I really don’t know why, but it seems that the people from the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada dont wish to debate ‘with people like us’. Here is a reply I post on the forum of the Ludwig von Mises Institute with the intention to provoke a larger debate. Here are some exchanges
I thought this guy was just a troll.
He should have made a new thread and post his arguments there, but I have to say, I just dont see any real argument from him.
I think you do not realize how mutch our theory is exactly what Adamn Smith and Ricardo wrote.
I’m almost done with P.J O 'Rourke “Wealth of Nations”. By the time I’m done with it, my Adam Smith books will arrive through mail.
One thing is certain, Adam Smith was not a “Anti-capitalst for a more human and natural world”. Nor did he advocate the belief that all wages should be the same around the world.
One thing that I liked about his arguments was :
WE “can do very well in sales” because we have money here and some people exploit this by selling shirts 400% the value they really have. And why would an…other human would need to work 12-14 hours per days or more (because it is NOT 8-10 hours in the world’s sweatshops) to make YOUR cloth, when a child selling the same cloth in our malls is paid 1000% the salary of the one who makes the damn cloth?
Enjoy.Apparently Price-gouging is wrong.
unionrevolte,
What (if anything) do you have against (1) private property (including one’s own body and labor) and (2) voluntary exchanges of such property between free individuals?
In what ways do you differ from – and in what ways are you similar to – the Zeitgeist Movement / Venus Project?
This part…
…especially encouraged me to make the analogy.
Welcome!
Z.
So, they’re basically asking for total wage equality, that every worker be paid an identical amount of money per hour of labor. What are the most effective ways to attack such a view of how the world “should” be?
First, this is nothing but a restatement of the labor theory of value. The simplest way to debunk any hard reading of the labor theory of value is by simple example. For instance, you could look at some useful good… say graphite. There are many ways for a person to make graphite. But what they are saying is that the person making graphite from wood ashes should receive the same wage as someone who makes graphite by crushing and burning diamonds. Pick any good, and you can make the same argument.
Naturally, they respond that no one should make graphite by crushing and burning diamonds, but that leads to the next point: who will determine, and how will they determine, the “best” way to make any given good? Ask what is the “best” way to make any good, and then note that the “best” way is determined, in part, by the available capital goods for the procedure. It is impossible to use “best” process X to make good Y unless capital goods A, B, and C are available.
In the past, capital goods A, B, and C were absent, so the “best” method was different. Of course, there is nothing special about the past. The possibility that there is some heretofore unknown set of capital goods D, E and F that permit an even “better” method to make Y in the future is very high. But in order to make D, E, and F, people will need to stop making A, B, C, and Y in order to think up, design, and produce D, E, and F. What incentive is there to do this if there is nothing to be gained by working on D, E, and F?
Is “thinking up new capital goods” going to be a valid job in this society they want to build? If not, who will do the inventing? If so, how do I distinguish a person who is thinking up new capital goods from someone who is twiddling his thumbs? Who will determine what sets of actions will constitute a “job” worthy of a “wage” and how will this information be archived and handled?
That’s a fairly linear argument you can make against wage equality. There are even some side threads you can take. For instance, who determines that everyone is getting paid the same amount? Who observes that no “under the table” production is happening? What happens when someone is willing to work longer (shorter) hours than everyone else? Obviously, the infrastructure for observing and enforcing this wage equality have a nonzero cost. Do these costs come out of the “world bank” first, and then everyone else gets a cut of what’s left?
Of course, no matter how much is spent on surveillance and enforcement, there will always be some chicanery. What prevents the amount set aside for surveillance and enforcement from growing without bound and consuming the entire wealth aggregation? What prevents the people in charge of surveillance from using the information they get from the surveillance from profiting via underhanded methods, like graft or blackmail? (Here I say blackmail because it is the use of information gleaned against the victim’s will which is being used, though I am aware that blackmail is legitimate in a free society)
Basically, through these arguments, you can show that the end result of any attempt to totally equalize wages is a totally authoritarian society, in which the individual has no freedom, but must act on the dictates of some outside force. Whether this outside force is an all-seeing magic computer that has their best interests in mind or a ruthless and evil dictator or group of dictators with their own interests in mind is not something that the individual in such a society can determine. He can be told that everything is for the best by the dictators just as easily as by the computer. The figures of how much wealth is being produced can be falsified, and there’s no way to prove such falsification is not occurring except by each individual going around and seeing everything with his own eyes, which is simply impossible.
There are other ways to debunk the nonsense being spewed, but that’s the one I chose to develop first. Hope this helps.
Debated the wrong person?
That person was me 
Yeah I didn’t have a lot of time to go very deep into it, I was mostly trying to reply to a point or two here and there - I think I was putting my kids to bed at the time.
Funny story, I had a later exchange where I posted the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto - he called them propaganda and that it wasn’t the communist Manifesto.
So I sent him the link.
