Much of the basic services we have now are tiered and even the goods we buy. Is all bread the same price? Are all massages? All computer tech services?
exactly. I am not sure why this person thinks he has “got me” Because first he said do you advocate a world in which basic services . ..
And I said I advocate a world without coercion.
then he was like let me rephrase . . . .
But I want to argue further, that if two people’s houses are on fire, one person poor, one rich and politically connected, which house do you think the public fire department is going to save?
It seems like an argument against a tiered system is based on an assumption that equality of opportunity is the ideal.
Actually, the political connected part is what is to be despised.
Well, New Keynesian economics includes much more than this, but the Philips curve is based entirely on Keynesian logic and premises. Chapter 21 in the general theory shows an explicit relationship between the level of employment and inflation.
We’re going to need examples and further elaboration. But I’d like to say that all the so-called problems you associate with capitalism are only magnified by third party intervention; in fact, the government institutionalizes such inefficiencies. I suggest Gabriel Kolko’s (a socialist historian) work on pre-progressive American capitalism.
No one opposes labor coops. If they can compete, then by all means… But this is not socialism. You should probably start a new thread if you want to have a real discussion with specifics.
thats what I am saying. In a free society, the rich can have their own fire rescue company while the poor can have a low budget version of the same. Or maybe a charity/volunteer based one. Right now there is the illusion of everybody is equal in terms of basic services, but that is far from the truth.
His intent was to convey his belief that the standard for fairness was a labor market characterized by ease of entry, equality of opportunity, and the ability to rise and fall on one’s own merits rather than be subjected to success and failure based on predetermined factors out of one’s control. I’m inclined to agree, even aside from the fact that underselling represents an introduction of a lack of efficient market competition.
Soviet state capitalism, as with Western market capitalism, is based on the existence of an elite upper class that owns and controls the means of production, so though they’re technically different modes of production, they retain similar hierarchical structures.
Economic democracy requires socialism by its very nature, and is focused on the avoidance of market concentration (monopoly/oligopoly/monopsony/oligopsony), only in the event that markets are even an element of socialist economic structure. Most socialists remain somewhat anti-market, but market socialism theoretically prevents concentration through an establishment of an egalitarian network of workers’ ownership rather than capitalist ownership as well as more equitable access to productive resources, enabling equality of opportunity. The absence of those factors causes the capitalist economy to be inclined toward concentration.
Though I’m personally not an advocate, market socialism is reliant on vibrant competition and the discipline of profit and loss to maintain efficiency, ensuring that competition rather than concentration remains dominant.
Underselling is a symptom, not a root cause. The root cause is market and wealth concentration, which generates various barriers to firm entry.
A lack of interest of financial institutions in providing start-up loans and other support to such enterprises, for one thing. As noted by Vanek:
Though on most counts, I’d say that all entry-level firms face the same challenges in barriers to entry generated by the established behemoths.
Efficiency is somewhat of a rhetorical ideal; it’s not something that many will dispute or have especially significant disagreements about, merely the means of obtaining it. It’s not important enough that liberty be sacrificed to it, however. Fortunately, socialism provides both greater efficiency and liberty in that it eliminates the authoritarian hierarchies of the capitalist labor market, but if you’re familiar with anarchism, you’ll be familiar with the arguments on that front. Many haven’t come across the “efficiency” perspective, though.
Yes, because as noted by Mill, the consequences of market concentration entail that “the competitors who have the smallest means, though they may have every other element of success, must necessarily be crushed through no fault of their own.” Established firms with greater financial resources to draw on will succeed even if entry-level firms are able to allocate their own resources more efficiently, simply due to their greater reserves. And while I’m quite familiar with the nature of Austrian hostility to empirical research within economics, virtually the entire empirical literature yields the result that workers’ ownership and management is a more productive organizational form, which there are convincing theoretical reasons for.
No, because market socialism is based on egalitarian distribution of property ownership, but still within the confines of a competitive market economy characterized by small worker owned and managed firms. The other form of socialism consistent with libertarianism, decentrally planned socialism, also utilizes that model but abandons the market economy so that incentives are derived from alternative remunerative schemes, such as compensation based on effort or some other measurement of labor input.
