Because wages are a fundamental part of the market process, as explicated by Mises, Rothbard, and just about any other economist.
The new landowners cannot benefit from producing for the market except via providing benefits to others.
Relative to what? He has to produce what they’re willing to buy. He does not have to make them better off than they would be without the theft. He does not have to make them better off than they would be (including psychic income) continuing to farm the land.
You cannot have a feudal system without a feudal legal order. Mises, Socialism: “As soon as the latifundia are drawn into the sphere of market transactions they begin to crumble, until at last they disappear completely.”
If the policy we begin with is to take all the land and transfer it to one or two owners, how is this not categorized as a feudal legal system as well?
So, now we’re dealing with an autarkic economy here? The workers and goods can’t go anywhere else? If that’s the case, think about what you’re postulating here: a single isolated vast land-and-capital monopoly/cartel. As Rothbard wrote, such a firm would suffer from the calculation problem just as severely as any socialist state. Therefore, assuming its vast inefficiency (and thus the vastly sub-optimal standard of living for even the landowners) and given a firm private property rights regime, it would be entirely in the landowners’ best interest to divest. Furthermore, this latest extension of your thought experiment rests on the notion of monopoly-of-demand prices, which Mises proved is an empty concept. Also an expropriation is not a barrier to entry; the latter term refers to markets, not specific goods.
This doesn’t follow from the calculation problem. What follows from the calculation problem is that it is in the interest of the economy as a whole to divest. There is no reason to suspect that communist leaders do better in a capitalist system than they did personally under the communist system, taking the package as a whole. They might end up making more money and having more stuff in the capitalist system, but they actually have to work or do something productive to have anything. Under the communist system, they could sit lazily and have something. They can well consider that an advantage.
This is an argument for restoring their property, not for instituting rent control.
Well of course their property should be restored. I was understanding your point about total control to be the new landowners having the option of using the land for things other than farming. The relevant comparison, then, is the relative position of the former landowners under a system where the new owner is restricted in his use of the land, and where he is not.
Yes, a one-time fostering of moral hazard is preferable to a permanent wrench in the gears of the market process.
The whole point of moral hazard is that you don’t have a one-time incident, you’ve increased the chances of further theft. That is also a permanent wrench in the gears.
I did not discount that option. I said the best option was restitution. The above would constitute a partial restitution.
And the rent control option strikes me as partial restitution in exactly the same way.
"He does not have to make them better off than they would be without the theft. "
Again, without restitution, that is simply impossible.
“If the policy we begin with is to take all the land and transfer it to one or two owners, how is this not categorized as a feudal legal system as well?”
You didn’t postulate that as a legal order. You postulated it as a one-time confiscation.
This doesn’t follow from the calculation problem. What follows from the calculation problem is that it is in the interest of the economy as a whole to divest. There is no reason to suspect that communist leaders do better in a capitalist system than they did personally under the communist system, taking the package as a whole.
A communist leader does not have complete ownership of the capital value of that which he controls. The unitary monopolist does, and would indeed benefit from divesting.
The relevant comparison, then, is the relative position of the former landowners under a system where the new owner is restricted in his use of the land, and where he is not.
Right, and you have not refuted my case that the latter case would be preferable.
The whole point of moral hazard is that you don’t have a one-time incident, you’ve increased the chances of further theft. That is also a permanent wrench in the gears.
It in and of itself is a one-time incident. It may or may not create a cascade of further thefts. A regime of rent control, on the other hand, is definitely a permanent wrench in the gears.
And the rent control option strikes me as partial restitution in exactly the same way.
As I said, price controls are not mere transfers of wealth. They break markets.
how is being anti-wage labor pro-market?
I don’t know, most of us, perhaps all of us, are not anti-wage labor. We’re against manipulated labor markets. We’re against government policies that encourage more cartelization and more consolidation than the market would support, and which artificially lower wages compared to the market outcome. On the other hand, even left-libs who throw around terms like ‘wage slavery’ don’t generally mean that they oppose people working for a wage at all, but that they oppose government interventions making workers worse off, together with interventions making it harder to start a business (licensing, overhead, intervention in credit markets - according to Carson, although I disagree with him on credit markets). They might also predict that on a free market, people would be less likely to be wage earners and more likely to be entrepreneurs, or even that no one would work for a wage because there would be more co-ops and what not, but even this is a prediction, not a demand that someone prohibit wage earning.
