The idea of “free contract” between the sexpot and her starving subject is equally absurd. I’d say this is certainly worth exploring the consequences. Although, an academic seminar on the subject with Chomsky wasn’t really what I had in mind.
We can maintain that choice exists in buying food from the only source available when you’re starving, but there is a cost to maintaining that. The cost is that we’re also free today, now, and in fact, in any situation. You can always choose not to follow the laws, the consequence is just death.
With all the talk of starving men, we should go to a country that is “more capitalist” and find these starving people who have no choice but to be enslaved or starve to death.
Then we can talk about it.
It just occurred to me that the same “problem” applies to anarcho voluntarism as well, where the uber-inelastic demand is for a person’s services as opposed to a person’s property.
Also, i think this exerpt from the wiki article on wage slavery has some pretty good points:
I also started reading the article on free association (communism and anarchism), but then I saw terrible grammatical errors and stopped.
I hear Somalia is a property rights haven. It makes sense because Somali is the first language that Mises got translated into.
Chomy’s point is correct in the current society. However, in a true free market, the starving man would have thousands of food suppliers to choose from. He may even be able to grow their own food.
If the starving man didn’t have to pay property taxes, perhaps he could have kept the land he once lived on and dedicated his unemployed time to farming his land for food.
I wonder how often Chomsky stops to think about how many less starving people there are in moderately capitalist countries than in communist ones. Probably not often…
Skooma Addict wrote,
Well if the starving person is being forced to abide by a form of property that they disagree with, then they basically do have a gun pointed to their head. “Abide by there rules to aquire goods, or you will be punished.”
The employer is not imposing punishment on the would-be employee. The would-be employee can either accept the contract, or starve. There is no coercion involved.
The idea of “free contract” between a stripper and her excited customer is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.
Is it any worse than the free contract between the glutton and the ice cream supplier?
I this is very ad hoc. Your whims might tell you it is absurd, but I tend to prefer reason over whim.
This is by no means self evident, you are just kind of throwing this statement out there.
In that situation, the excited customer pays to get into the strip club in the first place. He decides how much money to spend. If he knows he is loose with his money in those situations, he can always bring enough cash for what he plans to spend.. Total freedom of choice.
The idea that it could work otherwise is a sick joke. He’s still a libertarian communist, right ?
So how would “freedom” work in his “paradise on earth” ? Someone’s starving and he doesn’t want to work. We give him food anyway ? Well yeah, he’s free to do whatever he wants. But let’s say it’s somehow not allowed, “those who don’t work don’t eat” (Marx said that I think), he MUST work or he starves. Society gives him a job to do : street cleaner. But he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to be “free”. Well, we’ll have to force him to work.
The idea of “free contract” between society/socialist State and his starving citizens is a sick joke
Okay, let’s work through this.
Survivor of a shipwreck washes up on a beach in an anarcho-syndicate utopia. He stumbles around until he finds a cooperative farm and asks for bread.
The coop committee says they only have enough bread for members of their coop, but he is welcome to join. At this point, the man’s hunger has “coerced him” into a choice. He joins the collective or he starves.
Is Chomsky against the whole concept of ownership or merely the concept of private ownership? If there is no ownership, then what prevents the shipwreck victim from loading up every loaf of bread in the village and taking off in the coop truck?
The truck and the bread are not privately owned, but they are collectively owned. That means the collective decides how they are used and may exercise power over anyone who wants to use them.
Chomsky says coercion of individuals by property owners is immoral but in a system with scarce resources, you must assume coercion of individuals by the collective is necessary and just.
Coercion is controlled by majority vote. Our shipwreck victim gets a vote, but the majority decides if he gets bread.
Now let’s say he lands in a conventional libertarian country. The owner of the farm offers him a job that pays X amount of money and sells him bread at the market price.
Or, let’s say the farmer is a jerk. He realizes the guy is starving and offers him a loaf of bread in exchange for 20 years of indentured servitude.
The man agrees because his hunger gives him no choice. Is it right for the farmer to hold him to this contract?
The man works for a few weeks, gets his strength up and violates the contract, fleeing to a city where he can get a better job. The farmer charges breach of contract and brings the man to court.
What happens next depends on the kind of court system you assume. Do you leave the matter to a magistrate, who gets to decide the merits of the case by himself? Or do you assume a jury trial, where a group is expected to judge the merits of the contract and decide what is fair?
What recourse does the man have in society #1, where resources are allocated by majority vote? What recourse does the man have in society #2 where resources are owned by private individuals?
In both cases, we have to assume conflict resolution systems that go way beyond the scope of the example. What does the resident of Chomskytopia do if he doesn’t agree with the decisions of his coop? Is he free to leave? What if he hasn’t worked enough to “pay” for his bread yet? What does the resident of libertopia do when he decides his boss is being unfair?
Both sides make the same mistake here. They each assume their society will resolve the conflict peacefully and the other society will be grossly unfair.
In fact, I think both societies would handle the lifeboat situation appropriately. The real question is one of economics. Over time, which society will produce the most bread, and which society will charge the lowest “price” for it?
Evidence suggests that the society that would “charge” the most is the society with no prices at all.
If you want a society that is totally free of “coercion” you must assume a society that has no scarcity. When you find it, please let me know.
On the contrary, making bad choices is genetic. IQ and life outcome are intimately linked, and IQ has a significant genetic component.
Some people are just more stupid than others. Clear your mind of the blank slateist nonsense that leftists peddle.
But what does it mean that some people are dumber than others? Does it mean that some men are not naturally rational and do not wish to seek knowledge for its own sake, or does it mean simply that some people are biologically limited in the level of wisdom they can accumulate?
The general intelligence factor is basically just cognitive ability of all kinds, IQ is the best proxy for g, as it has the best loading factor, but pretty much anything vaguely cognitive has a positive manifold with other cognitive tests. For example: Even reaction time tests can be used as a rough proxy for intelligence, and they show the same East Asian > White > Hispanic > Black grading that all other metrics of cognitive intelligence show.
As for whether it means some people are dumber than others, yes, it does, and it ties in with irrationality too, for example, people with lower IQs are less likely to be able to delay gratification.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly by the accumulation of wisdom though. Can you specify in more depth?
About my remarks on “wisdom” I was just trying to create a dichotomy between reason as a defining feature of man (which everyone has to some degree as manifested in abstract thought), and “wisdom” which is the perfection of this faculty -namely the grasp of true, justified, belief.
I suppose that according to IQ measurements, there is no difference between the two (not surprising as the definition of man seems to be more of a metaphysical and not a biological conclusion).
Well no, naturally, because that’s metaphysical prattle (with all due respect, I mean no offense). What you’re describing is somebody who is an independent thinker basically, able to evaluate and judge independent of paradigms and zeitgeists - Such people are usually of high intelligence.
And I disagree, man can be biologically defined quite easily.
Alright so now I’m curious, what is the biological definition of man?