In the context of the capitalist economy, the state’s role in sustaining regulatory structure is integral. I most often mention Yu’s A new perspective on the role of the government in economic development: Coordination under uncertainty to illustrate this. As noted by the abstract:
| This paper argues that the government possesses certain unique features that allow it to restrict competition, and provide stable and reliable conditions under which firms organise, compete, cooperate and exchange. The coordinating perspective is employed to re-examine the arguments for industrial policies regarding private investment decisions, market competition, diffusion of technologies and tariff protection on infant industries. This paper concludes that dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination policies explains the rapid economic growths in post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. |
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Also consider this portion:
| [The government] possesses some unique features that distinguish it from the firm. Such features allows the government to regulate competition, reduce uncertainty and provide a relatively stable exchange environment. Specifically, in the area of industrial policy, the government can help private enterprises tackle uncertainty in the following ways: first, locating the focal point by initiating projects; providing assurance and guarantees to the large investment project; and facilitating the exchange of information; second, reducing excessive competition by granting exclusive rights; and third, facilitating learning and diffusion of technologies, and assisting infant industry firms to build up competence. [u]The history of developmental success indicates that the market and the state are not opposed forms of social organisation, but interactively linked (Rodrik, 1997, p. 437).[/u] In the prospering and dynamic nations, public-private coordination tends to prevail. Dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination explain the successful economic performances in the post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. It is their governments’ consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the economic problems that differentiates the entrepreneurial states (Yu, 1997) from the predatory states (Boaz and Polak, 1997). |
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The aforementioned point about infant industries is my favorite and perhaps the most illustrative aspect of the role of state protectionism in facilitating maximum development because of the simplicity of the infant industries argument, and the nature of the historical record in exhibiting economic benefits stemming from such strategic trade policy. Rather than merely permitting the benefits of immediate unrestricted trade accrue to the benefit of one more powerful nation due to underdevelopment, a government protection of infant industries is established until such time as they “grow up” and can thus be expected to be legitimately competitive industries, thus maximizing dynamic comparative advantage in the long run. As noted by Ha-Joon Chang in Kicking Away the Ladder, trends of state protection of capitalism as an aspect of strategic trade policy have been existent since the nineteenth century, and an early advocacy of the infant industries argument is actually made by Alexander Hamilton.
I’m certainly in favor of drastically minimizing and ultimately eliminating the role of the government in public affairs. But that objective is not consistent with the continuation of capitalism.
Of course it is. Socialism is the public ownership and management of the means of production, and workers’ ownership and democratic control of firms is and always has been an integral facet of that and socialist theory. That workers’ ownership and management minimizes distributed and tacit knowledge problems is the basis behind David Prychitko’s non-socialist advocacy of it, at which point it’s simply a short jump to Theodore Burczak’s socialist advocacy. Some critical analysis also turns the socialist calculation debate on its head, since socialism is able to utilize decentralized coordination and/or market competition, whereas capitalism is the economic theory that has actually been reliant on governmental central planning, as noted in Munkirs’s The Transformation of American Capitalism: From Competitive Market Structures to Centralized Private Sector Planning, for example. Here’s an interesting review excerpt:
And again, consider the factor of market concentration.
Leviathan:
Maybe I am too much of a newbie, but I don’t undertsand how your view is socialism. If a group of people own a business and can compete with other business, accumulate/own capital, and profit from so doing, how is this different from the free market economy? It seems to me no different from partnerships and collective ownership of corporations.
It sounds like the only thing you are adding to this picture is coersive prohibition of certain activities.
How could you allow free competition while prohibiting such things as underselling. It sounds to me like you are simply advocating central planning with the added regulation of limiting ownership to worker coops. How is this consisent with liberty?
Only if the whole economy is one giant coop. Coops competing with each other or with corporations is not socialism. I’ve already dealt with the rest of this nonsensical post on the calculation thread.
