hat’s so wrong it’s funny. The laissez-faire era did not just benefit bosses, it lifted the majority of people out of poverty.
95% of people did not live in abject poverty in the 1800s.
If you have some data for that, I’ll be happy to conced the point.
Which part are you disputing, whether society got richer as a whole or whether it benefited the majority of people?
As for the latter, I refer you to economic theory that tells us that profits are a fixed proportion of the “rent” extracted from capital, and bosses could not have been getting richer without a huge rise in standards of living for the common people.
As for the first, you can look at any graph of GDP per capita in the west. Here is one for the US. You clearly see it spiking from 1800 onwards (and earlier), not from 1900 or starting with the post ww2 boom.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/ideas-and-consequences-presidents-and-poverty/
And a quote from Keynes:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?Itemid=275&id=854&option=com_content&task=view
Sorry, I actually wasn’t trying to show that solar power isn’t feasible at all, or that it could never be feasible. It certainly is or can be feasible, although that does depend on the definition of “feasible” being used. 
I also wasn’t trying to make you stop promoting solar power - I certainly promote it myself. My point was twofold:
Simply asserting that we can convert to other forms of energy, like solar energy, hides an enormous amount of complexity.
It simply does not follow that renewable energy sources lead to no longer worrying about energy.
With that said, I also definitely support nuclear power, and I think it’s a tragedy and a travesty that it isn’t used more widely. However, nuclear power is at least as capital-intensive as solar power.
Here’s a great essay about just what goes into making things in today’s world.
That quote is referring to the amount of U-235 expected to be inside Earth’s crust. The vast majority of it is not readily accessible. It needs to be mined, refined, and processed before it can be used in fast breeder reactors. It’s not like atmospheric oxygen, where all you have to do to get it is contract your diaphragm. Furthermore, opportunity cost doesn’t really apply to breathing, as it’s typically unconscious and therefore doesn’t interfere with conscious activity.
I know. But honestly, I don’t see how private ownership of the means of production necessarily leads to some group of people “having to” sell their labor. With all due respect, you haven’t demonstrated that to me.
Please explain how “the right to subsistence” is any kind of freedom.
To me, the issue is simple: do you think it’s okay for a hungry person to take food from someone else without the latter’s consent? My answer to this is no. Furthermore, I’d say that the first person was not harmed by the second, but that the second person was harmed by the first.
What exactly do you mean by “liberty” and “basic needs”?
I actually wasn’t making that assumption. By saying “whatever [the limiting scale] may be” and “wherever familial/communal sharing and reciprocity end”, I left open the possibility that there may be no limiting scale. However, if there is (at least in practice), then capitalist production and exchange will occur beyond that point. Does that make more sense?
Well when I described:
I think it was pretty clear what I meant here. You did answer:
So we were specifically speaking of a situation where all goods are still scarce (exactly in your definition of supply not sufficient for demand), which means you need a rationing mechanism. One possibility is to use money. And in fact you did say exactly this and I am wondering that you don’t remember:
And exactly because I was wondering that you really would answer “money”, I asked once more to be sure:
You answered:
*1: So either I have misunderstood you and you didn’t mean to ration goods (inclusive food and energy!) by use of money or you forgot what you ran along.
In first case it begs the question what you meant at all with your post and you still need to answer my question of my old post which was:
In latter case the question needs to be answered of:
EDIT *1
And when I read other posts of you I even believe that you do not really believe in lala land post scarcity world:
Post scarcity means: satisfying all needs to complete saturation! And having not one single work to do which bears even a little disutility.
But I agree nuclear energy has a lot of potential. But it is funny that you come up with it after only writing about renewables. Check out the so called Molten Salt Reactor MSR (also called LFTR – Liquid Fluid Thorium Reactor). It uses Thorium which is much more available than Uran and the fuel doesn’t need to be processed. It also is a breeder like the IFR. It’s in research again in Japan, Czech, Russia…
So there is no necessity to abolish private property. If it works better as the usual capitalistic firm it will out-compete it naturally, a peaceful revolution. So just start such companies and make better offers to workers as the normal firms do. Since you think they are oppressed in the normal ones it should be easy to give them a better deal, which means you have the better workers and therefore better products.
