Can you provide me an example of such a resource? A resource where all men have an equal rightful claim over it? A resource in which all men are bound by duty to pay for and maintain? I know of no such resource.
You assume that arbitration would not exist in the absence of a state. it is not the problem with my argument, but a non-sequitur statement of yours.
Of all the examples provided in history it will have been state’s violations of rights that effected the broadest volume of people. Where an individual murderer kills a small handful of people, things like genocide and war only rest on the shoulders of government. So again, if your concern is protecting property rights why do you put forth the organization which has systematically and historically violated the most?
I never said there wouldn’t be thieves, and murderers. You assume too much. What’s naive instead is your belief that socialism(government) can work and that it actually provides a valid service. My “Utopian” concept is based on logic, reality, and the natural order of things. Your governmental construct is built with a strong denial of reality and facts. So to the contrary, it is you who is being Utopian not me. It’s like accusing me that I think it’s utopian that private agency’s can deliver fresh milk every morning to the store. I would say to the contrary, I think it’s utopian, and quiet frankly physically impossible from a knowledge and limited resource standpoint for a collective government agency to perform the same task.
There would be allot less theft though, that much is for sure and there would be no overbearing organization which has found a way to justify the act of coercion, theft, extortion, and murder.
Hence the study of law and ethics and how it would work in such a society. This wouldn’t be a lawless society.
But people DO respect property rights. The cases where property rights aren’t respected are far and few. Just as we respect some parts of “public” property, and almost all people respect private property.
I’d have to agree. People in general must respect property. See the “Why is Africa poor?” thread for more on this.
This was because of course, in such a panic, people ran to the most liquid asset on an international level; the world reserve currency, the US dollar. This will of course cease to be the case in the future, especially when people are running from the dollar and Treasuries. The Fed has comprised such a ridiculous proportion of the demand since then as well. The very fact that yields are still historically low on Treasuries makes me more certain that their prices will fall through the floor; Treasuries have become a total mania; the ultimate bubble. I feel very confident having leveraged short positions in the 10, 20 and 30 year Treasuries over the long-run.
Excellent points. I myself tend to subscribe to a relatively organic theory of value - subjective cultural ideas play a role, as do concrete economic factors like scarcity and production cost. I find that moving too far in either direction, toward either an entirely behavioral or entirely mechanistic view of value, tends to untether ideology from reality.
Production costs and supply are themselves subjectively determined. The causal chain (for value) runs from individual => economic system => nature, and not the other way around. For example, if there is an intense increase in the demand for cars, steel will have to be allocated towards the production of cars, and away from other productions. Likewise, iron will be redeployed from other productions towards the production of steel (requiring coal), which increases the demand for coal, and therefore increases coal production. The price mechanism is what coordinates this allocation process. But all of this is meaningless if you deny the underlying fact of scarcity.
I did. It’s literally right there. They don’t exist in vacuums, they exist within concrete social, historical and economic parameters. Do you prefer the example of chinampas, which were collectively owned and farmed by the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan? Or perhaps the similarly ordered terrace farming of the Incas?
I am concerned with property rights only in so far as they are a defining feature of political and economic practice - I hold no loyalty to their absolute enforcement. I am frankly bemused by your characterization of socialist policy regarding the state - you seem to think that all Marxists believe in bureaucratic central planning: even were that the only ideological current within the movement, why would we continue advocating a clearly failed political and economic policy? In reality, Marxist economic policy in its current form (that is, as it is argued by modern Marxist parties) is an amalgamation of various approaches. Some advocate organization of the state along anarcho-syndicalist lines, others argue for centralized party organizations. Some call for violent revolution, some call for incremental appropriation of state functions by local government apparati.
It was utopian of Marx to think that the socialist revolution was inevitable, it was utopian of Lenin and Stalin to think that centralized planning could effectively run an economy, and it is utopian for you to believe that the cooperative features of modern capitalism (like the milk delivery you keep harping about) would effectively function without regulated social functions and class relations to underpin them.
Your reasoning is sound, but don’t underestimate the ability of those in power to manipulate events. They will fight to retain reserve status for the dollar. Reserve status is a “relative” thing, all the U.S. has to do is keep the dollar “stronger” or more attractive than other currencies. So, if a crises could be instigated within a competitor to the U.S. dollar, the dollar’s reserve status could be retained for awhile longer. The U.S. needs to keep all other central banks on an inflationary path, by coersion or war, if necessary. In the long run, the dollar and treasuries will go to zero, but in the mean time, there could be massive rallies and flight to quality, IMO.
I would like to ask a question to our friendly neighborhood Marxist. Suppose I am a man living with my wife and two children. We have a nice little house with the whit picket fence. Each week day I go to work (voluntarily) and receive compensation for my work which my employer pays me (voluntarily) and I provide for my family, we live peacefully, and don’t bother anybody else/don’t exert our will on others. My question is, what makes you think you have the right to stick a gun in my face and steal from me?
