How is it fair that you get your worker self-management yet I can’t work for someone if I desire? (The idea of working for someone is repulsive to me but to some that isn’t the case.) Emotions heavily influence ethics, especially deontological ethics, which in some form you endorse. (Your ethics is very absolutist, outright stating that employment is always morally wrong, not taking into consideration the consequences of not just socialism but how it would affect other people. Many people have grown up constantly being told what to do, a person like that would perform poorly under a environment where he/she has no one to tell them what to do, what about them? You wish to force them manage themselves even when they don’t want to? Do you care at all about what they want? Just because I hate being told what to do, and believe that people would be better off if they thought for themselves, I’m not willing to force them to conform to my wishes. Is it ethical to force someone to do what they don’t want to do “for their own good”? Perhaps you believe so.
Anyone serious about ethics wouldn’t be as absolutist as you are. (Any socialist who labels employment immoral isn’t serious about ethics either. Pure emotion.)
Reminds me of religious people who label something like drug use as immoral, because drugs are “bad” for people, even though people willingly choose to do drugs.
My sympathy towards anarcho-socialists is quickly going down.
But I think where there leftists have a perfectly valid point, here, is that this contract is not actually fair. Publishers are at a massive advantage in the formation of publishing contracts. In most exchanges, the wealthier party clearly enjoys a surfeit of rights in the exchange. However, leftists misdiagnose the cause of the problem. They jump to the conclusion that the wealth itself is the cause of this state of affairs. Meanwhile, the right-wingers deny that it’s even a real phenomenon. Between the two, we are almost hopeless.
The fact is that a surfeit of rights must exist as a matter of law. Who writes the laws? Government. Who interprets the laws? Government. Who enforces the laws? Government. So, wealthy interests do not end up with a surfeit of rights by magic, there is always an intermediary: the government. The government is the means by which laws, rules and regulations are put into place that create the surfeit of rights that wealthy interests enjoy. And how do they persuade the government to do this? Bribery. It may be legal bribery (lobbying) but bribery all the same.
But the statists (left & right) always believe the solution is more government, even though government is the cause of the problem to begin with. Wealthy interests create an unfair playing field for the little guy? Let’s increase taxes on the rich. Let’s impose equal opportunity labor laws. Let’s give child-tax credits. Blah blah frickin’ blah. The cycle was already laid out by Mises in Socialism and Hayek in Road to Serfdom. There is a “crisis”. Government steps in to “solve” the “crisis”. The “solution” unwittingly sows the seeds of another, often larger, crisis. The government intervenes again. And so it goes until the entire economy - and, with it, the government - is driven to its knees in a final collapse.
The correct answer is to solve the root problem: Instead of granting favors to wealthy interests that create the need for legally-protected unions or “worker’s rights” legislation, why not simply not grant those privileges in the first place? That’s called a free market… not allowing the big guys to rig the market to quash smaller competitors.
The first flint-knife-maker to run a newly arrived flint-knife-maker out of the tribal village on threat of, well, death… was the first crony capitalist. The first-ever “Too Big to Fail” industrialist. He was the first a-hole who sought to “protect the tribe’s knife-making industry” (aka himself) at the expense of the tribe. And it’s all been downhill since then. The trouble is that a) people generally fail to perceive that regulations are primarily about protecting established business interests and b) that “good” governments (i.e. the governments of developed countries) act either in their own interests against all business interests (big and small alike) or in the interests of big business against small businesses and consumers. Government never acts in the true interests of small businesses and consumers for the simple reason that it cannot, even if it really intended to. (Calculation argument)
In a sovereign individual, how does a voluntary non-aggressive act not constitute a legitimate act?
I have. I was talking about in the current system, not in your Utopia where there is no private ownership. So how is capital/the means of production managed in your system? Surely for a factory to exist there is a hierarchy.
The more you use logic the more Utopian the socailist argument will become.
A corner stone of socialist ideology is that individuals don’t have freedom of choice. They don’t have a right to the products of their labor. They serve the state and the “greater good”.
You also couldn’t become a slave if you would desire to, boo hoo for you.
Are you appealing to emotion? Ironic, ey?
That’s your assumption. Also, another assumption you pressupose here is that I want to condunt some sort of putch where the majority of people will not be supportive of individual autonomy and non-hierarchical organization. And assumptions are mother of…
Voluntarism doesn’t make stuff magically ok.
By the fact that neither voluntarism nor NAP are not legitimate ethical principles, but no-imposition-of-harm and power equality (no hierarchy and no wealth ineqality) are. Also another fact is that they are not the only ones, they are only the a priori ones, but there are a posteriori ethical principles, so even if one doesn’t violate those two axioms, one can still behave immorally.
