“Huh? The risk taken on by the capitalist is spread among the taxpayer in the situation described (guaranteed government bailout).”
And now you’re almost saying what Fool and I are. Also notice, that the guaranteed government bailout does not go to the workers. Also notice, that the government has broken up more strikes than it has supported.
All of the sudden, capitalists are starting to look like the welfare queens.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude.
Fool asked “why not have the government take on risk?” I said the government doesn’t take on risk, it only spreads it around.
Some modern day capitalists are welfare queens, indeed. I agree.
A big proportion of todays largest companies and multinationals are welfare queens, only surviving by State enforced regulatory cartels and monopoly priviledge.
“Capitalism” is a broken word. I have no idea what anyone means by “capitalism” in most contexts unless they explicitly define the term. I don’t know what you mean by it.
“Mutualism” is a mishmash of bad, old ideas (muddled and pointless quasi-labor theory of economic value, confused armchair philosophizing on property, questionable predictions about mutual banks and free credit in a stateless society, a general partisan leftism and quasi-Marxist aesthetic, needless hostility toward other libertarians, lots of reverence for economically illiterate “anarchists” like Proudhon, etc.) put together singularly by the long-winded blogger Kevin Carson and thrown on top of the otherwise solid foundation of standard anti-statist libertarian premises. The only interesting things to come out of mutualism (read “Kevin Carson”) are the empirical questions raised about net effects of state intervention on the internal organization of firms.
In terms of what they actually advocate regarding the state, mutualism and ancapism are idential: libertarian anti-statism. The only real difference is that mutualism throws in a few bad arguments and old economic confusions. So, I guess, David Friedman/Rothbard “[anarcho-]capitalism” is better than Kevin Carson/Proudhon “mutualism” to whatever degree they’re actually different.
Stephan Kinsella has written about the core difference between Mutualism and what we here define as Capitalism.
For Mutualism, occupancy and use are the standard for establishing ownership of land, capital, property e.t.c
But we see the core reason behind property rights is to ‘avoid conflicts over scarce resources’.
The question is not who has physical possession; it is who has ownership. Thus, asking who is the owner of a resource presupposes a distinction between ownership and possession - between the right to control, and actual control.
For this reason, the answer cannot be whoever has the resource or whoever is able to take it, is the owner. To hold such a view is to adopt a might makes right system where ownership collpases into possession.
Such a “system”, far from avoiding conflict, makes conflict inevitable.
Apart from promoting a system that drastically reduces our ability to contractually exchange property titles, I do enjoy Kevin Carson and his blog.
I’m not quite sure how capitalism avoids conflicts any more than Mutualism does.
“Also notice, that the guaranteed government bailout does not go to the workers.”
Depends on the case. The bailout of the auto companies, as best I can tell, went mainly to the workers–it prevented the auto union’s pension funds from going bankrupt, while wiping out sizable claims against the companies by bondholders.
Do you think mutualism ever avoids conflicts? Why or why not?
Depends on the case. The bailout of the auto companies, as best I can tell, went mainly to the workers–it prevented the auto union’s pension funds from going bankrupt, while wiping out sizable claims against the companies by bondholders.
OK, let’s assume union pensions caused the auto companies to go bankrupt. As I understand it, the company agreed to pay the pensions through a contract. Thus, the union workers are the creditors and the company the debtors. What happens when one goes bankrupt and can no longer pay his creditors? Bankruptcy laws usually stipulate that the creditors are entitled to some of the debtor’s assets. If this were applied in this case, it would mean that the union workers (along with maybe the bondholders you mention) would gain ownership of the company. So the effect of the bailout was not to save the company for its workers but for its owners. It was theft from the workers of what should be rightfully theirs.
Let’s be fair. GM laid off most of their workers first, and the state legislature in MI nullified a lot of union contracts. It hasn’t been rainbows and sunshine for auto workers these days.
“I’m not quite sure how capitalism avoids conflicts any more than Mutualism does.”
All forms of conflict revolve around disputes over scarce physical resources, whether your body (a scarce resource), or property.
That is why we go on and on and on about self-ownership and property-rights here. Because all disputes and conflicts are based on this and nothing else. Even disputes and disagreements about things like IP, just reduce into claims of ownership of scarce physical resources.
