Long & Carson are not the end all be all. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few up & comers realized possible shortcomings in their cases & attempted to address them.
For example, the recent thread on Wiebe’s ““A Rothbardian critique of Cuzán and Ostrowski and a Typology of Anarchy”” was pretty eye opening, even for (admittedly) a layman/newbie as myself when it came to the possible concept of never truly being out of anarchy.
Likewise, I found JC’s post’s in this thread fairly illuminating regarding mutualist theory. Hopefully the thread doesn’t de-evolve into another boxing match & sticks to the details rather than the spectacle of the arguments :\
Do you honestly think that the poor have political power? Please tell me: Who controls the political parties? Who donates millions of dollars to candidates? Who controls which candidates are actually presented to the media? Who controls the media? The poor are victims of the state, and in elections they are offered poison as food and poison as antidote.
So much of right-libertarian argumentation seems to rely on the belief that we have an actually functioning democracy. We don’t. We have an oligarchy with some elements of democracy to keep the masses happy. The actual decisions are not made by “the people”; they are made by the ruling class. The poor do not make any major political decisions; they are just used by statist liberals to get state-empowering policies.
That anarchism is ambiguous too? Not as much, and not in the same way. People may have a gut fear of the word “anarchy”, but with a little thought they will realize that they don’t really know very much about anarchism.
I take it you haven’t read de La Boetie. You should.
And who votes these candidates in, by and large the same people who receive welfare from them. It’s to be expected, do the poor, who are poor largely because of a lack of intelligence, really think they’ve figured out how to beat the rich?
We all are. Even CEOs of big companies, as much as your egalitarianism hates it.
And so much of left libertarian argumentation seems to rely on strawmen, like this point.
Once again, de La Boetie.
Same goes for capitalism.
You’re right, it’s worse, people think of anarchists as bomb throwing thugs.
Of course, you drop the word capitalist to pander to the socialists, so it’s no suprise you like to keep the word anarchism. I’ll give you another one. Free market, most people think that the free market is what caused the financial crisis.
sigh You and I get along better than most who hold differing views around here, Lib, but you aren’t getting it and I’m beginning to not expect you to.
You’ve got a real problem with anything left, man. Based on the other comments my initial post here received, which seem to consider it quite edifying, I don’t think the problem is with what I wrote but in your ability to look at these issues objectively.
I would stress that you cannot blame all the poor individual’s condition on The State alone, but also with The State’s effect on other people that said poor individual may interact with, as well as the possibility that some poor individuals, were they not lazy and/or more motivated, could actually be less-poor than they currently are (the case in which the individual, even when considering the interference from The State, could also be to blame, would exempt said individual from the below hyopthetical partially, as it highlights the seemingly external fate citizens of The State can experience, without even knowing it exists).
One example could be The State’s monopolization of law enforcement (which without the state would take form as PDA’s, arbitrator’s, etc.), which might cause an unfortunate occurrence where one individual, who potentially can give compensation voluntarily to a poorer-individual (via voluntary & non-coercive action) in exchange for poorer-person’s labor, is imprisoned over some discrephency in their taxes that said individual might relucntantly pay out of fear of imprisonment.
Possible court fees, time spent in prison, lost a job, etc. & that same indivdual who could’ve helped another poorer-individual out via anarchic interaction (voluntary & non-coercive), could very well end up in the same spot as the earlier mentioned poorer individual. Obviously, that all rests on the hyopthetical of one person coming across another & helping out via free-market trade, but it does show how the The State constantly interferes with free-market activity.
However, this possible cycle could very well leave the still poorer individual, who never ended up coming across the more well individual in the parking lot that day, at a crossroads: should he/she keep trying to improve, or accept the fate of the state’s role in having the poor, working and/or homeless class?
Sadly, likewise. You didn’t answer my questions. Again.
No, I don’t have a problem with anything left. I have a problem with things that don’t make sense. I have asked objective questions based on what you wrote. I don’t think they were insincere, or obtuse. I’m hoping you can supply the thought process behind the statements you posted so that I can better understand them. And I am asking out of respect and friendship.
