizens long-dead and decayed to the bone - we now have a mind-boggling justice conundrum.
Just because you call it that and Nozick did, doesn't make it so. It's one of the main criticisms that what we have today isn't the result of just transfers and therefore his proposal is both ahistorical and arbitrary. Think colonisation, wars, oppression by nobility and the church, oppression of women, etc.
Doesn’t make it not so, either. It is impossible to prove and thus nonsensical to believe every transfer of a possession is unjust. Not all of us are giving each other stolen art, colonial plunder, and blood diamonds.
I’m not transferring you stolen land or highways. The hens laid the eggs just days ago.
There's typically a viable and well-counterpoised point and counter-point to any position. (That's where ataraxia comes from.) At the very least, you could acknowledge the complexity.
You also inherited the blueprints for a chicken coop from some unknown innovator. Without whom, no chicken coop. Does that give this unknown innovator a right to a portion of your egg and poultry profits? If not, why not? You wouldn't have your coop without him.
Without the possibility to prove it, it is arbitrary and therefor a procedural proposal and procedure has little, if anything, to do with justice, which is why Nozick is not taken seriously by philosophers in Europe. Kind of like a footnote to Rawls if he's discussed at all. It's purely cultural that Nozick is considered an important thinker in the US due to its outsized individualism and Nozick is just an excuse to shore up anti-social laws.
Come to think of it, I fully support everything you propose to be implemented as quickly as possible in the US and watch it crash and burn as a result.
We can crash and burn all by ourselves, thank you very much. We don't need no stinking paternalism. :smile:
Assuming the USA for argument's sake.
Your coop is on stolen land so you owe a portion of your profits (a tax) to the indigenous tribe this land belongs to.
Your client traveled to your location via a system of public roads so you owe a portion of your profits (a tax) to the folks who construct and maintain these roads.
etcetcetc
The fact you cannot prove that all transactions throughout history are just does not entail you cannot prove that some transactions are just. Some can be proved, some cannot. Therefor it’s not arbitrary and not procedural. But I'm disappointed that all we are doing is quibbling about the word "historical". It's so trivial as to be irrelevant.
It's a simple matter; if someone stole a bike and you receive it as a gift, that's not a just exchange. You are not entitled to it and ought to return it to the person it was stolen from. If the bike wasn't stolen and the exchange was voluntary, that's a just exchange. So why is state distribution of wealth just or unjust?
Europe has given us the collectivist and social politics of Communism, Socialism, and Fascism, which have spread worldwide, ruining every country infected by their ideas.
All of that is irrelevant to our exchange of eggs.
I see you don't have an argument. Just bald assertion.
It looks to me like you'll be setting up your coop in the jungle and asking your clients to make their way to your site on foot, providing their own machetes for threshing out the overgrowth and defending themselves against wild beasts. You're going to need an ingenious marketing team.
If you're availing yourself of a single one of the niceties of 6000 years of civilization - in other words, if you're benefiting at all from the public good - you owe a tax to the public good.
The Public Good. Is that the same as the State?
Not interested in continuing until you present an argument or rebuttal of substance. Take care.
:smile:
Good riddance.
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
:grin:
A minute later....
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Sigh. It's not trivial because it's definitional and goes to the core of why Nozick's theory lacks any internal coherence. What's the likelihood of any transaction not being tainted by unjust transfers? Zero if you know anything about history. The market salesman accepts money from a thief, the daughter inherits money made from slavery, a country stole resources through colonisation. All wealth, especially in Western countries, is tainted if you're stupid enough to think Nozick has anything worthwhile to say about justice. Nozick's idea is as retarded as it is simplistic.
That had me laughing.
This thread is dead. What a shocker that NOS finally put everyone to sleep.
I’m not sure if this is lost in translation or not, but you’re equivocating between two senses of “history”. You might know something of history in the grand sense because you’d read a history book, but you know very little about the history of any given acquisition and transfer. In order to find out whether you are entitled to the object of any transfer—that it was not stolen for example—you’d need to examine [I]what actually happened[/i] in the course of the acquisition and transfer of that object. If you know anything about history, you know one cannot know the history of his bike by taking a history class.
If this idea is so simple why is it so hard to grasp?
Undead. :lol:
Glad I could give you a tickle.
My memory is a little poor and I likely didn't read the entire article but from what I remember of it it mentioned that unbridled capitalism, like any unbridled ideology, could make things even worse than things were between when we had friction between socialized and capitalistic markets. There would likely be more markets going up and down, weaker unions, less regulations, and valuations of any given product or company fluctuating more wildly than before.
(For information on the first record market bubble see the below link)
Tulip mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
It is hard to put a finger on "exactly" what would be the problem with a runaway capitalism type situation other than very little government oversight, a giant rift between the top 5% and everyone else, and all the power centered in the hands of the extreme uber-wealthy elite (which almost the same as it has ever been except even worse than before) but it also suggest probably the worse issue is the close -mindedness it could create for America and the rest of Western world. I believe this part of the issue is about that if there is no contrast between Capitalism and any other ideology then Capitalism is considered in a way the only ideology that is valid and "perfect" in it's own right.
From what little I know of history, ideology, sociology, philosophy, etc. is that when a culture like the one we have in the West becomes closed minded enough to only believe in ideology or one way of looking at the world that ideology more or less becomes merely dogma and those with status and/or power merely want to maintain the status quo. I could be wrong but it is similar to how the US was able to become more powerful than other countries in the last few hundred years. The US was willing to become BOTH industrialized and think and do things in a new way, if doing so had any potential of making things work better then how things where done in the past.
I think in a nutshell what people like NOS4A2 do realize is that the issue isn't about people having a problem with laissez-faire or whatever similar doctrine, it is about the common sense that most people about relying on ANY economic, religious, social, etc. theoretical doctrine or dogma to fix EVERYTHING. The real world is more complicated than any one ideology can example and while one ideology/narrative can be used to either explain and/or fix certain issues it shouldn't be the only tool that one has.
I don't know the ultimate outcome of what will happen to a society that allows a runway-capitalism system to go on, but I doubt that it is pretty.
(1988 Movie - "They Live" - where aliens come to earth and control everyone, which has been often commented as a metaphor for how similar it is to how the uber-rich/powerful and corporations already control everything.)
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The belief that everything must be “bridled” by an elected group of bureaucrats is ideology in the strictest sense, a superstition far deeper and obsequious than any political ideology that arises from it.
The fight scene is a perfect metaphor for this topic, folks fighting with NOS to put the ideology critique glasses on his face.