Capitalism is defined by the notion of private property. In USSR and similar states, state held private property over land, factories and firms. Therefore- state capitalism.
So private landowners can hold a legal monopoly over everyone else in the area by demanding taxation at the threat of imprisonment or execution?
Damn those McDonald’s collection agencies! keepin me down with their audits.
Economic anarchy and non-hierarchy are not synonymous. All economic anarchy means is ad hoc free association. People are free in a market anarchy to form themselves into whatever complex of associations they wish to, and yes, that can mean hierarchical relationships.
To then try to use force of law to end hierarchies would be to actually inject government back into anarchy, because you’d be injeting coercion into a situation where none exists, which is the root evil of government.
How do discourse ethics have anything whatsoever to do with hierarchy? This is a gross perversion of Hoppe’s discourse ethics, which have nothing to do with hierarchy. For hierarchy to have anything to do with discourse ethics I would have to be violating the principle of hierarchy by speaking against it, much as one would be obviously wrong to say that he is dead since one must be alive to communicate (to give an extreme and silly example). That’s what discourse ethics means, that you must affirm a thing in the process of denying it. How exactly am I violating the idea that hierarchy is not okay by speaking against it?
What is your a prior basis for an objective ethic?
Ah, but democracies do not limit themselves to regulating merely aggressions against other people. If they did, they would be at best decent. When democracies force laws on others that have nothing to do with ethical concerns, like passing taxes, or placing fines for speeding, they are aggressors themselves and break ethical law themselves.
Then why is the employee willing to continue working for the employer? Again, does the distributor not add value to a product by bringing it from worker to buyer efficiently?
Fraud would, but other kinds of transactions would not. If I see a fat guy buying doughnuts, he’s not being defrauded but he is doing something ultimately that I think he shouldn’t. But the point is, in a free society he gets to make that choice. If you deny that choice to the fat guy then you are the criminal. By injecting yourself between the freely chosen contract of employer and employee you become the criminal.
There is no fraud going on in an employment contract. If the employee really felt he was being defrauded, not getting the “full value of his labor” he could up his terms to make up for that before agreeing to the contract. At that point the employer would say, well, hey, there’s no room left in the contract for me to benefit too, so I won’t agree to it.
In a free society, both sides mutually benefit from any contract or it doesn’t happen, since either side can pull out or sue after the fact.
Wrong, lying to complete a contract is an indirect coercion known as fraud, because the outcome is identical to direct physical coercion: the obtaining of a good against another’s will, because if the person knew the full facts they would not have turned over the good. In both cases title to something is obtained illegitimately.
This is only your belief. The employee does not accept that he is being wronged. You cannot force your value choice on him in a free society! The employee may put whatever price on his labor he chooses and trade it at will. Who are you to come in and stop a freely chosen service contract?
Well you’ve come to the right place.
Yet you offer no supporting rationale for this disagreement.
Anarchism originally did not have any problem with private ownership of capital. It wasn’t until Godwin that that occurred. We are the original anarchs.
And that’s true in all cases? There’s zero rich people that earned their wealth purely by free exchange? Think again.
And property means sovereign control over and the ability to make decisions over. An employee, however, is free to make their own decisions.
Non-coercive slavery is a contradiction in terms, as what distinguishes slavery from any other arrangement is coercion in the relationship.
I think money would be impossible, since whoever worked at the place that minted coins would immediately claim it all for himself as “the product of his labor”… right before he smashed all the mint stampers for being “means of production” (and hence “illegitimate”).
Yes, they are.
What does “anarchy” mean? http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionA1#seca11 Also look at the next chapter What does “anarchism” mean?
They don’t - that’s the point. Discourse (or argumentation) is a libertarian socialist setting- there is no imposition of harm and no hierarchy; if any of those would to manifest itself, that would invalidate argumentation, and would become something else (violence or giving/taking orders), which means that absence of imposition of harm and absence of hierarchy are a priori norms of discourse.
Actually, Hoppe’s “argumentation ethics” is a gross perversion of his teacher’s (Habermas) “discourse ethics”.
