Need feedback on understanding of libertarianism and Marxism

[Liam]

I recently posted to my personal blog some of my understanding of the
positives, and the problems, with both libertarianism and Marxism.
(I've been a libertarian for some time, but am currently studying
Marxism.)
As an ultra-beginner to both theories, I could use a lot of feedback on
my barely existent understanding of both.
I'd appreciate comments on the blog (you have to create a
1st-post-moderated account to avoid spam,) but I'd be more than happy
to read any feedback provided here.
Thanks for any replies!
--Liam
Blog:
http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/
<http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/>

[Liam]

Eh, I guess I'll copy my blog content here and not force people
elsewhere: =)

On Marxism and Libertarianism:

This is a tough one because I'm not even close to being an expert on
either concept. Not even really a knowledgeable beginner. Karl Marx's
Das Kapital is a multi-volume zillion page tome I've barely been able
to get far into. One of my professors is a Marxist and says it took him
about 10 years to really get a handle on what Marxism is. So I'm
certain my meager understanding just barely scratches the surface, so
it would be nice to find someone knowledgeable to whom I can ask my
questions and pose my issues with Marxism. Because on the one hand it
makes perfect sense to me, and on the other, there are some very
serious integral problems with it.

If you know me or read my blog you know I identify as a libertarian.
Mainly a social libertarian. That is, I believe if it harm none do what
you will. (Note: despite the use of the phrase I hate Wicca and think
Alister Crowley was a freakin' nut.) The government especially, but
no one has the right to stick their nose in your personal business.
Your health matters, bedroom behavior, love life, religion, so long as
it all involves consenting adults, is no one's business but those who
you want to make it their business. Always have believed that, always
will.

But for some time I've also been playing with the idea of economic
libertarianism. I have pretty much always thought that the government
that governs least governs best. And I do still believe that. The
bigger the government, the more power it strives for, the more rights
and liberties and freedoms it takes from those that supposedly grant
the government its power-the people. But economic libertarianism
believes in a completely free and open market with no government
regulation. And that sounds great. What right does the government have
to control how we spend our money whether as a consumer or a business
owner.

But then... with no gold standard, money is a false construct kept in
existence by the governmental power. Well, I'm not an economist, so I
won't try to deal with that concept any more. But, an economy with no
regulation means rampant corruption and fraud. Even before I learned
Marxism isn't a dirty word, I'd been realizing that corporations
are pretty much inherently "evil" and will seek to get away with
anything and everything it can at the expense of every human and
economic and ecological resource it comes in contact with. From Enron
and Worldcom to the mining companies that violated safety regulations
that lead to the miner deaths last year and the horrific ecological
disasters with toxic dumping and the global warming.... Even with
regulations, corporations will do everything possible for the almighty
profit margin.

Now, the libertarian rebuttal is generally that the government allows
and even creates an environment where corporations are able to do ill.
The government creates laws and takes lobbyist money to create an
environment that gives corporations unfair power with little to prevent
it. In a true free and open market, the corporations wouldn't get
special dispensations, wouldn't get special protections from
lawsuits, wouldn't get tax money, and the people will use the
services of companies that are safe and responsible and not patronize
companies that are harmful or unfair to workers.

That sounds great, but is it possible? I don't think so; not in a
real world. Corporations do a lot of things in secret that people
don't know about. Corporations by their very nature will strive to
eliminate competition and prevent the people from having a choice in
patronizing someone else for similar goods or services, or prevent
people from being able to start new competing companies. Plus, there
are industries that the average person simply can't make informed
decisions about, such as pharmaceuticals. We can see this all over the
place with the difference between FDA approved medicine and the
non-regulated herbal remedy stuff. The industry of herbal and holistic
remedies that aren't regulated is fraught with fraud and cheats and
fakery and snake oil. And the profit margin on all that fakery from
herbal cold cures to memory boosters is ridiculously high while they do
nothing, while FDA regulated pharmaceuticals do work. Period. And
despite what people think, the profit the companies get from drugs is
much smaller that what people are making by sticking dried herbs into a
capsule with no research & development costs and yet not having any
real measurable medical effect. Known libertarian Drew Carey on flaming
libertarian Penn Jillette's radio show expressed that he wants to be
able to just walk into a store and buy Lipitor as he needs it. And
I'm thinking, how can we trust people to get good and right
information from unregulated companies that only care about profit in a
very very specialized industry where it's extremely difficult to get
good and proper information? I guess you can say caveat emptor, but
we're also talking about parents getting medicine and healthcare for
their kids. I can't even imagine the idea of having to treat my
wife's life-long and chronic multiple-connective tissue disorder in
an environment where the companies are unregulated and will do
everything possible to take advantage of being regulated only by
whether customers will buy your product or not. We could still rely on
our doctors' advice, but with even less to no regulation, they will
be even bigger shills for the pharm companies and will promote whoever
they're getting money from.

This has all concerned me and made me question my economic libertarian
beliefs. So, going on to Marxism. As a "red blooded" American
raised during the Cold War and on movies like "Red Dawn" and
"Rambo" and the like, I grew up learning Marxism was Communism and
both are evil evil evil! The mere mention of the word "Marxism"
held magical power to bring forth evil spirits of anti-American
godlessness and would make anyone in earshot question your patriotism.
So it really hasn't been until lately that I started looking into
Marxism and realized that Marxism is really not the same as Communism
and absolutely not the same as Soviet Communism. Soviet Communism is a
dictatorship and Marxism is utterly against compelling people to follow
a dictator. Against trying to stifle individuality and personal
freedom. Communism failed because it wasn't truly Marxist, and
can't be forced upon people. It has to evolve naturally just as
capitalism evolved, and will pretty much only work when the world is
naturally Marxist.

So I understand. (Preface everything I say about Marxism with "As far
as I understand," as I can be totally wrong.)

One of the biggest points of Marxism is that capitalism naturally
supports monopolies. Part of the capitalist ideology that we're
indoctrinated into convinces you that capitalism is all about
competition, and that's utterly not true. Free market is about
getting as much if not all of the market share as you can and running
your competition out of business. You ask any board member of any
corporation whether they'd rather have the competition or 100% of the
market share, do you really think you'll find a single "sane"
member who would not say 100% of the market? The entire goal of
capitalism is to make money, make as much of it as possible, and
prevent everyone who would possibly hinder your ability to make 100%
potential profit from doing so. And with this goal in mind, is there
any question that capitalism encourages as much corruption and cheating
as it can get away with for as long as it can get away with?

Now, we start getting into where I start having some problems with
Marxism. According to Marxism, the capitalist ideology would have you
believe that this is the natural state for humanity. That "greed is
good," that humans are inherently greedy and there's really no way
to have a socioeconomic system that is not inherently greedy, so why
fight capitalism? (Sounds a lot like the fundamentalist Christian
belief that all humans are inherently evil and must be saved.) So
according to Marxism, there is no inherent and default human nature and
social nature can be changed as needed for the betterment of the
society. Like the libertarian dream of utopia which I don't think
possible, I think this might be the Marxist dream utopia that's not
really possible. It seems to me, even as much as I am working on
breaking down my capitalist ideology brainwashing, that there still is
indeed inherent human nature. (It's not a supernatural condition
Christians call "evil", but) It's an innate desire to have as
much as possible. It's a trait that can be seen in all types of
cultures all around the world from primitive to modern. It seems to me
that that would be evidence of an inherent human nature.

But then, maybe, it's possible this greedy, envious nature may have a
biological component that began with self-preservation (hoard food,
fight for the best shelter, etc,) but can be changed completely to
altruistic and generous when the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy
of Human Needs are fulfilled and there's no fear of losing them. If
you don't have to worry about your needs, you don't have to work
for your food and shelter and food and shelter and medical care are
provided (without shortages and long lines) then there may not be any
greed and envy triggers in human nature. Maybe, I don't know. Who
really knows.

Did you know the US is the only modern advanced society that has no
universal health care? Kind of shows you where this country's
priorities are. Screw the citizens, the corporations are king. (As if
the war in Iraq isn't enough of a clue.)

I haven't even touched on what little I know about commodity
fetishism and the commodification of the worker. And how 5% of the
population owns 95% of the country's wealth. How 95% of the country
believes they're capitalists when they're not...they're working
for the capitalists. Those with power are the ones who own the wealth
and those are the capitalists. We, and even small business owners, are
simply workers for the ones who own the country's wealth. The
capitalists want to destroy the middle class as much as they want to
destroy competition. They believe the best running society is the one
where the ultra-rich run the society and everyone else is too poor and
disempowered to change it. And that's the natural evolution of free
and open market. That if all of the wealth in the world were equally
distributed (hypothetically) every person in the world could have a
basic American standard middle-class lifestyle. Everyone, from Alaska
to Ethiopia. (Hypothetically.)
So on the one hand I distrust and despise government and value human
liberty and freedom above all. No intervention so long as your actions
and behavior do not negatively affect other people. But, I also despise
corporate corruption and the cult of money capitalism creates. I
totally believe that any free and open market will beget unchecked
corruption and pain and misery all because of money and commodities.
But socialism because it is supported by the entire society, requires
that the society has a vested interest in what you're doing that
might affect the society, even if it's a private and/or solely
consensual behavior.

I need to spend days discussing these things with people smarter than I.

[enki]

Liam wrote:
> Eh, I guess I'll copy my blog content here and not force people
> elsewhere: =)
>
> On Marxism and Libertarianism:
>
> This is a tough one because I'm not even close to being an expert on
> either concept. Not even really a knowledgeable beginner. Karl Marx's
> Das Kapital is a multi-volume zillion page tome I've barely been able
> to get far into. One of my professors is a Marxist and says it took him
> about 10 years to really get a handle on what Marxism is. So I'm
> certain my meager understanding just barely scratches the surface, so
> it would be nice to find someone knowledgeable to whom I can ask my
> questions and pose my issues with Marxism. Because on the one hand it
> makes perfect sense to me, and on the other, there are some very
> serious integral problems with it.

You actually read marx and you are doing your best to explain what you
read. I still have to read Marx but becuse of how I believe I keep
putting it off.

>
> If you know me or read my blog you know I identify as a libertarian.
> Mainly a social libertarian. That is, I believe if it harm none do what
> you will. (Note: despite the use of the phrase I hate Wicca and think
> Alister Crowley was a freakin' nut.) The government especially, but
> no one has the right to stick their nose in your personal business.
> Your health matters, bedroom behavior, love life, religion, so long as
> it all involves consenting adults, is no one's business but those who
> you want to make it their business. Always have believed that, always
> will.
>

Still how best to protect liberty and promote tollerance. What are the
limits on tollerance and when personal behavior has a detramental
affect on others. The reson for government is to secure rights. That
is because people will dominate people if they can and if they can get
away with it. It can be bullies taking lunch money, the mob extrorting
protectionm many or slavers going out to capture their product. We
have to put limits on personal behavior and the next question is what
is the best way to do that. To stop people from usning force we first
use persuasion, having a society that promots "good" behavior. When
this persuasion fails there needs to be force. How best to defiene
good behavior and when to use force we have a system of laws.

> But for some time I've also been playing with the idea of economic
> libertarianism. I have pretty much always thought that the government
> that governs least governs best. And I do still believe that. The
> bigger the government, the more power it strives for, the more rights
> and liberties and freedoms it takes from those that supposedly grant
> the government its power-the people. But economic libertarianism
> believes in a completely free and open market with no government
> regulation. And that sounds great. What right does the government have
> to control how we spend our money whether as a consumer or a business
> owner.
>

Economics like other human behavor is better when free but like other
behavior needs limits. You touch on some good examples on where there
needs to be limits.

> But then... with no gold standard, money is a false construct kept in
> existence by the governmental power. Well, I'm not an economist, so I
> won't try to deal with that concept any more. But, an economy with no
> regulation means rampant corruption and fraud. Even before I learned
> Marxism isn't a dirty word, I'd been realizing that corporations
> are pretty much inherently "evil" and will seek to get away with
> anything and everything it can at the expense of every human and
> economic and ecological resource it comes in contact with. From Enron
> and Worldcom to the mining companies that violated safety regulations
> that lead to the miner deaths last year and the horrific ecological
> disasters with toxic dumping and the global warming.... Even with
> regulations, corporations will do everything possible for the almighty
> profit margin.

This is why we have freedom but impose limits. There is no objective
perfect system because we all have our interests. These intersts often
conflict and there needs to be a way to comprimise and come to
solutions without violence.

>
> Now, the libertarian rebuttal is generally that the government allows
> and even creates an environment where corporations are able to do ill.
> The government creates laws and takes lobbyist money to create an
> environment that gives corporations unfair power with little to prevent
> it. In a true free and open market, the corporations wouldn't get
> special dispensations, wouldn't get special protections from
> lawsuits, wouldn't get tax money, and the people will use the
> services of companies that are safe and responsible and not patronize
> companies that are harmful or unfair to workers.

Yes monopolies are bad. But look at how comunism has been implemented
with governmenmt monopolies in which force is used to keep out
competition.

>
> So I understand. (Preface everything I say about Marxism with "As far
> as I understand," as I can be totally wrong.)
>
> One of the biggest points of Marxism is that capitalism naturally
> supports monopolies. Part of the capitalist ideology that we're
> indoctrinated into convinces you that capitalism is all about
> competition, and that's utterly not true. Free market is about
> getting as much if not all of the market share as you can and running
> your competition out of business. You ask any board member of any
> corporation whether they'd rather have the competition or 100% of the
> market share, do you really think you'll find a single "sane"
> member who would not say 100% of the market? The entire goal of
> capitalism is to make money, make as much of it as possible, and
> prevent everyone who would possibly hinder your ability to make 100%
> potential profit from doing so. And with this goal in mind, is there
> any question that capitalism encourages as much corruption and cheating
> as it can get away with for as long as it can get away with?

Yes as I have said that monopolies are wrong but think of Marxism as a
government monopoly.

Don't sell your self short. This was a good post that deals with tough
issues.

Evil or self interst of ourselve without reguard for others is a
problem with humanity. If people were purly good we would need no
government. The fact is people do bad things it can be enslaving
somone or using unfair business practices to remove competition. There
is no perfect solution. We need some proscess to define what is
acceptable but take into account all interests. The problem with
Marxism is that people don't do their jobs by instinct. We don't
naturally know the best way to make the things we want and need and
resources are limited. What is the best way to allocate those
resources? Why was steam power invented in Roman times but it took
until 1800 for it to be made into somthing useful and efficeint.

Greed is most benifit for the least amount of work. We do that when we
search for value in the products we buy. Employers do that with the
people they hire. A problem I have with marxism is that I think it is
short sighted. Itis fine to maintain the current status. But it is
invention and the rewards of invention that modivate people. It may
take years and millions of dollars to create a new medicine that might
or might not work. Waht is the value of a unit of thought or an idea?
To me that there are too many intangables and unknown for us to rely on
Marx.

I am for freedom but having a democractic proscess to set the limits on
behavior that causes harm. What is harm? What we say it is and the
number of people who agree with us. There is a problem with democracy
is that minorities may not be protected. Natural minorities are the
rich. There are always more poor than rich. But is the few Rich that
make most of the decisions and control resource.

Sorry I am so rambling but you brought up many topics and I am doing my
best to respond to what you bring up. Basically when it comes to
economics it is a human behavior. People do bad things in their self
interest. People can do these bad things on their own or behind
oppressive government. We need some way to force and some custodian of
that force to stop people from be bad as we define it. How do we
define good and bad?

A high tax rate can be just as harmful as the local gang extorting
protection money. I also argue that collective protection is better
because if people have a feeling of security they will spend time doing
that they think profitable than trying to fortify and defend themselvs.

We need and want things. We have needs to eat and desire we would like
to have like a cushy bed. To get these thing somone has to make them.
Even in a state of nature we have to hunt food and cloth take time to
grow food and fine ore and turn it into useful metal things. In
economics things have to get done. Up to about two hundred years ago
everything was mede by hand. Since then we have had industry come in
and make things much easier and cheaper than ever before. This is all
based on trying to get somone to buy your stuff.

You mention that a small umber of people have a huge portion of the
wealth. I think you spoke of some kind of gold standard some objective
money. That causes a problem. There are problems with limiting the
money supply. A good example is the great depression when there is not
enough money for the economy.

http://www.whyy.org/homecollege/telecoursedescriptions/economics_u.htm

Money is really nothing and everything. It is an abstraction for
resources. People get money because they have been able to manage
resources better than others. Someone has an idea. If they can get
other people to give them money in a loan or to buy stock they can
build the facory and invest in the materials and labor to bring their
idea to reality. People will give the loan or buy the stock if they
think they will make a profit. Just follow the logic.

[srd]

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:24:55 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:

I can offer some comments on some of your arguments, mostly where they
strike me as mistaken. I won't try here myself to adjudicate
libertarianism versus socialism.

> And I'm thinking, how can we trust people to get good and right
> information from unregulated companies that only care about profit in
> a very very specialized industry where it's extremely difficult to get

> good and proper information? Plus, there are industries that the

> average person simply can't make informed decisions about, such as
> pharmaceuticals.

If the problem is the cost of information, why is more than minimal
regulation necessary? Could the government not instead issue approvals
some medications as safe and effective, without banning others? The only
regulation then needed might be that the pharmacies make the government
regulations easily available to customers.

> And with this goal in mind, is there any question that capitalism
> encourages as much corruption and cheating as it can get away with for
> as long as it can get away with?

Corporations are governed by the profit motive more thoroughly than
individuals, because in coporations, ethics support the pursuit of profits
instead of serving as a counterweight. But it is not so clear that
corporations are more likely to engage in corrupt conduct, since
non-economic motives can also corrupt.

Obviously, corporations will only be controlled by laws that punish
corruption. But your contention that this requires regulations or
nationalization does not engage the actual libertarian position, which
typically holds that corporations should be controlled through lawsuits,
especially, class action suits. This would include suits for punitive
damages. Control through criminal prosecution of corporate officers and
directors for fraud is also an option.

> But socialism because it is supported by the entire society, requires
> that the society has a vested interest in what you're doing that might
> affect the society, even if it's a private and/or solely consensual
> behavior.

I understand you to say that since under socialism, society pays for
everything, society will claim the right to control everything. But might
not the restriction take the form of a limit to the amount of income
available to each person, leaving the same freedom to choose within that
financial constraint.

srd

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:24:55 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:
>
> I can offer some comments on some of your arguments, mostly where they
> strike me as mistaken. I won't try here myself to adjudicate
> libertarianism versus socialism.
>
> > And I'm thinking, how can we trust people to get good and right
> > information from unregulated companies that only care about profit in
> > a very very specialized industry where it's extremely difficult to get
> > good and proper information? Plus, there are industries that the
> > average person simply can't make informed decisions about, such as
> > pharmaceuticals.
>
> If the problem is the cost of information, why is more than minimal
> regulation necessary? Could the government not instead issue approvals
> some medications as safe and effective, without banning others? The only
> regulation then needed might be that the pharmacies make the government
> regulations easily available to customers.
>

Well said. I read your article and it was intersting and not too long.
The problem with lawsuits is that it is much like and ex-post fact
law. Companies are modivated by profit current and future. There is
huge capital investment that needs to be profitable over a long period
of time if not indefently. Business relies on the free choice of
people to choose their product. Naturally they would like to have a
monopoly to ensure their profits but such monopolies would be
infringements on freedom. If there is no competition then they can
essentially confinscate any property or labor in exchange for ther
product. We limit the behavior of companies such as selling below cost
or buying the competion out not to mention outright violence or using
government to not allow the products through unfair regulation.

The basic function is to limit acceptable behaviors and equality of the
law. the problem I have with socialism it is a monopoly. Businesses
becomes more efficient which meanse more product for less cost. It
acomplishes this through the modivation of competition. Under
socialism businesses are run to produce products with no reguard for
profit. I would argue that that approach does not make the best use of
resources and leads to waste. Because there is limited rewards for
innovation there will be less of it.

Most ideas invlove uncerianty before they are refined into new
technoloy and innovation. Such things may require very large time and
capital investments with not certianty that they will do what they are
invisioned. Who should decide on what projects get funded over what
dosn't? The best people possible. How do you find the best people?
To make it simple people want the best product for the lowest price.
It is the effort of people that make better products. So businesses
hire the most productive people at the lowest cost. As a person
becomes more productive they become more valuable so the company will
pay more to keep them or they will go to a competetor. There needs to
be competition for the consumer as well as the worker if there is is
only one business with no competion they will have little leverage to
justify their higher worth becuse no exiests to pay them more. If a
person can't get what they want from a business they can start their
own and use their skills to create better products that can be chosen
over what is currently available.

Capitalism is not a system but the manifistation of freedom of personal
property and the free exchange. It is also the freedom to not exchange
that peroperty. There have to be limits on behavior because people
will take actions that are unjust if they can and benfifit from it.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:

Short verions:

Libertarianism holds that property rights are the basis of civilization
an that initiation of force (and as such, government) is generally a Bad
Thing (tm). Also, libertarianism is not utopian.

Marxism holds that property rights are a basic injustice to be done away
with and that initiation of force (revolution) is ultimately necessary
to abolish it. Marxism, however, is utopian, because it believes that

1) The threshold from democracy to communism is done via the
"dictatorship of the proletariat", and it is assumed that this
dictatorship will eventually abolish itself to make way for the true
communist, stateless society,

2) it believes in equality of outcome,

3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.

Ultra short:

Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.

--
regards , Peter B. P. - http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk

"If guns kill, do pencils cause spelling errors?"