As far as the fanfare received, I don’t want to be insulting, but we’re dealing with people who already agree with the assertions I am questioning, and also have not stepped forward to present the logical framework they put those conclusions through prior to adopting them.
If I am incorrect, you’ve landed a big trophy. A loud, arrogant proponent of your views. Isn’t that worth making your case?
The reason I don’t think you get it is because I don’t feel you are addressing my point. It’s like we’re talking past each other.
The way you deploy your capital simply doesn’t matter in terms of my point. How well you manage it, who you hire to work with it, how active or inactive you are, doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is that in a free market, you would not make one cent above the value you personally added to or through your capital through your own labor.
In a free market, there are 2 factors which are largely absent from the current, controlled market: free labor organization and free competition. You would not only have to be more attractive to labor than your competitors, including their ability to spontaneously start small businesses for themselves (home patio restaurants, personal sewing machine tailoring, etc.), but also their ability to form partnerships with your suppliers and distributors to create labor crises for you if you don’t meet certain demands.
What these factors mean is that relative to today, where a regulatory environment limits the power both of organized labor and the number of competitors for labor that can arise, both creating a situation where the employer is in the position of power in the employer/employee relationship, the relationship will become much more egalitarian. Workers will be able to demand higher wages, the only real upper limit being the amount of value they add via their labor. Thus through market forces, you will be forced, to retain any labor, to pay your workers the full value they add to the goods your company produces. If you do not, competitors who are willing to offer slightly more than you will be able to attract your employees away from you, and your workers will be motivated to hold general strikes against your company. Since profit comes only from the difference between the cost of labor and the value that labor adds to the finished product, this leaves you with no profit.
Haha, no worries; I probably should’ve chosen the embarassed smiley, actually. I seem to be popping up in threads more than usual latley. Darn insomnia.
It is not capatilism that is at fault - only the particular implementation. The essence of capatalism is free enterprise, that is, private property and the free market. Financial capital, interest and central banking are a different matter and are corruptions of a free market. Since when is a market ’ free’ if there is a monopoly on the money supply.
This is analogous to the corruption of democracy in the modern nation state. The essence of democracy is consensus and consent - the aye and nay vote is a corruption of the principle designed to rob the people of their liberty.
OK, robinson crusoe gives friday 500 berries in exchange for making robinson a stick. Then, robinson crusoe gets 5000 berries the next day, when he could ordinarily gain 500 with his bare hands. As only robinson and friday are on the island, and no coercion is employed, it is a free market. I don’t think your concept would hold in this situation.
Or, what if robinson makes the stick, then friday works for robinson crusoe with the stick, to pick berries, but he is paid in berries less than the amount he picked. Would your concept still hold?
“Since profit comes only from the difference between the cost of labor and the value that labor adds to the finished product, this leaves you with no profit.”
Interest is different, and is based on time preference. What it basically means is that you trade your money or whatever now for a greater amount later, but this is an equivalent exchange. In the context of that deal the value of the money now is the same as more money later. But I suspect most here already knew that.
To head off the predictable response, the reason why such a model couldn’t arise in the factory, where you lend out part or all of your capital for a greater return later, the reason is because that is not the only model available. A competitor can rely on working on the machine himself and paying himself a wage without profit for a living, along with the others he hires to make it work along with him. Since all these positions would, in theory, have to be filled anyway, and since no one will pay a higher, or even an equal, rent for the capital than what they can make from using the capital, the latter model will pay the workers more overall than the rent model could, and therefore would attract the most employees.
Too jumbled? I’m not as sharp today as I was yesterday.
Let me first amend my statement slightly. Management can indeed contribute to the value of the added product. Paying yourself for managing the work is not profit, though. You would have to pay someone for some management duties, in any case. It is where you pay yourself more than the wage for that person would be for doing identical work that you are taking profits.
La Boetie didn’t argue or prove that the poor have political power, the point that wa demonstrated is that there is ideological legitimacy. You seem to use La Boetie out of context to support conservative ideals.
The majority of the population doesn’t vote, and the ones that do are still screwed. The way in which you point the finger at the average person is absurd and victim-blaming.
Once again, La Boetie doesn’t prove otherwise. You misinterpret La Boetie as a way to legitimize your hatred from the underclass.