In Defense of Corporations, Tax Breaks, and Wal-Mart

Economics Political Theory
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61

Anybody can benefit from the state and anybody can become a part of it, the fact that the rich living of the state intervention in the market is easier to see than the poor receiving welfare is not relevant. Both receive welfare, both are bought off by the state

And? If nobody accepted welfare and refused the welfare state. They wouldn’t occupy those positions.

Unecessarily hostile? Coming from a LL I found that amusing

Of course it is, the state rules by consent. It does whatever it can to gain this. That’s the state only relation to the people, placating them so at to sustain itself.

And? I’m guessing the fact that they’re unequally distributed is what really annoys you. This still ignores the simple fact, the state buys off big buisness to sustain itself, just as it does with the poor.

Some choice quotes from anarcho-capitalists (from the Mises Forum)
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When you’re in a dire situation and a context in which your incentives for helping yourself are highly diminished, I’d like to see you refuse welfare. The welfare state as such is what breeds such dependancy to begin with and amounts to little more than bribery of the poor to keep them just barely at sustainance levels while keeping them in a state of dependancy, and the corporate or plutocratic state is what largely creates the conditions that cause a demand for welfare to begin with. You misplace blame.

Once again, you keep returning to the way in which people passively resign themselves to power as if it refutes the point that legal privilege selectively benefits a few at the expense of the many. It’s irrelevant to the point. I think you’re using La Boetie out of context to bolster a conservative viewpoint of general distain for the underclasses.

63

Indeed.

The videos of Brainpolice, XOmniverse, and Libertyisnotgiven along with discussing philosophical issues with Moragauth on youtube is what started my journey towards shifting my position from being a statist market socialist to a left libertarian anarchist a little over a year ago.

64

Ok, I was wrong, congratulations.

65

On a related note, partially due to the youtube market anarchist’s consistant debating with people like mr1001nights, some of the collectivists have come over to the market-oriented or individualist-oriented side. I can think of quite a few people who, 6 months ago I was debating with, and who now are taking individualist anarchist positions. While some might want to make me feel bad for being involved with youtube, it has been a good forum for developing one’s own ideas and exchanging with others. The market anarchist “community” on there is something that is expanding, and as such isn’t something to ignore outright.

66

Appeals to the emotion now?

67

Your videos are actually pretty good, although you sound really depressing. XOmniverse needs a girlfriend. And a shave. I think you know how hard it was for me to post that, but it is true.

But I’ll say it again, if these so-called converts won’t respect property rights, and embrace the NAP, then you’re kidding yourself that you’re winning friends and spreading influence. Anarcho-communists are not going to tolerate your claims to property when the state is abolished.

And the risk of pandering to these folks, is that you begin to promote a form of compromised libertarianism. Like allowing Joe the Plumber to frame the discourse within his minuscule wheelhouse of knowledge.

68

No appeal to emotion intended. The point is that the political system creates the bad incentives that perpetuates dependency and contributes to the negative conditions which creates the demand for welfare states to begin with. Welfare provides a disincentive to employment, while wage laws tend to diminish the labor pool or be made up for in a higher cost of living. Meanwhile, inflation eats at people’s savings and in conjunction with the other interventions it continues to cause a situation in which wages dont catch up with the cost of living. This is a significant part of the context in which one must understand people’s decisions to go on welfare. While there are such thing as welfare queens, it’s hardly the case that everyone whos on welfare just woke up one day and said “oh boy how I envy the rich, I think I deserve to live off of them”.

69

I don’t “pander” to anyone, I say exactly what I think. And if one keeps insisting on the concept of voluntary pluralism, over time who one’s allies and enemies are becomes clear as reflected in the degree to which they opt for “live and let live” or the degree to which they consistantly remain hostile and continue to push for their socio-economic model as a universal imperative.

I’ve long since concluded that those who consistantly reject polycentrism are statists in disguise or statists in practise. People like mr1001nights get on my nerves precisely because they are marxists in anarchist disguise, which is why I’ve tried to make a point of differentiating marxism (the root of authoritarian socialism) from genuine social anarchism (the disagreements between Marx and Proudhon or between Marx and Bakunin are handy in this regaurd), and some of the lefty-anarchists swayed my way on this.