I am into economics and political theory only since about 3 years, and I really try to push myself to take every possible perspective to get a complete picture and to avoid only believing what I want to believe. When I started checking out socialism (Marx etc..) I was so disappointed because there were really no answers to my questions, only vague descriptions of how it would work which ignored reality and can be realized only through force (state socialism) according to my opinion. I am not dogmatic but maybe I am just too dumb to understand how it works, so I am deliberately engaging proponents of socialism (especially libertarian ones) because someone may be able to explain it to me.
So the main purpose is not to convince socialists that they are wrong, but to do my homework and giving socialism a fair chance. There are for sure religious zealots among socialists, but I would argue that this also is true of capitalism. The latter ones are just lucky to be on the right side. Also a lot of libertarians were in fact former socialists (Hayek, Wieser, some within this forum). I as well had some socialist ideas before I started really engaging economics.
Wow, you’ve been hitting the books way longer than I have. I’ve only been seriously studying economics for about a year, and even then I have to read at a snails pace due to the school getting in the way. Either way, you most likely know more about how the economy operates than I do.
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with reading the writings of people like Marx or Engels as an intellectual exercise. If anything, exploring socialist literature while maintaining your studies of the Austrian economists will just solidify your opposition to all things collectivist.
You’re not dumb, believe me. And if you’re waiting for some champion of Marxism to come onto this forum and explain to us why centuries of progress in economics is wrong, then I’d exhale.
I like turtles.
What other option is there other than to work or hunger under any economic system?
I think it is a consequence of there being more humans than the means of production. If it were the case that for every human there was the oppurtunity to have private ownership of the means of production, then they wouldn’t have to sell their labour. But that isn’t the case, there are more humans to the means of production and so some class of society has to sell its labour if it wants to survive.
At the moment it isn’t a freedom for a lot of people. But I think it should be a freedom in the same way that the right to freedom of speech is a freedom.If a person is starving to death, then I would say it is ok to take food from someone else - providing that person won’t starve to death as a result. But our beliefs in the importance of property are different.
Liberty: Political and economic freedom, or political and economic self-determination.
Basic Needs: The needs which without we die, and or, drop below into absolute poverty: food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation etc etc.
Yeah that does. I’m not sure either of us can offer anything other than speculation on this. It may be possible that syndicalism doesn’t have a maximum value it can sustain before capitalist production and exchange occur, or it may be the case that syndicalism does have a maximum value it can sustain. If you have anything to add feel free.
Right, I understand that now.
When I said:
I was using the selling of labour, getting money and then buying food… as an example that people do work in order to survive. I wasn’t advocating that system, just saying that even in this system, which I view as bad, people still work if it means that they survive. So, I think, the point I was trying to make was that people would work off their own accord.
I’d imagine you’d be one of a kind since most people would want to not only feed themselves, but also their communities and families. But if everyone decided to follow your example and not work, then something like mutualism would have to be implemented - although I’m not sure who would implement it since no one is working. Also, even if we brought in mutualism, that doesn’t garuantee that we will all come back to work.
Well, I do think it is possible that we satisfy all needs such as hunger, thirst, shelter and so on.
That’s cool, I’ll give that a look at later.
Well, if that happens then I’d be all for it. But if the workers own the means of production, which is what that pretty much is, then it is by definition socialism. So that would be a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, and I’d be all for that.
If you are realistic you can bet your farm on that I wouldn’t be one of a kind. So its mutualism then. But mutualism already has a market and money! Therefore we are back at the question of how do I get food if I don’t want to sell my labor for work to get money?
Regarding the implementation: When one after another stopped working, production would go down very fast, and people who still produce and work would just stop to give the product of their labor for free. They would ask for something in exchange, hence you have a market and money. The market would implement itself out of people’s necessity.