Socialism is the public ownership and management of the means of production. While there is a common misconception that it necessitates state ownership and central planning, socialism is a vibrant theory with many strains and adaptations, with my reference here being to market socialism, specifically decentralized market socialism characterized by workers’ democracy. Since the capitalist labor market is characterized by hierarchical authoritarianism and dependent on substantial government intervention besides, I don’t regard it as a “free market.” The free market can only be achieved in the socialist economy, as with mutualist Kevin Carson’s free market anti-capitalism.
In my opinion, that’s not necessary. Socialism naturally limits the growth of the capitalist firm due to the collectivization of the means of production that it entails. This does not entail a prohibition of attempts to establish capitalism; it simply means that it will be a difficult prospect because the disproportionate and vastly inequitable distribution of ownership and control of those productive resources that enabled the dominance of capitalist economic structure before will be absent. There will likely be little desire to re-establish it because capitalism involves authoritarian hierarchical relations in the labor market and internal firm structure, whereas anarchism involves horizontal and democratic relations. It follows then, that for the reactionary to attempt to implement capitalism in a libertarian society would be akin to an untalented entrepreneur going to a public park and attempting to sell water next to a drinking fountain. Establishment of democracy and limitations on the ability of monarchism to develop are hardly authoritarian; neither would establishment of socialism and limitations on the ability of capitalism to develop be authoritarian.
However, that’s just my view. Some market socialist theorists advocate legal prohibition of private ownership of productive resources on account of the fact that they facilitate the hierarchical authoritarianism mentioned, but as a libertarian, I personally don’t believe that it’s necessary.
I didn’t speak of the prohibition of underselling, especially as underselling is merely a symptom of market concentration rather than a fundamental problem As mentioned, it will be difficult for market concentration to emerge if there is an egalitarian distribution of ownership and control of productive resources. As to “central planning,” the existing capitalist economy requires a greater deal of central planning through the historical and current role of the state as a stabilizing and efficiency agent and the straightforward hierarchical chain of command that characterizes the orthodox capitalist firm. Elimination of what Bob Black calls “factory fascism and office oligarchy” is quite consistent with liberty. And actually, I personally don’t advocate market socialism (I simply regard it as preferable to capitalism). I advocate anarchist communism.
It’s only your lack of understanding of socialist political economy that permits you to repeat any such nonsense. Socialism is the public ownership and management of the means of production, and market socialism has an earned place within the vibrant framework of socialist economic theory. More learned Austrians than you seem to regard Theodore Burczak’s model of “post-Hayekian socialism” as legitimately socialist, at any rate. Steven Horwitz, for example, notes that “[r]ather than substituting planning for markets as a way to promote economic justice, Burczak wants to supplement the markets with redistributive policies—he would stake all citizens to a rather large hunk of tax-funded wealth upon reaching adulthood—and would mandate worker ownership and management of firms. These changes will, he argues, promote broader access to the marketplace and enhance the chances that people will live “choiceworthy” lives. Because Burczak’s socialist vision gives great play to the market, and does so for the same reasons that Hayekians do, his critique must be taken seriously.”
I have always wonderd how people could see any decent value in democracy.
Socialist literature:
Btw. I come from a country that was and, as far as I am concerned, still is a quasi-socialist country. I do like some ideas of Marxism, but I also very much like ideas of libertarianism. Crazy? Well … maybe.
It’s a matter of an interest in self-management. Propertarians wouldn’t understand; it’s a libertarian thang.
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Being that you are an anarcho-communist; if you refuse to drop the term “libertarian” as an adjective to describe yourself, I think using the term libertarian is a bit too vague and useless on this site I would suggest not using the word to avoid confusion. I would think it reasonable to be expected to use the common definition this website uses (despite your objections), as you chose to come to here and this thread is not about the definition of the word .
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Could an issue of self management also be voluntarily working for a wage under someone else’s property? What about murdering an enemy to achieve my goals, is that self management? Could I also call democracy an issue of subjecting myself to some form of authority?
The term was invented by an anarcho-communist, and it’s not a habit of mine to honor Orwellian misappropriations of words.