No imposition of harm and no hierarchy.
Is socialism (direct democracy), there would be no taxes (being that they are robbery), but society could make for itself rules that it thinks will prevent (or reduce the risk) of harm. As Mill said- all rational people do that, so there is no reason for a society not to.
Because employers have property over means of production. In socialism, where everyone would be free to go till unused land, and to join one of many coops, (Bakuninist) collectives or (Kropotkian) communes, and where there are easily available (in the case you go bankrupt) interest-free loans (mutual credit), I would like to see, just for kicks, how many people would want to seek employment.
Distrubutor, transporter, seller, those are workers.
In the same way that would be a criminal by injecting myself between a swindler and someone about to be defrauded.
The employee is denied the full product of his labor, which means that his right to property is violated, which is what theft is. Being made to think that the capitalist is legitimate in taking a part of the fruits of his labor doesn’t make that ok, it makes it fraud.
If a slave-to-be is made to think by his future owner that slavery is ok, and agrees to sell himself, that doesn’t make slavery okay, just makes the slave defrauded.
Not being defrauded doesn’t depend on the defrauded “feeling that he was defrauded”, that’s the whole point of fraud, to get the defrauded to agree with the theft, so that no physical coercion need be exerted.
Where is any coersion? What force have I exerted?
So, in order to explain addind coersion to the deontological principle you accept, you have to go utilitarian.
I thought that for something to be illegitimate it must be non-consensual. Even slavery is legitimate if it is consensual, but lying is not legitimate?
That is the aplication of the labor theory of property. Property comes into being by labor, right to the full product of one’s labor is the same thing as right to property.
Likewise with many other defrauded.
Or put a price on himself, and sell himself at will.
As I said, absence of hierarchy is an a priori norm of discourse; there is no need for I don’t know how complicated a rationale, you only have to consciously accept what you allready perfomatively accept.
Before the Enrages and Proudhon (Enrages were communist, Proudhon was the main propagator of mutualism; both forms of socialist organisation), no one ever called himself an anarchist. It was a colloquial word for “chaos”.
He is a slave left “free” to chose his own master.
Selling oneself into slavery is by definition non-coercive.
Birthday Pony, it would help if you provided your working definition for “hierarchy”, as Autolykos already asked you to do twice.
Is sex hierarchical? Is anyone being defrauded there without them being enlightened about it? After all, a party gets physically penetrated (aggression?) by another, for crying (Prudhonian Ethics) outloud!
Anarchy means “no archon.” there is no prohibition on voluntary relations.
And no one else does? In a free society, anyone is free to build for themselves or save for and acquire any property they want, including means of production. Once they own them, they can decide to use them however they want. They could work on them themselves, pool them into co-ops where they work on them with other owners of means of production, or they could contract out (lever pulling, button pushing, hammer swinging, software coding, and other) services from other free individuals who are offering them in exchange for money, share of profits, or massage.
What is clearly hierarchical is your imposition of rules (bans) over what free humans can or cannot do with their bodies and their justly acquired property.
In a free society, you and like-minded socialists would be free to pool your own means of production and establish any co-op or commune on your own property. You would also be free to offer interest free loans, and even give away your own money or property to whomever you want.
Yes, your “injection” would be criminal if the supposedly “defrauded” party told you that he is OK with the interaction even after you clearly explained all the facts associated with it and tried to persuade him that he’s being swindled. It would be criminal if you “banned it” and tried to interefere with it by force if BOTH parties in the interaction told you to kindly f*ck off and mind your own business.
Lying is not a crime even in today’s society. Lying, of course, is legitimate unless it leads to a non-consensual property/service exchange. You can lie about the size of your d*ick all you want. If you lie that your Honda has an a engine and I consent to exchange $10k for your Honda WITH an engine, then you taking my $10k in exchange for a Honda WITHOUT an engine is illegitimate (theft) as THAT exchange is non-consensual. I never consented to exchange my $10k for a Honda WITHOUT an engine.