I think it is a consequence of there being more humans than the means of production. If it were the case that for every human there was the oppurtunity to have private ownership of the means of production, then they wouldn’t have to sell their labour. But that isn’t the case, there are more humans to the means of production and so some class of society has to sell its labour if it wants to survive
Not at all. It is a consequence of private property and the valuation of exchange over use. Even if we had replicators, in a capitalist society, the “owners” of said replicators could arbitrarily, and subject to no demcoratic control, decide who gets what and when. A replicator being subject to common ownership means anyone can walk up on it/them any time and replicate what they desire.
What I am saying is, there could very well be enough means for eveyrone to privately own them. But they won’t under a private property system. The owners of it will, and they’re likely to trade only with other owners or people whom can provide them a service.
On the 19th ce. “data.” That’s good. But I’m not yet willing to cede the point. I was looking for more data, less “theory.” What were people’s labor/leisure ratio, Life expectancy, acess to goods and services, etc? Im looking for the data myself, but I been kinda busy the last two days.
The magic post-scarcity world of syndicalism, of course.
Oh, no worries. I don’t wait for the jesus of socialism. Actually most proponents should be able to explain/explode my concerns/questions. If they are not able to its very telling 
What all you socialist types have to understand is that there wouldn’t be any replicators in a non-capitalist society. You say “a replicator being subject to common ownership” as if replicators will just pop out of nowhere in the future and the only question is how to fairly distribute the output. Read my signature, that’s the core fallacy of all anticapitalists, simply assuming that economic growth is some naturally occurring phenomenon, not the aggregate of greater efficiency and specialization.
I wanted to know which part of the claim you’re disputing before really digging into the data. You have the tendency to press me on facts that I believe to be indisputable yet at the same time oddly difficult to prove. But it should be possible to find data that shows that the 1800s were a time of rapidly improving standarts of living for the common people, and as a corrolary of that, a shrinking gap between rich and poor.
And also that the 1900s were a disaster, in the words of Steven Malanga (edited by me):
I disagree with that, I don’t think it is the case that the majority of people would laze around all day. I think it gets to the point when people want to do something satisfying with their lives, and often that is found in work. This is an interesting set of interviews with people on the train who back up that point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWkhlxX3xUs.
(On the reliability of that video, I think we can take it as reliable. For instance, there are at least two dozen people who are interviewed and it doesn’t seem to be so that they are stooges).
So I think that if we are going to be realistic, then we can say that there would be a suitable workforce who would help the community by giving their labour to get the neccesities of life. Also I don’t think that the workforce needed to carry out that work would need to be a particulary big size of the population. If we look at the number of ‘pointless’ jobs that don’t contribute much to the community - I’m thinking of retail work, such as working in a clothes store - then it’s clear that it doesn’t take a huge number of people to clothe the population. And with the work of clothing the population shared out amoungst the people, people would have a lot more free time.
In fact, I think the whole argument that people would just laze around all day is flawed. Pre-capitalism, the same argument could have applied. For example, it could have been asked, what if people don’t want to sell their labour and go to work as wage-slaves? Well, I think it’s clear that people like working, perhaps because it is often satisfying.
So on second thoughts I don’t think mutualism is relevant because I think humans would work. But if you still think that we wouldn’t work, and would laze around all day, then mutualism still doesn’t help. This is because, you’ve already admitted that humans are lazy, which I think is a false view to have. I hope you don’t think this is a cop-out, it really isn’t. I just think if you criticism syndicalism on the basis that humans aren’t going to work, then there’s no reason to think they would work under mutualism.
Chomsky said that the standards of living were rising in slave society and the Soviet Union, but that that isn’t an argument for slavery or Stalinism.
I don’t know if he’s correct about that, but I think he’s right that economic growth isn’t an argument for that kind of economy.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFxYyXGMfZM&feature=related)