You’ve never heard of a workers cooperative?
That’s the definition of hierarchical economic systems (like say, capitalism).
I never understood why income and hierarchical inequality bothered socialists so much. I honestly cannot compare it to anything except the jealousy that I experienced over Frat boys at my university having a monopoly on the biggest parties.
It’s simple in my eyes. No two people are the exact same. No two humans have the same drive, the same aptitude, the same environment, the same beliefs, the same attitute, the same physical tools, the same personality. And you wish to correct this natural phenomenon by cutting everyone else down to the lowest common denominator? No, I want people to self-allocate so that they may specialize in what they want to do.
Once again, I’m not a utilitarian. But we all lose in the inevitably authoritarian system you speak of. I benefit from people around me trying to trade me things I want for my “work tokens”, so that they, too, can trade for self enrichment.
I’m 6’4", I suppose I’ll have to have a few inches removed so that I won’t encroach on the rights of others to be of equal height.
Appeal to motives is irrelevant. The relevant thing is that power eqality is an a priori norm of communication, and thus an ethical axiom. I do personally think that correct ethical principles are present intuitionally in humans, but those are my religious/ philosophical view, which don’t have much to do with the topic at hand.
So? Are you directing me to towards naturalistic is/ought fallacy?
This sounds like you’re implying I’m for some sort of totalitarianism where some authority will order people what profession will they pursue in life, what person will they marry, exactly what will they eat, wear, etc. Which, of course, I would never support.
Banning authoritarianism is not authoritarian. Also, I don’t see how tolerating forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism (like voluntary slavery) can be called promotion of freedom, and the opposite.
Yes, and you would have to work extra hard so that my height being enlarged would be afforded, too.
No, I’m saying why “equality” forced by the state and not in spite of the state in unattainable. We are a complex species, and we cannot be molded into some ideal and arbitrary concept of “equality”.
Interestingly enough, I think by definition, banning what you’d consider “social authoritarianism”–that is, various, natural power constructs that arise from capitalism–is patently authoritarian. You either have it or you don’t.
Like I said in the other thread, your Communist Utopia could exist in a Libertarian society, but a Libertarian Utopia could not exist in a Communist Society. This is because one is authoritarian and the other is, well, not.
But it is a basic element of making all of these choices as a sovereign individual to not be restrained by others’ morality. In your case, you think that employment qualifies as immoral. Therefore, you want to protect the employee from the employer by illegalizing their relationship with your moral sword–imposing your own ideals on the individual making their own choices, whether or not they are ultimately detrimental, for the good of greater society. To me, this is no different than crusading against people drinking or smoking pot.
Say I built a chair with my labor and I voluntarily sold it to you for $10. Case A: A week later you voluntarily sell it to X for $15. Case B: A week later you voluntarily sell it to X for $5. Would you then attempt to hunt me down in order to give me “my” extra $5 (in Case A), or to take $5 from me (in Case B) – towards ensuring that I got paid the “full value of my labor”?
And just for kicks, what if X voluntarily sold the chair for $1 a week later? Are you going to make him hunt me down too? You’d get pretty busy pretty fast shoving all this a priori legitimacy stuff down everyone’s throat. It could get messy, too. Are you sure you have thought this all the way through?
Socialism is nothing more than slavery to the state or society. The individual has to forfeit their liberty, property, and the right to chose not to participate.
Libertarians are not against hierarchy per se, they are against compulsory hierarchy. Not against cooperation in any form, but against compulsory cooperation.
Since employment is nothing but trade–an employer giving me his previous labor (in dollars or any form I accept) in return for my labor
I must therefore produce everything I need to survive by myself with no help from anyone else–because for them to help me would alienate the product of their laboring as would their trading with me. Sure wish I knew how to make a pencil.
why do socialists think labor is so much better and more deserving than capital?
labor gets a return no matter what
capital may get no return at all.
people can use the profits from labor to invest capital and may or may not get a return.
people can provide capital and labor and gets the fruits of the combination, but both are neccicary to even bring a product to market and even have a sale or trade.
another other ishue seems to be saying the person must work or starve as is a slave because of this, sure a person must work or be given resources that someone else worked for, but that fact does not mean working for anyone in particular for any price in particular. its not the reasponsibility for the potential employer if not being employed would put someone in a worse situation, each individual is reasponsible for each individual.
If you treat the factor of production labour as homogeneous and all other factors as heterogeneous then labour is common to all production and therefore the source of production.