He was a bit sheepish after that.
o_O
I found your debate while googling through Montreal stuff. Nice to meet you.
He posted a reply on facebook about a “funny debate he had with Austrians”.
It looks as if he “won” the debate.
What are your thoughts on Direct Democracy? Apparently, it’s the bread and butter of that type of society.
@Drew Brando : Morality is a major part of humanity, we cannot dissociate it.
I think you are pretty well aware of ‘our goal for humanity’, now here is why we are TRUE liberalists and why Adamn Smith would agree with us:
-Only us can guarantee total FREE MOVEMENT OF ALL humans on the planet. Only us have a real plan to take off the country’s borders. Of course, you cannot do this without ballancing the economy between different reagions, we’re saw what happened when we do that : rich reagions becomes richer and poor regions becomes even more poor. This imbalance makes it impossible for the poor reagions to produce and consume goods like they would want to. Economic imbalance prevent real liberalism, this is evident!
-We are the only group wich proposes to really and definitely destroy the State (government) without causing a civil war encouraged by the social divisions. We are the only one that offers real free market that will regulates itself, exactly like Adamn Smith described.
-We would abolish most of the advertising that take off the critical thinking of the consumers, and will encourage real critical consumption. The ‘advertising’of the different products will have equal visibility.
-Our economic system proposes a full and perfect competition between businesses, without any speculation, taxes of any kind or bureaucracy.
-In a liberal-egalitarist world, every terrans would become a contractor and an investor. Every human will have equal economic power (the democratic investment) to invest it in the social projet they want. Investment will no more be a privilege of the minority or of the State. Investments will be made ONLY and by all of the humans.
Drew, you say “You suppose that a worker should be paid more then the entrepeneur”. But where did you found this in our writens? We constantly pretend that EVERY humans should get the SAME economic power. What would justify that a worker should be paid more than the entrepeneur? Nothing!
We are not anarchists, our system requires a social organisation, and we are far far away from the syndicalists. The world of the futur will forget what labor-unions were for because they will be free to work where they want and how they want, no more economic slavery. This is only a drawing, but you are free to ask any questions and I will try to develop my arguments the best I can.
@Micah71381 : Don’t be egocentric, if you don’t like reading books, be aware that some other people really love it. If there is a profession on earth wich will never have a lack of workers, it is medicine. And personnally, I would prefer the harvesting job than the desk operator one, but this is only my opinion. On this island, if the 3 peoples want to be desk operators, they could all 3 become some. And if they found that they need a doctor and a farmer, well they could come to terms (that they would FREELY negociate) and say that each will read medicine book 2 days per weeks, be a farmer 2 other days and work as a desk operator the 3 other days. And when the crops comes, they could decide that they take a pause in the medicine studing and go work to the field. The important work that no one wants to do must be fairly distributed between each workers, it is not the task of a single person to do the work that no one wants to do!
Personnally, I think it is ALOT more profitable to the island society to have all 3 workers to make some exercise in the farm’s field and that they all 3 have a minimum medicine formation. Don’t you think?
@z1235 : What differs us from the Zeitgeist Movement OR Venus Project is our theory and our revolutionary procedure. These groups base their theory on the collective property of the natural ressources, we base it on historical human knowledge and historical copyrights. Also, their revolution procedure is quite similar to the MAGIC used by the anarchists. Our theory is alot stronger than these groups, even if they could be complementary.
@Terrigan : I do not see where you want to go with that. Look, we accept the laws of market (offer and deman). If the graphite from diamonds is more rare, it will have a higher price than the graphite from wood ashes. Only one distinction : the workers of both of these profession will get the same salary because they both used the machinery and the knowledge gained from the whole humanity exchanges. Their work is a consequence of the social and historical conditions.
You ask “and how will they determine, the “best” way to make any given good”. I respond to you that everyone will be free to make the goods like they want to. What will determine if they use the best production way will be the price of the goods. Look, this is liberal-capitalism’s theory. Maybe your readings from the elementary school are too far?
@Redmond: On FaceBook, I responded to you that the 10 points in the communist manifest was the biggest mistake that Marx did. And he knew it. That is why, if you read the 1872 edition of this manifest, you will find in the preface that Marx and his colleagues wrote clearly pretends that these 10 points are not that important and that we should not bring a lot of attention to these. Unfortunatly, it seems that some people did and still does today. :0(
What did he win?
His ideas are completely unworkable, he later mentioned that he did not know what the labour theory of value was, etc etc.
Quebec already is a bankrupt social welfare state, I don’t see how it could get much worse, but hey they are free to try, I would just ask that they separate from Canada first.
Hi Unionrevolte
Please quote Marx saying “the 10 points of the communist manifesto were a big mistake”
Maybe the only mistake was that he actually set out a plan. Then people could critique it.
Spouting utopian nonsense is far more easy and it has the added benefit of being non-specific enough that anyone can be said to be promoting the goals by doing just about anything, even murdering other people!
