after much thought i think i have come to a reasonable understanding of the essence of these tendencies. now its true that virtually no libertarian roots for corporate privilege, to the contrary many of them endlessly speak out against much practices, even minarchists like ron paul or jon strossel. however by putting the cart before the horse they construct their language in such a way as to often suggest confusing the free market with a non-free market.
the problem lies with the entire paradigm of government intervention vs market activity. in the classic libertarian theory you have the free market- the civil society and then you have govt interference. the market is the water and then you have the raw sewage dumped into it. in the good ol’ days of industrial revolution the water was relatively clean and then it got more and more dirty. we now live in a mixed economy of polluted water. you can still see the benefits of capitalism (cheap consumer goods, living standards) but much of entrepreneurial energies are frustrated by economic interventionism. thus when many libertarians refer to the free market they simply differentiate the water from the additive. the water is capitalist, therefore the free market is capitalist. little thought is given to the possibility that the mode of production may have been influenced by state itself ( im not saying that’s the case, however).
so now we often see many libertarians seeing the companies who dont take subsidies as the good free market and ones like the MTA or blackwater as crony ones.
ironicly, even marx commits the same fallacy by calling capitalism the unhampered market of free exchange. although in this case he was against market economics in general.
"The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the greatest triumph of Free Trade in the nineteenth century. In every country where manufacturers discuss Free Trade, they have in mind chiefly Free Trade in corn or raw material generally. To burden foreign corn with protective duties is infamous, it is to speculate on the hunger of the people."
Most libertarians endorse corporations. That is why they were so silent over the ruling of corporate personhood.
In fact, when libertarians speak out against corporation, they often get lambasted by “their colleagues”. Most libertarians are corporate apologists. Take the example of Walter Block chastising Roderick Long.
Well Walter Block and Roderick Long always seem to be bumping into each other. I don’t think I have ever seen one actual lambast another. They just pick at each other over points within libertarianism. I think Block is a good stepping stone to understanding libertarianism but his positions on it aren’t fully developed. Long talks about this in his lecture on ‘Culture and Liberty.’ Libertarianism takes on a whole ambiance to it. It is not just simply a question of whether or not it is just the NAP.
um, i was not talking about the debate of corporate personhood. i was talking about conflicting market activity with free market activitivy. slave trade was a market activity too, you know. my beef is not “vulgar thinness”, (i’m actually against thick libs, as its a slipperty slope to anarcho-socialist arguments) its people who call the industrial revolution free market capitalism.
Libertarians could clean up the vocabulary. The word company should be used when talking about what ought to be. The word corporation should be used when talking the real world since it is a state granted privilege.
Which ruling? If you mean the recent Supreme Court one dealing with campaign financing, you couldn’t be more mistaken. It didn’t give any rights to any people that they wouldn’t have had in the absence of corporations.
The Marshall supreme court argued that corporations were people with rights. It was a deleterious argument but I’m not sure that it was that particular right which corrupted corporations. I just think it was stuff like NRA or state-chartered corporations like Erie Canal Corp. that’s the real problem and they seem to have been charted for the greater good and not because of individualism or something.
I sense irony here. The reason sic semper posted this and the reason Conza highlighted it are probably just the opposite.
I don’t agree with all of Block’s positions in full but I really admire him as a model for intellectual honesty. I don’t know of a thinker who comes off more baggage free. You really get the feeling he just goes wherever the logic leads him to, without any pre-existing personal prejudice influencing his steps along the line in any no matter how minor way.
Vulgar libertarianism misses the forest for the trees. Sometimes, albeit understandably, some scholars are too zealous in their defense of corporations in their current form, saying they just respond to incentives. The problem is, the same could be said for politicians.
It’s not that corporations are or aren’t to blame, it’s that the problem is systemic.
(BTW, if one thinks that corporations and other groups of people who group together to pool money should not be able to speak on political topics, then every newspaper will be forced to forgo their editorial page. Cable news channels are gone, etc. Similarly, can government restrict whether a business can own guns or not? Of course not, it would be a 2nd amendment violation. That isn’t calling a corporation a person. It is realizing that corporations are composed of people, and restricting a corporation’s ability to own guns, is, in reality, restricting individual’s right to owns guns.)
Yes, there is a problem with the current democratic/republic system, and yes I can see possible negative effects of the ruling. But from a legal standpoint, it is clearly correct.
The problem is what it also has been. The institution that can benefit those corporations. The State.
I find Block’s philosophical justifications rather brutish. By saying this I am not insulting him. He is an economist, not a philosopher. Block is a very sound libertarian but even libertarians can have preferences concerning the intrinsic structure of libertarianism or justifications of such structures. The culture of libertarianism isn’t just simple the answer of whether or not you are violating the NAP.