Co-opted? The state didn’t co-opt unions, unions co-opted the state.
I, and I hope others, can acknowledge that. But you won’t catch me advertising for unions or for corporations. That’s a common strawman of the libertarian left against the Austrian school, that because we won’t spit on corporations, we’re somehow pro-state capitalism.
Protection from being fired, state guaranteed pensions and healthcare, and above average wages in an uncompetitive environment, make unions fun for everyone from the shop steward to the janitor.
You’re way too clever not to see the inconsistency in your position.
Tell me Gilles, how many so called ‘christians’ or ‘jews’ or ‘judeo-christians’ westerners work for the military and kill anybody their masters tell them to kill ?
Maybe that’s one of the many amazing ways that fairy tales, sorry, revealed religion is beneficial to human liberty ? The members of different judeo-christian churches believe in blind obedience and murder as long as it’s murder in the name of the state. Cute is it not ?
None, currently, although I hear the Wal-Mart Worker’s Association (I believe that is the name) has done some good stuff.
And there is a difference between saying the corporations are necessarily immoral, and that corporations won’t exist in a free-market.
Some of those things would naturally emerge in a free market the state wouldn’t exist to back capital and land against labor. Others wouldn’t, obviously.
What inconsistency? An analysis of state privilege must be contextual. There isn’t one single absolute answer that applies in every case.
Contextualism is weak? If state privilege was absolutely in all cases immoral, than things like walking on public streets would be immoral, which is simply ridiculous. Keeping the context is essential.
Yes, it is weak. Because you speak in absolutes about big business and corporations, but when confronted on what I think I have proven is not only erroneous but dishonest argumenation, then it’s all about context.
The left is always slippery. At least you can argue people on the right into a crisis of logic, and maybe that is why more people from the right come over to libertarianism and anarchism, while people on the left continue to make excuses not to address logic and accuracy head on.
Do you mean that religion (the most primitive form of philosophy) would be dominant in a highly developed free market? I see no reason as to why religious views would be streanghtened, and I would find it truly unpleasant.
No it isn’t. You can’t even define the size or structure of the firm you claim not only exists, but is pervasive.
It’s making finger puppets in a dark room with a single light source. Have at it, it’s terribly anti-intellectual. But then, to hold marxist ideas, one has to be anti-intellectual because it can’t withstand the simplest logical attack.
And I want to be clear, I’m not using marxism as flame bait. Marxist class theory is absolute nonsense and has lead to more violent death and suffering than this world should have ever produced. And yet people persist in seeing the Proletariat as being wronged by the Bourgeoisie.
This is precisely the approach that Rod Long, Kevin Carson and any other number of left anarchists take.
Thank you for clarifying, although I would also say that my preferred theory of class is fully libertarian (based on Konkin’s and Cogner’s Agorist Class Theory and Long’s Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class). Workers, entrepreneurs, and some capitalists are oppressed by the state and other capitalists (a simplification).
In response to your previous post:
Praxeology can make qualitative predictions, not quantitative ones. I have no need to talk about exact firm size, whether in income or number of employees or whatever else, and there is in fact no a priori quantitative definition of “big business” (although it may be interesting to actually look at the size of various firms and see if there is any clustering at specific “sizes”, but I digress). It suffices to say that, given the policies and actions undertaken by the state, businesses will tend to be larger (due to all the direct and indirect subsidies that the state grants larger firms) and organized in a corporate fashion (given that its various ineffiencies are subsidized by the state).
Also note that this is an economic argument, not an ethical one. I am not saying (here, at least) that big business is inherently immoral or wrong. I am just saying that large corporations would be less common in a free market.
This is rubbish. Even when you simplify it, it’s still rubbish. Hoppe’s class theory is not only more developed (it doesn’t rely on marxism as a base) but it is also more accurate.
This is also rubbish. Neither Long nor Carson can make this case. All you are doing is making an assertion.
Wow, now you are deep in the rabbit hole. You continue to make unfounded assertions, and justify them by detaching morality from the discussion.
The point is, you, Long and Carson are all wrong. None of you can prove your assertions, intentionally (I believe), making them as general as possible.
I’m done Wombie. Your position, no matter how many times you articulate it differently, is bankrupt.
Both Long and Carson (in addition to pre-paleo Rothbard, Konkin, and several other LL writers) have written hundreds of pages to back up this case. That is more than a mere assertion.
That is because it is not a moral argument. Should we also discuss how morality effects Say’s Law?
Who’s making assertions now? The only good rebuttal during the “Conflation Conflict” was Klein’s, and he missed the point (that the various organizational problems entailed by corporations are subsidized by the state, not that co-ops and other firm types don’t have problems.