Right, and you have not refuted my case that the latter case would be preferable.
This is really the heart of your response. I believe we’ve laid out the respective cases, or at least that I’ve laid out mine. I don’t see that there’s anything left to say here. You are not convinced by mine. I am not convinced by yours. Very well.
In closing, I wish people would keep in mind that left-libs and yourself are on the same side. We’re all against government intervention and for free markets. We believe that government intervention has favored the rich, and has good public-choice reasons to have done so. You disagree. Rather than trading insults and assuming each other to not understand basic economics (as opposed to its application to a particular problem, which is a harder task) I’d hope we can work together to get the government out of the economy.
I did get impatient, and I apologize for that.
Mises was not an ancap, and I am specifically talking about Mises. As someone who claims to know something about AE, I shouldn’t have to remind you about this.
I don’t mind if you reject AE or disagree with Mises, but I do wish you would stop pretending you ever did, because its kinda obvious you do not.
In order to believe this, one would have to suspend all understanding of time preference and praxeology.
I don’t mind if you reject AE or disagree with Mises, but I do wish you would stop pretending you ever did, because its kinda obvious you do not.
Hey, both of you - definitions of words need not carry ideological or economic content. Agree to some definition and then use appropriate modifiers to say what you mean. I tend to think it’s best here to stick to meanings that people here understand, so for instance, ‘capitalism’ here is understood the mean the free market without government intervention.
In order to believe this, one would have to suspend all understanding of time preference and praxeology.
If I were answering the question “how is the prediction that wage labor would disappear on the market consistent with Austrian theory” I’d have given a different answer.
However, I’m game. In a society where everyone has equal time preference, there would be no interest. In a society where everyone had very low time preference, everyone might prefer to go into business for themselves. We can only say a priori that such situations are very, very unlikely. I do think there would be more co-ops in a free market, and certainly that most business would be smaller, but I don’t think that everyone would want to own a business, and I think there would be plenty of wage-earners (although marginally less than today.) I think the fact that it is easier to not earn a wage would simply influence the way the competition worked out, and raise wages up to marginal productivity. I don’t think co-ops would predominate on the market. I do think they’re kind of neat, although I can’t say I’d want terribly badly to participate. I did shop at a co-op, and even joined, but didn’t work there.
That was my point.
“I don’t mind if you reject AE or disagree with Mises, but I do wish you would stop pretending you ever did, because its kinda obvious you do not.”
I did once agree with Mises.As anyone here will know (and can check) I was a a strict An-cap and leading voice in the left-lib purges of 2010 but now I see I was wrong.I was deeply wrong and I admit that publicly and to my eternal shame.
Depends what you mean by “wage labour” and “anti wage labour”. And I don’t like falling back on the idea that somethings scary because it would contradict what Mises or Rothbard etc said.
According to just about every work of economics (Austrian or otherwise) the market process involves wages, capitalists, entrepreneurs, and landowners. If you use the term “market” to describe some alternative social system of production and the division labor that doesn’t involve the above, then you should use a different name for it than “market” (like, depending on the workings of the system, “syndicalist order”, “agorist order”, “mutualist order” or whatever). Otherwise, it seem like you are just trying to slip in your doctrine under the radar of those who believe in the efficacy of what over 99% of people think of as the market process.
As someone who is familiar with AE, surely you know that capitalism has a precise meaning at a place like this. You’re using Marxist definitions at a Misesian website.
Well, seeing as how marx(ists) invented the term, I think that’s only fair, idnit?
Well, seeing as how marx(ists) invented the term, I think that’s only fair, idnit?
Too bad they didn’t, Blanc and Proudhon both used the term Capitalism before Marx.
LS deemed it a “marxist” definition of capitalism, as I’m sure he considers them both marxists. So, seeing as how the definition that was used is consistent with its original context… it’s only fair, isn’t it?
LS deemed it a “marxist” definition of capitalism, as I’m sure he considers them both marxists. So, seeing as how the definition that was used is consistent with its original context… it’s only fair, isn’t it?
Marx’s definition and Blanc’s definition differs quite a bit. So no, not really. Shoehorning in outdated yet not original definitions doesn’t seem very fair at all.