You’re right… But believe me I’m from Greece and there is no greek left-winger that believes in the free market (I have found only ONE leftish blog that believes in it). Left-wingers in my country are so maniac in their market hate, that saying to them that free market is actually a left-wing idea is going to get you insulted to death. In fact Leftism in my country is nothing more than fascism in a progressive dress. So despite the fact that I agree with your ideas, in Greece I am an “insensitive dogmatic neoliberal”
Cheers. And thanks for commenting, the blog is still new, and the comments help raise the interest level. (same to you nitro and d_z)
Now that’s better. 
Not at all. It was a good post.
Not at all. It was a good post.
Thanks a lot! I believe that while theoritical discussion of the principles of libertarianism is useful, we lose sometimes the point which is the practical issues in the abolishing of the state.
There was no strawman. I pointed out a popular left libertarian strawman, that if you would like, I can source references from Long, Carson, blog comments from their supporters, and IIRC, even you (in another thread today).
The difference between what you do and I do, is that I can back up my claims.
I can understand where you’re coming from precisely because you’re from Greece.
No, you cannot back up such claims because they are misrepresentations. Calling people utopians simply because they are not traditionalists is a misrepresentation.
It would seem to me that calling people traditionalists because they are not modern or agree with you is equally mis-reprensting, methinks.
It could be asking for trouble, perhaps it is definitely asking for trouble. So might selling cocaine, or heavy weaponry be asking for trouble. I don’t think that necessitates prohibition or regulation.
Right, but if I tell you,
Dave, if you come onto my property and get hurt, I’m not going to accept responsibility, so if you don’t agree, don’t come over for that picnic.
I don’t see that as unreasonable. Corporations don’t even go that far, they just say, “you will have to sue the managing entity”.
I don’t have any stake or interest in the corporate form. But as per the OP, I can smell an attack that is without merit, and the LL / Long / Carson attack qualifies as meritless. There is no scholarship attached to it, at one point Rod Long was trying to use the Dilbert cartoon to make his point about corporate life. Dilbert. I mean, c’mon…
I can understand where you’re coming from precisely because you’re from Greece.
Well I did not quite get that… Are you Greek or do you have knowledge of the political situation in my country?
Did the Greek State, magnificent in its idiocy, manage to grab the attention of the Mises community? Do we get laughed at overseas?
I’m Kiddin’ of course.
My basis for calling certain people traditionalists is not merely because they disagree with me. In fact, most of the people in question are proud of being traditionalists, and have expressed precisely such a sentiment (“Indeed, I am a conservative”) and even tried to argue that libertarianism and conservatism are synonimous.
My basis for calling certain people traditionalists is their open hostility to anything that remotely deviates from their medievalist cultural norms, and their constant use of relics of the past as examples of a free society or the reoccuring assumption that traditional cultural norms will somehow be the law of the land in a libertarian society.
Or perhaps I disagree with the comparison you’re drawing. So cut the intellectual dishonesty, you’re boring me.
Here’s the point you’re missing: people do agree to cooperate with corporations. And those that don’t and that are effected? They still have somebody to sue, that is, if they can prove liability.
I hate it when people misuse irony.
In any case, your post is replete with fallacious, don’t blame me for proving it(and yes, that was a strawman).
Perhaps once you stop posting strawmen I may start answering in a way more conduscive to debate. So stop being intellectually dishonest.
Wait, what? Shareholders are liable? Not unless you can prove it, I suggest you read Kinsella on this. And yes, you can have your restitution, that means suing the corporation, not the shareholders (or customers, or suppliers, or lenders).
Why don’t you cut the bullshit?
You’re ridiculous. He’s said no such thing, rather that it is possible. Which you seem to ignore or misunderstand.
Funny, since your left libertarian friends seem to analyse the corporation according to statist definitions.
What, specify the flaws with the social contract? And drag the topic off course?
Yes I can back them up, you made such a claim today at the forums. And these statements are common on the Mises blogs, and many other blogs and forums. I never said all LL held them, I said it was a popular strawman, and I can certainly prove their popularity by use.
I didn’t call anyone a utopian. I said the ideas are utopian. Even LLs can’t live up to their own nonsensical ideas, or they already would be. Instead, they read Dilbert and pretend they know what it is like to run a company, to manage employees, to handle cashflow and attract capital.