If an employer tells an employee that he will pay him $3000 at the end of the month for his service contract i.e. “employment”, then goes ahead and only pays him $2000, then that’s fraud. But it’s not fraud because YOU said it was. It is fraud because the employee said it was. If all parties in a contract clearly state what they are exchanging for what, then go ahead and perform the exchange as promised, and both parties confirm that the other party delivered on their side of the contract, then there is no fraud.
I asked you before: If the full product of my labor is a means of production (say, a hammer), do I own the hammer or can any “worker” just walk in, take it, and start producing his own property with it? Is he not denying ME the full product of my labor by doing so?
You are entitled to whatever you produce with your own labor PROVIDED that you only used previously unowned means or your own property to produce it. By using someone else’s means of production to produce something without their consent (contract) you are denying THEM the right to the full product of their labor (property).
Finally, you repeatedly avoid answering this question: How is an employment contract different from a service contract? Say you banned employment in your socialist utopia and unleashed hordes of Tito’s cops to enforce it. If all employers re-named themselves into “customers” and all employed re-named themselves into independent “service providers” (single-owner firms) in their contracts, what would be the basis for banning their exchange?
Damn, Z1235, that was a nuclear bomb of a post, you destroyed him.
It’s very important that a theory of justice require a victim before ‘authorities’ can take legal action. Otherwise you get initiation of torts by the authorities which is ripe for abuse in a thousand ways. If you explain your case to the employee and he’s still fine with completing the action, your only recourse is to walk away. You cannot “make capitalism illegal” if it’s a result of voluntary transactions.
And if you’re not in favor of all voluntary transactions where there is no victim then you’re not an anarch / libertarian.
Haha, parting shot 
In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks. People who make decisions will show no slightest bias toward their own interests. There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends.
And the rivers will run uphill.— David Friedman
And pedophilia means “child friendly”.
You own the hammer. If you choose to sell it, you get compensated for the work you put into making it and no more than that. I think he already explained this concept.
Suppose you have a sister dying of cancer and I am the only person with the cure. I will provide it if she becomes my sex slave for the rest of her life. She agrees and we sign a contract. By your standards, she is not a victim but a free human who can do with her body as she wants and I am a free human who can do with his justly acquired sex slave as I want. When I read some of the arguments here I can’t help but imagine someone like Jefferson Davis defending slavery.
Employment demands that you waive your basic rights. If a person cannot obtain by contract a right to kill, rape and torture its other signatories, then they shouldn’t be able to obtain the right to collect the fruits of their labour by the same principle.
Keyword: state.
But suppose that you made the hammer on a machine that I personally built. I’ve hired you to run this machine. With the machine you can make 100 hammers a day of very high quality. Without the machine you can make perhaps 5 hammers a day of far inferior quality.
Am I cheating you by taking the hammers you produce with my machine, and the metal I bought, and selling them for a market price that is more than what I agreed to pay you for a day’s work? Or do you in fact recognize that without my machine you wouldn’t even be able to earn as much from the hammers you could make on your own as I’ve offered to pay you to simply run my machine?
The problem is you’re equivocating on the word ‘slavery’ here. If you have a contract, you don’t have a slave, for the contract can be broken by either party at either time and your recourse would be a legal suit, you would at no time be able to force her to continue the contract. In slavery, force is used to keep the victim in a service state, and there is never a voluntary relationship. Similarly, if one voluntarily enters into work where the only pay is room and board and the work is sex, that is voluntary and thus not slavery, but the moment the sister wants out and you stop her, it becomes slavery and false imprisonment and you have committed a crime.
There is absolutely no reason to think that slavery would exist in a free society, as it is a direct contravention of the non-aggression principle (NAP). So, I really don’t know what you’re talking about with your last line.
We are the guardians of true freedom of the world–to slander us as supporting slavery is the worst slander of all. It is the statists who unknowingly support slavery of entire societies, of the entire world! by their support of statism currently existing worldwide, and you have the gall to come here and accuse libertarians of slavery!
o_O what basic right is that, and how did you derive it?
