I define socialism/fascism/mercantilism as all governments between no-government and communism. Socialism being the government expansion. Fascism being the private sector expanding into governmental monopoly ability. Mercantilism being socialism and fascism together. Mercantilism is the composite concept for socialism and fascism happening in tandem. That’s what I’ve gathered from this forum and reading some literature on this.
Seriously, I think this thread has gone off the cliff like so many Bond cars that it makes me wonder if folks are willing to consider that maybe there is a bit of crankness in economics and the host of the social sciences. Hell, my intro to psychology teacher (a graduate student that was focusing on decision making in psychology) thought that many parts of psychology was outright pseudoscience. And he had no problems explaining why. For him it was a matter that there was an attempt to mimick the natural sciences either in the methods of experimentation and/or classification. Oddly, this is an old argument that’s been often repeated independently by various social scientists (Rothbard and Szasz are the only two of note that I can think of right now). So, Giles, don’t go and bitch when even the folks with the PhDs in the field point it out. And don’t bitch ever more when someone who isn’t “credentialed” happens to repeat the same thing. Maybe there’s truth to their words, or maybe not, but it’s not going to go away with Jedi handwaving and bitching, that’s for sure.
Yes. I figured you were stating that economic science can tell us how things are, not ought. I thought maybe you knew, since you brought it up, but maybe you were only generalizing - but I thought maybe you knew the answer to this and I quote you, “Austrian economics can show the nature of the market system and government intervention…” and I was wondering what that “nature” is. What is that relationship (nature) between the market system and government intervention that Austrian economics shows.
if you don’t particularly know and were making a general statement, no big deal, I thought that was a curious statement and it would be interesting to know that “nature”.
Ok, but then my other criticism applies, you can’t tell me who is a net tax consumer because you can’t tell me which money would or would have not gone to them in a free market. Unless you too suffer from The Fatal Conceit. Of course, that definition is questionable, but I’ll go with this line of thought for now.
Ah, OK, I understand what you mean now. Do you think you could clarify your statement, I’m still not sure what you mean. I think you’re asking whether or not I could elucidate what the effects of the government are on the free market and how the free market would function without the state. In which case I’m going to have to direct you to the writings of the Austrians whose books are available for free on this site and perhaps some writings of other Austrians. If that’s not what you’re asking, mind clarifying?
Nitpicking here:
Its ironic, in the mythical world of communism, there is no state.
Shall we stick with the traditional definition of socialism being the nationalization, and subsequent government control of a certain industry?
In my humble opinion, mercantilism is a very specific set of economic policies; for instance, thebasic policy of mercantilism is that that a government pursue a policy of reducing imports, increasing exports, and ensuring that there is a net trade surplus. However, this policy, which is the ethos of mercantilism, does not fit into your blend-definition of mercantilism since it need not involve either government expansion, nor the government granting any monopolies, though, in practice, it almost always does. This leads me to the opinion that mercantilism is its own different animal that needs to be defined not definining it as a mix of fascism, and socialism, but as its own system defined by the general ethos above.
Can both both laugh at what you said here in good humor…lol “I understand… not sure what you mean.”…lol Ok, I’ll try again. [:)]
If that’s what Austrian economics can “show”, which I believe is what you stated.
Yes. That’s what I’m asking.
I guess in a way I see what you mean except in communism there is still a monopoly whereas the other end of the spectrum (no-government) doesn’t have a monopoly and if it does it therefore a government.
I agree with what you said here and that’s why I was saying, but not in so many words.
I was thinking of this article by David Osterfield. Here’s a quote:
"Arid this, in turn, means that the Marxist cannot distinguish between what is commonly referred to as capitalism, or a system of free trade, and mercantilism, or a system in which the operation of the market is impeded by extensive government restrictions for the benefit of the ruling group. It is important to realize that it is not simply that the Marxist does not distinguish between capitalism and mercantilism. It is that the Marxist paradigm quite literally renders him incapable of making such a distinction."
“In contrast, the strength of the liberal paradigm lies in precisely its ability to provide an analytical distinction between voluntarism and power, market, and government. This distinction has been at the center of liberal thought from its very inception. Adam Smith, for example, wrote his massive Wealth of Nations specifically to refute the doctrine of mercantilism. Smith argues that under mercantilism monopolistic privileges were granted to a few favored firms, permitting them to sell at exorbitant prices, while tariffs were enacted to keep out foreign competitors. But if a nation were to eliminate imports it would need to have its own exclusive colonies in order to obtain raw materials. The power of the state, of course, was ideally suited to carve out and police the resulting colonial system. Smith charged that the mercantilist system not only hurt those in the colonies but the workers in the mother country as well. Its only beneficiaries, he says, were “the rich and powerful.””
There’s more, of course, in the article. I thought the article was short and sweet.
These are definitely not commonly accepted definitions.
Your right, we couldn’t say for certain where the money would have gone in a free market. But that still does not change the fact that net tax consumers are parasites. Whether or not they would receive the same amount of money in a free market seems irrelevant (even though we both know it is very unlikely they would). They do not earn their income through voluntary transactions, and live parasitically off the net tax payers. So they are parasites.
