also there is a difference between an uprising and thuggery. upprising presupposes oppression and injustice, whilst the latter is oppression and injustice.
in anarchy you dont fear uprisings you fear thuggery. but thankfully you and the other libertarians can enjoy competition between providers of justice and security to give you the best possible chance at justice and security… so i dont think the richer libertarians have anything to fear from poorer libertarians. and i dont think that libertarians will have all that much to fear from the odd socialist who will have all his odds against him, as such thuggery will be sporadic and chaotic
Excuse me? Who pays the bulk of taxes? Who can actually afford private security?
That’s not a libertarian society. That’s mob rule, exactly what we have now. The state has taken away populist violence from unions and the underclass and institutionalized that same violence with government taxes and legal enforcement.
One would have to disagree with such blatantly leftist class jingoism.
You have your classes confused. There are plenty of the poor who glide through life on the back of others. There are plenty of the poor who are net tax eaters. The difference between a rich statist and a poor statist, is that the rich statist actually produces something. Don’t confuse wealth with privilege, power manifests itself in a lot of different ways, a prime example being Barack Obama making less than the people on Wall Street, and yet wielding the power of a global emperor.
Time for a libertarian conception of class that has to do with who is a parasite and who is a host.
For some reason that thread appeared by Laughing Man’s institution right after I read Thomas Paines biography and it certainly resonated with me. It all came together in my mind. It’s the combination of liberty and workers in which both find themselves on the same path. It definitely was a good thread.
I don’t see how, he absolutely crushed it. Of the critiques I’ve read (I don’t know how many were neo-mutualist though) they held that Bawerk just didn’t analysise it in the propert context, without any proper elaboration.
First thing is first: I never used the term “socialist” in a libertarian/anarchist society – that is YOUR term. I just want to clear things up before you try to move the goal posts too far. A “socialist” only exists in a statist society. As you rightly seem to suggest, a “socialist” in a libertarianarchist society is just a thug. I agree with you on that.
However, I am not going to assume that thugs will magically disappear in Libertariania. I doubt you would assume that either.
Indeed. However, there is nothing you nor I can do to guarantee that the cost of preventing/defending yourself against thuggery will always be affordable. Therefore, my conception of the distribution of wealth is just as plausible as yours.
Taxes?? Who cares about taxes??? when the rich print the money!
Clearly you are confusing our current statist society with a hypothetical libertarian society. I am not interested in entertaining your change of goal posts.
You are doing a grave disservice to libertarianism and economic thought. Tax contributions do not matter when the money supply is monopolized, inflated and distributed to the rich first.
Good point. Who does print the money? Is it Bill Gates? Is it Warren Buffet? Who does it?
You just erected marxian goalposts in a libertarian discussion. I am simply reminding you that marxian class theory, is not libertarian class theory.
I know, what about the children?
But is it distributed to the rich first? Didn’t unions get bailed out? Are Wall Street employees really “the rich”? Are all of the people who get medicare and medicaid, really the rich? The money is printed to pay for that, isn’t it? The money is printed to pay the soldiers, and their GI Bills, isn’t it?
The question has always been, who produces, and who consumes that production, and who is a net producer, and who is a net consumer.
The banks print the money and they give it to the rich first. I already said that. What more do you need to know?
Yes, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are rich cronies who get cheap loans, cheaper than everybody else. They are parasites of the state. Their wealth is subsidized by the tax-payers, the tax-payers who pay for it through price inflation.
Yes. Anybody who gets a cheap loan is both rich and subsidized by the tax-payer. Did you not know that??? Did you not know that cheap loans are a result of the inflation of the money suppy???
Yes, those people are all relatively rich.
No, that is not the question. That may the the question for pseudo-confused-libertarians but that is not the libertarian question. In our current state of affairs, who produces and who consumes are directed by the statesmen. The answers to your questions are irrelevent unless you are trying to justify the state. Are you trying to justify the state? I doubt it. It seems to me that you are blind to the fact that the state influences all aspects of the economy.
The true question is this: Are you free or are you coerced into using a particular currency? The libertarian answer is: No, you are not free. You are forced to use a monopolized and inflated currency.
Without the state monopolizing and inflating the currency, I highly doubt that cronies like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet would be rich. They would actually have to work for a living.
Let me propose something to you, let me know your thoughts.
An entirely worker owned shoe factory is producing shoes for $100 a pair. They employ 1000 workers. A sale price of $150 per pair of shoes leaves no surplus.. They sell a total of 10000 pairs of shoes a month. Let us assume that each worker gets paid the same amount. This leaves each worker with $500 a month in profit.
Now, lets assume an evil capitalist owns a shoe factory which produces shoes. He employs 1000 workers. The same $150 price tag per pair of shoes. Through more advanced machinery, the cost to produce a pair of shoes is reduced to $50 with LESS work needed from the worker. They sell a total of 10000 pairs of shoes a month. Let us assume again, that each worker is paid the same amount. The capitalist pays each worker $500 a month wage for his work, and pockets the remaining 500,000 profit.
My question to you is this, is the capitalist exploiting the workers who are now working less, and earning the same income?
Clearly this model is not intended to be an actual representation of any market or economic laws.