[Fran]

Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:
> Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:
>
> > I recently posted to my personal blog some of my understanding of the
> > positives, and the problems, with both libertarianism and Marxism.
> > (I've been a libertarian for some time, but am currently studying
> > Marxism.)
> > As an ultra-beginner to both theories, I could use a lot of feedback on
> > my barely existent understanding of both.
> > I'd appreciate comments on the blog (you have to create a
> > 1st-post-moderated account to avoid spam,) but I'd be more than happy
> > to read any feedback provided here.
> > Thanks for any replies!
> > --Liam
> > Blog:
> > http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/
> > <http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/>
>
> Short verions:
>
> Libertarianism holds that property rights are the basis of civilization
> an that initiation of force (and as such, government) is generally a Bad
> Thing (tm). Also, libertarianism is not utopian.
>
> Marxism holds that property rights are a basic injustice to be done away
> with

It holds no such thing. Marxism rejects ahistoric or suprahistoric
notions of justice. It sees property as an expression of the conflict
and the collaboration of humans in a given epoch -- neither just or
unjust, but rather, more or less rational, from the point of view of
progress towards human freedom, in a given set of material
circumstances.

> and that initiation of force (revolution) is ultimately necessary
> to abolish it.

It holds no such thing. It observes that violence is a common feature
of conflicts over property, and that it's improbable that any property
holding class, and especially, any *privileged* property holding class
will surrender it without itself initiating violence, and that
accordingly, the revolutionary classes will probably be obliged to use
violence in order to secure their control over the means of production.
It's an educated guess rather than a firm prediction. Engels, for
example, speculated on other lines of possible development and Marx
barely commented on this at all.

> Marxism, however, is utopian, because it believes that
>
> 1) The threshold from democracy to communism is done via the
> "dictatorship of the proletariat", and it is assumed that this
> dictatorship will eventually abolish itself to make way for the true
> communist, stateless society,
>

No, Lenin assumed that the most important functions of the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat would wither and atrophy as abundance was approached
and classes became dissolute.

> 2) it believes in equality of outcome,
>

It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.

> 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
>

No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is
this that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way,
it must be swept aside.

>
>
> Ultra short:
>
> Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
>

Ah, but you see, one can be both.

Fran

[Liam]

Fran wrote:
> Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:

[ snip ]

> It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.
>
> > 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> > doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
> >
>
> No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
> labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is
> this that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way,
> it must be swept aside.
> >
> > Ultra short:
> >
> > Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
> >
>
> Ah, but you see, one can be both.
>

*sigh*
Gods it's all ideology.
Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
And the current state of capitalism isn't any better.
I keep thinking/wishing that if I know more about both, I can
objectively see the workability and feasibility of one or the
other...but from the words and opinions of other who are experts in
both, all I see is ideology.
=/

[Franklin Jefferson]

An interesting, thoughtful analysis.

I like the idea of a libertarian taking a good, unbiased look at
Marxism, although I think you miss a little in not really noticing some
of the absolutely loony conclusions that Marxism ends up at. In
general, all of the worst excesses of the 20th century-- genocides,
agressive wars, mass starvation, ethnic cleansing -- seem to stem from
governments, not from corporations. Indeed, of almost any century! To
the extent that evils are perpetrated by corporations, it tends to be
when corporations are given a state-supported monopoly, or are given
state protection or state exemption from laws.

But I think it's a good thing to think about. What do we want, and
why, and what is the best way to actually defend our individual
liberties?

For what it's worth, I am not a libertarian of the
libertarian-anarchist variety, who thinks that the best outcome would
be no govenment at all-- it is not at all clear to me that a true
anarchy does not devolve into a society of thugs, warlords, and
thieves, where the closest thing to law is protection rackets-- as,
say, has happened in Somalia. It seems to me that some government is
needed to support the legal system that allows commerce to function.
However, this government needs to be strictly and vigorously kept small
and to the point; it's the government's job to maintain our liberty,
not to remove it or tell us what to do.

Liam wrote:
> I recently posted to my personal blog some of my understanding of the
> positives, and the problems, with both libertarianism and Marxism.
> (I've been a libertarian for some time, but am currently studying
> Marxism.)
> As an ultra-beginner to both theories, I could use a lot of feedback on
> my barely existent understanding of both.
> I'd appreciate comments on the blog (you have to create a
> 1st-post-moderated account to avoid spam,)

I'm not thrilled about setting up yet another password-protected
account-- I've got too many such things already, sorry-- so I posted my
comments in my blog, and cc them here.

> but I'd be more than happy
> to read any feedback provided here.
> Thanks for any replies!
> --Liam
> Blog:
> http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/
> <http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/>

--
Franklin Jefferson
***My blog: Jefferson's Democracy***
http://franklinjefferson.blogspot.com

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 09:42:21 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:

> *sigh*
> Gods it's all ideology.
> Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
> And the current state of capitalism isn't any better.
> I keep thinking/wishing that if I know more about both, I can
> objectively see the workability and feasibility of one or the
> other...but from the words and opinions of other who are experts in
> both, all I see is ideology.
> =/
>

In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming man's
nature as a social animal. The latter point is probably less transparent
than the former, but is equally true. If capitalists combine with one
another to enforce their mutual interest, you have the rebirth of the
interventionist state built in, and in the meanwhile, equally oppressive
non-statist forms of oppression through combination.

The lesson from comparison might be that designing social systems is the
wrong way to promote progress. What's the alternative? Perhaps the key is
the political system, not the social/economic system. If the civilized
world has managed to agree that health care should be universal, has
American failed to come to this conclusion because its purely political
methods of conflict resolution remain in the 18th century; because the
morass of conflicting government entities and institutions "checking and
balancing" each other leaves no room for the majority to exert its will
and in the process to educate itself?

srd

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

srd <srd1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 09:42:21 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:
>
> > *sigh*
> > Gods it's all ideology.
> > Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> > change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> > Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> > more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> > the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
> > And the current state of capitalism isn't any better.
> > I keep thinking/wishing that if I know more about both, I can
> > objectively see the workability and feasibility of one or the
> > other...but from the words and opinions of other who are experts in
> > both, all I see is ideology.
> > =/
> >
> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming man's
> nature as a social animal.

It does? Funny, I never noticed. Libertarianism does not seek to
overcome the market, which is ultimately a social phenomenon.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

Fran <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote: > Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote: > > > I
> recently posted to my personal blog some of my understanding of the > >
> positives, and the problems, with both libertarianism and Marxism. > >
> (I've been a libertarian for some time, but am currently studying > >
> Marxism.) > > As an ultra-beginner to both theories, I could use a lot of
> feedback on > > my barely existent understanding of both. > > I'd
> appreciate comments on the blog (you have to create a > >
> 1st-post-moderated account to avoid spam,) but I'd be more than happy > >
> to read any feedback provided here. > > Thanks for any replies! > > --Liam
> > > Blog: > >
> http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/
> > >
> <http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism
> /> > > Short verions: > > Libertarianism holds that property rights are
> the basis of civilization > an that initiation of force (and as such,
> government) is generally a Bad > Thing (tm). Also, libertarianism is not
> utopian. > > Marxism holds that property rights are a basic injustice to
> be done away > with
>
> It holds no such thing.

Yes, it does, or rather, *private* property rights.

> Marxism rejects ahistoric or suprahistoric notions of justice. It sees
> property as an expression of the conflict and the collaboration of humans
> in a given epoch -- neither just or unjust, but rather, more or less
> rational, from the point of view of progress towards human freedom, in a
> given set of material circumstances.

Does the above have any meaning?

>
> > and that initiation of force (revolution) is ultimately necessary to
> > abolish it.
>
> It holds no such thing.

And yet, Marx and Marxists was, were and are, revolutionaries. How come?

> It observes that violence is a common feature of conflicts over property,

...and dictates that violence must be applied to end the
capitalist/democratic state apparatus and all private property of the
means of production.

> and that it's improbable that any property holding class, and especially,
> any *privileged* property holding class will surrender it without itself
> initiating violence, and that accordingly, the revolutionary classes will
> probably be obliged to use violence in order to secure their control over
> the means of production.

IOW, you agree with me.

> It's an educated guess rather than a firm prediction.

It is much more than that. It is a commandment of communism.

> Engels, for example, speculated on other lines of possible development and
> Marx barely commented on this at all.

Thats is why Engels have been silently scorned by communists for a long
time. He simply wasn't radical enough.

>
> > Marxism, however, is utopian, because it believes that
> >
> > 1) The threshold from democracy to communism is done via the
> > "dictatorship of the proletariat", and it is assumed that this
> > dictatorship will eventually abolish itself to make way for the true
> > communist, stateless society,
> >
>
> No, Lenin assumed that the most important functions of the Dictatorship of
> the Proletariat would wither and atrophy as abundance was approached and
> classes became dissolute.

Kenin was a nutter and a utopian who believed that all ills of humans
would disappoear once communism was realized as a societal form. He
genuinely believed that humans would turn close to super-human.

>
> > 2) it believes in equality of outcome,
> >
>
> It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.

Does not argue the point I raised.

>
> > 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> > doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
> >
>
> No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
> labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is this
> that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way, it must
> be swept aside.

So far, experiments in "sweeping away capitalism" have been failures,
and at worst, outright catastrophes. The last century is riple with
examples.

>
>
> >
> >
> > Ultra short:
> >
> > Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
> >
>
> Ah, but you see, one can be both.

Correct, but that doesnt change that for all intents and purposes,
libertarians are generally much less nutty than marxists and communists
when it comes to realizing what freedom is and what means should be
applied to trying to achieve it, and what means should NOT be applied.

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
<pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:

>> It holds no such thing.
> Yes, it does, or rather, *private* property rights.

Well, Marxism has often stated of itself that it does not proceed from
judgments of justice. But private property in the means of production
results, according to Marxism, in workers having to sell their labor
according to the value of he labor power, whereas capitalists get to
profit from the value added by the labor. Workers are said to be paid less
than what they added to the product. This serves as an appeal to a concept
of justice. Marx said judge by actions, not by what historical actors say
about their motives. The same dictum must be applied to Marxism itself.

srd

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
<pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:

>> No, Lenin assumed that the most important functions of the Dictatorship
>> of
>> the Proletariat would wither and atrophy as abundance was approached and
>> classes became dissolute.

> Kenin [sic] was a nutter and a utopian who believed that all ills of

> humans
> would disappoear once communism was realized as a societal form. He
> genuinely believed that humans would turn close to super-human.

Shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin wrote "The State and
Revolution," in which he outlined the political system under the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Parliamentary institutions, particularly
the ministries, were deemed unsuitable for a workers state, which Lenin
contended the Paris Commune proved needed a representative system directly
responsible to organization of the producers. But when the Bolsheviks
assumed power, without even an effort to justify this deviation, they
reinstuted the parliamentary ministries, renamed as Soviet Commissariats.

No one has been able to explain how this history is compatible with
political honesty.

srd

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
<pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:

>> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
>> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming
>> man's
>> nature as a social animal.
> It does? Funny, I never noticed. Libertarianism does not seek to
> overcome the market, which is ultimately a social phenomenon.

The libertarian program doesn't demand that social "phenomena" be
scuttled, only man's social *nature*. The market is constructed, in
libertarian ideology, on the basis of purely self-interested strivings. Of
course the person most conscious of the need for "pure capitalism" to get
rid of social motivation was clearest to Ayn Rand, for whom "altruism" was
a swear word.

From a realistic as opposed to ideological perspective, it may indeed be
wondered, however, whether the market could survive the deletion of social
motivation. The Prisoners' Dilemma seems to demonstrate that all
cooperation ends when its benefits are appraised through purely
self-serving motives, at least in sequential transactions, which are
certainly necessary for commerce.

srd

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
<pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:

> does? Funny, I never noticed.

One caveat here: my point _is_ something you would have to *notice*. On
offer is a logical analysis of libertarian presuppositions, NOT direct
articles of faith shared by most libertanians.

srd

[Vngelis]

srd wrote:

Thats what made them different from anarchists.

One has to use what is available to fight the enemy. The eventual goal
is the abolition of ministries ie when the cleaner can make important
administrative decisions as any minister preceding him.

The revolution needed to expand. It didn't. The old forms became
institutionalised.
A carbon copy of advanced capitalist countries, but without the social
forms of property linked to them.

[enki]

That is all fine. But if property is seen as the problem then there
comes a problem with investment, managment and progress. People don't
do their gobs out of instinct. Somone has to make decisions of
allocations of resources (managment) and what to invest in. When it
comes to research and devlopment there is a huge unknown. How many
resources will it take to make a given improvment. Research on drugs
takes years and there is no certianty that anything productive will
come from it.

A problem I have with Marxism is the challenges of leadership. People
don't just do their jobs to the best of their ability on a daily basis.
It is not to hard to be the best at what you do but getting other
people to do their best is a real challenge. The problem of no
personal property is that you loose a major modivator for people to be
productive. This can be at the entry level, middle managment or in
research and devlopment.

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 09:42:21 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:
>
> > *sigh*
> > Gods it's all ideology.
> > Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> > change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> > Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> > more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> > the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
> > And the current state of capitalism isn't any better.
> > I keep thinking/wishing that if I know more about both, I can
> > objectively see the workability and feasibility of one or the
> > other...but from the words and opinions of other who are experts in
> > both, all I see is ideology.
> > =/
> >
> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming man's
> nature as a social animal. The latter point is probably less transparent
> than the former, but is equally true.

It is not that dificult to take a way property but how do you harness
the true potential of what a person can do. It is pretty natureal for
people to get the most reward for the least amount of effort. We
wouldn't have this whole modern world and efficiencies.

If capitalists combine with one
> another to enforce their mutual interest, you have the rebirth of the
> interventionist state built in, and in the meanwhile, equally oppressive
> non-statist forms of oppression through combination.

You have freedom but we put limits on that freedom so that freedom is
increased.

>
> The lesson from comparison might be that designing social systems is the
> wrong way to promote progress. What's the alternative? Perhaps the key is
> the political system, not the social/economic system. If the civilized
> world has managed to agree that health care should be universal, has
> American failed to come to this conclusion because its purely political
> methods of conflict resolution remain in the 18th century; because the
> morass of conflicting government entities and institutions "checking and
> balancing" each other leaves no room for the majority to exert its will
> and in the process to educate itself?
>
> srd

The basic question is when is a right on the part of somone requires
the obligation of another. It is easy to create need but dificult to
satisfy that need.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

srd <srd1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
> <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
>
> >> It holds no such thing.
> > Yes, it does, or rather, *private* property rights.
>
> Well, Marxism has often stated of itself that it does not proceed from
> judgments of justice. But private property in the means of production
> results, according to Marxism, in workers having to sell their labor
> according to the value of he labor power, whereas capitalists get to
> profit from the value added by the labor.

And since the LTV has been thoughly debunked for more than a century, we
can scrap that hypothesis entirely.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

srd <srd1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

It is a humerous, although sad, thing to observe how communists are oh
so ideologically pure and pious when not in power, but when they halls
of power are open to them, they become themselves exactly what they have
denounced so vehemently beforehand.

[enki]

Let say that your job is to fill a hopper of flower. That hopper leads
into a machine that makes bread. You may be making a million dollars
of bread a year. Under Marx are you entittled to that million dollars
that the breadis worth. Let say that machine cost five million dollars
and it took twenty million to devlope. Arn't the people who built and
devloped the machine entittled some of that profit? How about the
person who took to risk to buy the machine having no gauintee of profit
in a competitive market. If there is no reward or limits on reward
then it is a strong disincentive to investment and devlopment. If
things were made by hand then Marx might have a point. In the modern
world people work with machines that had to come from somwhere and be
bought. People make investments or give money to people who they think
can return a profit on that money. People are free to choose the best
value for their money wether it be investments or products.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

And there, we have marxism in a nutshell: Nothing is left for investment
in replacement capital goods, so a marxist economic system will only
work as long as what was plundered from the precursor society has not
broken down.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

srd <srd1...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
> <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
>
> >> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
> >> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming
> >> man's
> >> nature as a social animal.
> > It does? Funny, I never noticed. Libertarianism does not seek to
> > overcome the market, which is ultimately a social phenomenon.
>
> The libertarian program doesn't demand that social "phenomena" be
> scuttled, only man's social *nature*.

WOuld there be social phenomena without an inherent human tendency
toward a social nature?

I think not.

> The market is constructed, in
> libertarian ideology, on the basis of purely self-interested strivings.

No, the market is a comcept grounded in reality.

> Of
> course the person most conscious of the need for "pure capitalism" to get
> rid of social motivation was clearest to Ayn Rand, for whom "altruism" was
> a swear word.

Your point? Ayn Rand is not the model of all libertarians and all
libertarians are not like Ayn Rand.

[enki]

For the most part, that is correct. Just as people do bad things out
of self interest, they do good thing with no self interest but that is
not way to run a business or society. You will still have people who
try to do good and may make a difference but I don't see people looking
for the highest cost product with the lowest quality.

[enki]

Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:
> srd <srd1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
> > <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
> >
> > >> It holds no such thing.
> > > Yes, it does, or rather, *private* property rights.
> >
> > Well, Marxism has often stated of itself that it does not proceed from
> > judgments of justice. But private property in the means of production
> > results, according to Marxism, in workers having to sell their labor
> > according to the value of he labor power, whereas capitalists get to
> > profit from the value added by the labor.
>

That might be true but it is wrong. If we want to live we have to
work. If we want food we have to go and find it or better grow it. If
we want a plow, we have to find ore and turn it into iron then make the
plow. Is it just that crops need to be plowed or iron has to be dug
out of the ground and carried to a place to where with work it is make
into a plow. We don't have to do all that today because of invention
and the proit it made the investors and inventors. If there was no
reward than diging it out by hand and is sufficient.

What is adding value to a product? A plow from iron. If you wanted a
factory you have to accumilate a great deal of resources. Often times
people with wealth don't have an idea or people with an idea don't have
wealth. Either they can be earned or confinscated. People can give
the money voulintarily in investment for the *hope* that there will be
profit. With invention and innovation there is a chance that it will
not succeed or will even work.

[enki]

There is a real ptoblem with the power necessary to confiscate
property. It is a real problem how to check that massive power that a
comunist government has. First they take all property then how do we
ensure the property is used as it is intended to use. That is the
advantage of private property is that it is derrived voulintarily.
People give moeny in exchange for a product and service they don't gave
to buy or buy from a competitor or just do without.

One of the dangers of capitalism is the formation of monopolies. How
is a government monopoly any different than a private monopoly?

[enki]

> It is a humerous, although sad, thing to observe how communists are oh
> so ideologically pure and pious when not in power, but when they halls
> of power are open to them, they become themselves exactly what they have
> denounced so vehemently beforehand.
>
> --
> regards , Peter B. P. - http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk
>
> "If guns kill, do pencils cause spelling errors?"

What is the check on natural human evil in comunism? The state has
power that meanse the peopel in the state have that power. Even if
comunism was a system that made sence how could there be a check and
ballance on those with the massive power that comunism gives them.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > It is a humerous, although sad, thing to observe how communists are oh
> > so ideologically pure and pious when not in power, but when they halls
> > of power are open to them, they become themselves exactly what they have
> > denounced so vehemently beforehand.
> >
> > --
> > regards , Peter B. P. - http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk
> >
> > "If guns kill, do pencils cause spelling errors?"
>
> What is the check on natural human evil in comunism?

None in the organisational structure.

> The state has
> power that meanse the peopel in the state have that power. Even if
> comunism was a system that made sence how could there be a check and
> ballance on those with the massive power that comunism gives them.

Precisely, and it shows in the body counts.

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:54:52 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
<pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:

> Your point? Ayn Rand is not the model of all libertarians and all
> libertarians are not like Ayn Rand.
>

She understood (to a limited degree) something the others didn't, which is
that the libertarian standard of freedom can be infringed by collective
action, even employing market mechanisms, if the dominant mentality didn't
change, in her words, by becoming thoroughly selfish as opposed to
altruistic.

My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
self-serving nature undermines socialist/communist institutions. Without
such a psychological revolution--as profound as "The great proletarian
cultural revolution" was intended to be-- eliminating most of the accrued
state functions would only be followed by these functions either devolving
to other collective entities or re-emerging.

Libertarians who deny this are mystified by the formal political state,
considering it somehow unique in its coercive potential, or they are
mystified by the use of political violence, not recognizing the coercive
potential of private monopolistic combination. Only if man's social nature
_could_ be banished could libertarianism be feasible in implementing its
anti-coercive ideals, because only the thoroughly self-seeking person
would renounce voluntary combination with others to secure their common
interests. Out of such combinations and the differing opportunities of
persons to form them arise disparities in power.

srd

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:13:10 -0800, Vngelis <mebe...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Thats what made them different from anarchists.
> One has to use what is available to fight the enemy. The eventual goal
> is the abolition of ministries ie when the cleaner can make important
> administrative decisions as any minister preceding him.
> The revolution needed to expand. It didn't. The old forms became
> institutionalised.
> A carbon copy of advanced capitalist countries, but without the social
> forms of property linked to them.

The lesson Lenin drew in The State and Revolution is that the working
class cannot use "what is available" to fight the enemy, but rather must
completely destroy the bourgeois state to exercise its rule. This did not
pertain to what would come with the spread of revolution and the advent of
socialism; those phases involved the withering away of the proletarian
state, not the introduction of its forms.

Note that the conclusion was surmised from the Paris Commune experience.
It didn't depend on the expansion of the revolution, because revolution in
Paris was far more isolated than the revolution in Russia and in addition
historically premature. The fact that Lenin argued from the Paris Commune
makes implausible any contention that he intended to portray an advanced
phase of workers rule. He spoke in The State and Revolution of
preconditions for the proletarian dictatorship, not its _eventual_ form.
In fact, it is clear from that work that Lenin thought proletarian
democracy would take its clearest form at the inception of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, when the most rigorous proletarian
democracy was most essential.

