You’ve failed to demonstrate what is necessary to prove your point.
No, you made a wholly irrelevant objection, like all your objections.
I think it is starting to be used as a witch hunt term too. Whats worse is being called a neo-feudalist for supporting non proviso Lockean proeprty titels to land…
I’ll give a shot, I guess.
I would classify big buisness (which is an unclear but convienent abstraction, regardless) as any buisness sufficiently big enough to activley collude with The State (let’s call this a state collusion risk factor, since you cannot automatically assume all big buisnesses are colluding), & one that is activley persued by The State via it’s laws for the initation, continuation, or elimination of present or past collusive activity.
Now, in a state society, this would be nigh impossible to work out, since The State has the advantage of resources to cover it’s tracks in links to buissnesses & banks etc. The State also has the advantages of legislative power, media, etc.
In a stateless society, however, I think somehing along the lines of a statist collusion risk, or a coercive collusion risk rating would be important for individuals via the markets to decide, detect, patron, & boycott certain buissnesses.
Transparency would obviously be required, but such would be needed anyway for accurate information to circulate throughout the free-market society.
Private services, the possibility of failing buisnesses, & the such could definitley help in providing the investigative and/or de-centralized legal & investigative incentives for coercive-collusion to be almost out-competed, improbable, or socially unnacceptable, per the preferred voluntaryistic qualities of stateless life.
I think a topology of collusion and/or consent among buissnesses & the state (similar to a topology of state interventionism, per Rothbard in P&M) would help more, though.
I do think that coercive-collusion describes big buisness’ in-bed activity with The State better, though, and avoids the implications of non-collusive corporations (such as corprations who merley exist in the state society, such as ourselves) automatically being the bad guys.
Great blog post by Peter Klein today
Rothbard on Organizations
Ok.
Subsidies are not the only form of state intervention in the economy. Without the regulatory framework currently imposed, some big firms might get smaller (currently propped up by state priviledge), and some big firms might get bigger (currently undermined by state penalties). To categorically state that all big firms must shrink without the state, by only focusing on one aspect of state intervention, is fallacious.
To categorically deny it is fallacious as well.
Did anyone here do that? Look again.
I don’t know. You tell me.
I do have an aversion to corporate hierarchies, but I would describe that aversion as more ethical than aesthetic—an opposition to seeing people pushed around, even in ways that don’t violate libertarian rights. (Rights-violations are the only forms of oppression that should be fought by force, but they’re not the only forms of oppression that should be fought.)
That’s an amazingly silly thing to say.
But Long considers it immoral for a boss to issue ultimatums to his employees. How does a voluntary, mutually beneficial association “push around” only one person? Workers are equally capable of unilaterally terminating a relationship even though the employer wishes to continue it.
Its nearly universally recognized that a person being unable to terminate an employment is slavery, yet some how the belief that it is not slavery to prevent a person from firing an employee is wide spread.
The extremely strange things I’ve heard espoused by the Left Libertarians become more understandable if this is how their torch bearer thinks.
His articles and responses to the Conflation debate at Cato Unbound are very insightful into Long’s perspective. And not in a positive way (in my opinion).
Such relationships are only necessarily mutually beneficial in a free market, which isn’t the case today.
If that is the case then I’d say employers gets the worse end of it, as far as having their ability to initiate and terminate the employment relationships usurped. But they are still mutually beneficial, at least when originally entered into.
But even so, Long wasn’t making that distinction. He was describing that form of association as immoral, in the same way that some people might describe other people engaging in prostitution as immoral. Though in this case it seems only person is guilty while the other is a victim. More similar to a feminist view of prostitution, maybe?
Long also claims to be a feminist.
That’s an apt comparison. It is very dependent on the fact that there isn’t a free market, just as some feminists don’t have a problem with prostitution qua prostitution, just the nastier forms that emerge in patriarchal societies (street prostitution, for example). Long (and Carson, for that matter) doesn’t have a problem with wage labor (or corporations or large firms) in and of itself; it’s just that they think that the current specific nature of the wage system depends on the state limiting people’s options. To put it in Aristotelian terms, it is the existing act that they are opposed to, not the potency.
Also, just to be extra clear, when he says “immoral”, he doesn’t mean “in violation of the NAP”.
And hierarchies will always exist, there will always be people being pushed around and those doing the pushing around. It’s human nature, and moreover, part of the division of labour.
Pushing people around is part of the division of labor ? That’s news…
Depends on what you mean by hierarchies and pushing people around. But I don’t want to get into a semantic argument right now [:P]
In essence, I agree with you. But, post-state, I think that people will have far more options open to them than today. So many of the excesses of today’s business management won’t exist, for the same reason that racism and sexism will be lessened. It does bear mentioning that the lack of state-backed unions will also ease hostilities.
Some people are better leaders than others. Go to any high school where the teacher has divided people into groups to do a project for an apt illustration of this.