We think all that is needed for a just natural order arising - is a mutual agreement over property rights in bodies and physical goods. Nothing else. Mutualism and its emphasis on ‘possession’ as ownership leads to a condoning of violence and aggression as a means to aquire scarce physical resources.
“Mutualism and its emphasis on ‘possession’ as ownership leads to a condoning of violence and aggression as a means to aquire scarce physical resources.”
How? I find it silly to think that capitalism is somehow immune to relying on violence in the case of open conflict.
Let’s not forget that capitalist property rights also serve to justify instances of violence when agression is made against someone or their property. If there are squatters in an abandoned building, does capitalism not rely on violence to evict them? Does capitalism not rely on violence in a case of trespassing where the trespasser refuses to leave? Does capitalism not rely on violence in instances of open conflict?
Imagine a group of hunter gatherers. They do not homestead most of the land on which they live and instead simply hunt is as it stands. If a capitalist decides to homestead the land, do they not rely on violence to remove the hunter gatherers? Or instead, as Mutualism would suggest, do the hunter gatherers have a legitimate claim to the land by virtue of the occupancy and use of it?
We have been around in circles about this before. The way to define ‘norms’, such as property rights and aggression are open to philosophical debate. The only thing I have come across that makes sense to me is Hans Hoppe argumentation ethics.
http://mises.org/daily/5322/Argumentation-Ethics-and-Liberty-A-Concise-Guide
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312
As for the hunter-gatherers, the definition of ‘homesteading’ is wide open. At what point does a piece of land became what you really use or something that you just roam over? Very difficulty to define, and a moot point, because except for parts of Africa human being are no longer Hunter-gatherers, and there is no more land to homestead. We have a system of parcelled out property titles, some fairly aquired, and some unfairly aquired.
The problem with Mutualism, occupancy and use, is that it infringes on the rights of fairly aquired property, while using an ethical justification that because ‘others’ have unfairly aquired stuff in the past, it is okay to do this to anybody. I just think it will lead to more chaos and violence. You do not obviously.
How about explaining to us here, how your prefered type of occ/use Anarchism, exactly differs from Mutualism? (we do realise there are different types of Mutualism as well)
I like Kinsella, but his little critiques of mutualism were mostly unimpressive… because the proper answer to the mutualist use-occupancy-ownership silliness is empirical and economic analysis - not normative ethical theorizing, libertarian or mutualist or otherwise.
Almost universally among humans, from hunter-gatherers to civilized urbanites, the interpersonal criterion for perpetual ownership is first personal possession. I demonstrate this with reference to anthropology, psychological experiments, experimental economics, history, and economic theory in a tumblr post with fancy animations and stuff here:
http://whakahekeheke.tumblr.com/post/5894532751/a-brief-history-of-society-this-is-an-historical.
Most interestingly, the work of child psychologist Ori Friedman at UWL has shown that young children definitively infer perpetual ownership from first possession. This is strong empirical confirmation of “the property instinct.” Furthermore, hunter-gatherers and intermediary swidden horticulturalists - when they do make any property claims about land - assign perpetual land rights based on first possessionn or first use. Anthropologist Michael Dove at Yale has gone to exhaustive lengths trying to get this through to those who unduely project their political preconceptions (communalism etc.) onto such peoples. They had private property when they had property in something. If it was owned, it was owned according to the property instinct: perpetual private property based on first possession.
Carson’s proposed mutualist property system only actually differs from standard perpetual private property based on first possession in one way: he thinks the time until unoccupied property is considered abandoned should be shorter than it is now. This is mostly pointless armchair philosophizing about a non-issue. Abandonment criteria are determined by common law, not partisan moral theories. And it is very difficult (if not impossible) to predict the quantitative specifics of what common law abandonment will be in any region under stateless common law. We can make educated guesses about orders of magnitude based on what may yield the most socially efficient incentives. That’s about it. It’s counterproductive to get drawn into debates about what the precise rules of abandonment or what exactly should constitute use or possession in any case because those are not questions open to a priori theorizing. You can state the general rules and probable orders of magnitude and that’s all you need. Conflicts will arise in practice and be sorted out on a case-by-case basis.
“The problem with Mutualism, occupancy and use, is that it infringes on the rights of fairly aquired property,”
Only if you think capitalist property is “fair.” So it seems like you’re saying, “the problem with mutualism is that it makes capitalism seem unfair.”
“while using an ethical justification that because ‘others’ have unfairly aquired stuff in the past, it is okay to do this to anybody.”