Have you seen ANY discussion from the Bolsheviks regarding the form that
should be taken by the initial proletarian state? Did any tendency
question the reflexive introduction of a sytem of ministries such as Lenin
had castigated as indelibly bourgeois?

srd

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:55:58 -0800, enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Let say that your job is to fill a hopper of flower. That hopper leads
> into a machine that makes bread. You may be making a million dollars
> of bread a year. Under Marx are you entittled to that million dollars
> that the breadis worth. Let say that machine cost five million dollars
> and it took twenty million to devlope. Arn't the people who built and
> devloped the machine entittled some of that profit? How about the
> person who took to risk to buy the machine having no gauintee of profit
> in a competitive market.

No, the labor theory of value acknowledges the indirect transmission of
value by the cost of capital. If it matters to you for anything besides
Internet chatter, you should get clearer on what it actually states. Marx
is extremely careful in the discussion about the transmission of value
from capital stock. Believe me, he does nothing nearly as stupid as you
accuse. What he does not allow as creating value is land or
entrepreneurship. As an economic theory, until you actually do something
with the constructs, it is purely a matter of definition. But as an
ethical theory it does not strike me as wacky, at least no more so than
most other ethical theories.

Here's why. If profits are necessary to stimulate innovation, innovation
become incommensurable with labor, both because of its greater need for a
different kind of prod (profits) and because the profits that accrue from
innovation bear little necessary relation to the preceeding sacrifices.
Making a lot of profits depends too much on luck, whether by favorable
events or favorable endowment. Because of their incommensurability to the
sacrifices of labor, profits seem to require special moral justification,
because, all else being equal, their allocation represents a departure
from justice. (This isn't my claim, but it is a fairly palatable rendition
of the actual logical implications of the labor theory of value. Whether
right or not, it is not in this form unreasonable.)

srd

[Michael Price]

Liam wrote:
> Fran wrote:
> > Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:
>
> [ snip ]
>
> > It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.
> >
> > > 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> > > doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
> > >
> >
> > No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
> > labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is
> > this that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way,
> > it must be swept aside.
> > >
> > > Ultra short:
> > >
> > > Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
> > >
> >
> > Ah, but you see, one can be both.
> >
> *sigh*
> Gods it's all ideology.
> Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.

How would the strong dominate the weak under libertarianism? They
have
no powerful state to back up their desires for domination and thus have
no
protection against alliances of large numbers of individually weak
people.
Far from being a fantasy the ability of consumers to protect themselves
with their money is far more realistic that the ability (or desire) of
government
to do so.

[Michael Price]

srd wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 09:42:21 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:
>
> > *sigh*
> > Gods it's all ideology.
> > Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> > change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> > Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> > more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> > the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
> > And the current state of capitalism isn't any better.
> > I keep thinking/wishing that if I know more about both, I can
> > objectively see the workability and feasibility of one or the
> > other...but from the words and opinions of other who are experts in
> > both, all I see is ideology.
> > =/
> >
> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming man's
> nature as a social animal. The latter point is probably less transparent
> than the former, but is equally true. If capitalists combine with one
> another to enforce their mutual interest, you have the rebirth of the
> interventionist state built in, and in the meanwhile, equally oppressive
> non-statist forms of oppression through combination.

But the expression of man's nature as a social animal in no way
requires
the State or indulging in State-like activities. You can get your fix
of
social interaction without the initiation of force, and that's what I
recommend
you do and what you probably do anyway.

>
> The lesson from comparison might be that designing social systems is the
> wrong way to promote progress. What's the alternative? Perhaps the key is
> the political system, not the social/economic system.

And exactly how do you propose to design a political system without
economic effects?

> If the civilized
> world has managed to agree that health care should be universal, has
> American failed to come to this conclusion because its purely political
> methods of conflict resolution remain in the 18th century;

Or because the "cilivised world" came to no such conclusion,
governments
came to that conclusion.

> because the
> morass of conflicting government entities and institutions "checking and
> balancing" each other leaves no room for the majority to exert its will
> and in the process to educate itself?
>
> srd

Why should the majority be allowed to enforce it's will? If it's
will is that
you hang would you be so enthusiastic about it's will?

[Michael Price]

srd wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:41:12 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
> <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
>
> >> In essence, communism requires the overcoming of man's nature as a
> >> self-serving individualist, while libertarianism requires overcoming
> >> man's
> >> nature as a social animal.
> > It does? Funny, I never noticed. Libertarianism does not seek to
> > overcome the market, which is ultimately a social phenomenon.
>
> The libertarian program doesn't demand that social "phenomena" be
> scuttled, only man's social *nature*. The market is constructed, in
> libertarian ideology, on the basis of purely self-interested strivings.

But there is nothing to say that some of those self-interested
strivings
are to satisfy one's social nature, and in fact many of said strivings
are.
For instance people strive to educate their children, form social
groups
of common interest etc.

> Of course the person most conscious of the need for "pure capitalism" to get
> rid of social motivation was clearest to Ayn Rand, for whom "altruism" was
> a swear word.
>

But her viewpoint characters and her sympathetic characters are all
intensely
social, in the right circumstances. None of her heroes or heroines in
asocial
or antisocial and none of them would make sense if you tried to make
them
so.

> From a realistic as opposed to ideological perspective, it may indeed be
> wondered, however, whether the market could survive the deletion of social
> motivation. The Prisoners' Dilemma seems to demonstrate that all
> cooperation ends when its benefits are appraised through purely
> self-serving motives, at least in sequential transactions, which are
> certainly necessary for commerce.
>

Well no, that's not what the Prisoner's Dilemma says at all,
particularly
in multiple games situations.

> srd

[Fran]

Liam wrote:
> Fran wrote:
> > Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:
>
> [ snip ]
>
> > It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.
> >
> > > 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> > > doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
> > >
> >
> > No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
> > labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is
> > this that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way,
> > it must be swept aside.
> > >
> > > Ultra short:
> > >
> > > Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
> > >
> >
> > Ah, but you see, one can be both.
> >

> *sigh*
> Gods it's all ideology.

Not sure what you mean by this

> Marxism requires a near utopian situation

Marxism requires nothing at all. It's a coherent set of ideas about the
sources of human conflict and collaboration and the relationship these
phenomena have to the actual human societies or the future line of
development.

Proletarian-run societies require, of course, a proletariat, which in
turn presupposes high levels of urbanisation, industrial development
and, since you can't eat industrial output, reaqdy access to an
agricultural surplus. I wouldn't describe this as utopian.

> that needs a fundamental
> change in human behavior in order to work...

No it doesn't. It requires a fundamental change in the organisation of
work and agency amongst humans. The relationship between the structures
through which power is exercised, its subjects, and the material world
is dynamic. Were it not so, no progress at all would be possible, since
the elite would never have an incentive to change, and change would be
impossible to effect from below.

The problem has been that the existing elites in the advanced
industrial societies have managed, Lenin to the contrary, to continue
to effect incremental change in the time since WW1. Lenin asserted that
in the age of imperialism, capitalism was at an impasse, and that no
substantial further reforms could be won from it. This turned out to be
manifestly wrong. Not only did it grant further reforms, but even the
structures through which the ruling classes of the first world traded
in labour changed. They managed to find new sources of sweated labour
to exploit -- primarily in the still industrialising world, and were
able to use these surpluses to enrich layers of their own proletariat,
allowing them to enter the 21st century in a position of political and
social strength viz-a-viz their own workingclasses.

The material conditions for prolterian societies exist in the first
world, but of course, the political conditions are absent, since most
working people of the first world have found little reason to consider
politics at all -- living as high on the hog as they do.

This situation cannot be sustained in the long run of course, and it's
at that time, if not a little sooner, when those of us who favour human
equality and freedom must step forward with analysis and solutions.

Fran

[Vngelis]

Lenin did try to destroy the bourgeois state. Erecting its forms when
the principle of capitalism was private property is a destruction of
the state for the state is the expression of the bourgeoisie. The
problem was that a ministry has to exist, ie the old form until a new
one replaces it. I do recall Trotsky stating when he assumed the
Foreign Ministry that we will issue a few resolutions and do away with
it.

If life were that simple. Most of the actual leaders of the Bolshevik
party were against the seizure of power and Lenin only achieved a
majority for it on the 10th October. A discussion of the form the
initial proletarian state should take didn't occur, even by Lenin. Dont
you think only a few of them believed in outright victory?
>
> srd

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

Michael Price <nini...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Liam wrote:
> > Fran wrote:
> > > Peter Bjørn Perlsø wrote:
> >
> > [ snip ]
> >
> > > It argues for humans to be the measure of all things.
> > >
> > > > 3) it believes that all evils of man is attributed to capitalism, and
> > > > doing away with capitalism thus does away with all evils of men.
> > > >
> > >
> > > No, it argues that material scarcity, and the imposition of alienating
> > > labour is an obstacle to human freedom and self-awareness, and it is
> > > this that must be overcome. In so far as capitalism stands in the way,
> > > it must be swept aside.
> > > >
> > > > Ultra short:
> > > >
> > > > Marxism is nuttery, while libertarianism is a pretty smart thing.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Ah, but you see, one can be both.
> > >
> > *sigh*
> > Gods it's all ideology.
> > Marxism requires a near utopian situation that needs a fundamental
> > change in human behavior in order to work...but if it did work, great!
> > Libertarianism is more of a natural progression of human behavior and
> > more realistic, but it's a playground for the strong dominating over
> > the weak with a fantasy of consumer check and balance over power.
>
> How would the strong dominate the weak under libertarianism?

If you follow the run-o-the-mill leftist claims, they would supposedly
due this because "they" own a majority of the capital in society, but
this neglects the considertion that money and capital is not power, but
authority, and those things are not the same.

> They
> have
> no powerful state to back up their desires for domination and thus have
> no
> protection against alliances of large numbers of individually weak
> people.
> Far from being a fantasy the ability of consumers to protect themselves
> with their money is far more realistic that the ability (or desire) of
> government
> to do so.

I as a consumer have the power that would make shopkeepers that
misbihave shit their pants many times over.

A dissattified customer that spreads the word of bad behavior on teh
part of a shotowners is a nightmare for the latter.

[Peter Bjørn Perlsø]

Fran <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > that needs a fundamental
> > change in human behavior in order to work...
>
> No it doesn't. It requires a fundamental change in the organisation of
> work and agency amongst humans.

Correction, a fundamental *utopian* change in how societyal organisation
is.

Please consider how Marx dictated that money be abolished, and how Lenin
fared when he tried this in early USSR.

[mechp...@gmail.com]

[ snip ]

> This situation cannot be sustained in the long run of course, and it's
> at that time, if not a little sooner, when those of us who favour human
> equality and freedom must step forward with analysis and solutions.

Well, I said it before and I'll say it again, I barely know anything
about Marxism. I've been introduced to it through a professor, I've
read the Wikipedia entries, I've read Web sites, and I've started
trying to read Das Kapital. And all I know is that it feels like what
little bit I've learned is probably not enough to even begin to form an
opinion.

But, what it seem like so far, and what prompts me to say Marxism
requires a near utopia to work and fundamental changes in human
behavior, is because at this moment human nature IS to be greedy and
focus on self-interest.

Now, I'm not sating that's an inherent, permanent nature! I don't know.
I'll grant that it's a changeable nature. It can evolve and shift and
humans in general may one day be truly altruistic, but right now,
humans will in general do as little work as possible to get as much as
possible for themselves (or at best, their immediate family or people
they really care about.) For Marxism to work naturally and without a
Soviet/China style dictatorship, the fundamental nature of humanity
will need to change. And that doesn't seem remotely possible any time
soon. Worker's revolution or not.

There are people who favor world equality and whatnot. There are
exceptions to the generalization. But until most humans are willing to
work hard for no direct renumeration (money, which can be traded for
entertainment and commodities,) Marxism will fail. You could wipe out
all money today, you could magically eliminate all money, all stocks,
all exchange markets, and basic (even if changeable) human nature will
still seek to hoard what it can, find some way to exchange symbols of
wealth for things one wants, create symbols of wealth in order to
separate themselves from other people as being "better," and find ways
to work as little as possible--the rest of humanity be darned.

That may be cynical of me, but it's based on what I see and experience
in people. There are exceptions, sure. But in general, it's just not
going to happen.

I haven't read it yet, but supposedly Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars
Trilogy" is a set of novels that as a backdrop to the story shows the
development of a socialist Mars. I think that's about the only way a
Marxist society could develop, if all the altruistic people of the
world literally left and founded a world that is not connected to a
capitalist society in any way, in which they would still have to use
money and commodities to deal with the rest of the world/humanity.
But, that would be "utopia" wouldn't it?

In reality, I suppose if some terrible, horrible, world-wide
catastrophe were to occur that basically wiped out the financial system
of the world and the wealth structure, changes could begin to occur.
Or, the worst would be magnified. Global warming leads to famine and
plagues. Humanity could become shocked out of complacency, money would
come to have less value, people would begin to work together for the
common good. Or, humanity fixates on hording wealth and goods, those
with money isolate and protect themselves instead of spreading the
wealth and helping others, and pockets of anarchy form instead of
collective efforts.

Based on how humans are today, I think the latter is more likely to
occur.

[anathrax15]

Liam wrote:

> That sounds great, but is it possible? I don't think so; not in a
> real world. Corporations do a lot of things in secret that people
> don't know about. Corporations by their very nature will strive to
> eliminate competition and prevent the people from having a choice in
> patronizing someone else for similar goods or services, or prevent
> people from being able to start new competing companies. Plus, there
> are industries that the average person simply can't make informed
> decisions about, such as pharmaceuticals. We can see this all over the
> place with the difference between FDA approved medicine and the
> non-regulated herbal remedy stuff. The industry of herbal and holistic
> remedies that aren't regulated is fraught with fraud and cheats and
> fakery and snake oil. And the profit margin on all that fakery from
> herbal cold cures to memory boosters is ridiculously high while they do
> nothing, while FDA regulated pharmaceuticals do work. Period. And
> despite what people think, the profit the companies get from drugs is
> much smaller that what people are making by sticking dried herbs into a
> capsule with no research & development costs and yet not having any
> real measurable medical effect. Known libertarian Drew Carey on flaming
> libertarian Penn Jillette's radio show expressed that he wants to be
> able to just walk into a store and buy Lipitor as he needs it. And
> I'm thinking, how can we trust people to get good and right
> information from unregulated companies that only care about profit in a
> very very specialized industry where it's extremely difficult to get
> good and proper information? I guess you can say caveat emptor, but
> we're also talking about parents getting medicine and healthcare for
> their kids. I can't even imagine the idea of having to treat my
> wife's life-long and chronic multiple-connective tissue disorder in
> an environment where the companies are unregulated and will do
> everything possible to take advantage of being regulated only by
> whether customers will buy your product or not. We could still rely on
> our doctors' advice, but with even less to no regulation, they will
> be even bigger shills for the pharm companies and will promote whoever
> they're getting money from.

This is one thing that comes under fire when referring to libertarians.
Economic libertarianism is pretty much the abolition of government
regulation in the economy with very few exceptions (regulation of
natural monopolies, providing public goods, etc). One of the first
things nay-sayers come to is 'what about the 'important' government
regulatory agencies? The FDA is the common one that comes to mind.
Many people are willing to give the goverment more power to the
government if it means their food and medicine will be 'safe'.
Libertarians then say that the private market would take care of the
FDA's job just fine, which I happen to agree with. We all know that
the private sector handles almost anything better than a government
agency would. The question is how would it work? My guess is that
private companies would take over the job of the FDA. For the food
industry for example, restaurants would pay to have the most trusted,
efficient, and effective private food industry's stamp of approval on
their food. The public would determine the the validity and trust of
the companys. Whatever company becomes the most trusted and valued,
would be the most effective regulator of food safety. This is similar
to how S&P rates bonds on Wall Street. No one would take S&P seriously
if thier bond grades weren't accurate. Similar to if a private drug
agency endorsed useless herbs and remedies, they would not be taken
seriously, and thus people would be essentially using these drugs at
their own risk. Also keep in mind if this were to happen, the FDA
would not just disapear overnight and a flood of new private business
opened the next day. A process like this would take time.

[enki]

> Here's why. If profits are necessary to stimulate innovation, innovation
> become incommensurable with labor, both because of its greater need for a
> different kind of prod (profits) and because the profits that accrue from
> innovation bear little necessary relation to the preceeding sacrifices.
> Making a lot of profits depends too much on luck, whether by favorable
> events or favorable endowment. Because of their incommensurability to the
> sacrifices of labor, profits seem to require special moral justification,
> because, all else being equal, their allocation represents a departure
> from justice. (This isn't my claim, but it is a fairly palatable rendition
> of the actual logical implications of the labor theory of value. Whether
> right or not, it is not in this form unreasonable.)
>
> srd

You call it luck it may be. Still you can't get luckey if you don't
play. Economic systems are large and complex. If you are going to
devlope a product you don't know unitl you try if the idea will
translate into a marketable product. You can reduce this risk through
work. That is you can do market analysis or understand the principles
of what you are trying to do. Today it is obvious how a stem engine
works but why did it take fout rthousand years of history for people to
build on especially it technology was known for two thousand years?
Somone had to accumilate the resources and have the idea then make it
work.

Today we have ever increasing powerful information technology that is
increasing productivity. That risk and luck is being redused by
getting a better objective picture of markets and managment.

There is a difference between luck and methodical approach to a goal.
If I mixed household products in my bathtub and I cured cancer, that
would be luck. But a company investing in scientists for fifty years
through trial and error and understanding the principles of science
that would be research. Calling success or failure purly luck realy
degredes the efforts of people who are successful. There is no
guarintee that somthing will be successful but there are things you can
do that will increase the odds. Getting a degree in engineering or
managment will make it far more likley you will get a good job than if
you spend your life on drugs or have kids when you are in your teens.
I am sure that there are people with advanced degrees who can't find
work and druggies that do well in life. Run the numbers you will find
that those behaviors significantly affect how you will don in life
financially.

We have an intellecet we can learn the behaviors and methods to
succcess and avoid those that lead to failure. You can desire success
and learn and work towards it you can still desire success and not
engage in the behaviors those behaviors. Finally you might not care to
succeed and you might not be productive enough to meet your own needs.

[srd]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:57:48 -0800, enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Calling success or failure purly luck realy
> degredes the efforts of people who are successful.

That's why only people who are get to do it. <g.>

> There is a difference between luck and methodical approach to a goal.
> If I mixed household products in my bathtub and I cured cancer, that
> would be luck. But a company investing in scientists for fifty years
> through trial and error and understanding the principles of science
> that would be research. Calling success or failure purly luck realy
> degredes the efforts of people who are successful.

I think you may be missing the distinction I'm trying to draw. If I run a
research laboratory, I can hire scientists to run it. They do work and are
paid according to the work they do. Since the laboratory is essentially
run by employees, it could be run by the government. Obviously, some labs
are. So what does the owner add, and what is the function of rewarding the
owner with a profit? Presumably, the owners (or some of them) are involved
in high-level decision-making, including which scientists to employ at the
highest level of management and which opportunities to pursue, where the
scientific merits are equal. Such grasping of opportunity, some hold, is
performed better by someone with a financial stake in the process, because
there are no rules that guarantee success. Pure luck will almost always be
insufficient, but many investments, even when guided by the highest levels
of skill, will not be successful.

To the extent that productivity results from following rules--no matter
how sophisticated--the activity involved is a form of labor. When
discussing profits qua profits, you need to exclude those activities that
may be performed better for a salary. Those are the activities where a
strong relationship exists between the sacrifices needed and the rewards
afforded. Where entrepreneurship is the dominant facet of the activity,
skill is of course a necessary condition for success. But it is so far
from sufficient that when the reward is considered relative to the
sacrifice entailed, startling disproportions may obtain.

srd

[srd]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:02:54 -0800, Vngelis <mebe...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> If life were that simple. Most of the actual leaders of the Bolshevik
> party were against the seizure of power and Lenin only achieved a
> majority for it on the 10th October. A discussion of the form the
> initial proletarian state should take didn't occur, even by Lenin. Dont
> you think only a few of them believed in outright victory?

What about the ensuing months? Lenin published the companion to "The State
and Revolution," "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegate Kautsky," in
November 1918. Why didn't he use the opportunity to discuss the problems
actually implementing the measure "The State and Revolution" called for?

srd

[Vngelis]

srd wrote:

How to maintain state power became the overriding priority with regards
to the invasion of Russia by German and British imperialism.

They ended up in the same trap as Kerensky. One cannot suspend oneself
from the international dimension. Theoretically one can do everything,
but in practice it would mean harakiri literally.

They did create new ministries though. The ministry of planning-gosplan
in peacetime as opposed to the imperialists who only remember it in
wartime...

I agree with what you say but humans are given a certain set of
conditions to operate with. Lenins ideals in the State and Revolution
are a blueprint even in embryonic form for the future.

[srd]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:56:53 -0800, Fran <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> that needs a fundamental
>> change in human behavior in order to work...
> No it doesn't. It requires a fundamental change in the organisation of
> work and agency amongst humans. The relationship between the structures
> through which power is exercised, its subjects, and the material world
> is dynamic. Were it not so, no progress at all would be possible, since
> the elite would never have an incentive to change, and change would be
> impossible to effect from below.

Most people most of the time throughout history have labored primarily for
material reward. Communism entails the abolition of material rewards for
labor. More than that, it entails the abolition of material rewards for
anything, since goods are hypothesized as freely available to everyone.
And you, Spider, want to say that no fundamental change in human behavior
is required. You are a shallow Spider indeed! You weave, "It requires a

fundamental change in the organisation of

> work and agency amongst humans," as if that answers the point, as if a
> fundamental change in the organization of work, such that it is
> accomplished for reasons unrelated to material wants, does not in turn
> require a fundamental change in "behavior," or to avoid triviality, in
> _mentality_.