No, instead they think if Bob works on a $7 million dollar stamping press, then he should own it when they overthrow the bourgeois asshole who actually earned the money and/or credit facility to purchase it, and knew through entrepreneurial skill, how to best deploy it for profit…
That’s why I cut straight to the issue that was missed (afaik) by even the Misesians. How can Long (by extension of Carson) criticize “big business” without defining it? How can they criticize “corporations” when a single individual can incorporate (under state law)? I remember a few weeks ago, posting on some blogs and other commenters would be all “corporations suck, corporations are evil rah rah” and when I pointed out that an individual could incorporate, you could hear the tiny gears in their brains snapping teeth, and grinding to a halt. Many of the LLs I criticize hold utopian views, because they don’t actually live in the real world. Long reads Dilbert. Carson, who knows what he does. You, what do you do? Do any of you run businesses? Have any of you organized and lived in collectives?
You can sit around and think until you are blue in the face, convinced your logic is infallible, but if you won’t test it in the real world (when the opportunity exists) then you can’t (IMO) proclaim your knowledge absolute. A lot of LL thought (as parroted by Carson and Long) isn’t a priori. It’s just speculation.
Maybe you guys are the “real” anarchists. The “real” libertarians. In which case, we are not of the same school. Not by a long shot.
It would be more of a case of you missing the point and being evasive.
That’s besides the point.
So why not just favour complete liberty? Instead of sliding leftist preferences in through the back door. Like I said, you ignore property rights. In my house, we’re not equal.
Don’t be silly, everybody knows Roderick Long goes down into the coal mines after lecturing about philosophy.
We really need an ignore function on this forum.
Strawman
Strawman.
Act like a grownup BP and argue honestly. Name names, and provide proof. Otherwise these claims are just trolling.
Did I not just say that I make the rules if we’re on my property, instead of “if you come onto my property I can enslave you?”.
I don’t know who is the “real” libertarian or the “real” anarchist. All I know is that the “”“real”“” anarchists who wrote the Anarchist FAQ spew less poison on libertarians, than I see here between left or right libertarians.
That is not an accurate description of the status quo. Limited liability (again, as a uniform state law, not just a private contract!) tends to shield corporations for that liability. It’s effectively legal immunity from torts. So why you insist on pretending that the status quo of how corporations work is somehow 100% libertarian, given the existance of a state law (again, not just a private contract) that uniformly establishes its legal status, is perplexing to me.
This makes no sense because only people can be sued. Asking me to sue a “corporation”, and yet there being no actual human beings held responsible, makes no sense. Humans are responsible for their actions and you can’t just hide behind a legal definition of an institution to avoid that. So, is ANYONE liable in your view? Or does individual responsibility go out the window in favor of the legal status of an institution?
The thing is, I don’t disagree that it’s possible, it just doesn’t follow from the fact that it is possible that this describes how all corporations currently function. So it is inevitably fallacious to point to the theoretical possibility for contractually limited liability as an argument for the currently existing reality, which is not an example of a purely contractual limited liability. It’s simply not a valid argument for currently existing corporations.
That doesn’t drag the topic off course, because those very same flaws are relevant to the question of corporate personhood and limited liability.
This entire post is a misinformed musing on what other people think. You also make use of fallacious arguments such as “have you ever run a buisiness”, which is irrelevant to the question of general principles of economics - which can theoretically be understood by anyone without having run a buisiness themselves. The study of economics as such is not the same thing as the specific area of “how to run a buisiness”. Furthermore, your argument that an individual can incorporate (as a regulation that they must pass in order to do buisiness that inherently is more beneficial for a large corporation as a barrier to entry that they can much more easily get past than an individual, I.E. this isn’t exactly making your case!) has already been addressed and does not really get around the problems.
I’ve not suggested that they would die out altogether. The most coherent LL arguments I’ve read seem to suggest that via State distortion, the marketplace is artificially overpopulated with big businesses. I agree that, to argue that they’d all disappear, is overkill
.
I agree that it provides many, many people with cheaper goods, they aren’t 100% parasite, but to suggest that they’re 0% parasite is kind of odd, and I think this is where the “vulgar”/“leftie” discussion derails. They do beg for (on occasion) and benefit from (e.g.) eminent domain. I know I blogged about one such happening before but can’t seem to find it in my archives. Needless to say, I’ve defended Wal-Mart on many occasions, against many criticism.
Now, you’re talking about a very specific form of adhesion contract. You’re talking about an adhesion contract without any specified terms, only suggesting that the buyer agree to whatever you think the terms might or ought to encompass, and unconditionally so. This is a textbook example of ambiguity. And ambiguity in contracts, especially adhesion contracts, is a tough thing to overcome when contested.
I was trying to illustrate the difficulty of caveat emptor, when the buyer solely bears the risk that the seller may defraud him.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.