Although it seems like it could sometimes be difficult to tell who is and who is not a net tax consumer. It would be very difficult to tell in some cases. Also, what about the unemployed 16 year old kid who drives on taxpayer financed roads? He pays no taxes, and he drives on roads that were payed for with tax dollars. He uses many other public services, even though he has never paid any taxes. Would he qualify as a net tax consumer? If so, I could say that the vast majority of babies and children are “parasites”. Or would how much the parents pay in taxes somehow determine whether or not their children are net tax consumers?
On A side note, even if some net tax consumers would earn the same income in a free market, the money they earn could very well come from completely different people than those who are currently paying the net tax consumers wages. If so, then it definitely could not be said that they were never parasites, since they did live parasitically off unwilling taxpayers.
Well I outlined an educated view above this post of yours that is undoubtedly debatable. Yet to rely upon “common” as a source of knowledge isn’t an attractive approach: Obama was a commonly voted in President, meaning, it was more common for people to vote Obama than McCain.
And look at the confusion you stated above in this post. You stated “…socialism is not commonly used to refer to… performed by government, but… government control…”
Isn’t government control performed by the government?
Good response. Someone here is trying to play epistemological games to avoid direct criticism.
I think you lost the plot here. I can’t understand this no matter how many times I read it.
Ah semantics.
The refuge of a scoundrel.
Eric, thanks for your response.
Running with this line of thought, I’d like you to consider the following. If it is true that those who earn money in the current market do so in a way that differs from the way they would have earned money in a free market, I think you’re going to have a very difficult time proving that anybody isn’t, to some extent, a parasite. This is true whether or not they happen to work for the state or not, the fact is that the current state of government intervention significantly changes the distribution of resources within the economy. If you look at the financial sector you’ll see that there exist a vast number of lines of work that simply wouldn’t exist had the government not monopolized fiat currency. I’m not talking about public sector employees here but people who occupy jobs that exist because of the demand for them due to the existence of fiat money. So you’re argument is essentially that everybody is a parasite to some extent, we just can’t know who and there’s no possible way that we can do, unless somebody solves the socialist calculation problem. I find this to be a very troubling implication that takes the force out your position entirely.
I don’t think it’s clear that it’s unlikely that state employees would not be able to make the same amount of money in a free market. What you have to understand is that academics are merely filling places in a job that is already monopolized by the state. It’s by no means self evident that demand for the service provided by intellectuals would not be demanded on a free market. I think you speculate on this issue, and that’s about it.
On a more fundamental level I’m not so sure that you can define a parasite as one who is a net tex consumer. It certainly flies in the face of Misesian subjectivism, since I don’t regard intellectuals are being parasites. At the very least, I suspect to see some sort of support for this definition.
Of course, others are simply ignoring their critics. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is more dishonest.
I can see this is going nowhere. If you want to make up your own definitions, then go ahead. You can defy the masses!
I’m going to redefine “can see” to “am”, “this” to “a” and “is going nowhere” to “statist hack”. So now you’ve admitted that you’re a statist hack you’d best not deny it or you’ll most certainly be playing semantic games.
Yea, let me rephrase that…But it is basically unrelated to the rest of my post. It was something that just popped into my head while I was typing.
Lets say a public employee (lets say a professor) is earning 70,000 dollars a year. Then, for one reason or another, he is suddenly forced to compete in the market. So now he can no longer live off the taxpayers. But he is able to keep his job as a professor, and still earn 70,000 dollars a year. So he worked the same job, and earned the same amount when he lived off taxpayers, and when he didn’t.
However, the people who were paying his wages when he was a net tax consumer are different people than those who were paying for his services when he was competing in the free market. So even if he could keep the same job and earn the same amount in the free market, he would still be a “parasite” because the people who are paying for his services are not the same people as those who would voluntarily pay for them in a free market.
I hope that was more clear. If not…Oh well, it wasn’t really an important point anyways.
Why should anyone constrain themselves to what the masses think?
The definition game in debate gets old. Whatever the popular definitions may or may not be, as long as both parties in the debate understand the terms used, and in what context, it is irrelevant what 300 million Americans or 6 billion global citizens think those terms mean.
Making appeals to common definitions is just a cowardly way of avoiding substantive debate. Either you understand Wilderness’ use of those terms, or you do not. If you do not, and wish to argue in good faith, you can ask for clarification. But to ask Wilderness to not only be accountable to your expectations of the terms, but millions of people, for whom he has no capacity to poll, is just a waste of all of our time.
Abandon the argumentum ad populum definition game if you are serious about going somewhere.
We were talking about definitions, it’s not like I am hiding in semantics and popular opinion. As I said use whatever definitions you want, just as long as you concede that Mises should now be referred to as a statist, socialist, crank, and parasite. My point was that these are not useful labels when used in this way.
Right, I get it now. Exactly. Some will argue we cannot know, but that is nonsense. We don’t have to prove negatives to make a strong argument.
Hoppe’s take, is that even if you do not work for the state proper, say you bid for military contracts and win the privilege to produce tanks or fighter planes, then you are still a parasite because the state is an illegitimate monopoly customer paying for your services and production with loot taken by force from others.
And the notion that government employees and contractors pay their share in taxes is also false, as they are merely rebating a portion of their ill gotten income back to the state, in a populist game of obfuscation.