Marx early on said work would become a means of expressing man's
relationship to the material world and to other men. (This is meant to
include women and even Spiders.) Is not a person who works for these
reasons a different kind of person than those living today? Would
expressing their relationship to the material world and to other men be a
sufficient motive to impel significant work by most people today? I think
the best you could say, Spider, is that you don't know (although that
statement does not come easy to a Spider.) So either there's a necessary
change in mentality or we simply don't know whether the human material
will bear the weight of this system.

I think many communists would be unphased were they forced to conclude
that the evolution of society could go only as far as Stage 1 Communism
(or Socialism proper). But socialism proper is really a midpoint between
communism and the proletarian dictatorship. If communism were deemed
impossible, it is not immediately evidence that the evolution from the d
of p to socialism would plausibly proceed unaffected. But an unending d of
p might be unappealing to many.

> The problem has been that the existing elites in the advanced
> industrial societies have managed, Lenin to the contrary, to continue
> to effect incremental change in the time since WW1. Lenin asserted that
> in the age of imperialism, capitalism was at an impasse, and that no
> substantial further reforms could be won from it.

Lenin didn't merely "assert" this. He believed he proved it. Does it ever
happen that you, Spider, actually change your opinions when a pet theory
is empirically disconfirmed?

srd

[jmh]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:13:23 GMT, srd in talk.politics.libertarian
confessed to the world saying:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:54:52 -0800, "Peter Bjrn Perls"

><pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
>
>
>> Your point? Ayn Rand is not the model of all libertarians and all
>> libertarians are not like Ayn Rand.
>>
> She understood (to a limited degree) something the others didn't, which is
> that the libertarian standard of freedom can be infringed by collective
> action, even employing market mechanisms, if the dominant mentality didn't
> change, in her words, by becoming thoroughly selfish as opposed to
> altruistic.
>
> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's

You're going to have to elaborate on that claim. "The Market",
freedom of contract or association, recognition that one's rights
only have meaning in the context of other people (Crusoe without
Friday has no need of any rights) to place limits on one's scope of
action, custom and it's basis in establishing law...

The only thing in libertarian social insititutions that cuts against
"social man" is the assumption that the individual can legitimately
be sacrified by society for the "greater good". The individualistic
approach requires that the individual make the choice to sacrifice
him- or herself for others rather than the reverse. The collective
view is that some meta entitty and will exists that can legitimately
sacrifice one of it's parts.

jm

[jmh]

On 18 Dec 2006 12:56:41 -0800, anathrax15 in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:
>

> Liam wrote:
>
>> That sounds great, but is it possible? I don't think so; not in a
>> real world. Corporations do a lot of things in secret that people
>> don't know about. Corporations by their very nature will strive to
>> eliminate competition and prevent the people from having a choice in
>> patronizing someone else for similar goods or services, or prevent
>> people from being able to start new competing companies. Plus, there
>> are industries that the average person simply can't make informed
>> decisions about, such as pharmaceuticals. We can see this all over the
>> place with the difference between FDA approved medicine and the
>> non-regulated herbal remedy stuff. The industry of herbal and holistic
>> remedies that aren't regulated is fraught with fraud and cheats and
>> fakery and snake oil. And the profit margin on all that fakery from

And yet we see a petition from the scientific community that
apparently works within the FDA testing and certification
complaining about the politiciation of science and information.

I wonder (especially looking at the crap that's approved and
advertized on TV) it it's as one sided as you suggest.

>> herbal cold cures to memory boosters is ridiculously high while they do
>> nothing, while FDA regulated pharmaceuticals do work. Period. And
>> despite what people think, the profit the companies get from drugs is
>> much smaller that what people are making by sticking dried herbs into a
>> capsule with no research & development costs and yet not having any
>> real measurable medical effect. Known libertarian Drew Carey on flaming
>> libertarian Penn Jillette's radio show expressed that he wants to be
>> able to just walk into a store and buy Lipitor as he needs it. And
>> I'm thinking, how can we trust people to get good and right
>> information from unregulated companies that only care about profit in a
>> very very specialized industry where it's extremely difficult to get
>> good and proper information? I guess you can say caveat emptor, but

1) Their compitition will certainly be all over any bad product
2) Consumer Reports, UL, Good Housekeeping, other similar
3) "caveat epmtor" as you say but that's also just some common sense
and bothering to ask questions, do a little research of your own
(which is a lot easier today than 20 years ago)
4) legal remedies -- all these huge product liability awards
come from juries not legislation.

Might be able to do it easier than it seem FDA is already using several
private labs to do the research and produce a finding (and then sometimes
the FDA will ignore it--I assume--and so the petition mentioned above).

jmh

[enki]

I support liberitiarinsm over socialm but I am no purist. There are
things that government should do although minimal. Roads fire
protection police and army are some that come quickly to mind. What
most people see is the weath generated from a business but they often
don't see that they get products for much lower cost. I would take a
20% pay cut if my expences went down 30%. That is a problem wit state
owned enterprises is that they often focus on distributing the profit
for social good not what socal good the lower cost does.

After working in government, I find that it is very wastful and
inifficient. It is dificult to judge success because no profit is made
and there is no competition for what is done. The government may not
be the best way to do some things but you don't want to contract our
your army.

[Michael Price]

It also ignores the fact that the structure of capital and money
imposes
costs on not using it to satisfy consumers. You can certainly use your
money to make things bad for people, but keep doing it and you're going
to have a lot less money.

>
>
> > They have no powerful state to back up their desires for domination
> > and thus have no protection against alliances of large numbers of
> > individually weak people. Far from being a fantasy the ability of
> > consumers to protect themselves with their money is far more
> > realistic that the ability (or desire) of government to do so.
>
> I as a consumer have the power that would make shopkeepers that
> misbihave shit their pants many times over.
>

> A dissattified customer that spreads the word of bad behavior on the

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:56:53 -0800, Fran <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> that needs a fundamental
> >> change in human behavior in order to work...
> > No it doesn't. It requires a fundamental change in the organisation of
> > work and agency amongst humans. The relationship between the structures
> > through which power is exercised, its subjects, and the material world
> > is dynamic. Were it not so, no progress at all would be possible, since
> > the elite would never have an incentive to change, and change would be
> > impossible to effect from below.
>
> Most people most of the time throughout history have labored primarily for
> material reward. Communism entails the abolition of material rewards for
> labor. More than that, it entails the abolition of material rewards for
> anything, since goods are hypothesized as freely available to everyone.
> And you, Spider, want to say that no fundamental change in human behavior
> is required. You are a shallow Spider indeed! You weave, "It requires a
> fundamental change in the organisation of
> > work and agency amongst humans," as if that answers the point, as if a
> > fundamental change in the organization of work, such that it is
> > accomplished for reasons unrelated to material wants, does not in turn
> > require a fundamental change in "behavior," or to avoid triviality, in
> > _mentality_.
>

What is the point of comunism if there is no material reward? For the
past few hundred years people have strove to be more productive mostly
for personal gain and that increase in productivity has benifited the
vast majority of people alive. If there is no personal gain then all
of our activities should be focused on what we need to survive. Grow
enough food so that we each get the minimun calories a day and what we
need to maintain our body tempiture.

How terrible a life with no personal reward.

[Fran]

That's often the way with new things.

> But, what it seem like so far, and what prompts me to say Marxism
> requires a near utopia to work and fundamental changes in human
> behavior, is because at this moment human nature IS to be greedy and
> focus on self-interest.
>

Can you see the contradiction in your last claim? "Human nature" can't
be anything "at this moment". It's either the same for all time or the
phenomena you put under the rubric "human nature" must be something
else. Humans are neither inherently "greedy" nor inherently altruistic.
Human behaviour and consciousness is the result of the complex
interplay of one's intellectual attributes and one's social settings.
>From the moment one first draws breath, one begins a long and complex
journey towards self-awareness, constrained or facilitated by one's
social and physical setting and one's mental capacity for processing
what they perceive of these settings.

The concept "human nature" describes nothing useful, and is most often
advanced as an argument for the existing social order.

> Now, I'm not sating that's an inherent, permanent nature!

It's implicit.

> I don't know.
> I'll grant that it's a changeable nature. It can evolve and shift and
> humans in general may one day be truly altruistic,

then it wouldn't *be* nature. The word "nature" is about what one
carries from birth.

> but right now,
> humans will in general do as little work as possible to get as much as
> possible for themselves (or at best, their immediate family or people
> they really care about.)

Again, can you see the tension in your "or". Why do people care about
getting anything at all for their immediate family? Why should they
"really care about" anyone, if it's all about them alone?

Humans seek to gratify themselves. We seek pleasure, which requires
freedom and work is almost always an imposition on freedom. Humans of
course, can make little sense of either freedom or pleasure unless they
know themselves and can understand their own possibilities. It would be
damn near impossible for any human to fathom such things on their own,
and still less to have the freedom to consider enjoying any of it
without the free collaboration of others, and so most of us seek out
fellow travellers -- people who can join us on our journey, who seem to
share at least our immediate interests, and who have an intrinsic
reason to collaborate. And we cannot begin to define and identify such
fellow travellers except through trials arising out of common activity,
and through self-reflection.

Humans certainly want to maximise their scope for free activity, but
few of us want to be truly alone for any substantial period of time,
and many who lose or are denied meaningful work suffer grievously as a
consequence -- and not merely because they are materially worse off. We
learn and grow through interaction with our fellows, and are by and
large happiest when we feel ourselves to be amongst those who share our
interests. Material wealth facilitates freedom and thus happiness, but
it's not a sufficient condition. People fantasise about wealth in the
way they fantasise about heaven, or one day being a sporting hero or
celebrity. In the end, what they really want is to understand who they
are so that they can be amongst those who are their peers.

> For Marxism to work naturally and without a
> Soviet/China style dictatorship, the fundamental nature of humanity
> will need to change. And that doesn't seem remotely possible any time
> soon. Worker's revolution or not.
>
> There are people who favor world equality and whatnot. There are
> exceptions to the generalization. But until most humans are willing to
> work hard for no direct renumeration (money, which can be traded for
> entertainment and commodities,) Marxism will fail. You could wipe out
> all money today, you could magically eliminate all money, all stocks,
> all exchange markets, and basic (even if changeable) human nature will
> still seek to hoard what it can, find some way to exchange symbols of
> wealth for things one wants, create symbols of wealth in order to
> separate themselves from other people as being "better," and find ways
> to work as little as possible--the rest of humanity be darned.
>

The question is not a moral one, but a practical one. How will all of
the goods and services that the 6 billion people on the planet need to
live a sustainable and dignified existence be produced and equitably
delivered? What is the most efficient, equitable and effective means of
ensuring that the burden of labour required for this is met and the
product of that labour distributed?

Try answering that question.

Fran

[mechp...@gmail.com]

Fran wrote:
> mechp...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Fran wrote:
> > > Liam wrote:
> > > > Fran wrote:

[ snip ]

> > But, what it seem like so far, and what prompts me to say Marxism
> > requires a near utopia to work and fundamental changes in human
> > behavior, is because at this moment human nature IS to be greedy and
> > focus on self-interest.
> >
>
> Can you see the contradiction in your last claim? "Human nature" can't
> be anything "at this moment". It's either the same for all time or the
> phenomena you put under the rubric "human nature" must be something
> else. Humans are neither inherently "greedy" nor inherently altruistic.
> Human behaviour and consciousness is the result of the complex
> interplay of one's intellectual attributes and one's social settings.
> From the moment one first draws breath, one begins a long and complex
> journey towards self-awareness, constrained or facilitated by one's
> social and physical setting and one's mental capacity for processing
> what they perceive of these settings.
>
> The concept "human nature" describes nothing useful, and is most often
> advanced as an argument for the existing social order.
>
> > Now, I'm not sating that's an inherent, permanent nature!
>
> It's implicit.

OK, we're arguing semantics here. You're parsing hairs with my use of
the word "nature" and ignoring the concept I'm describing. I may need
to find a better word than "nature" to express what I'm trying to say,
but your exposure of my evident misuse of the word "nature" doesn't
address the topic at hand.
Let me restate what I said then in a way that may use a more
appropriate word:

But, what it seem like so far, and what prompts me to say Marxism
requires a near utopia to work and fundamental changes in human

behavior, is because at this moment generalized and seemingly basic
human behavior IS to be greedy and
focus on self-interest.
Now, I'm not sating that's an inherent, permanent generalized and
seemingly basic human behavior!

> > I don't know.
> > I'll grant that it's a changeable nature. It can evolve and shift and
> > humans in general may one day be truly altruistic,
>
> then it wouldn't *be* nature. The word "nature" is about what one
> carries from birth.

Restate:
I don't know.
I'll grant that it's a changeable generalized and seemingly basic human
behavior. It can evolve and shift and humans in general may one day be
truly altruistic,

> > but right now,

> > humans will in general do as little work as possible to get as much as
> > possible for themselves (or at best, their immediate family or people
> > they really care about.)
>
> Again, can you see the tension in your "or". Why do people care about
> getting anything at all for their immediate family? Why should they
> "really care about" anyone, if it's all about them alone?

Maybe because humans are more complex than can be described using false
extremes and faulty generalizations.
We can make certain general observations about general human behavior
and yes, nature. But certainly any generalization must allow for
individual exceptions and exceptions for specific circumstances.
Evolutionarily it makes perfect sense for humans to be self-serving in
general, but altruistic at certain times and conditions for the benefit
of their offspring. That's biology. Psychologically, most humans may
also find it advantageous to be predominately self-serving but
altruistic on occasion and certain circumstances toward those
immediately around them (family and friends.) Also, some individuals
may be expressing an evolutionarily biologically designed capacity to
be altruistic toward the species in general which explains some people
being very socially aware and charity minded. It may be advantageous to
the species as designed by evolution.
Is that "nature" or some kind of default inherent behavior? I don't
know. If being self-serving is a biological imperative and thus
"nature," because of that word we've applied to it we assume it's
unchanging. But, we know that certain behaviors that may be innate,
either as individuals or a species, does change over time. Because
evolution is changing that default innate behavior, can we not call
that "nature"? Maybe it is general human nature to be selfish and
self-serving and self-involved...but be cause we're applying the word
"nature" to this phenomena does that preclude that it's changeable?
Over time, proper conditions...evolutionarily? And what if we chose to
enact behavior that is contrary to our "nature," that benefits the
species as a whole, would that not cause slight alterations in the
evolutionary changes in human "nature"?
The words we use try to explain and describe reality--they don't MAKE
reality. So because we call something "nature" doesn't make what we're
describing conform to the definition.

I don't know. Ergo, I'm blogging and posting to newsgroups those very
concerns and questions.
=)

[srd]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:55:26 -0800, Fran <Fran...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Humans are neither inherently "greedy" nor inherently altruistic.
> Human behaviour and consciousness is the result of the complex
> interplay of one's intellectual attributes and one's social settings.

This was not Trotsky's view. For instance, Trotsky wrote that competition
was inherent in the human psyche. He believed socialism would find new
directions for competitive impulses. He didn't deny the existence of human
nature in this sense. Trotsky also expressed considerable admiration for
Freud in his efforts to map what was in essence "human nature."

Spider, you are constantly posting what you believe true, but never why
anyone else should believe it. Here you tell the world that YOU think
human nature is not inherently greedy or altruistic. Yet anthropologists
universally find evidence of both greed and altruism in all extant
societies, even those that try to ban the corresponding conduct. The truth
is that, as usual, you are not merely wrong but 100% wrong. While you
claim human nature is neither greedy nor altruistic, the overwhelming
evidence is that it is BOTH greedy AND altruistic.

One might think that self-professed "dialecticians" would have greater
tolerance of the highly "contradictory" character of selfhood. Rather,
they are so flummoxed by contradiction that their response to encountering
it is to deny not only the contradicting predicates but their entire
substrate, "human nature."

Perhaps the existence of a "contradictory" human nature is the ultimate
reason for the intellectual and practical failures of systems that
attempt to specify the ideal form of social arrangements (in
contradistinction to what I am coming to think is the real direction for
social progress, the perfection of the _political_ framework.

srd

[Frank Clarke]

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 02:35:51 GMT, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
<slrneoejsf...@apex.localdomain>

>The only thing in libertarian social insititutions that cuts against
>"social man" is the assumption that the individual can legitimately
>be sacrified by society for the "greater good".

Did I read this wrong? You're saying there's a "libertarian social institution"
somwhere that holds an "individual can legitimately be sacrified by society" for
any reason?

Where?

(change Arabic number to Roman numeral to email)

[Bernard Curry]

On 15 Dec 2006 10:18:48 -0800, "Liam" <ne...@celticbear.com>
wrote:

>I recently posted to my personal blog some of my understanding of the
>positives, and the problems, with both libertarianism and Marxism.
>(I've been a libertarian for some time, but am currently studying
>Marxism.)
>As an ultra-beginner to both theories, I could use a lot of feedback on
>my barely existent understanding of both.
>I'd appreciate comments on the blog (you have to create a
>1st-post-moderated account to avoid spam,) but I'd be more than happy
>to read any feedback provided here.
>Thanks for any replies!
>--Liam

"Socialism" is doctrine re structuring society so men can
live convivially. "Marxism" is socioeconomic doctrine re
structuring of production within society. Society exists
before societal production exists so "socialism" subsumes or
is super-ordinate to "marxism".

To grasp the relativity between "socialism" and "marxism"
one needs grasp that "socialism" is of two main kinds: 1)
"authoritarianism", i.e. belief in using force and deceit
through Government to structure society including the
economy. And 2) "libertarianism", i.e. belief in using agape
(compassion) and truth in structuring society including the
economy.

In libertarian society a Body Politic (BP)is vested with use
of force and deceit to prevent their use between citizens.
The BP is not a _Government_ because libertarians
voluntarily use truth and agape in their relation with other
libertarians. In libertarian society the BP is a State.

Force and deceit are vested in the BP so that, as its
essential and sole function, the BP can control (govern)
asocial, anarchical men within society. (Libertarians need
not be governed.) Societal problems rise because
authoritarian use, for their own benefit, the force and
deceit of the BP as Government. So doing is rule by man in
the guise of rule by law and is why, as an economy grows,
the landed and moneyed gentry get richer while the people
get poorer.

Just as "socialism" is of two opposite kinds so economic
"isms" are of two opposite kinds. "Marxism" is the opposite
of "fascism" and both are subordinate to _authoritarian_
"socialism".

The same applies to "libertarianism" but the names in
customary usage for the opposite kinds of libertarian
"socialism" are inappropriate. Indeed, authoritarians
_refuse_ to differentiate between authoritarian and
libertarian "socialism" and libertarians let them. The
latter is customarily signified as free enterprise, free
market, laissez faire, etc. More appropriate words are
"individualism" and "corporatism".

In the foregoing, the words in quotes signify concepts of
perfectness that exists only within our minds. Although we
conceive perfectness it never exists in material reality.
Any material phenomenon is a _synthesis_ of opposites.

Important is that, though we cannot achieve perfectness, we
_can_ change a phenomenon _toward_ perfect. That is the
process of perfection.

Society is the opposite of asociety and is a synthesis of
"archism" (socialism) versus "anarchism" ("asocialism"). Our
society as a whole is a synthesis of "authoritarianism" and
"libertarianism". The U.S. now is a synthesis of
authoritarian "communism"/fascism" and libertarian
"corporatism"/"individualism". The landed and moneyed gentry
is moving us (quite rapidly) back toward "authoritarianism"
on the scale of synthesis between them.

The foregoing is based on a logical process based on sets of
three and pairs of opposites that I signify as _dialection_.
The words enclosed with quotes are pairs of opposites. Any
material phenomenon is on a scale of synthesis between
opposites. Every opposite is both end and start of both a
scale of synthesis and a dialectic.

Karl Marx attempted to use dialectics (his _historical
dialectic_ and _dialectical materialism_) but he was not
able to use it properly.

Reactively or purposively, Marx helped create the biggest of
all social hoaxes of the people by the gentry.

Bernard Curry

***********************
>Blog:
>http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/
><http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2006/12/13/on-marxism-and-libertarianism/>
***********************

************************************************************************

The eternal vigil that is the price of liberty is a vigil against
authority that begins within ourselves as individuals and within
the groups to which we belong.--Bernard Curry

************************************************************************

Email : bc...@ispwest.com
******************************************************

[srd]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:

>> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
>> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
>> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
>> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's

> You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.

The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
secure their common interests."

I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
combination. As long as people tend to combine with other people to obtain
their common interests (as against the interest of others, outside the
combination or whose influence within the combination is weak), whatever
evils libertarians identify in state action will continue to exist, even
if the state is abolished, as long as the combinatorial propensity
continues to exist. It is this combinatorial tendency that I mostly
identify with man's "social nature."

A less hypothetical but also less perspicuous a point--just as Marxists
have never instituted communism, libertarians have never succeeded in
getting their program adopted. (If it ever existed historically, it was in
medieval Iceland!) Despite mammoth political efforts to decrease the size
of government, it has expanded, even under economic semi-libertarian
politicians. The human social instinct apparently makes it so impossible
to institute or maybe even to relatively approach libertarianism.

> The only thing in libertarian social insititutions that cuts against
> "social man" is the assumption that the individual can legitimately
> be sacrified by society for the "greater good". The individualistic
> approach requires that the individual make the choice to sacrifice
> him- or herself for others rather than the reverse. The collective
> view is that some meta entitty and will exists that can legitimately
> sacrifice one of it's parts.

