Well why assume that the consequences would be bad? There are plenty of individuals out there whose wealth was justly acquired and who no doubt possess superior judgement to politicians divorced from the market. What is the point of allowing politicians to further squander stolen wealth?
-Jon
How are you going to stop them?
Confiscating “their” wealth would be one way of doing so, as nothing they took by force would be theirs under a market order. At which point the question remains how to return this stolen wealth (and this is not ‘socialism’ as some might claim - it is the undoing thereof.) I realize you’re approaching this from an efficiency vantage point, but I really don’t see how excluding leeches from acquiring these assets will result in any losses. They’ll retain any privately earned wealth they made, which if they are so brilliant they may put to use.
-Jon
My question was how are you going to do that?
Hmm is your point that that could not be done without the State (and its ruling class’s consent), making it a poor option? I suppose I can see how the idea would work, with the money going to the other bidders (if I understood it correctly) and thus leaving the hands of the purchaser - at which point if they’re efficient in managing the acquired holdings, they will be providing a service to their consumers, and if not others more efficient in the running of the firm will acquire it. Is this the underlying rationale behind the idea?
-Jon
Exactly. So the only reason to give it to employees is if you feel they have a just claim of ownership. However, they do not.
So? If the USPS exists because of capital that rightfully belongs to taxpayers, then the USPS belongs to taxpayers.
Taxpayers are not anybody in particular. You do not get to speak for them as a whole class. Maybe you think the Postal Service must be broken up, and maybe another taxpayer thinks it’s better to keep it in one piece. Which one of you is right?
You have made a completely independent claim to the process of privatization, which is that the property of politicians and their collaborators should be confiscated because it was unjustly acquired. In the first place, this implies a reversal of the power relationship between you and politicians. You are now the expropriator and they the subjects. In the second place, this requires a significant expenditure of resources. It is likely that the politicians will not simply submit silently. They are well organized and will defend their property violently. This means that it will be extremely costly to confiscate their property. Who will pay this price?
Incorporate it. I sell my share, he can keeps his. Easy enough.
That’s exactly the point I want to make. However, even incorporation has its pitfalls. Before you can sell share, you need to draw up an administration system for the company through which shareholders get to exercise control. That also implies ownership of the company.
There doesn’t need to be any rules in place for shares to change hands. As shares consolidate into fewer hands it would either be into the hands of someone who wanted to administer or liquidate the USPS.
But pragmatic concerns of how to institutionalize ownership would be determined by individual market actors. Libertarian philosophy merely needs to determine who has the most just claim on the property, the market can enforce it.
There needs to be for shares to be worth anything. If the shareholders don’t actually control the directors, the shares will be worthless.
As shares consolidate it becomes much simpler to enforce control over the directors. If it was most practical to let the USPS administer itself until the shareholders can achieve incorporation I see no reason to second guess that.
For this reason I support giving out shares of ownership to taxpayers. I would, however, allow the employees at the local and state levels keep their jobs, and as they pay taxes as well, give all but the higher echelons proportional shares of their own (if there’s a balance left after figuring in subtraction of earnings from tax dollars).
Presumably, given your hypothetical, we are at the stage where the state is pretty much ready to dissolve. Should the victims of theft desire their stolen wealth returned to them, then it remains for them to find the means to acquire it I guess, provided they undertake all the costs involved themselves and do not foist them on third parties. Restricting politicians from bidding in the meanwhile should be perfectly possible too. No real expropriation is taking place as the property was stolen to begin with.
Why is bidding in auctions somehow different than bidding for other private companies? You are not going to expropriate them from that.
I never intended to make such a distinction. Look, my point is simply that it is morally suspect that thieves should be allowed to profit from their misdemeanours. But ultimately it’d be up to the victims.
How do you know “they do not”? That’s your opinion, not apodeictic fact; which opinion appears to be based on “they’re state employees” - but it doesn’t follow that just because they’re state employees they’re responsible for any illegal (from the libertarian viewpoint) acts of the state - postal workers are not doing anything that would be illegal under liberty. The same principle applies to them as to everyone else. See Rothbard’s Confiscation and the Homestead Principle in the June 1969 Libertarian Forum, or How to and How Not to Desocialize:
Paul, a homesteading claim requires that the appropriator produced the good in question. Employees of government enterprises did not produce the capital of the enterprise, no more than employees of any capitalist enterprise produced the capital. They only produced the specific goods they had already been paid to produce. They have no further claim. Rothbard should have been wiser than to bring up socialist principles to desocialize.
The people who do have a claim to have produced private capital out of public enterprise are its liberators, the people who acted upon or within the government to privatize the capital. They deserve to be rewarded for their efforts at protecting the public and promoting economic welfare.