Agreed, there will definitely be short-term volatility in everything, especially currencies because every country has printed ridiculous sums of money. I think the US will lose their ability to coerce other countries though, and I think this is already evident from recent events in China, Russia, Iran, etc. Nobody seems to care as much what the US government says. I try my best to ignore short-term fluctuations, I’m an investor not a trader. I look at the fundamentals, try to spot a trend, and ride it out for the long haul. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another dollar/Treasury rally soon after the equity markets tank again due to the high P/Es, low volume, and complete lack of fundamentals driving the recent run ups.
No one asserted any right of the sort. As a Marxist, I would want to make sure that, if your employer had to close up shop for whatever reason (recession, debt, etc.) that you and the rest of the workers at your place of employment could find a low-interest loan to buy the property yourselves and become collective shareholders of the business - running it democratically, which I suppose might upset some of you.
Great, so we can live in your communist society and not be threatened with violence and robbed. We can all trade amongst each other voluntarily and keep the fruits of our labor and you won’t extort us? How noble of you.
If the business goes under, why can’t people just voluntarily purchase the assets at an agreed upon price and then allocate them in an efficient and profitable matter? I don’t understand what role “you” play in all this.
And where would these funds come from? If you artificially suppressed the interest rate, in order to provide cheap and easy access to credit, you would lower the incentive to save, which would lead to capital deficiencies, and lower labor productivity. Also, would you save all failed institutions? What if the firm was generally unremunerative because the demand for its products, relative to other products, doesn’t justify the employment of those capital goods and combination’s? If society no longer demanded type writers, for example, would you take funds away from other, more warranted employments, in order to save this superfluous industry? Would cheap and easy credit be available to all investment ventures? And if so, wouldn’t there be massive misallocations of resources, leading to all sorts of bubbles, which have to be liquidated? And finally, what makes you think that laborers will be able to turn the business around, and how would you prevent the “free rider” problem which always plague “democratic” ownership?
I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted, and haven’t really investigated the implications of such a policy.
sure have come a ways from yesterday’s health care bill [:D]
anyone who bothered to read it or at least read up about it a lot care to lay any specific criticism as to how regulation A will lead to unintended consequences B, C, & D.
I was actually putting forward a policy for the current situation in America, not some kind of projection of the Socialist Utopia awaiting us in the future. So I, as a collective bargaining negotiator, would attempt to find a source of micro-credit (from a variety of possible sources, public and private) that would enable the workers of X Machine Parts Plant to buy those assets at an agreed upon price, and continue to utilize them collectively in a profitable manner.
Nice snark, by the way. Really makes your arguments more effective.
The business failed for a reason. Your solution is to direct money away from some other productive enterprise in order to prop up inefficiency and waste?
No, my solution is to reorganize the company under workers’ management in order to remedy inefficiency and waste. I really don’t see the distinction between a company being bought out and reorganized by a conglomerate, or a group of shareholders, and that same company being bought and organized by the workers who run it.
If anything, such cooperative corporations are more fiscally and economically stable than their traditional counterparts.
Corporations suffer from principal-agent problems, and managerial diseconomies, but they have the ability to general vast sums capital, which allows for static economies, and increases labor productivity. Entrepreneurs are also more sensitive to demand conditions relative to labor, and aren’t as risk-averse (absolutely vital). Cooperatives don’t have access to such capital, which means lower productivity, and lower wages. Furthermore, the interests of the workers themselves don’t coincide; everyone has their own opinion on how the firm should be operated. Cooperatives also have every incentive in the world to limit the amount of labor they employ (in order to increase their own remunerations), and they suffer from the “free rider” effect.
The only way your system could work is if you arbitrarily took funds from corporations, through some awkward corporate tax, and gave them directly to cooperatives (subsidies). But this is inefficient and entirely unnecessary. You would severely limit output, capital accumulation, real wages, and profits.
All excellent critiques in theory - but in practice all resolvable as the example of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation shows. I frankly think the most conclusive end to this argument will come from seeing how the world economy rebounds from this recession - the forms of management that are most effective at rebuilding industry will prevail.
Edit - Mondragon takes 2% of annual revenue from each company branch in order to make up budget shortfalls across the corporation as a whole. I do not see why you think an arbitrary subsidy is the only route to fund such an enterprise, when alternative means already exist.
The company isn’t being bought out; its assets are. And those assets are being bought out by individuals who have proven themselves to be more skilled at running an enterprise than the previous owner. You cannot with a straight face say that “the workers” would be able to utilize those assets better (by democratic process no less), than an individual who is an expert at managing such things, and has already proven themselves as economically prudent and efficient by being in that position to purchase the assets in the first place.