OK, there you have it. Let's provisionally define "libertarianism," qua
social system, as a society where no one is sacrificed for the good of the
group. Then my counter-claim is that libertarians will never be successful
in instituting such a system: groups will always find ways to coerce
individuals to sacrifice in their interest. We can provisionally
operationalize "communism" as a society in which *everyone* is sacrifice
for the good of the group: where no one obtains or retains any resources
except where his so doing increases the net benefits of the group as a
whole. (This doesn't correspond to what most communists actually advocate,
but is the logically consistent expression of their position. It is, in
fact, what I subscribed to as a commie.)

So the difference between communism and libertarianism maps pretty cleanly
to the distinction between utilitarianism and Kantianism in ethics. These
competing ethical orientations actually seem to project the altruistic and
egoistic orientations of human nature. Neither can triumph, because with
respect to human nature, each is a partial truth.

srd

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
> >> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
> >> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
> >> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
> >> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
>
> > You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.
>
> The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
> self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
> secure their common interests."
>
> I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
> combination. As long as people tend to combine with other people to obtain
> their common interests (as against the interest of others, outside the
> combination or whose influence within the combination is weak), whatever
> evils libertarians identify in state action will continue to exist, even
> if the state is abolished, as long as the combinatorial propensity
> continues to exist. It is this combinatorial tendency that I mostly
> identify with man's "social nature."
>

am I understanding this the idea is a statless society. That is not
possible because some people do bad things to each other. These few
people can disrupt the lives of many people to where they would have to
come together to form defence and there is the basis of the state. The
problem with comunism is people have the desire to have the maximum
reward for the least effort. To live and to have the things we want we
have work to transform nature into things we want. In modern times a
few inventors and managers have brough is incredible advances in the
way we live and they did for personal reward very few have created for
social good. It takes more work to lead than to actually do the work
yourself. It is not to hard to do your best but it is much thougher to
get others to do their best. If leadership is not worth the effort few
people will engage in it.

Still there is loss of resources because force has to be used to keep
people from from not doing work for personal benifit on their own time.
There is a problem of in comunism of checking the power of the people
who control the system. In a free market, you just don't buy from
businesses you don't like or if they don't satisfy you. I can't
imagine a statless society that is not chaotic. I am not saying that
there shouldn't be law or public effort but law has to be applies
equally. Heavy regulation can be a limiting factor of competition.
Larger businesses often support regulation because they can afford the
costs that would be prohibitive for smaller upstart competition.

What attracts me to more of a liberitarian philosophy is that if you
think that there are companies that don't offer good value for
competition you can start your own business don't like your job create
your own.

[srd]

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:45:35 -0800, enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> am I understanding this the idea is a statless society. That is not
> possible because some people do bad things to each other.

We speak here of communism, stateless and classless. But communists and
communistic anarchists are not the only persuasions that advocate the
abolition or total atrophy of the state. The libertarians who are to my
mind at least the most consistent, the anarcho-capitalists, likewise
advocate the abolition of the state. They make a point that might be a
valid answer to yours. They argue that the abolition of the state is not
necessarily tantamount to the abolition of law (and the associated
institutions of courts of law.) Envisioned is a system of law administered
through a network of agreements by private law enforcement agencies, from
whom citizens buy protection. I don't know if this ultra-brief summary
succeeds in making the anarcho-capitalist position comprehensible. I think
it follows very logically from a position that believes that market
competition will optimize economic efficiency, broadly conceived. There
isn't a good logical reason to assume the same process cannot determine
the framework of society. Or otherwise, that if market competition has
flaws that show up in the thought experiment of using the market to
determine politics, why those same flaws are not also present when the
market is used for ordinary purposes. "Foundations" standing as exceptions
to quotidian social process look ad hoc and arbitrary these days.

But just as most "practicing libertarians" stop short of the consistency
of today's leading anarcho-capitalist theoreticians, I don't think most
Marxists put that much stock in communism, phase 2. Socialism really would
suit them just fine.

srd

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:45:35 -0800, enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > am I understanding this the idea is a statless society. That is not
> > possible because some people do bad things to each other.
>
> We speak here of communism, stateless and classless. But communists and
> communistic anarchists are not the only persuasions that advocate the
> abolition or total atrophy of the state.

I think comunism is possible if the human race is given a labotomy. I
once read an old book called works and days and Hesiod talks of the two
types of strife. The good strife or competition and the bad the use of
force and deciet. I have a theory of human devolpment and violence.
There was a time before civilization and we were living in small groups
at the mercy of nature. It took every bit of our skill and
intelligence to survive and later thrive. We had to compete against
very formatible creatures and exiest in a hostile enviornment. I can't
guess of what percentage of people survived to reproduce but that drive
to live and succed in a highly competitive enviornemt over tens of
thousands of years probibly had some influence on our behavior.

The libertarians who are to my
> mind at least the most consistent, the anarcho-capitalists, likewise
> advocate the abolition of the state. They make a point that might be a
> valid answer to yours. They argue that the abolition of the state is not
> necessarily tantamount to the abolition of law (and the associated
> institutions of courts of law.)

Law is worthless if it is not enforced. We have all of recorded
history, philosophy and religon seeking to persuade people to be good
but as of today we have not devloped a society to come close to doing
right. I would argue that almost all people who harm others know they
are doing wrong but choose to do it. They may be passionate and not
care about the consequences or they think they can get away with it.
There has been a serach for the perfect moral system where peopel would
choose good over evil and we are not even close. It is a challenge to
define what good and evil are.

Envisioned is a system of law administered
> through a network of agreements by private law enforcement agencies, from
> whom citizens buy protection.

That is not good. Why are the rich entittled to have their property
protected and not the poor. On top of that what is there of the rich
from using this force for offensive purposes. They could attack their
competitiors or just blatently enslave people. The basic premise of
protection is the granting of rights. In Roman times generals bought
their armies and it was a matter of time when this force chose the
leadership.

The use of force is a quandery. How do you guard the guards. It is
necessary for protecting rights but that power can be misused. The US
tackled the problem by dividing the powers of government so they
struggle against each other as well as having the princple power with
no privelage.

I don't know if this ultra-brief summary
> succeeds in making the anarcho-capitalist position comprehensible.

It makes sence if no force is necessary for people to be honest. It is
almost as bad for comunism for people no have desires. I realy think
that hard-core liberitarians see only government as a source of
repression. I think we need a society that has a good morality one
that encourages respect of others and life in general. You can have a
god if it helps. I tend to think that the equity of each other is
totaly anti-logical. There are clearly people who are stronger or
smarter and they can dominate others. The Spartan domination and
terroizing of the Helots is a prime example. In ancient times the
world was run on slavery. I argue that the message of Jesus and the
values of the Christians had a hand somthing to do with the change in
society as Rome was ended. It is clearly documented that a god was a
driving force for the push for Rights in western civilization.

I am not religous. But toput it simple it was the most murderous
regiems in history are the ones that activly rejected God. The
Comunists and the Nazies. With no god there is no respect or
recognition that humans even have any rights. Follow or we can kill
you because you have no value. Or the Nazies who took a pure Darwinina
approach. The struggle of the races Instigate conflict and the intense
war and competition will kill off all the weak and leave the master
race.

I think
> it follows very logically from a position that believes that market
> competition will optimize economic efficiency, broadly conceived. There
> isn't a good logical reason to assume the same process cannot determine
> the framework of society. Or otherwise, that if market competition has
> flaws that show up in the thought experiment of using the market to
> determine politics, why those same flaws are not also present when the
> market is used for ordinary purposes. "Foundations" standing as exceptions
> to quotidian social process look ad hoc and arbitrary these days.

Markets are great and I have faith in them. It is all based on
non-violence. People give money for products free exchange. Humans
being mischevious little bastards will screw that up. First the
creation of monopolies. Creating conditions were it is dificult for
competition to get estabolished like selling under cost. There needs
to be competition for labor and customers. There are some things like
building of roads which are hard to exclude use of and make a profit
but we all benifite greatly. Fire protection. You could be in a
crowded city and some peopel don't subscribe to the fire protection but
they fire gets started now the problem is too big to control and the
whole city is burned down. The Chicago fire made the argument for
public fire protection.

>
> But just as most "practicing libertarians" stop short of the consistency
> of today's leading anarcho-capitalist theoreticians, I don't think most
> Marxists put that much stock in communism, phase 2. Socialism really would
> suit them just fine.
>

For me I thik in our attempt to help people we subsidize bad behavior.
Education is not valued we have had the wrong incentives for welfare.
I also think that government involvment has driven up the prices of
heath care and education not to mention the total cost of government
that is paid. I have worked in government and seen the waste and bad
managment.

[Michael Price]

srd wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
> >> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
> >> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
> >> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
> >> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
>
> > You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.
>
> The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
> self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
> secure their common interests."
>
> I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
> combination.

It is considerably more than that as it is the monopoly of force.

> As long as people tend to combine with other people to obtain
> their common interests (as against the interest of others, outside the
> combination or whose influence within the combination is weak), whatever
> evils libertarians identify in state action will continue to exist, even
> if the state is abolished, as long as the combinatorial propensity
> continues to exist.

Even if this were true (and you haven't shown it) abolishing the
State
raises the price of coercion significantly and thus makes it less
common.

> It is this combinatorial tendency that I mostly
> identify with man's "social nature."
>
> A less hypothetical but also less perspicuous a point--just as Marxists
> have never instituted communism, libertarians have never succeeded in
> getting their program adopted. (If it ever existed historically, it was in
> medieval Iceland!)

But it did exist and worked well. In the "Wild West" as well.

> Despite mammoth political efforts to decrease the size
> of government, it has expanded, even under economic semi-libertarian
> politicians.

Massive efforts by who? The efforts to expand the State have been
considerably
bigger?

> The human social instinct apparently makes it so impossible
> to institute or maybe even to relatively approach libertarianism.
>

No the anti-social instinct does that. You can indulge your social
instinct without the State helping you to do it and usually do.

> > The only thing in libertarian social insititutions that cuts against
> > "social man" is the assumption that the individual can legitimately
> > be sacrified by society for the "greater good". The individualistic
> > approach requires that the individual make the choice to sacrifice
> > him- or herself for others rather than the reverse. The collective
> > view is that some meta entitty and will exists that can legitimately
> > sacrifice one of it's parts.
>
> OK, there you have it. Let's provisionally define "libertarianism," qua
> social system, as a society where no one is sacrificed for the good of the
> group.

Which is not the definition at all.

> Then my counter-claim is that libertarians will never be successful
> in instituting such a system: groups will always find ways to coerce
> individuals to sacrifice in their interest.

Then why make it easy for them by designing an institution for
precisely
that purpose?

> We can provisionally
> operationalize "communism" as a society in which *everyone* is sacrifice
> for the good of the group: where no one obtains or retains any resources
> except where his so doing increases the net benefits of the group as a
> whole. (This doesn't correspond to what most communists actually advocate,
> but is the logically consistent expression of their position. It is, in
> fact, what I subscribed to as a commie.)
>
> So the difference between communism and libertarianism maps pretty cleanly
> to the distinction between utilitarianism and Kantianism in ethics. These
> competing ethical orientations actually seem to project the altruistic and
> egoistic orientations of human nature. Neither can triumph, because with
> respect to human nature, each is a partial truth.
>
> srd

LIbertarianism doesn't rely on a lack of social instinct or even
"altruism" to
function. In fact libertarianism both promotes and rewards social
instincts
and allows the fulfillment of "altruistic" goals by individual who wish
to achieve
them.

[Michael Price]

enki wrote:
> srd wrote:
> > On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
> >
> > >> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
> > >> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
> > >> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
> > >> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
> >
> > > You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.
> >
> > The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
> > self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
> > secure their common interests."
> >
> > I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
> > combination. As long as people tend to combine with other people to obtain
> > their common interests (as against the interest of others, outside the
> > combination or whose influence within the combination is weak), whatever
> > evils libertarians identify in state action will continue to exist, even
> > if the state is abolished, as long as the combinatorial propensity
> > continues to exist. It is this combinatorial tendency that I mostly
> > identify with man's "social nature."
> >
> am I understanding this the idea is a statless society. That is not
> possible because some people do bad things to each other. These few
> people can disrupt the lives of many people to where they would have to
> come together to form defence and there is the basis of the state.

But the State is not the only or even the best defence against the
few bad
people who can disrupt the lives of many others. In fact the State is
the
source of much of the disruption and choas that impact all our lives.
Polycentric law can provide protection against bad people at a lower
cost, faster and with less chance of causing the problems that it
purports
to solve.

[jmh]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:07:11 GMT, srd in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:

> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
>>> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
>>> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
>>> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
>>> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
>
>> You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.
>
> The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
> self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
> secure their common interests."
>
> I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
> combination. As long as people tend to combine with other people to obtain
> their common interests (as against the interest of others, outside the
> combination or whose influence within the combination is weak), whatever
> evils libertarians identify in state action will continue to exist, even
> if the state is abolished, as long as the combinatorial propensity
> continues to exist. It is this combinatorial tendency that I mostly
> identify with man's "social nature."

A couple of comments.

1) The arguement proves too much -- essentially what you're
saying is that man's social nature undoes any society. While
I think the basic internal conflict exists that's that then is
just a given, forever telling us social utopia is not an option.
If one takes the criticism seriously then there's no point to
discuss since your critique is universal.

2) I think the counter arguement is that, assuming utopia is
not the standard, the libertarian, and especially the AC variant,
is that it's the incentive structures within the political system
that would set the level to which one approaches that utopian limit
point. IN this case libertarianism is not unmined by either the
failings of man's social nature. The question is which system of
incentives and the form that system takes can only have import to
how close a society comes to the target and how durable that
experiemnt will be.

jm

[enki]

> But the State is not the only or even the best defence against the
> few bad
> people who can disrupt the lives of many others. In fact the State is
> the
> source of much of the disruption and choas that impact all our lives.
> Polycentric law can provide protection against bad people at a lower
> cost, faster and with less chance of causing the problems that it
> purports
> to solve.
>

The state is a generic term and it could take many forms. Political
philosophy is about designing a state the maximizes personal freedom
through protection but least oppression and abuse.

Still what I am not awaire of other ideas byond the state or some form
of government. I can argue against a stateless society. Basically it
has to do with collective security I subscribe to the social contract
theory. You consent to the social contract of a given jurisiction my
you choosing to live there. Things like fire protrection of military
can only protect a region not just the dubscribers in that that area.
If I work for customs and I only let in terrorists who will attach the
opposite political party or non-subscribers to the government.

Often times it is not just a few people who terrorize other but large
systems that are designed to conquer such as Roman Legions and SS
Panzer Divisions. Societies are self feeding entities, people are
products of their societies while we define our society. We as
individuals have the ability to make choices but look at behavior of
markets or other large social orginizations.

[srd]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 14:36:05 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:

> A couple of comments.
> 1) The arguement proves too much -- essentially what you're
> saying is that man's social nature undoes any society. While
> I think the basic internal conflict exists that's that then is
> just a given, forever telling us social utopia is not an option.
> If one takes the criticism seriously then there's no point to
> discuss since your critique is universal.

Man's social nature undoes any libertarian society; man's asocial and
anti-social nature undoes any communist society. I think you are right
that the argument applies to utopian social visions. As I am using the
concept of 'utopian' here, it clearly encompasses Marxian communism,
although Marxists would reject the 'utopian' label. I think the main
thrust of your counter is that libertarianism is not a utopian social
vision. Thus your next paragraph

> 2) I think the counter arguement is that, assuming utopia is
> not the standard, the libertarian, and especially the AC variant,
> is that it's the incentive structures within the political system
> that would set the level to which one approaches that utopian limit
> point. IN this case libertarianism is not unmined by either the
> failings of man's social nature. The question is which system of
> incentives and the form that system takes can only have import to
> how close a society comes to the target and how durable that
> experiemnt will be.

I was trying to figure out what "AC" meant. "Austrian-capitalist"? Then I
realized it was simply anarcho-capitalist. It took me a long time, because
in considering your earlier paragraph, I thought you might be right that
some forms of libertarianism at least are not utopian. I was thinking of
some classical liberal positions. To me anarcho-capitalism is so obviously
utopian that I would not have remotely expected it.

I think man's social nature does undermine anarcho-capitalism, even its
more pragmatic-appearing David Friedman variant. You posit that incentive
structures within the politicas system determine the approach to the
utopian limit, but this function can only be assumed if man's social
nature is left out of the account. The utopian limit is generally defined
as the complete elimination of coercion. For the a-c approach to be
self-evidently sound, the level of coercion must be proportionate or at
least monotonic with respect to the level of state coercion. But since man
is a social being, he will find non-state ways of effecting coercion.
Moreover, one major function of the state in serving instinctually
conflicted mankind is _decreasing_ the availability of coercive levers to
non-state actors.

To be more precise, it isn't libertarianism that is undermined by man's
nature, but the argument for libertarianism. It simply leaves out man's
social nature. It is proposed that radically decreasing the role of the
state will create a less coercive society, but the argument cannot be
sustained without examining the effect of man's social nature on the
coercive levers available to non-state actors. Friedman's A-C model is
based on a neo-classical economic analysis, and the economic models do not
and perhaps cannot predict behavior social motives clearly intervene. From
an economic perspective, no one should vote, yet million do.

srd

[srd]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:06:04 -0800, Michael Price <nini...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>> Then my counter-claim is that libertarians will never be successful
>> in instituting such a system: groups will always find ways to coerce
>> individuals to sacrifice in their interest.
> Then why make it easy for them by designing an institution for
> precisely
> that purpose?

I think this is the core of your point. The state was designed as an
instrument of coercion. So eliminating it will clearly decrease the level
of coercion. The problem is the point is not self-evident, but it is
proposed as if it were. The state is a coercive instrument, but it must be
argued, not assumed, that the state does not decrease the overall level of
coercion, or that it wasn't partly "designed" for exactly that reason. I
mean, the conventional assumption is exactly that. How do you that that
eliminating the state will decrease coercion _overall_? You speak of the
Wild West. To make this argument you would have to first find a way to
quantify coercion, at least approximately, and then measure it and compare
it to a hypothetical case where there was a strong state presence.

On your point about the state not being a mere domiant social coalition,
you say the state is distinguished by its monopoly on the use of force. My
first impulse is to carp, but let's just try to be more precise. I think
you are saying the state has a legal monopoly on the initiation of violent
force. But first, this is really only a relative matter. The state's laws
can say only the state can initiate force, but that doesn't prove the
point. I can _say_ that only I have the right to initiatie force, but the
saying doesn't give me any actual power. In fact people see force by other
actors as legitimate in some circumstances. And legitimate or not, it is
mostly the actual use of force, not its legitimacy, that receives the onus
of libertarian attention.

But there are forms of force besides the legitimate use of arms. Even
libertarian ideology recognizes fraud as a form of coercion co-equal to
force. And the opportunity for fraud increases directly with increases in
wealth.

Would a libertarian society end up being more or less egalitarian than a
mixed economy? Libertarians typically neither know nor care. If the state
serves to contain economic inequality, then it is surely not a
straightforward matter to predict the amount of social coercion from the
level of state coercion.

srd

[enki]

srd wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:06:04 -0800, Michael Price <nini...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> >> Then my counter-claim is that libertarians will never be successful
> >> in instituting such a system: groups will always find ways to coerce
> >> individuals to sacrifice in their interest.
> > Then why make it easy for them by designing an institution for
> > precisely
> > that purpose?
>
> I think this is the core of your point. The state was designed as an
> instrument of coercion. So eliminating it will clearly decrease the level
> of coercion. The problem is the point is not self-evident, but it is
> proposed as if it were. The state is a coercive instrument, but it must be
> argued, not assumed, that the state does not decrease the overall level of
> coercion, or that it wasn't partly "designed" for exactly that reason. I
> mean, the conventional assumption is exactly that. How do you that that
> eliminating the state will decrease coercion _overall_? You speak of the
> Wild West. To make this argument you would have to first find a way to
> quantify coercion, at least approximately, and then measure it and compare
> it to a hypothetical case where there was a strong state presence.

I completely disagree that the state is a design of coersion. There is
no question that at time it has gone that direction.

Trace the evolution of the state backward. You get to stone age
huntergatherers who lived in groups. Then as now it is nearly
impossible to survive on your own and impossible to continue the
species. It is believe that people lived in groups of 12-50, who
knows. Later, we get agroculture and the owning to land. As peopel
grew more than they needed it allowed people specialize their skills.
>From the time we have writing we have war and we have evidence of war
before writing. If you are some specilized craftsman you create
property. When you create somthing people want it. You create
colletivew defence for people in a certian area. You have a social
contract, you want to live inside the wall you have to contribute to
its construction and maintainence.

In nature we just take what we need, wether it is finding somthing on
the ground or killing an anmial. In some comunites it may be possible
to be communist many societies were this way for example Egypt where
pretty much it was a planned economy directed by the Pharoh for the
good of his people. You can Feudalism was a comunistic system. People
had no rights and were considered part of the land.

It was in the Middle Ages when people in towns began to petition and
start winning the provelage to pay taxes in stead of showing up for
service. In modern times it was seen as better that we support private
property. Systems got vastly more complicated and new technology was
introduced and it was not possible to direct a economy efficeintly.
Just because you parents were a good ruler or doctor didn't mean you
would become one. Today the skills of our parents may be obslete by
the time we get a job.

One constant troughout all civilization is the need for protection.
That is when we create somthing we only give it up voulintarily. Often
creating protection for your self can be dificult time consuming and
waste of resources and time when you could be doing somthing
productive. We have physical security such as walls police and locks.
We also have cultural security that is we create society in that we
teach good morals or basically persuading people not to infringe on the
property of others.

