I’m Htut, I’m kind of a technophile hippy. I guess I’ve been interested in politics and economics since I was pretty young, as my dad and his friends always included me in their conversations (being treated like an adult when I came home from school was about all that kept me sane, I think). At some point I started hearing about people like Karl Hess and Proudhon. It got completely out of control after that.
I basically support voluntaryism, I am a moral cosmopolitan and a bit of a leftist.
By leftist I mean a few things I guess. I agree with many of the critiques of bourgeoisie society and culture are valid. It seems to me that the paternal family, cultural atavism and moral/religious conservatism are results (and partial causes) of the persistant interference of force into human relationships, and only became so widespread due to the advantages they presented in an economy with state-enforced property titles and norms. Likewise, those in power developed customs and laws that enabled to perpetuate these traditions to ensure the power of their families. I also think that criticisms of statism are bound up with rejection of such notions as anti-racism, anti-authoritarianism and individual self-development apart from the family ‘cult’.
This is not to say I am anti-family or anti-culture, I just don’t think that the existing structures and relationships among people, their relations and the cultural norms that surround them in almost any era are really compatible with, or likely results from, a free society of free minds.
I am also a cosmopolitan, which means that I think that all people regardless of situation are due an equity of treatment and respect. This is actually the primary reason I am a voluntaryist.
By voluntaryist I mean I do not believe people ought to be subject to any claims they have not explicitly agreed to and, in questions of justice, that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty. Since this is based on my cosmopolitanism, it also includes a moral injunction not to attempt to override the judgement of other individuals when they do not want our help, even if our doing so would not be forceful. I think we should basically respect the ability of others to make their own choices and face their own consequences, not only in our formal limitations (not beating people up because they’re homosexual) but also by not engaging in collective (and by this I do not mean some sort of group consciousness, just together) disrespect of their views and choices. As a point of experience, I can not think of where humiliating someone or telling them they’re ‘bad’ ever encouraged them to do good.
Wow, that’s awesome. You reached Voluntyrism the long way round, taking left principals and taking them to thier ultimate conclusion rather than what most others do which is sort of being sucked straight into libertarianism through either ethical or economic arguments… Good job.
Property is theft/property is freedom isn’t really a contradiction to me. It all depends on what property. And to my eyes the history of state propertarianism is just the artificial accumulation of land, and then capital, into the hands of those who were advantageously protected by the state. I do not see Ford as a stunning free market success, but as a product of statism.
The state defines and protects property claims the same way it runs farming - by bureaucratic rules, and to its own advantage. The property rights that resulted in Standard Oil simply were not products of the free market. The 19th century and its umpteen-billionaires were results of capital and land centralization by the inherent nature of the state. This is not to denigrate ‘capitalists’ or individuals such as Rockefeller, simply to point out that what we think of as the age of ‘laissez-faire’ was a product of state intervention even when the state professed (and attempted) to be a ‘neutral’ or ‘night watchman’ state. Big business as we know (and knew) was corrupted and I think probably brought into existence by this system of state-defined and protected property rights. The state can not be ‘neutral’ or ‘fair’ even in terms of plots of land.
I agree, I like the way this kind of discussion is going. To expand a little on this theme…
I don’t know enough about Ford in particular, but in general any company that gets large enough when there is a monopoly state is very likely to get deeply entangled in the state leviathan. It seems nearly inevitable, especially if you count using patents to get a little slice of monopoly action for yourself, which surely every major company does.Then there’s lobbying, cushy deals with local governments where you have your plants, etc. Not to mention the basic issue of corporate personhood, which is a state-granted privilege and not a free-market one.
It’s not surprising that in a monopoly environment, every entity that grows large enough gets more or less a de facto part of that monopoly leviathan, whether or not our terminology and usual focus here reflects this. We spend so much time defending “robber barons” against anti-capitalists that it’s easy to forget they’re big users of state power as well, even if theoretically they could say it is only in a defensive capacity.
As we often remark, capitalists hate capitalism - they’d rather use the weapon of state power to their advantage than compete. It’s only in a fully free market that we would really have unmitigated praise for specific big corporations (if they did a good job), rather than the mythical big corporation that is totally free market somehow, even though that would be an impossibility with the current State.
Yes, but when the State does that, it will do it the same way it does everything: by making bureaucratic rules.
And, enforced free of charge and without check by private law will encourage the accumulation of capital, including land, into well placed people.
I simply do not see what the state did as protecting property in the normative sense.
It protected property in the ontological sense, property as control over resources.
It did not protect, in other words, legitimat property.
The state defines the boundries of and the legal owners of given pieces of properties by state-generated rules.
Those who hold large titles to property have, in the state ‘neutral’ legal system, inordinate ability to enforce their ‘rights’.
It’s not just a subsidy. t’s outright distortion of the market. The state is not competent or reliable to assess ownership.
And, after you have 1000 acres, it is easier to get your claim to another 1000 enforced for two reasons.
The advantage you have in the legal system for concentration of capital in your hands
the sheer viciousness of all state jurisprudence
I also argue that the claims actually enforced were in boundries and often entirely invalid and pernicious.
the state can not decide who is the valid owner any better than it can do anything. Both of these will be reflected in whom it awards property claims to.
I emphasize again I have nothing against owners of capital, I have something against the method of determining who owns capital.
No doubt that there was State intervention in the so called age of “laissez-faire”. But the industrial product of that age and the rapid capital accumulation that took place during that time was despite statism and and never the result of it. The state only interferes. The state cannot create capital but only destroy it.
When the state intervenes to secure and protect previous capital accumulation by special privileges, that previous capital still had to be produced by the market. State intervention may have hindered growth rate or even deprived other more urgent things from being produced, but then it is more accurate to say that all the things that were not produced, are the product of the State.
When the state grants or allocates capital to the well-connected, that capital still had to be produced and confiscated prior to its appropriation.
Do you see the fine distinction between what you are saying and what I am saying? nothing except destruction can be a product of the State.
I think you two are commenting on the same Christmas tree from different angles. State cannot create, but it can redistribute. So the capital that was created was the product of the free market, but who ended up with most of it wasn’t (necessarily).
I agree that the technical and economic achievements of the age were despite the state, as they always are. But I also argue that the particular manifestations were just as much the product of the State as they were in the age of Democritus; and that in more ways than might be thought, the system was thoroughly statified. For the State had in its control the most important aspect of the market and liberal society: apportioning and upholding property rights. It is my claim that Vanderbilt was ten times as much the product of state intervention as had been typically imagined, which is not to say that he was not an excellent businessman or entrepaneur. Simply that I find it almost absurd to imagine the Commodore being the titan that he was without state-propertarianism.
Yes, I agree. Interventionism diverts production to lines that it would not have taken if it were an unhampered market. Scarce resources are not fully utilized to best serve the public. Projects of less value are taken over potential projects of higher value. No doubt that certain “business men” achieved much personal wealth and influence at the expense of the public by means of State coercion.
This is the crisis of interventionism and not capitalism.
I never claimed to be critiquing ‘capitalism’ in the sense of laissez-faire. I am a cosmopolitan voluntaryist, property and contract defined and enforced on the market are central to my conceptions of justice. I simply mean to say that the critique of interventionism can be taken much more broadly and deeply than the simple pointing out of overt interventions and fascistic policies, to include the entire superstructure of the economy.