Anarchism without adjectives (in short, voluntary pluralism) is not a compromised form of libertarianism, it is the inevitable consequence of a thoroughly applied thick libertarianism in which matters of personal preferance become inconsequential.

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The right of self-determination down to the individual level is, in a word, anarchism. No, it does sound like Mises was an anarchist at heart.

71

No. You are just taking one sentence out of context. Furthermore that paragraph belongs to a chapter of the book which deals with foreign policy and nationalism, not with fundamental theory about the political status of the individual.

72

Sigh this is so easily gainsaid. Yes, I took it in context. He qualifies his statement by saying he finds the notion impractical. So what? As for the rest, that is to be expected given the topic of the book… Mises did not have his head stuck in the clouds and thus did deal with issues concerning real, existing institutions, like the state.

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A number of thoughts came up reading the exchange.

  1. Corporations (joint-stock companies) are free market institutions. “Corporations vs. the Market” is a contradictory title.

  2. If some forms of business benefit as a result of being able to avoid a general burden that government is imposing on the rest of the industry, these benefits

are passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. (Agorists should probably favour this)

  1. Roderick Long doesn’t have a clear thesis. Are corporations in general bad or just some? Are they bad because they benefit from state interventions or

because they lobby for the interventions? He doesn’t say clearly whether they benefit on net or lose on net from state interventions. He makes many strong

suggestions, but never offers and decisive proof.

  1. He makes no distinction between aggressive and defensive bribery. If a larger business can more easily bribe politicians, this may be a blessing as well as a

curse.

  1. He dosen’t have any clear definitions for many of the words that he uses, such as: capitalism, free market, corporatism, power. Nor are the definitions apparent

from the context in which he uses the words.

  1. He has no theory of the corporation. He clearly hasn’t read Robert Hessen’s “In Defense of the Corporation”, or MES Chapters 6.8 and 6.9.

I’m not really sure how much Block and Huebert differ from Long in theory. The difference might be one of semantics, or of emphasis. Long doesn’t really have a clear position.

74

Whatever.

If you want to actually know what Mises thought about anarchism, as opposed to your interpretation of one sentence, here’s another quote from the same book.

It has already been pointed out that this doctrine is mistaken in so far as it concerns the character of private ownership of the means of production. But even apart from this, it is altogether untenable. The anarchist, rightly enough, does not deny that every form of human cooperation in a society based on the division of labor demands the observance of some rules of conduct that are not always agreeable to the individual, since they impose on him a sacrifice, only temporary, it is true, but, for all that, at least for the moment, painful. But the anarchist is mistaken in assuming that everyone, without exception, will be willing to observe these rules voluntarily. There are dyspeptics who, though they know very well that indulgence in a certain food will, after a short time, cause them severe, even scarcely bearable pains, are nevertheless unable to forgo the enjoyment of the delectable dish. Now the interrelationships of life in society are not as easy to trace as the physiological effects of a food, nor do the consequences follow so quickly and, above all, so palpably for the evildoer. Can it, then, be assumed, without falling completely into absurdity, that, in spite of all this, every individual in an anarchist society will have greater foresight and will power than a gluttonous dyspeptic? In an anarchist society is the possibility entirely to be excluded that someone may negligently throw away a lighted match and start a fire or, in a fit of anger, jealousy, or revenge, inflict injury on his fellow man? Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints.

Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace.

75

Why are you presenting this as something new? I’ve read it. It would tie into his “impracticabiity” qualifier.

76

Excuse me ? I said nothing about it being new or old. I’m only saying that trying to present Mises as an anarchist is nonsense.

hmmmmmm…

Because you say so ?

77

Yawn. No, because the concerns he raises regarding anarchism are all concerns regarding its practicability.

78

You didn’t even read the whole chapter, let alone the whole book. Mises is talking about so called national self-determination and the ‘right’ of individuals to choose which national government will rule them. Construing that as support for anarchy is nonsense. But I understand you’re parroting some party line or other here.

79

Yeah, sorry. I meant the sort of pandering the libertarian left does, not you specifically.

80

Prove it.

Yes, which might involve self-determination down to the individual level, were it practicable.

You’re confusing me for yourself. You didn’t do anything to show my interpretation of Mises is incorrect. I’d love to know which “party line” you’re referring to.