Last month I wrote a paper on child labor and why it’s good for “third world countries”, and my History teacher read it infront of the class and demonized me.
Are you serious?
That is crazy! Where do you go to school?
Redmond, I didn’t say I won anything. Only time will tell if we were true.
You say our “ideas are completely unworkable”, but can you offer us an argument?
Beleive me, I would also prefer if Quebec was independant than Canada…
Kindly, André Franc-Shi
Redmond, here is the citation from the 1872 edition of the manifest :
However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847 to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.
Sources : http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1872
for they’re social work
‘they’re’ ‘social work’.
LOL.
Cranks like this are worthless. I don’t know why libertarians bother. They don’t give a damn about economics, they’re just leftoid religious nutters.
@Ricky James Moore II : Because some libertarians know we are a menace for the burgess and it’s capitalistic world that you are trying to redifine with some elements from the past. We bring hope to the 85% of the people on earth that suffers under the present economic system.
"On this island, if the 3 peoples want to be desk operators, they could all 3 become some. And if they found that they need a doctor and a farmer, well they could come to terms (that they would FREELY negociate) and say that each will read medicine book 2 days per weeks, be a farmer 2 other days and work as a desk operator the 3 other days. And when the crops comes, they could decide that they take a pause in the medicine studing and go work to the field. The important work that no one wants to do must be fairly distributed between each workers, it is not the task of a single person to do the work that no one wants to do!
Personnally, I think it is ALOT more profitable to the island society to have all 3 workers to make some exercise in the farm’s field and that they all 3 have a minimum medicine formation. Don’t you think?"
What if they freely negotiate to do only 1 job each? For the love of God: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Ricky, I wasn’t going to bother but this is one of the most basic economic laws.
Look, we don’t care anymore what Marx wrote. Neo-marxism is not the same as classic-marxism, you know, WE have evolved in 150 years… You must make the distinction if you want to understand the modern situation ou our modern economic and politic positions.
Really? so stop quoting him and trotsky and lenin.
The other people on your facebook page LOVE marx and Trotsky - Trotsky was as utopian as the rest of them.
The fantasies are promoted to convince others to give them power.
After they get power, they just fuck things up, because they actually don’t have a plan.
Much Like Marx.
Remind them that someone having a bigger salary than someone else isn’t decreasing the other person’s salary. Pretend I’m worth $10. Whether Bill Gates is also worth $10 or $100, it doesn’t change my worth.
I’d also give Economics in One Lesson a quick fly-through because I’m sure they’ll use minimum wage arguments and shit, which you can easily knock down with that chapter. And talk about the broken window fallacy a lot.
Promote capitalism, but also promote voluntaryism. Ask if they’d be willing to get rid of the State without socializing/corporatizing the economy first with the help of the State’s coercion. If they say no, you can work with that and blame them for being just as bad and forceful as government. If they say yes, then you can talk about a voluntaryist society in that you wouldn’t force them to be capitalists any more than they could force you to be socialists. Again, if they say no, they’re just another form of government. If they say yes, then you can get into the details (i.e. how companies need to compete for workers with higher wages and better conditions, how technology doesn’t increase unemployment at all, etc.) of capitalism and why that division of labor is beneficial to everyone.
@Aristippus : “What if they freely negotiate to do only 1 job each?”. Look, it is simple, the workers are FREE to do as they want, so if they all want to do 1 job each, they can!
But wich one will do the littering if no one want to do it? The answer is all of them. The littering will be equally seperated between each 3 workers, even if they all do a different ‘profession job’.
It cannot go simplier than that, it is the exact same thing you would do if you would live with your girlfriend or some friends…
@Redmond : “Really? so stop quoting him and trotsky and lenin.”. What? When did I quote these people? You are the one who asked me to quote Marx…
I do not totally agree with Trotsky, but he’s fight against Staline did help to develop the theory even further. He’s “permanent revolution theory” helped us to understand the worker’s positions even more.
It helped us the understand the impact of the “FORMOISIE” and the “INNOVOISIE”, two different classes from the proletarians…
@Brian Anderson : “having a bigger salary than someone else isn’t decreasing the other person’s salary”. You should really go back to school and learn finance. Do I have to remind you that a business have limited finances and bank’s credit? What you are telling is like “if the State invest 1000$, that doesn’t means I will have to pay this 1000$ elsewhere”. We all know this 1000$ will be taken from somebody somewhere…
This debate isn’t going anywhere. Please provide REAL metaphysic arguments.
Because some libertarians know we are a menace for the burgess and it’s capitalistic world
Ignorance is not a menace to Freedom, at worst is an annoyance.
We bring hope to the 85% of the people on earth that suffers under the present economic system.
Delusions of grandeur, how typical.
I remember this guy from the Amazon forums that claimed that socialists were “in the quest to create a perfect system” (seriously) and that libertarians were a “bunch of misguided anarchists defending the status quo”. LOL