What? The justification is that ownership is based on occ/use, so you own what you occupy or use, not that “well they took it from us, so we can steal from this unrelated person! AANNNAAARRRCCHHHYYYYY!”
“I just think it will lead to more chaos and violence.”
I think more people have been killed for trespassing and squatting over the past ten years than in the entire history of factory expropriation. Not because I’ve done the numbers, but because I know of cases where folks were killed for trespassing or squatting, and I don’t know of any police officers or capitalists being killed by workers occupying a factory.
“How about explaining to us here, how your prefered type of occ/use Anarchism, exactly differs from Mutualism?”
I’m not sure my personal preferences are too much different. I come from more of a syndicalist tradition than I do a theoretical one, and that’s about it. And a lot of my theoretical position are heavily influenced by post-structuralists.
"Only if you think capitalist property is “fair.” So it seems like you’re saying, “the problem with mutualism is that it makes capitalism seem unfair.”
By fair, I mean things like - exchanging my labor to aquire commodities such as money, then using that money in voluntary exchange with others to aquire land or physical goods.
If any of this is unfair, I would like you to elaborate on exactly why.
"What? The justification is that ownership is based on occ/use, so you own what you occupy or use, not that “well they took it from us, so we can steal from this unrelated person! AANNNAAARRRCCHHHYYYYY!”
You are just describing the physical action of aquiring ownership. When pressed for ethical justification, it came down to the fact that all land was previously stolen in past history, all capital was built up by exploitation e.t.c This was the ethical reason as to why accumulating property beyond immediate physical needs was not allowed/discouraged. This is why I believe your system of ethics views human interaction through a type of Marxian class bias.
Here we do not differentiate between (or apply different rules to) employers, employees, capitalists, managers, laborers - to us they are all individual actors engaging in voluntary exchange with one another.
Here we do not differentiate between (or apply different rules to) food, land, capital, property, clothing, factories - to us they are all scarce physical resources.
What attracted me to ancap / libertarians, is they have a more mechanistic system of ethics which avoids these class distinctions and wipes away a lot of conditioned bias.
http://whakahekeheke.tumblr.com/post/5894532751/a-brief-history-of-society-this-is-an-historical
Cal, that is a good post, and other intelligent ideas as well. A blog worth bookmarking.
Any time I’ve pointed out that capitalism arose from violence was just to bring down this idea that capitalism somehow came about peacefully and through voluntary exchange.
I don’t think that political and economic philosophy has to be tied in with a system of ethics. I maintain that ownership is derived from occupancy and use and that any claim beyond that must be backed by external force. The ethics of it doesn’t matter to me.
Communist ideas are more about finding/creating conflict than solving it. E.g.:
That is a great example of taking a relationship that is normally seen as mutually opportunistic and changing the interpretation to incite conflict between others.
Carson’s proposed mutualist property system only actually differs from standard perpetual private property based on first possession in one way: he thinks the time until unoccupied property is considered abandoned should be shorter than it is now. This is mostly pointless armchair philosophizing about a non-issue. Abandonment criteria are determined by common law, not partisan moral theories. And it is very difficult (if not impossible) to predict the quantitative specifics of what common law abandonment will be in any region under stateless common law. We can make educated guesses about orders of magnitude based on what may yield the most socially efficient incentives. That’s about it. It’s counterproductive to get drawn into debates about what the precise rules of abandonment or what exactly should constitute use or possession in any case because those are not questions open to a priori theorizing. You can state the general rules and probable orders of magnitude and that’s all you need. Conflicts will arise in practice and be sorted out on a case-by-case basis.
I’ll quote this to stress this. LL’s have to realize that moralizer’s are just one small group of market adherents. For them to focus on the ethics, and common law speculating is determental for them to get a real appreciation about what we are saying. Speculation and morals lead to very confused languages, it is best to speak of universal languages and/or positive statements of consequences of actions.
To be honest, this is really starting to grate on me…I am comming to the conclusion that political labels in themselves ought be abolished as some confused language that says little of universal positive descriptions of reality. I have been so frustrated by this if I get the time I may collect my scattered thoughts on it and write a paper on it, as it really is that frustrating.
Is there even such a thing as a “universal language”? What do you mean by “positive statements of consequences of actions”? Why should morality and ethics be ignored, in your view?
Why hello there, tyrant.