>
> On your point about the state not being a mere domiant social coalition,
> you say the state is distinguished by its monopoly on the use of force. My
> first impulse is to carp, but let's just try to be more precise. I think
> you are saying the state has a legal monopoly on the initiation of violent
> force. But first, this is really only a relative matter. The state's laws
> can say only the state can initiate force, but that doesn't prove the
> point. I can _say_ that only I have the right to initiatie force, but the
> saying doesn't give me any actual power. In fact people see force by other
> actors as legitimate in some circumstances. And legitimate or not, it is
> mostly the actual use of force, not its legitimacy, that receives the onus
> of libertarian attention.

You spell it out really good. There is good morality and bad morality
that is uses of force that enhance personal property and those that
degrade it. Still there has to be clearly defined perscriptions for
the use of force and the best way is the democratic proscess with
checks and ballances.

>
> But there are forms of force besides the legitimate use of arms. Even
> libertarian ideology recognizes fraud as a form of coercion co-equal to
> force. And the opportunity for fraud increases directly with increases in
> wealth.

The we can persuade people to be honest but if that fails we need to
enforce our regulations if they are to be affective. A logical and
principled use of force can be effective in both preventing and then
persuading people to respect the right of others.

>
> Would a libertarian society end up being more or less egalitarian than a
> mixed economy? Libertarians typically neither know nor care. If the state
> serves to contain economic inequality, then it is surely not a
> straightforward matter to predict the amount of social coercion from the
> level of state coercion.
>
> srd

I don't think a purly liberitarian society would be very productive.
If we could persuade all people to respect others it would work. Until
peopl don't form gangs mafias extortion rings or slaving parties it
will have a chance. In a purly liberiterian society, for example, I
live here and a large menicing overbearing neighabor moves in. I am a
woose and feel theratened so I go out and shoot him. There is no law
no person can tell me how to defend myself so I pre-emptivly kill a
future percieve enemy. By the way his house is now empty so I take his
stuff and keep or see it. Let say I don't kill him, I decide to
fortify my house. I have to spend a great deal of time and money to
install security and may be hire some one to protect me. My protection
is only as good as I have resources to pay my security.

[strabo]

enki wrote:
> srd wrote:
>> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:24:55 -0800, Liam <ne...@celticbear.com> wrote:

<snipped>

>
> Capitalism is not a system but the manifistation of freedom of personal
> property and the free exchange. It is also the freedom to not exchange
> that peroperty.
>

>There have to be limits on behavior because people
> will take actions that are unjust if they can and benfifit from it.
>
So much for freedom.

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
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[enki]

> >There have to be limits on behavior because people
> > will take actions that are unjust if they can and benfifit from it.
> >
> So much for freedom.
>

I see where you are comming from. That was the view of politics until
the 1790s. Go read Hobbes and hist philosophical state of nature of
the war of all agaist all. I can find examples from philosophy where
the natural evils of man deed to be controlled.

People are also capible of good but and hav the ability to use reason.
That potential dosn't guarntee they will use it. You can look at
Indain tribes as early as 1800s some ver very peacful and accomadating
and some were very violent and dominating. In history we have seen the
powerful overwhelm the weaker. It is not until modern times do we have
this idea of human rights and there are limits on how we can treat some
one. Either you persuade somone to respect you or you have a ballance
of power. We didn't negociate with the Mastadons for meat and hides we
went out and killed them.

[strabo]

srd wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:54:52 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"

> <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
>
>
>> Your point? Ayn Rand is not the model of all libertarians and all
>> libertarians are not like Ayn Rand.
>>
> She understood (to a limited degree) something the others didn't, which
> is that

> >the libertarian standard of freedom can be infringed by collective
action,

???

>even employing market mechanisms, if the dominant mentality didn't
change,

???

> in her words, by becoming thoroughly selfish as opposed to altruistic.
>

>

> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
> possible to sustain the market in its absence.
>

>It is rather that man's
> social nature undermines libertarian institutions,

>just as man's
> self-serving nature undermines socialist/communist institutions.

>Without
> such a psychological revolution--as profound as "The great proletarian
> cultural revolution" was intended to be-- eliminating most of the
> accrued state functions would only be followed by these functions either
> devolving to other collective entities or re-emerging.
>
> Libertarians who deny this are mystified by the formal political state,
> considering it somehow unique in its coercive potential, or they are
> mystified by the use of political violence, not recognizing the coercive
> potential of private monopolistic combination. Only if man's social
> nature _could_ be banished could libertarianism be feasible in
> implementing its anti-coercive ideals, because only the thoroughly

> self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to

> secure their common interests. Out of such combinations and the
> differing opportunities of persons to form them arise disparities in power.
>
> srd
>
Ill-defined and conflicting statements and double-talk

You may have something to say but I can't figure
out what it is.

[enki]

strabo wrote:
> srd wrote:
> > On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:54:52 -0800, "Peter Bjørn Perlsø"
> > <pe...@DIESPAMMERDIE.dk> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Your point? Ayn Rand is not the model of all libertarians and all
> >> libertarians are not like Ayn Rand.
> >>
> > She understood (to a limited degree) something the others didn't, which
> > is that
>
> > >the libertarian standard of freedom can be infringed by collective
> action,

I thin Ayn Rand should be read as we should strive to read as much as
possible. I have read a bit and there is still more I would like to
read and I have limits of time and enegry and the rest of my life.
Rand does make good points but she can be criticized on may points.
The idea of objective value. Value is purly subjective. Somthing is
worth what somone is able to pay. How much is a unit of thought or
imagination worth? She is right that we need to work to change nature
in to things that we need. People often criticize her because people
have no inherent value. People don't like the way she characterizes
socialists. I cna understand the fustration because I have trouble
getting into honest debate with people who I disagree. It is always
about winning not trying to explain your position and to be understood
and be persuasive. This is a good discussion for the most part but it
seems that most people here fall on the liberitarian side rather than
on the socialist side.

[strabo]

srd wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:35:51 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
>>> My point is neither that libertarians are generally conscious that they
>>> must eliminate (or deny) man's social nature nor that it is actually
>>> possible to sustain the market in its absence. It is rather that man's
>>> social nature undermines libertarian institutions, just as man's
>
>> You're going to have to elaborate on that claim.
>
> The elaboration in the following paragraph was "only the thoroughly
> self-seeking person would renounce voluntary combination with others to
> secure their common interests."
>

What is a "thoroughly self-seeking person"?

What is a "voluntary combination"?

> I'm saying the state is nothing more than a form of power through social
> combination. As long as people tend to combine with other people to
> obtain their common interests (as against the interest of others,
> outside the combination or whose influence within the combination is
> weak), whatever evils libertarians identify in state action will
> continue to exist, even if the state is abolished, as long as the
> combinatorial propensity continues to exist. It is this combinatorial
> tendency that I mostly identify with man's "social nature."
>

What is a "social combination"?

Makes no sense.

> A less hypothetical but also less perspicuous a point--just as Marxists
> have never instituted communism, libertarians have never succeeded in
> getting their program adopted. (If it ever existed historically, it was
> in medieval Iceland!) Despite mammoth political efforts to decrease the
> size of government, it has expanded, even under economic
> semi-libertarian politicians. The human social instinct apparently makes
> it so impossible to institute or maybe even to relatively approach
> libertarianism.
>

"mammoth political efforts"?

A "semi-libertarian"?

A "social instinct"?

"relatively approach libertarianism"?

>> The only thing in libertarian social insititutions that cuts against
>> "social man" is the assumption that the individual can legitimately
>> be sacrified by society for the "greater good". The individualistic
>> approach requires that the individual make the choice to sacrifice
>> him- or herself for others rather than the reverse. The collective
>> view is that some meta entitty and will exists that can legitimately
>> sacrifice one of it's parts.
>
> OK, there you have it. Let's provisionally define "libertarianism," qua
> social system, as a society where no one is sacrificed for the good of
> the group. Then my counter-claim is that libertarians will never be
> successful in instituting such a system: groups will always find ways to
> coerce individuals to sacrifice in their interest. We can provisionally
> operationalize "communism" as a society in which *everyone* is sacrifice
> for the good of the group: where no one obtains or retains any resources
> except where his so doing increases the net benefits of the group as a
> whole. (This doesn't correspond to what most communists actually
> advocate, but is the logically consistent expression of their position.
> It is, in fact, what I subscribed to as a commie.)
>
> So the difference between communism and libertarianism maps pretty
> cleanly to the distinction between utilitarianism and Kantianism in
> ethics. These competing ethical orientations actually seem to project
> the altruistic and egoistic orientations of human nature. Neither can
> triumph, because with respect to human nature, each is a partial truth.
>
> srd

Gotta be a post grad student.

[enki]

We as humans have personal desire the desire to have friends and to be
liked. That is a socal instinct. Praise or scolding is a useful way
to influence people we can call it peer pressure. If all we did was
respont to peer pressure we would never do anything exeptional. You
work six days a week instead of three we don't like it stop because you
are starting to do better than us. You are a violent bastard and we
don't accept you. There are times that social approval persuades
people to either respect others or be mediocre. There is a time when
social pressure is not enough to control destructive and dangerous
behavior.

I mostly side with the Libertarian side. We have a democratic proscess
to define bad behavior based on liberitarian princples of protection of
private property and equality of the law and regulation. People have
freedom of association. We ascocialte who we want hire who we want buy
and sell to who we want.

Should credit card companies sell the organs of dead people who owe
them money?

[strabo]

enki wrote:
>>> There have to be limits on behavior because people
>>> will take actions that are unjust if they can and benfifit from it.
>>>
>> So much for freedom.
>>
> I see where you are comming from. That was the view of politics until
> the 1790s. Go read Hobbes and hist philosophical state of nature of
> the war of all agaist all. I can find examples from philosophy where
> the natural evils of man deed to be controlled.
>
> People are also capible of good but and hav the ability to use reason.
> That potential dosn't guarntee they will use it. You can look at
> Indain tribes as early as 1800s some ver very peacful and accomadating
> and some were very violent and dominating. In history we have seen the
> powerful overwhelm the weaker. It is not until modern times do we have
> this idea of human rights and there are limits on how we can treat some
> one.
>

The concept of individual or inherent Rights (as per the Declaration of
Independence) is rooted in organic law which holds that each adult knows
the essential difference between 'right' and 'wrong'. This notion of
individual inherent knowledge and responsibility has been known
throughout history. The basics here are dishonesty and physical force.
From these two laws all other criminal laws are derived.

"Human rights" as found in the UN charter and various post WWII
conventions is a secular invention which tries to associate itself
with American individual Rights but which falls far short. In each
case it is some jurisdiction granting privilege usually as group
entitlement rather than to the individual.

>Either you persuade somone to respect you or you have a ballance
> of power. We didn't negociate with the Mastadons for meat and hides we
> went out and killed them.
>

Well, yes and no. Hunting societies utilize fetishes and totems
as a means to identify with their animals. This ensures a proper
respect and dignity for the hunter and the hunted. Super-awareness
also serves to protect the prey from over-hunting. This device is
sorely missed in the modern world.

We can assume this same poise for those who infringe upon our inherent
Rights for in some cases lives may lawfully be surfeit. In other cases
we can simply sue them into submission.

Amply demonstrated for thousands of years, formal government is
not needed in human society.

[strabo]

Socialism is a social engineering scheme which fails in part because
power corrupts. Best to leave each society to its own merits.

[enki]

> The concept of individual or inherent Rights (as per the Declaration of
> Independence) is rooted in organic law which holds that each adult knows
> the essential difference between 'right' and 'wrong'. This notion of
> individual inherent knowledge and responsibility has been known
> throughout history. The basics here are dishonesty and physical force.
> From these two laws all other criminal laws are derived.

I would disagree with you. I would not say avoidance of physical force
is some inherent or a priori knowlege. It can easier for me to kill
somone and take their stuff than than to have to make it myself. risk
v. reward. There were successful cultures that thaught that
non-violence was weakness. The whole ancient world was based on
slavery and they didn't even have the concept of human rights. I would
say that human rights was a result of christian values and teachings.
Starting with Jesus telling slaves that they have value with his god to
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights....

Still religon and morality is just persuation for people to not be
violent an respect others. I have often wondered about human nature it
is too dificult a question because we are so influenced by our society
but that society doesn't dictate what kind of person we are.

>
> "Human rights" as found in the UN charter and various post WWII
> conventions is a secular invention which tries to associate itself
> with American individual Rights but which falls far short. In each
> case it is some jurisdiction granting privilege usually as group
> entitlement rather than to the individual.

Still what is the force behind the conventions? In other words what
good are they if they are not backed up by force. We routine
oppression of people around the world until the oppressors are
persuaded or force to respect people.

>
>
> >Either you persuade somone to respect you or you have a ballance
> > of power. We didn't negociate with the Mastadons for meat and hides we
> > went out and killed them.
> >
> Well, yes and no. Hunting societies utilize fetishes and totems
> as a means to identify with their animals. This ensures a proper
> respect and dignity for the hunter and the hunted. Super-awareness
> also serves to protect the prey from over-hunting. This device is
> sorely missed in the modern world.

It is long term profitability and long term self interest that we
manage resources in the most efficient way. You can look at the
morality of short term gain from long term loss. What is fair business
what is fraud. It takes large sums of capital to build a factory and
seldom do people or even corporation have cash on hand to buy what they
need like few people actaully could save up to buy a house. So you
have to borrow the money or raise money from selling stock. It takes a
long time to pay that money back or share holders want that stock to
increase in value. To get that loan you have to demostrate that you
will pay that money back or convince share holders to buy your shares.
If you are not making a profit the share holders will fire you or the
bank foreclose on your business.

>
> We can assume this same poise for those who infringe upon our inherent
> Rights for in some cases lives may lawfully be surfeit. In other cases
> we can simply sue them into submission.

All that is still based on force. You can pass judgment on somone but
still the property has to be confiscated by force or your whole
punishment is that we don't like you.

>
> Amply demonstrated for thousands of years, formal government is
> not needed in human society.
>

What examples are those? Are you talking about pre-civilization,
pre-agroculture? The problem with that is the groups of peopel were
much smaller and people couldn't survive without the approval of the
group. A family is a society that is not formally governed by laws but
that is a few people.

[Topaz]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:26:51 -0500, strabo <str...@flashlight.net>
wrote:

>>There have to be limits on behavior because people
>> will take actions that are unjust if they can and benfifit from it.
>>
>So much for freedom.
>

This web site explains what is going on with the "left" and the
"right" in the modern economic sense.
http://www.michaeljournal.org/myth.htm

The meaning of "right" and "left" has changed. I stay with the
original meaning for the same reason I refuse to call homosexual
perverts "gay". The word "gay" was originally a good thing.

The right is for outlawing homosexual perversion,
prostitution, abortions, heroin, and other bad things. It puts the
good of the nation first and ahead of the freedom of individuals to
corrupt the culture of the nation.

Leftists believe in the Rede of Witchcraft which states-- If it
harm none, do what will you will. This sounds nice, but like the apple
that the witch gave to Snow White it has poison within. The Rede of
Witchcraft is the Bible of liberalism. It would legalize homosexual
perversion, prostitution, drugs, etc.

The right is for building a great nation. Leftists care only
about individual freedom and are opposed to any laws that would make
the nation better. There are beaches where normal families will not go
because homosexual perverts practice their perversion on the beach.
When the liberals say they are for freedom this is kind of thing they
are talking about. Of course people should be free to do what they
want most of the time. There is no argument there. Liberals are
talking about being free to do things that many people object to and
want outlawed. Their philosophy, taken to its logical conclusion,
would not allow the law that says drivers have to stop at the red
lights. Their philosophy would allow heroin to be sold on grocery
store shelves and allow ads promoting heroin on TV. Their philosophy
would result in chaos and degeneracy.

Libertarians are liberals who want freedom for the Ebenezer
Scrooges to be as greedy as they want. They have the same philosophy
as other leftist who want to legalize heroin and prostitution, namely
that the state can't tell them what they can't do. People don't like
laws stopping them from doing things, and we should sympathize with
that, but sometimes that is not the most important thing. Capitalists
want freedom for greed, other liberals want freedom for degeneracy,
but good laws would make a nation good.

The Communists were leftist and they said they were fighting for
freedom. In Spain they sided with the anarchists. The Communists and
the anarchists were the same people or the same type of people. The
Communists were for having government but only temporarily. They said
that their government was necessary only until the whole world was
Communist. After the world was Communist they wanted to dissolve the
government and have an anarchy.

The right wing cares about the future. Leftists only care about the
present. If their philosophy results in a nightmare future like in
Soylent Green or some other futuristic nightmare they are not
interested and insist that nothing could be more important than the
freedom of individuals to be as decadent as they want. To see the kind
of society
libertarians are fighting for see the movie "8MM", they aren't for the
snuff part, but
other than that it shows liberalism in action.

http://www.nationalvanguard.org http://www.natvan.com
http://www.thebirdman.org http://www.ihr.org/
http://wsi.matriots.com/jews.html http://www.nsm88.com/

[jmh]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 23:27:54 GMT, srd in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:

> On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 14:36:05 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
>> A couple of comments.
>> 1) The arguement proves too much -- essentially what you're
>> saying is that man's social nature undoes any society. While
>> I think the basic internal conflict exists that's that then is
>> just a given, forever telling us social utopia is not an option.
>> If one takes the criticism seriously then there's no point to
>> discuss since your critique is universal.
>
> Man's social nature undoes any libertarian society; man's asocial and
> anti-social nature undoes any communist society. I think you are right
> that the argument applies to utopian social visions. As I am using the
> concept of 'utopian' here, it clearly encompasses Marxian communism,
> although Marxists would reject the 'utopian' label. I think the main
> thrust of your counter is that libertarianism is not a utopian social
> vision. Thus your next paragraph

The point was not so much that libertarianism is not utopian but
that the criticism offered against it, if it can be accepted,
is so damning to all social-political theory that it becomes a
non-issue. By undoing libertarianism this way you've also eliminated
any alternative to it as well.

>
>> 2) I think the counter arguement is that, assuming utopia is
>> not the standard, the libertarian, and especially the AC variant,
>> is that it's the incentive structures within the political system
>> that would set the level to which one approaches that utopian limit
>> point. IN this case libertarianism is not unmined by either the
>> failings of man's social nature. The question is which system of
>> incentives and the form that system takes can only have import to
>> how close a society comes to the target and how durable that
>> experiemnt will be.
>
> I was trying to figure out what "AC" meant. "Austrian-capitalist"? Then I
> realized it was simply anarcho-capitalist. It took me a long time, because

Sorry, should have spelled it out--but you seem to have a
pretty good grasp of the variants so took the short path.

> in considering your earlier paragraph, I thought you might be right that
> some forms of libertarianism at least are not utopian. I was thinking of
> some classical liberal positions. To me anarcho-capitalism is so obviously
> utopian that I would not have remotely expected it.

I can certainly understand the views (not necessarily argreeing)
that it's not feasible, that it will devolve/evolve into a statist
system, that it simply institutionalized a Hobbesian state of
natural war and other lines of thought. I don't see the utopian
slant on the AC approach. No one but those who wish to create
strawmen claim a market produces some consumer utopia so why
the the assumption that the AC approach is utopian?

> I think man's social nature does undermine anarcho-capitalism, even its
> more pragmatic-appearing David Friedman variant. You posit that incentive
> structures within the politicas system determine the approach to the
> utopian limit, but this function can only be assumed if man's social
> nature is left out of the account. The utopian limit is generally defined

I disagree, it's man's social nature that is exactly what the
social institions evolve to come to grips with. It's just those
evolutionary social institutions that libertarians, and the AC
simply push this to a further limit and the minarchist and Libertarins
or classical liberalism witin the political social interactions.

Taking Smith's butcher story out of the purely economic goods/services
setting and looking how it applies to the production of law -- which
is clearly one of the primary social institutions that address the
problems of man's social nature.

> as the complete elimination of coercion. For the a-c approach to be
> self-evidently sound, the level of coercion must be proportionate or at
> least monotonic with respect to the level of state coercion. But since man
> is a social being, he will find non-state ways of effecting coercion.
> Moreover, one major function of the state in serving instinctually
> conflicted mankind is _decreasing_ the availability of coercive levers to
> non-state actors.

Other than in case of misreading a AC 101 presentation no one is
claiming the polysentric approach will completely eliminate coercion.
What's argued is that, contrary to the historical thinking, the
creation of some specific agency with a monopoly on the use of
that force will not minimize the application of that force.

The standard of nonitinitation is merely the stated principle
that disputing parties would both be expected to present their
cases in defending themselves against the charges of initiating
force.

> To be more precise, it isn't libertarianism that is undermined by man's
> nature, but the argument for libertarianism. It simply leaves out man's
> social nature. It is proposed that radically decreasing the role of the
> state will create a less coercive society, but the argument cannot be
> sustained without examining the effect of man's social nature on the
> coercive levers available to non-state actors. Friedman's A-C model is
> based on a neo-classical economic analysis, and the economic models do not
> and perhaps cannot predict behavior social motives clearly intervene. From
> an economic perspective, no one should vote, yet million do.

The economic analysis simple assumes a given set of preferences
and some form of general rationality by the actors. The neoclassical
analysis is only one of the tools underlying the argument. Moverover,
some social behaviors are very clearly predicted by the analysis.
That voting participation is not one of them is beside the point,
just as the inability of the theory to predict how many blue sweaters
will be bought compared to red sweaters.

The neoclassical theory has been applied to our modern political
state and has proven pretty good at explaining why it's not able to
produce legislation that is driven by a sense of "the general good"
versus the special interest dominated outcomes we see. The outcomes
are due to institutional structure and not to just man's social
nature.

The issue and question is not about "_decreasing_ the availability
of coercive levers to non-state actors" but about reducing the incentives
to pull those levers regardless of who has access to the level and to
minimize the ability of some to use those levers to impose the will of
the some upon others in just any arbitraty manner the some might choose.