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Language evolves. like it or not, the word “libertarian” officially (and in a non obscure manner) includes propertarian philosophy. You are at a propertarian website that uses the word as an adjective for the political leanings it represents. Idealism can get a bit distracting and unproductive if one wishs to throw out as much as possible whenever possible
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In response to my musing about democracy, you said it was an issue of “self management”. I was basically just pointing out the emptiness of the phrase/ comment; or more poetically stating, to quote you regarding my statement, “what?”
Language’s most productive evolutions involve slight deviations from the original meanings of terms that still bear some familial relationship to the original definition. The misappropriation of the term “libertarian” by U.S. propertarians constituted no such thing; it was the application of a term to an ideology plainly opposed to the philosophy that it already described. Incidentally, it doesn’t strike me as being the case that the propertarians on this board regard the popular meaning of the term “capitalism” as being a reason for describing it as such instead of using their euphemism of “corporatism,” so I see no need to do anything other than reciprocate, even if my reasoning were not sound.
That was a matter of the emptiness and unclear nature of your response more than anything else.
As I understand anarcho-communism (and perhaps I don’t), it seems to me the anti-thesis of liberty, since it would involve coercive appropriation and regulation to prevent or deny private ownership.
If you imagine that everyone could be persuaded to permanently and voluntarily give up private ownership, then I suppose that would be OK. Otherwise, it involves immoral use of force.
In any case, I still don’t see how group ownership and competition is any different from capitalism. It seems you might just call it “group capitalism”. I don’t see how such a system could avoid the same problems you see in individual capitalism. It would seem one firm could certainly come to dominate the market and therefore have the ability to undersell its competitors.
Even if you start out by confiscating all property and evenly distributing it, market processes will redistribute it unevenly, whether among groups or among individuals. It seems your system would require a constant redistribution.
What would be the incentive for one group to increase its own efficiency and production?
And in what sense does the group “own” its property if any new property will be immediately redistributed by some outside force (the government?)?
Those with power always fear losing it; why would the ruling class be content to peacefully part with private property in most conditions? As Western liberal democracies are politically stable countries, I advocate that the means of production be nationalized and then subject to decentralized workers’ ownership and management to implement a transitory phase of market socialism, but violent insurrection in less politically stable countries will probably require some degree of forcible expropriation of productive resources from their current “owners.” I’m simply not inclined to regard that as immoral, as capitalist labor markets are currently rendered coercive, hierarchical, and authoritarian as a result of the consolidation of control by a ruling class, so it’s simply a matter of using minimal force to eliminate greater coercion, as with the principle of force being justifiably used to arrest and incarcerate a violent criminal, as it’s intended to ultimately reduce force.
It’s in the difference between public ownership and private ownership and hierarchical wage labor and horizontal labor.
How is that, when ownership by a small group of individuals and/or firms would constitute a re-establishment of private ownership? More importantly, how are firms able to create monopolies/monopsonies/oligopolies/oligopsonies when none have an inordinate access to productive resources?
Why is that? This merely seems derived from the fallacious idea that there is equality of opportunity and natural extreme inequality of outcome in the capitalist economy.
Profit, as a more egalitarian distribution of firm ownership creates an interest in its success that does not exist in the capitalist labor market.
There’s generally little role for government intervention in a market socialist economy, certainly much less than there is in a capitalist economy.
I guess if everyone voluntarily places himself under the control of the majority, there is nothing morally wrong with some kind of democratic socialism, but the moment someone must be forced against their will to submit, the line has been crossed.
I consider this kind of submission to the “general will” to be contrary to reason and human nature in that it cannot lead to the maximum fulfillment of a human being.
The only reason I should submit to a “general will” is if it will enhance my own sense of fulfillment. This is the standard by which all things are measured. This means that I am the standard, not the “general will” of the majority. If I agree with the majority, fine. Otherwise, why should I submit?
In the case of private property, I think it flows directly from human nature and so attempts to subvert it will result in a decrease in fulfillment. This will occur not only because other systems are less productive of the necessaries of life, security and comfort, but also because private property and private enterprise themselves bring fulfillment.