You honestly still fall into the trap of equating workers’ rights with Marxism? What’s wrong with this “libertarian” movement?
Yes, workers are the taxpayers. Yes, workers do directly homestead state-land. Yes, taxpayers pay for the state, and technically their funds are funding the workers, however, not directly. The state withholds money as well. Yes, the taxpayers have been violated, but selling land to wealthy, government bedfellows as oppossed to those that have directly worked on the land is an example of Vulgar Libertarianism and a form of corporativism.
I hoped it would be obvious by now that the government’s workers are corporatist to the bone. As tax-consumers they are the first beneficiaries of government.
So then who are the workers and how are they the same as the tax payers?
Individualist methodology does not recognize the existence of class rights such as workers’ rights.
Some, perhaps, such as the administrators. Most, however, simply want to make their cash, go home to their girl friends or wives and live a comfortable life with friends drinking Friday night and sleeping in on Saturday morning.
The workers are the same as the entrepreneurs; they belong to the ever weakening producing class at the benefit of the parasitic (political) one.
They are the same as “taxpayers” (i.e. those that are exploited) for that very reason.
Because “workers are not individuals, but are rather animals to be exploited by us, their noble rulers.”
On what do you base this supposed right? If the land has no legitimate present owners, it is open for homesteading. The government is not a legitimate owner.
Yes. If it’s rightfully his, he can do whatever he wants with it.
A lot of it was, yes, but a lot of it also was not.
If it was genuinely their land, homesteaded by them and not fallen into disuse except perhaps by their being forced off it at gunpoint, then it was their land. Receiving something you knew to be stolen from another would be criminal, it would mean you were an accomplice to the theft, so if you knowingly benefited from the theft, they may simply take back what was stolen from them (though it would be wise on their part to take the matter before a reputable private arbiter, lest they be assumed to be the initiators of aggression).
If, on the other hand, you didn’t know, and you (or some prior owner from whom you acquired it through a chain of voluntary exchange) homesteaded the land after the natives had been forced off it, it is your land. Their property was destroyed by those who forced them off the land, and so they should seek restitution from those who committed the crime or the inheritors of their assets.
If you didn’t like that, I guess you’d really hate it if I brought up Murray Rothbard’s “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle”. In it, and based on libertarian principles of property, Rothbard argues for both state and corporate "property " to be appropriated by the workers as their legitimately homesteaded labor products. I guess Rothbard was a red. Who knew?
First, I would consider libertarianism to be entirely leftist in nature, in fact, I would consider libertarianism to be as far down the left spectrum as possible. See Karl Hess.
Second, you have a point, however, why stop at workers in the “government” sector? Almost every corporation showing millions of dollars in profits - or ironically in losses - receives some form of government subsidization. Farmers, farming corporations, agri-business, real-estate, construction, football teams, you name it! It seems an example to me of vulgar libertarianism, to confuse the “private sector” of contemporary civilization with the private sector invisioned by libertarians as a moral basis for development.
This, however, does not refute your statement, that all “government workers are parasites,” but it does suggest that if all “government workers” are parasites, then almost everyone in society can be seen as a parasite. I disagree with this for one reason - civilization and all societal dealings have been monopolized by the state. So, working for the state, technically, does not seem entirely wrong, as long as one is not an administrator. Of course, this is all a wide grey area, and it depends largely on the form of revolution that should be taken up. I, personally, hope to see radicalized unions eject government influence, “privatized” or not, from their businesses thus legitimizing themselves as libertarians and moral operators.
Of course, they’re in it for the money. Where is that money coming from? And do you imagine that if the government did not employ them, they would be able to earn as much on the market given their specialization in government work?
The workers are the last people who morally deserve a cut of government property. The only reason they need to be bought out are economic: they have the power to screw up the property in the transition phase (as we saw in the Soviet Union).
Rothbard did not have exclusively good ideas in his life, his backing for democracy and the Libertarian Party being the obvious testaments.
The money comes from the workers. If the government did not employ them? I’ll give you one better! If the government did not exist, I am absolutely certain that the plight of the workers would not exist in any context.
Again with this red-baiting though. Is that all you know? “You’re a pinko-commie! l;jdaf;j;ejfa;jf;ajfs”
Congratulations, you’ve just epitomized the entire Vulgar Libertarian attitude towards life and political economy in a string of flamboyantly Randroidian comments.
The fact that it has an illegitimate owner makes it not open to homesteading. It means the issue of its ownership is unresolved. For something to be homesteadable, it must be clearly unowned, meaning that the issue of ownership is resolved.
If the workers pay to pay the workers, then the government is running a fully autarkic economy. Evidently that is not the case. The government pays the workers through income taxes collected from labor exchanges in the private sector, and the government’s workers are de facto exempted from such taxes, which makes them all an accomplice of the government.
The fact is that to an individualist, there is no such class as “the workers.” There are only individual labor contracts.
I am not replying to anyone in particular, but I felt that an important immigrant related issue had to be brought up. That of the Trans-Texas Corridor.
You know what I mean. The position you seem to be arguing is not libertarian in my opinion, and can be described in contermporary English as leftist.
Of course. But what has that to do with my point ? All those subsidies should end.
Only net tax consumers.
Too bad that’s inconsistent. As you realize “Of course, this is all a wide grey area”. But what really bothers me is that you think lowly public employees are some sort of victim. Actually these people are one of the biggest forces supporting statism.
You’'ll never see that because unions are largerly a creation of the state. Just as public employees are rent-seekers willing to use force to keep their privileges.
At what point does it cease to be stolen property? One would think the original owner, or his heir, is still the rightful owner. One doesn’t get to keep stolen goods just beacuse he didn’t know the goods were stolen.
Albert owns a piece of property.
Bob steals Albert’s property.
Charles buys the property from Bob, not knowing it is stolen.
Dan buys the property from Charles, again not knowing it is stolen.
At no point has Albert lost legitimate title to the property; it is still his, and he has every right to use it as he sees fit. Dan has every right to seek restitution from Charles, who in turn has every right to seek restitution from Bob. Good faith on Charles’ and Dan’s parts does not somehow magically turn Bob’s illegitimate title legitimate.