The AC argument is that the grant of monopoly that comes from both the
Hobbesian and the Lockean branches of political theory is in error. The
grant of monopoly will not ensure anything--a benevolent state/leviathan
might produce it but that's a difference source--about the level of that
application of force or coercion witin society. The decentralization of
that power would appear to be a better model based on both history and
newer theory.

jmh

[jmh]

On 22 Dec 2006 22:47:05 -0800, enki in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:
>

>> The concept of individual or inherent Rights (as per the Declaration of
>> Independence) is rooted in organic law which holds that each adult knows
>> the essential difference between 'right' and 'wrong'. This notion of
>> individual inherent knowledge and responsibility has been known
>> throughout history. The basics here are dishonesty and physical force.
>> From these two laws all other criminal laws are derived.
>
> I would disagree with you. I would not say avoidance of physical force
> is some inherent or a priori knowlege. It can easier for me to kill
> somone and take their stuff than than to have to make it myself. risk
> v. reward. There were successful cultures that thaught that
> non-violence was weakness. The whole ancient world was based on
> slavery and they didn't even have the concept of human rights. I would
> say that human rights was a result of christian values and teachings.
> Starting with Jesus telling slaves that they have value with his god to
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
> equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
> Rights....

I think you'd need to do a lot of work to study all the law
underlying those socieities and the relationship between the
slave and the owner before you can say that the ancient world
lack any sense of *human* rights.

The christian teachings are follow ups to jewish teachings
which many people think trace back to Hammurabi. His
codex clearly includes some sense of human right in that
it does not promte the legal position that merely because
on is a slave or of lower caste/rank one has no rights.

jmh

[enki]

jmh wrote:
> On 22 Dec 2006 22:47:05 -0800, enki in talk.politics.libertarian
> confessed to the world saying:
> >
> >> The concept of individual or inherent Rights (as per the Declaration of
> >> Independence) is rooted in organic law which holds that each adult knows
> >> the essential difference between 'right' and 'wrong'. This notion of
> >> individual inherent knowledge and responsibility has been known
> >> throughout history. The basics here are dishonesty and physical force.
> >> From these two laws all other criminal laws are derived.
> >
> > I would disagree with you. I would not say avoidance of physical force
> > is some inherent or a priori knowlege. It can easier for me to kill
> > somone and take their stuff than than to have to make it myself. risk
> > v. reward. There were successful cultures that thaught that
> > non-violence was weakness. The whole ancient world was based on
> > slavery and they didn't even have the concept of human rights. I would
> > say that human rights was a result of christian values and teachings.
> > Starting with Jesus telling slaves that they have value with his god to
> > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
> > equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
> > Rights....
>
> I think you'd need to do a lot of work to study all the law
> underlying those socieities and the relationship between the
> slave and the owner before you can say that the ancient world
> lack any sense of *human* rights.

You might have a point. When I was thinking of the anbcient work, I
most had the Romans in mind. Still slavery was accepted all over the
ancient world. Slaves were generally seen as a precious resource
becuase they were expensive not to mention if the slave had useful
skills.

I wonder if the Greco-Roman view of fate vs the Christian view of free
will had anything to do with the progression of human rights. Just a
thought.

>
> The christian teachings are follow ups to jewish teachings
> which many people think trace back to Hammurabi. His
> codex clearly includes some sense of human right in that
> it does not promte the legal position that merely because
> on is a slave or of lower caste/rank one has no rights.
>

Going back to the Roman times, the economy was dependent on slavery.
In stead of bargianing for labor people war lined up infront of a spear
and told to work. Depending on your skill you might have better jobs
withe better living conditions. With the fall of Rome and partly the
economic decline slavery gave way to serdom which is not much better.
Throughout the middle ages this idea of human rights slowly formed.
Partly is was a result of Germanic traditions that followed the German
invaders. In most of the middle ages under christian doctrine as
interpited by the church there was a gradiation of matter of rocks to
God and there were some people better than others and this idea realy
was not challenged until the Reformation when people began to read the
Bible for themselvs. Right on page one Adam was the first mand created
in the image of God. If we are all decendended from Adam then there is
no justification that some people are given special divine position.

[srd]

On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:43:33 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:

> The issue and question is not about "_decreasing_ the availability
> of coercive levers to non-state actors" but about reducing the incentives
> to pull those levers regardless of who has access to the level and to
> minimize the ability of some to use those levers to impose the will of
> the some upon others in just any arbitraty manner the some might choose.

I don't see how the last is different from the availability of the levers.
The propensity for the levers' use is what's important, and it depends on
availability and incentives. It does seem to me that anarcho-capitalism
focuses on availability rather than incentives. In fact, it rather seems
that Marxism focuses on eliminating incentives for coercion, whereas
libertarianism on limiting or eliminating available levers, the state
being a lever that is made unavailable in anarcho-capitalism; private
property being an incentive that is unavailable in communism. And in
general the problems of anarcho-capitalism have to do with the absence of
levers to accomplish desirable things, and in communism, the abence of
incentives for the same.

> The AC argument is that the grant of monopoly that comes from both the
> Hobbesian and the Lockean branches of political theory is in error. The
> grant of monopoly will not ensure anything--a benevolent state/leviathan
> might produce it but that's a difference source--about the level of that
> application of force or coercion witin society. The decentralization of
> that power would appear to be a better model based on both history and
> newer theory.

That's the first time I've heard this argument, based, that is, on
decentralization rather than directly on the general virtues of the
market. I suppose there's a good chance I don't understand it, based on a
few sentences. On it's face, it seems to me extremely far-fetched. You
seem to be saying that whether central power contributes to freedom or
subtracts from it can be decided in particular instances (always, that is,
in favor of _decreasing_ the amount of central power) based on a global
evaluation of the validity of the philosophical models that have defended
the state's existence. Although I can't show that your reasoning rests on
focusing on one aspect of human nature and ignoring the conflicting
side--because I don't know what your reasoning is--I don't see how it
could come from any other method. That may be my failure of imagination,
but the conventional wisdom has it than in various circumstances, the
exercise of state power has increased freedom, precisely by encroaching
more decentralized social forms, as when, say, the federal government
helped defeat Jim Crow in the southern U.S., to take one example that is
fairly uncontroversial. (I think I can speak here of more decentralized
_state_ systems, because you are emphasizing decentralization rather than
market mechanisms.) So even with some recent thinking that co-ordination
can be achieved with greater decentralization than had been supposed, you
have a heavy burden to establish that the use of state power is *always*
undesirable. (Or at least that its total abolition is desirable, because
no better can be attained through it, which is weaker but nevertheless
very demanding.) And from this comes my sense of its utopianism.

srd

[jmh]

On 23 Dec 2006 14:45:56 -0800, enki in talk.politics.libertarian

I think it's more complicated that that. Yes, slaves were expenseive
capital investments but there's more than just that. Slaves did have
"rights" in that laws existed that provided certain types of protection.
Also, there's the whole question of how did one become a slave, what
was the duration of that status, what was the status of a person who
moves from slave to freeman or the revese.

For instance, Hammurabi's Code talks about a person who owes a
debt they cannot repay. They can then eliminate the debt by
serving as a slave (the man's family is also included--good or
bad? family is kept together, all become slaves so what does
that mean for the wife and children? Are they just expected to
work to earn they keep as it were?) for a period of 3 years
and then the man is free again.

Similarly, even in the US South, laws existed that granted
the slave a portion (for get how much, want to say it was
something like 60%) of any pay the slave's work generates
if the work is not directly for the slave owner, e.g., the
owner rents to slave to a neighbor. The money earned could
then be used by the slave to buy freedom. We know that in
the US case racism was also a major part here so the slave
earning freedom was generally better off heading west.

That seems more an issue of racism than that of society
allowing slavery (and indentured servitude which I think
is what a fair amount of slavery was--excluding the
prisoner's of war).

I don't know enough history, espeically history of law and
slavery, to speak authoritqatively here but there
seems to be a lot more going on than merely the stereo-
typical vire that salves are no different than an barn,
lawnmower or car.

> I wonder if the Greco-Roman view of fate vs the Christian view of free
> will had anything to do with the progression of human rights. Just a
> thought.

No doubt there's some thing to find there, not sure if
the causality you're looking for is there though.

>>
>> The christian teachings are follow ups to jewish teachings
>> which many people think trace back to Hammurabi. His
>> codex clearly includes some sense of human right in that
>> it does not promte the legal position that merely because
>> on is a slave or of lower caste/rank one has no rights.
>>
> Going back to the Roman times, the economy was dependent on slavery.
> In stead of bargianing for labor people war lined up infront of a spear
> and told to work. Depending on your skill you might have better jobs
> withe better living conditions. With the fall of Rome and partly the
> economic decline slavery gave way to serdom which is not much better.
> Throughout the middle ages this idea of human rights slowly formed.
> Partly is was a result of Germanic traditions that followed the German
> invaders. In most of the middle ages under christian doctrine as
> interpited by the church there was a gradiation of matter of rocks to
> God and there were some people better than others and this idea realy
> was not challenged until the Reformation when people began to read the
> Bible for themselvs. Right on page one Adam was the first mand created
> in the image of God. If we are all decendended from Adam then there is
> no justification that some people are given special divine position.
>

Sure but wasn't that the whole point of the nobility: the kings
were originally suppose to have come from a more direct branch
tracing back to Adam (or Noah if you really believe ;-)

Or is that a myth?

jm

[enki]

> >>
> >> The christian teachings are follow ups to jewish teachings
> >> which many people think trace back to Hammurabi. His
> >> codex clearly includes some sense of human right in that
> >> it does not promte the legal position that merely because
> >> on is a slave or of lower caste/rank one has no rights.
> >>
> > Going back to the Roman times, the economy was dependent on slavery.
> > In stead of bargianing for labor people war lined up infront of a spear
> > and told to work. Depending on your skill you might have better jobs
> > withe better living conditions. With the fall of Rome and partly the
> > economic decline slavery gave way to serdom which is not much better.
> > Throughout the middle ages this idea of human rights slowly formed.
> > Partly is was a result of Germanic traditions that followed the German
> > invaders. In most of the middle ages under christian doctrine as
> > interpited by the church there was a gradiation of matter of rocks to
> > God and there were some people better than others and this idea realy
> > was not challenged until the Reformation when people began to read the
> > Bible for themselvs. Right on page one Adam was the first mand created
> > in the image of God. If we are all decendended from Adam then there is
> > no justification that some people are given special divine position.
> >
> Sure but wasn't that the whole point of the nobility: the kings
> were originally suppose to have come from a more direct branch
> tracing back to Adam (or Noah if you really believe ;-)
>
> Or is that a myth?
>
> jm

Actually I do rember that from I believe that is from Chaucer who meant
it as a Joke.

These are actually dificult scholary questions we are dealing with and
the history of human rights. I thing we are both at the end of our
knowlege of what we can site as fact. In the west there are two roots
of human rights one is from a religous interpitation that is we are
endowed by our creator and voltaire who saw religon as an instrument of
oppression. Same tradition different interpitations. I am sure there
are books out there written by people who have the PHDs and done the
research.

Today I am skeptical of much of the lititure that there is so much bias
in contemorary research. I get the feeling that troupthink and
political correctness distorts a great deal of research or the
information we get not to mention those writing to counter this
perception. I was shown a philosophy book called scalling the secular
city which was an argument againt the over seculization of our culture.
Lately I have not found many book that interest me. The last
intersting book I read was the Modern Mind by Peter Watson.

[jmh]

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 08:13:08 GMT, srd in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:

> On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:43:33 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:
>
>> The issue and question is not about "_decreasing_ the availability
>> of coercive levers to non-state actors" but about reducing the incentives
>> to pull those levers regardless of who has access to the level and to
>> minimize the ability of some to use those levers to impose the will of
>> the some upon others in just any arbitraty manner the some might choose.
>
> I don't see how the last is different from the availability of the levers.

By your arguement the levers just exist and there's not much
we can do about actually eliminating them.

I do agree that there's a view in libertarian thought that says
one of the main levers is the State so therefore we have a split
within the libertarian approach with anarchists looking to eliminate
one of the big levers while other variants look to controll the
incentives and access.

> The propensity for the levers' use is what's important, and it depends on
> availability and incentives. It does seem to me that anarcho-capitalism
> focuses on availability rather than incentives. In fact, it rather seems
> that Marxism focuses on eliminating incentives for coercion, whereas
> libertarianism on limiting or eliminating available levers, the state

That's not as clear a position as you make out. Libertarians will also
suggest that markets do a lot more to eliminate the conditions that
exist creating the incentives to apply coercion and Marxism's use
of the state simply allows a different set of people to wield the
levers to reward their particular cronies.

In this case I think the clash is one of world view and perception
and apeals to "facts" fail since the differecen is how either
side is interpreting and weighing various facts.

> being a lever that is made unavailable in anarcho-capitalism; private
> property being an incentive that is unavailable in communism. And in
> general the problems of anarcho-capitalism have to do with the absence of
> levers to accomplish desirable things, and in communism, the abence of
> incentives for the same.
>
>> The AC argument is that the grant of monopoly that comes from both the
>> Hobbesian and the Lockean branches of political theory is in error. The
>> grant of monopoly will not ensure anything--a benevolent state/leviathan
>> might produce it but that's a difference source--about the level of that
>> application of force or coercion witin society. The decentralization of
>> that power would appear to be a better model based on both history and
>> newer theory.
>
> That's the first time I've heard this argument, based, that is, on
> decentralization rather than directly on the general virtues of the
> market. I suppose there's a good chance I don't understand it, based on a
> few sentences. On it's face, it seems to me extremely far-fetched. You

Yet oddly enough the decentralized market approach has not only
delivered goods and services and opportunity to lower income
groups and subcultures. The centralized approach has typically
provided a "one size fits all" solution.

The other aspect is that the centralized approach has limited
the available support channels for these less fortunate within
society by professionalizing the activities -- driving up costs
and introducing all the problems of bureaucracy without really
solving any of the ills that existed (fraud and the like) within
the decentralized, volunteer system of the past. In fact, the
monitization of the activity via teh conversion from a voluntary
social contribution into a profession increases the incentives
for that fraud.

> seem to be saying that whether central power contributes to freedom or
> subtracts from it can be decided in particular instances (always, that is,
> in favor of _decreasing_ the amount of central power) based on a global
> evaluation of the validity of the philosophical models that have defended
> the state's existence. Although I can't show that your reasoning rests on
> focusing on one aspect of human nature and ignoring the conflicting
> side--because I don't know what your reasoning is--I don't see how it
> could come from any other method. That may be my failure of imagination,
> but the conventional wisdom has it than in various circumstances, the
> exercise of state power has increased freedom, precisely by encroaching
> more decentralized social forms, as when, say, the federal government
> helped defeat Jim Crow in the southern U.S., to take one example that is
> fairly uncontroversial. (I think I can speak here of more decentralized

Sure, you have one possible example. Not include the creation of slums
based on public and Section 8 housing which were frequently higher
cost and lower quality than alternative private rentals, the programs
to provide extended owhership that result in low income people taking
loans to buy housing that was not even close to being repaired
but HUD was certifying it as fit to habitate.

We can also look to all the harms done by centralized goverment as well.

I think the balance is not favorable for sentralization of power even
if you ignore the totalitariani and authoritarian regiemes.

> _state_ systems, because you are emphasizing decentralization rather than
> market mechanisms.) So even with some recent thinking that co-ordination
> can be achieved with greater decentralization than had been supposed, you
> have a heavy burden to establish that the use of state power is *always*
> undesirable. (Or at least that its total abolition is desirable, because

I don't have to show that "state power is *always* undersirable".

All that need be shown is that the teh abusive application of
coercive force would be less than is occuring within a state
society -- or that a decentralized form of states is preferable
to a more centralized form of state. I think history shows the
latter proposition to be true already.

The former, the anarchistic approach, has some evidence in history and
also has some good support from purely theory (both neoclassical economic
analysis, social choice theory, and generalized game theory.).

> no better can be attained through it, which is weaker but nevertheless
> very demanding.) And from this comes my sense of its utopianism.

To me, when one invokes the term utopia the key aspect is that of
perfection, in the case of libertarianism it would be no one every
initiates force, which is a far cry from something just being impractical.
I think the rhetoric of utopianism here completely misapplied.

jm

[Ron Allen]

Liam wrote:
> Marxism requires a near utopian situation that
> needs a fundamental change in human behavior in
> order to work...but if it did work, great!

Ron Allen answers:
Capitalism necessitated and coerced fundamental
changes in human behavior in order for it to work.
For example, modern capitalism both required and
enforced the commodification of human labor. In
other words, human labor was transformed into a
marketed and marketable good. Capitalism has been
a disciplinarian force, pushing and pulling labor,
with the support of the modern authoritarian and
liberal state.

Liam wrote:
> Libertarianism is more of a natural progression
> of human behavior and more realistic, but it's a
> playground for the strong dominating over the
> weak with a fantasy of consumer check and
> balance over power.

Ron Allen answers:
There are different libertarianisms. There is
libertarian capitalism, and there is libertarian
socialism. If a natural progression is realistic,
then the libertarian socialism is as much about
natural progression as is libertarian capitalism.
Really-existing capitalism has always been a
playground for the strong dominating over the
weak, and the modern authoritarian state is the
repository of power over the people. There can
be no libertarian arrangement unless or until the
people -- as educated, experienced, and conscious
citizens -- are a check on the power of those whom
they elect to represent them in matters of public
concern. A true democracy is more about a balance
of powers between the government and the citizens;
but, really-existing modern liberal democracies
are more about the balance of powers between the
branches of authoritarian liberal governments.
All power is invested in the modern state; but,
in order for there to be a true balance of powers,
all power must be entrusted to the people, who may
then deputize representatives where and when this
is needed. The franchise is not enough; the vote
is never enough.

Liam wrote:
> And the current state of capitalism isn't any
> better. I keep thinking/wishing that if I know
> more about both, I can objectively see the
> workability and feasibility of one or the
> other...but from the words and opinions of
> others who are experts in both, all I see is
> ideology.

<><><><><><><>

"The mob is the mother of tyrants."
-- Dionysius (430?-?367 BC, Greek soldier, tyrant
of Syracuse)

[srd]

The following focuses on the portion above. The first half was interesting
and largely new to me.

Granting the *possibility* of an argument favoring decentralized
solutions, perhaps in the form of a rebuttable presumption in favor of
decentralization, what I don't see is how this kind of evidence can ever
justify the conclusion that decentralized solutions are _always_ better.
Now you say you don't owe an argument for universal superiority, and I
acknowledged that logical point within the parentheses below:

"you have a heavy burden to establish that the use of state power is
*always* undesirable. (Or at least that its total abolition is desirable,

because no better can be attained through it, which is weaker but
nevertheless very demanding.)"

While the weaker argument is all you require, in actuality it looks to be
no easier to prove. Say that circumstances exist where the centralized
solution produces the more efficient (very broadly construed) outcome.
Then to defend A-C, you would need to prove that NO institutions could be
engineered that permitted the centralized solution where and only where it
was properly applied. (I probably don't need to add that this potential
improvement over A-C need not be perfectly appliable; only resulting in
sufficient discrimination to improve upon the A-C outcomes.)

On the rhetoric of utopianism, I think you are right that I am at the
least stretching the concept. Possibily justifying that stretch, it would
seem that the claim that decentralized solutions are invariably superior
to centralized ones would be utopian, insofar as it asserts the
_perfection_ of the mechanism when compared to the alternatives under all
circumstances. To the extent that a position is only nominally weaker than
this, it might bear the same label.

srd

[jmh]

On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 01:13:05 -0800, srd in talk.politics.libertarian

confessed to the world saying:

But here you force another universal, which is locially the same
as the first.

There's never going to be a certainty in proof or argumentation
since quite a lot of where the differences in the sides resides is
with some of the premises/assumptions. Several people have written
book length arguments in an attempt to deal with that--I'm not up to
that ;-)

I think if you've found some of what I've said interesting what might
be useful would be to review whatever you're looked at previously to get
your knowledge of the libertarian and especially the market-oriented
anarchist (AC) understanding to see if what those sorces were arguing
now offer a more robust argument to reconsider--even if that merely
means more sophisticated crtitiques from you in the future.

Last thoughts that I have time and energy for (but thanks for a
very good conversation--don't happen onften in UseNet).
1) for some reason humans seem to be able to agree to what we
might call "general/common good" principles at a consitutional
level.

2) states are strutures that have always been imlmented as both
activte social institutions (making laws, exerting power, etc)
and are always controlled/operated by some small subset of the
governed population.

3) when we humans go about actually applying our principles to
specific cases we seem to be much less able to separate our
specific interests or personal views from the situation so we
find that these "common good" principles in abstract somehow
become special interest when applies as a concrete action.

4) states tend not to go to war all that much (oddly enought
I think it's the stong central goverment democrcasies that
go to war the most but maybe thats just an aberation of the
20th cnetury) but the strong central goverments are the
ones that have historically been the military powers and
empires.

5) one of the most peaceful periods of time for "the west"
was a period of time when no formal international governing
authority exists. Both LofN and UN have proven pretty useless
in preventing or even limiting war, even worse, both have been
seen (probably justifiably as well) highly biased organizations.

6) The US Civil War, which really settle the Federalist-Anti
Federalist debates, could be described as occurring due to the
fear of the presense of a strong central goverment (concern about
the nature of the states that would be introduces to the union
and type of economic interests they would have and the balance
of power at the federal level).Rather than preserving peace
it not only cause civil war but has also result in on-going
war against it's neighbors.

Proof? of course not. I think there are strong arguments and
I also think that the decentralized approach offer more flexibility
to implement a wider range of politial philopsophies. States by
nature tend to be much more monochromatic in complextion.

jmh

[srd]

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:14:10 -0800, jmh <jmh...@apex.localdomain> wrote:

> thanks for a
> very good conversation

Thank you as well.

srd

[Ron Allen]

enki wrote:
> What is the check on natural human evil in
> comunism?