Listen. There’s a categorical difference between “kill, rape, and torture” and “employment” which makes all the difference. It’s contained in one word:
Coercion.
The employment contract is in fact a voluntary trade of a set amount of money for a particular service, continued on a day to day basis until either party breaks the agreement. Why can’t you weird socialist anarchs get that through your heads? If there is no coercion, there is no crime. End of story!
Instruments of labor (land, mines, and similar natural recources) can legitimately be only under possession, they cannot be property.
Calling employment service provision doesn’t make it so. Employment is theft.
Ban of hierarchy cannot be hierarchical, it is by definition it’s opposite, being that it bans it.
Yes, because free society means socialism. Society that tolerates slavery can in no way be called free.
Being defrauded really good doesn’t means you were not defrauded.
So, it would be criminal to ban slavery if it’s not directly coerced. Okay, that in that definition, I have to problem in being a criminal.
So I can be banned by propertarian law from doing things that are not aggressive?
What if you don’t ask, and I don’t mention that it doesn’t have an engine, but it assumed? Like I sell you a bread in a store (you do that every day without any questions) and when you get home and cut it, you see it’s empty instide, it’s only crust. You didn’t ask, I didn’t say that it has something inside it, did something illegitimate happen, what would the voluntaryist law say?
You own it until you transfer the title of ownership to someone else. You sell it, and then it’s the buyers property, and he can use it to make something. But it is illegitimate to rent means of production because then the workers who us them don’t get the full product of their labor, because a part goes to you.
By using someone else’s any property without their consent is stealing, and you should return that property.
I have answered it multiple times.
Relation between a person doing a service job and a person for whom the service job is done is one between equals, the service provider, and the service reciever, like buyer and seller when good for good is exchanged.
Employer and employee relation is a hiearchical relation where the subordinate alienates his labor, and the superior takes a part of the product of the subordinate’s labor, it is not the superior that recieves the service, but a third person- the customer, and the customer doesn’t pay the service provider for his service, but pays the service provider’s boss.
Still doesn’t make it ok. Let’s take a thought example of a society that moulded people into believing that 2+2=5 (being that ethics is objective, like mathematics). In that society, someone buys something and goes on to pay 5.000 instead of 4.000 because of that lie that the plebs was thought in school and the media. I “inject myself” in that trade, and tell him that he’s being stollen from, that he is defrauded in paying more. The seller than asks him if he thinks that he is being defrauded, and reminds of all the lessions in school about 2+2 being 5, and the buyer will remembering his education and media propaganda that he has been force fed his entire life smirk and accepted that is not being defrauded and that no theft is happening.
Likewise in the slave society, I remember reading ancient Roman sources about slave rebellions where some slaves would oppose the revolutionaries not because of fear of their master, and not because a personal affection for him, but because the were genuinely appalled at questioning the slave system, which they accepted as something good, natural, and the only way things could be.
Millions of slave throughout history would say that they are not in any way harmed by being slaves, that they are not deminished by being subordinate, because it has become a conditioned response to deem it normal.
Likewise with the majority of women troughout history who while living under patriarchal oppression would never accept that they are being oppressed in any way.
The problem is that truth is not determined by personal opinions. People are not property, and slavery is illegitimate no matter if some slaves love being, even if every slave ever were to love being a slave, it still doesn’t make it right. Likewise with other hierarchies, they are illegitimate, voluntary or not.
Of course it can be done, like it has been done for slavery.
Socialist state is a contradiction, and socialism means no hierarchy, that is- no power ineqality, so there will be no one “in power”.
Not true. If you sell youself to me, means you are voluntary accepting to become property, meaning that I can beat you, torture, rape of murder you and that’s all legitimate, because you are my property. If you change your mind and want to run away, well, tough luck, you are my property, and no one else can aggress against my property, I am to have total control over it. Changing your mind and regreting transfering the title over youself on me, and then taking it back is the same as transfering a title over a car to me and then changing your mind and taking it back. It is theft if you or anyone else takes my car, and it is my car, being that I have title over it which you have without direct coersion transfered to me. Likewise if you voluntarily transfer the title over youself to me.
Slavery, and with it rape, torture and murder. What a great quadrad for a “free society” to be proud of tolerating.
stsoc, let’s close this with your non-response. The arguments completely destroying your inconsistent theory of justice and your utter inability to respond to them are out there for all to see.
Your thesis that humans selling their labor services to each other for thousands of years and across continents (separated by long unnavigable oceans) have all been exploited morons until an enlightened control-freak genius like yourself woke up in his mother’s basement with the idea to start banning such injustice is quite frankly psychopathic. Your vision of workers banging away hammers (which they own), pushing buttons and pulling levers on machines (which they own), and creating “full products of their labor” which at all times have willing buyers ready to pay the “full value” for said labor is completely idiotic. In your control freak wet dream, every human, every molecule, and every atom moves within the confines of your bans, every “product of labor” has a willing buyer, every buyer has an interest free loan to get what he needs, every endeavor is profitable, and everything is predictable – because you will simply ban outcomes which conflict with your delicate aesthetics.
You are completely oblivious to the concepts of uncertainty and risk which makes you the idiot vs the employee who quite rationally prefers the certainty of a paycheck to a % share in the uncertain future profits. The full value of his hammer-banging labor service is determined by the supply of and the demand for hammer-banging services at the time and nothing more. Judging from your moronic world-view, you probably couldn’t run your mother’s dishwasher much less a profitable business.
With this, I’ll stop beating your sorry a** as it’s bad for my karma – it constitutes a massive intellectual inequality and probably a hierarchy(!) to boot. As homework, try finding an example for an employment contract which I would be unable to re-define as a service contract under whichever (hopefully meaningful) definitions of the two terms you decide to use. Good luck with your search and peace out.
Considering that Stsoc is now cherry picking what he wants to respond to, has ignored entire posts of mine that contain one question or one challenge, and has devolved to bald restating of his beliefs without supporting rationale or any attempt to dig into principle or explain further or examine his reasoning, I consider this discussion over as well. I do think he’s fooling himself and is more committed to an ideologic outcome than a principle, because the principles do not support his conclusions.
Is it a priori justifiable that people who are determined to assert, in the face of superior argument, that employment is illegitimate, have never had a job in management or a supervisory capacity? Because then they would see its basically no different than being a customer anyway. Theres power disparity in customer/service provider relations too, if you look hard enough. Why, one guy has a bunch of money he is willing to spend! The ther guy needs money, thats why he is at work! And one guy needs a wheelbarrow, thats why he left his house! And the other guy has more wheelbarrows than he needs! what inequality!
This, as far as I can tell from reading your last 45+ posts, sums up the gist of your argument. If we “ban” it, it will exist nevermore because it’ll be banned! If you truly believe this, then you’re not going to be convinced otherwise by an internet forum spat.
Ban of sex cannot be sexy, it is by definition its opposite, being that it bans it
"
This, as far as I can tell from reading your last 45+ posts, sums up the gist of your argument. If we “ban” it, it will exist nevermore because it’ll be banned! If you truly believe this, then you’re not going to be convinced otherwise by an internet forum spat.
Ban of sex cannot be sexy, it is by definition its opposite, being that it bans it "
In all fairness though, it is possible for a society to exist where there is no hiearchy. This can happen if there is unanimous consent for no hiearchy. However as soon as one person forms a hiearchy, then hiearchy must exist in the society, even if it is temporary. Either people impose a hiearchy to force someone to leave, or disband the hiearchy. Or people allow it to continue. Without people unanimously acting this way, a society where hiearchy doesn’t exist is impossible.
It’s taken me a long time to understand the leftist mindset
(from Anenome) Sorry I couldnt find out how to make a proper quote.
I share the exact same thought, thats basically what Im trying to do (even here), grasp the psychological source of their mindset in order to effectively shatter it into pieces (just for charity). But is hard because I see so much incoherence, some (like my aunt lol) act like they are moraly superior while they defend Bashar Al Assaad and atack the rights of Tibetans. By the way I like what I been reading from you.