Ron Allen answers:
The most effective check on natural human evil
is ever and always our natural human goodness,
kindness, and generosity.

enki wrote:
> The state has power that meanse the peopel in
> the state have that power. Even if comunism was
> a system that made sence how could there be a
> check and ballance on those with the massive
> power that comunism gives them.

Ron Allen answers:
Communism is not statist. Communism is anarchist.

While we have both statism and capitalism, how can
there ever be a check and balance on those with
the massive authoritarian powers given to them by
the statutory powers of the modern state?

There are checks and balances established between
the three branches of government in these United
States, for example. But, there are no real and
effective checks and balances established between
the citizens and the state. Periodic voting is
not a substantive check on the authoritarian
powers of the state. There is no existent balance
of power, such that the power of the politicians
is matched by the power of the people.

<><><><><><><><>

"People have no special rights because they belong
to one race or another: the word human defines all

rights."
-- José Marti

[Michael Price]

Ron Allen wrote:
> enki wrote:
> > What is the check on natural human evil in
> > comunism?
>
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> The most effective check on natural human evil
> is ever and always our natural human goodness,
> kindness, and generosity.

If that were the most effective check we wouldn't need
socialism though would we? It would be a check on the
"harshness" of capitalism.

>
>
> enki wrote:
> > The state has power that meanse the peopel in
> > the state have that power. Even if comunism was
> > a system that made sence how could there be a
> > check and ballance on those with the massive
> > power that comunism gives them.
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> Communism is not statist. Communism is anarchist.
>

Your communism certainly contains an organisation with
the monopoly of force. Your insistence that it is not statist
is base solely on your deceptive definitions.

> While we have both statism and capitalism, how can
> there ever be a check and balance on those with
> the massive authoritarian powers given to them by
> the statutory powers of the modern state?

We can't but we can have capitalism without statism,
and in fact that's really the only way to have it.

>
> There are checks and balances established between
> the three branches of government in these United
> States, for example. But, there are no real and
> effective checks and balances established between
> the citizens and the state. Periodic voting is
> not a substantive check on the authoritarian
> powers of the state.

Then why would it be a substantive check on the authoritarian
powers of the people?

[Michael Price]

Ron Allen wrote:
> Liam wrote:
> > Marxism requires a near utopian situation that
> > needs a fundamental change in human behavior in
> > order to work...but if it did work, great!
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> Capitalism necessitated and coerced fundamental
> changes in human behavior in order for it to work.
> For example, modern capitalism both required and
> enforced the commodification of human labor.

Human labour has always been a commodity by it's
nature, it is scarce and useful, such things are commodities.

> In other words, human labor was transformed into a
> marketed and marketable good.

When was it not a marketed and marketable good?

> Capitalism has been
> a disciplinarian force, pushing and pulling labor,
> with the support of the modern authoritarian and
> liberal state.
>

How is paying someone "discipline"?
>

[Michael Price]

enki wrote:
> srd wrote:
> > On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:57:48 -0800, enki <enk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Calling success or failure purly luck realy
> > > degredes the efforts of people who are successful.
> >
> > That's why only people who are get to do it. <g.>
> >
> >
> > > There is a difference between luck and methodical approach to a goal.
> > > If I mixed household products in my bathtub and I cured cancer, that
> > > would be luck. But a company investing in scientists for fifty years
> > > through trial and error and understanding the principles of science
> > > that would be research. Calling success or failure purly luck realy
> > > degredes the efforts of people who are successful.
> >
> > I think you may be missing the distinction I'm trying to draw. If I run a
> > research laboratory, I can hire scientists to run it. They do work and are
> > paid according to the work they do. Since the laboratory is essentially
> > run by employees, it could be run by the government. Obviously, some labs
> > are. So what does the owner add, and what is the function of rewarding the
> > owner with a profit? Presumably, the owners (or some of them) are involved
> > in high-level decision-making, including which scientists to employ at the
> > highest level of management and which opportunities to pursue, where the
> > scientific merits are equal. Such grasping of opportunity, some hold, is
> > performed better by someone with a financial stake in the process, because
> > there are no rules that guarantee success. Pure luck will almost always be
> > insufficient, but many investments, even when guided by the highest levels
> > of skill, will not be successful.
> >
> > To the extent that productivity results from following rules--no matter
> > how sophisticated--the activity involved is a form of labor. When
> > discussing profits qua profits, you need to exclude those activities that
> > may be performed better for a salary. Those are the activities where a
> > strong relationship exists between the sacrifices needed and the rewards
> > afforded. Where entrepreneurship is the dominant facet of the activity,
> > skill is of course a necessary condition for success. But it is so far
> > from sufficient that when the reward is considered relative to the
> > sacrifice entailed, startling disproportions may obtain.
> >
> > srd
>
> I support liberitiarinsm over socialm but I am no purist. There are
> things that government should do although minimal. Roads fire
> protection police and army are some that come quickly to mind.

All of which have been provided successfully by private individuals.

> What
> most people see is the weath generated from a business but they often
> don't see that they get products for much lower cost. I would take a
> 20% pay cut if my expences went down 30%. That is a problem wit state
> owned enterprises is that they often focus on distributing the profit
> for social good not what socal good the lower cost does.
>
> After working in government, I find that it is very wastful and
> inifficient. It is dificult to judge success because no profit is made
> and there is no competition for what is done. The government may not
> be the best way to do some things but you don't want to contract our
> your army.

Why not? What is the downside of having people agree that they will
defend the "country", whatever that is, by force if it is attacked? A
standing
army is dangerous to liberty and has an actual interest in provoking
attacks,
a militia consisting of a large part of the populace has no such
interest and is
quite capable of repelling most attacks and making others uneconomic.

[Topaz]

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:09:05 -0500, Ron Allen <ral...@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

>enki wrote:
> > What is the check on natural human evil in
> > comunism?
>
>
>Ron Allen answers:
>The most effective check on natural human evil
>is ever and always our natural human goodness,
>kindness, and generosity.
>

No, it's laws.

[enki]

>
> All of which have been provided successfully by private individuals.
>
> > What
> > most people see is the weath generated from a business but they often
> > don't see that they get products for much lower cost. I would take a
> > 20% pay cut if my expences went down 30%. That is a problem wit state
> > owned enterprises is that they often focus on distributing the profit
> > for social good not what socal good the lower cost does.
> >
> > After working in government, I find that it is very wastful and
> > inifficient. It is dificult to judge success because no profit is made
> > and there is no competition for what is done. The government may not
> > be the best way to do some things but you don't want to contract our
> > your army.
>
> Why not? What is the downside of having people agree that they will
> defend the "country", whatever that is, by force if it is attacked? A
> standing
> army is dangerous to liberty and has an actual interest in provoking
> attacks,
> a militia consisting of a large part of the populace has no such
> interest and is
> quite capable of repelling most attacks and making others uneconomic.

The idea of collective security and things like building roads may be
necessary functions of government. For an army it is a basic concepts
of defence to defend a geographic area and not just subscribers for the
military. Take fire protection for example. You are a subscribe to
fire service but others are not. A fire starts in a part of town that
is not subscribing to fire protection by the time it get to you the
fire is out of control and it is byond the ability for it to be
controlled and half the city burns down. This is what happened in the
Chicago fire of the 1870s. Roads are another function of government
because it is dificult to exclude people from using them except for
major highways and to make a profit.

Yes, standing armies are problems for liberity because you have a group
of people that are so much better armed and trained than the general
population. It is the basic problem of government the need to impose
force to ensure rights and making sure that that force is not used to
repress rights. The short answer the founders of the US came up with
was power without privelage and dividing of powers. The executive
controls the military and the legslature pays for it.

Your point about militias is valild up until the modern age of
mechanized warfare where small groups of well trained and equiped units
can overwhelm much large forces. See Conquistadores, Panzer Divisions
and a modern Mechized force such as in Iraq. Even well trained lightly
equped units can defeat much larger untrained forces like Executie
Outcomes did in Africa where about 80 defeated an army of 10,000.

I favor many liberitarian ideal but not the more extreme abstract
concepts such as no governemnt. The problem I have with the basic idea
is that people do bad things if they it in their interest and can get
away with it. There is no sure way to ensure rights but over time we
get better a perfecting ways to do it. I have made the argument that
there needs to be a combination of force and persuation. Have a
culture that defines a good then promotes that while having laws that
when broken force can be used.

[enki]

Ron Allen wrote:
> enki wrote:
> > What is the check on natural human evil in
> > comunism?
>
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> The most effective check on natural human evil
> is ever and always our natural human goodness,
> kindness, and generosity.

That is very wishful thinking, after seeing the evil that has been
unleashed on the world. Yes peer pressure and with holding approval
can be a powerful force on some individuals it is no sure way for
protection. I can't comprhend what it takes to kill whole families but
it has been done.
>
>

>
> Ron Allen answers:
> Communism is not statist. Communism is anarchist.
>
> While we have both statism and capitalism, how can
> there ever be a check and balance on those with
> the massive authoritarian powers given to them by
> the statutory powers of the modern state?

First capitalism is not power granted by the state it is power
accumilated by acheavment and the choice of others. That is a person
takes a risk and invests in a new idea. To implemnt that new idea
people have to voulintarily lend money or invest in the enterprise.
Still people have to choose to purchase the goods produced by that
enterprise. All the state does is protect private property and set the
rules for accuring that property that are equall among all. The
liberitarian state should use it power from stopping people from
behavior not comelling behavior.

>
> There are checks and balances established between
> the three branches of government in these United
> States, for example. But, there are no real and
> effective checks and balances established between
> the citizens and the state. Periodic voting is
> not a substantive check on the authoritarian
> powers of the state. There is no existent balance
> of power, such that the power of the politicians
> is matched by the power of the people.
>
>

We can vote, that is the check. There are dangers in too much
democracy. That is people who spend their time in their profetions
don't follow the minute dealing of policy and such as Alcibides did in
the Saracuse expidetion cause government to make very bad decisions.
You also have the problem of natural interests. In a democracy what is
to stop the poor from taking all the property of the rich and the
problems that causes.

[Michael Price]

enki wrote:
> >
> > All of which have been provided successfully by private individuals.
> >
> > > What
> > > most people see is the weath generated from a business but they often
> > > don't see that they get products for much lower cost. I would take a
> > > 20% pay cut if my expences went down 30%. That is a problem wit state
> > > owned enterprises is that they often focus on distributing the profit
> > > for social good not what socal good the lower cost does.
> > >
> > > After working in government, I find that it is very wastful and
> > > inifficient. It is dificult to judge success because no profit is made
> > > and there is no competition for what is done. The government may not
> > > be the best way to do some things but you don't want to contract our
> > > your army.
> >
> > Why not? What is the downside of having people agree that they will
> > defend the "country", whatever that is, by force if it is attacked? A
> > standing army is dangerous to liberty and has an actual interest in provoking
> > attacks, a militia consisting of a large part of the populace has no such
> > interest and is quite capable of repelling most attacks and making others
> > uneconomic.
>
> The idea of collective security and things like building roads may be
> necessary functions of government.

What is "collective security"? If I am attacked I want security, but
that's
an individual want not a collective one. The fact that large numbers
of
people may want protection at the same time in no way means that we
need the State to provide it, contracts to defend each other are quite
sufficent
to provide mutaul defence.

> For an army it is a basic concepts
> of defence to defend a geographic area and not just subscribers for the
> military.

But what does that mean? It does not mean that I am secured against
attack, that's the cops job. It means that I am secured against
someone
trying to change the people who allegedly secure me against attack.
But
why would I not want a change of people who allegedly secure me against
attack? Why would I want to stay part of one nation as opposed to
another?
If you think about it my interest is as likely to be with the new boss
as the
old boss.

> Take fire protection for example. You are a subscribe to
> fire service but others are not. A fire starts in a part of town that
> is not subscribing to fire protection by the time it get to you the
> fire is out of control and it is byond the ability for it to be
> controlled and half the city burns down.

Is that really likely? Most people insure their homes and insurance
companies have found it cheaper to put fires out than pay for damages.
There is no reason to believe that in the absence of the State fires
will
commonly rage out of control, it would cost too many people too much.
Now it's true that insurance subscribers would pay for much of the fire
protection of non-subscribers, but not all of it. There would be a
free
rider problem, but there is no reason to believe it would not be
overwhelming.

> This is what happened in the
> Chicago fire of the 1870s. Roads are another function of government
> because it is dificult to exclude people from using them except for
> major highways and to make a profit.
>

But it's easy to charge money for putting billboards on them.
Private
roads are often profitable and when they're not it's often because the
road simply isn't worth it. Currently Australian governments charges
much more than the cost of providing and maintaining roads, even if
there
was wastage most people would be better off paying for the roads
direct.

> Yes, standing armies are problems for liberity because you have a group
> of people that are so much better armed and trained than the general
> population. It is the basic problem of government the need to impose
> force to ensure rights and making sure that that force is not used to
> repress rights. The short answer the founders of the US came up with
> was power without privelage and dividing of powers. The executive
> controls the military and the legslature pays for it.
>
> Your point about militias is valild up until the modern age of
> mechanized warfare where small groups of well trained and equiped units
> can overwhelm much large forces.

Like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam etc? The death of the
militia
has be exaggerated.

> See Conquistadores, Panzer Divisions
> and a modern Mechized force such as in Iraq. Even well trained lightly
> equped units can defeat much larger untrained forces like Executie
> Outcomes did in Africa where about 80 defeated an army of 10,000.
>

An army of 80 defeated a gang of 10,000, and they probably bribed
most
of their commanders (I would). See how little control a much bigger
army
is having versus people who are _motivated_. The US had more than 80
people in Somalia, and they ran.

> I favor many liberitarian ideal but not the more extreme abstract
> concepts such as no governemnt. The problem I have with the basic idea
> is that people do bad things if they it in their interest and can get
> away with it.

Indeed, but the State enables that behaviour, it doesn't generally
restrict it.

> There is no sure way to ensure rights but over time we
> get better a perfecting ways to do it. I have made the argument that
> there needs to be a combination of force and persuation. Have a
> culture that defines a good then promotes that while having laws that
> when broken force can be used.

But force can be used without a monopoly of it. Indeed people
without
a monopoly of force are more likely to use it only when they have
justification.

[Michael Price]

Topaz wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:09:05 -0500, Ron Allen <ral...@bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
>
> >enki wrote:
> > > What is the check on natural human evil in
> > > comunism?
> >
> >
> >Ron Allen answers:
> >The most effective check on natural human evil
> >is ever and always our natural human goodness,
> >kindness, and generosity.
> >
> No, it's laws.

Laws that apply to everyone, even your fueher, which is exactly what
you don't want.

[Ron Allen]

enki wrote:
> What is the check on natural human evil in
> comunism?

Ron Allen wrote:
> The most effective check on natural human evil
> is ever and always our natural human goodness,
> kindness, and generosity.

Topaz wrote:
> No, it's laws.

Ron Allen answers:
For immature human beings, the threat and fear of
punishment is a restraint on crimes; but, for
mature human beings, the threat and fear of
disrespect and disregard from others becomes a
restraint on crimes. Sooner or later, our own
natural tendency to goodness becomes a natural
restraint on our natural tendency to baseness.
Conscience is, in the words of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, "the pulse of reason".

<><><><><><><><>

"A man's conscience and his judgment is the same
thing."
-- Thomas Hobbes

[Ron Allen]

enki wrote:
> What is the check on natural human evil in
> comunism?

Ron Allen wrote:
> The most effective check on natural human evil
> is ever and always our natural human goodness,
> kindness, and generosity.

enki wrote:
> That is very wishful thinking, after seeing the
> evil that has been unleashed on the world. Yes
> peer pressure and with holding approval can be a
> powerful force on some individuals it is no sure
> way for protection. I can't comprhend what it
> takes to kill whole families but it has been
> done.

Ron Allen answers:
We live in a world that promotes, cultivates,
intensifies, praises, and rewards competitive
cupidity and selfish struggle. It is no wonder
that people are so nasty, so immodest, so mean,
so ugly, so vulgar, and so brutish. It does the
élites a lot of service when we take criminal
and combative human behaviors as if these were the
most normal, most direct, and most congenital
fruits of human nature. Human crimes are not an
indication of human freedom. Human evil is not a
demonstration of human freedom. Human goodness
is the best evidence of human freedom. Human
generosity, not greed, is the truest example of
human freedom. Civility is a manifestation of
freedom. The inveterate criminal is not free; and
so, we must constrain and confine the criminal.

Ron Allen wrote:
> Communism is not statist. Communism is
> anarchist.

> While we have both statism and capitalism, how
> can there ever be a check and balance on those
> with the massive authoritarian powers given to
> them by the statutory powers of the modern
> state?

enki wrote:
> First capitalism is not power granted by the
> state it is power accumilated by acheavment and
> the choice of others. That is a person takes a
> risk and invests in a new idea. To implemnt
> that new idea people have to voulintarily lend
> money or invest in the enterprise. Still people
> have to choose to purchase the goods produced by
> that enterprise. All the state does is protect
> private property and set the rules for accuring
> that property that are equall among all. The
> liberitarian state should use it power from
> stopping people from behavior not comelling
> behavior.

Ron Allen answers:
These are propositions that every ideological
and libertarian capitalist advocates; but,
really-existing capitalism does not observe or
obey these ideas, these suggested ideals. We
can talk about hypothetical capitalism; but, we
cannot confuse a theoretical capitalism with
really-existing capitalism.

Ron Allen wrote:
> There are checks and balances established
> between the three branches of government in
> these United States, for example. But, there
> are no real and effective checks and balances
> established between the citizens and the state.
> Periodic voting is not a substantive check on
> the authoritarian powers of the state. There is
> no existent balance of power, such that the
> power of the politicians is matched by the power
> of the people.

enki wrote:
> We can vote, that is the check.

Ron Allen answers:
We can only vote for what is offered. Our vote is
always limited to the candidates who happen to run
for political office.

enki wrote:
> There are dangers in too much democracy.

Ron Allen answers:
We hear this dull refrain very often, as if this
settled the matter. I have also heard that too
much freedom is dangerous.

Every argument used against democracy is also and
always an argument that is used against liberty.
If a libertarian ignores the arguments against
liberty, then you cannot condemn a democrat for
ignoring the arguments against democracy.

enki wrote:
> That is people who spend their time in their
> profetions don't follow the minute dealing of
> policy and such as Alcibides did in the Saracuse
> expidetion cause government to make very bad
> decisions. You also have the problem of natural
> interests. In a democracy what is to stop the
> poor from taking all the property of the rich
> and the problems that causes.

Ron Allen answers:
In capitalism, what stopped the United States from
taking land from the Native Americans? The state
defended this usurpation of land by slaughtering
the Native Americans.

In England, did capitalism stop land enclosures?
No! Land enclosures, which helped to inaugurate
modern capitalism, were a usurpation of land, a
seizure of land that was violently and forcefully
defended by the state.

<><><><><><><><>

"A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till
it is engrafted with a foreign stock."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

[enki]

> >
> > The idea of collective security and things like building roads may be
> > necessary functions of government.
>
> What is "collective security"? If I am attacked I want security, but
> that's
> an individual want not a collective one. The fact that large numbers
> of
> people may want protection at the same time in no way means that we
> need the State to provide it, contracts to defend each other are quite
> sufficent
> to provide mutaul defence.

What is collective security. Simple certian actions benifite all. A
city wall would be collective security for people in the town. It is
more defendable and efficient than each person fortifing their own
house. It is simple efficiency as with other human activities. We have
the ability to create orginizations that are far more efficient than
people working in uncoordinated ways on their own. If you chose to buy
or have property under the jurstiction of collective security you are
agreeing implicity to the social contract. I am a raider, I go to the
border and say let me in the couontry because I am just going to raid
the people who don't subscribe to the secuity service. I am only going
to rob poor people who don't pay taxes.

>
> > For an army it is a basic concepts
> > of defence to defend a geographic area and not just subscribers for the
> > military.
>
> But what does that mean? It does not mean that I am secured against
> attack, that's the cops job. It means that I am secured against
> someone
> trying to change the people who allegedly secure me against attack.
> But
> why would I not want a change of people who allegedly secure me against
> attack? Why would I want to stay part of one nation as opposed to
> another?
> If you think about it my interest is as likely to be with the new boss
> as the
> old boss.

Police and military both are in the business of security just at
different lavels and jursdictions. Police don't protect any one.
There are no plice guarding people and businesses yes there is private
security that does physical securty but the police go after people
after they commit crimes or have hurt people. The idea of that it
takes the interest away from committing crimes or harming people. If
the police only went after people robbed or attacked subscribers than
the those too poor would have no liberity. I could get a mob together
or form a company to go and round up all non-subscribers to the police
and openly sell them into slavery or just commit any crime against
them.

The military on the other hand is defence on a different scale. It is
designed to confront other organized militaries meet and defeat them in
battle. Just as people resort to violence to settle disputes so do
nations. In the bast larger nations would just conquer smaller ones
because they could. In the past and to extent today, there is the idea
of ballance of power where nations would form alliances to basically
become bigger and deter attacks because of cost benifit. Today and
since Kant first had the idea that democracy decreases war because the
average person who bears the brunt of war would seldom be fore it
because of personal interest. That is why many see spreading of human
rights and democracy is spreading peace because the populations that
have to fight the wars won't be eager to start them.

>
> > Take fire protection for example. You are a subscribe to
> > fire service but others are not. A fire starts in a part of town that
> > is not subscribing to fire protection by the time it get to you the
> > fire is out of control and it is byond the ability for it to be
> > controlled and half the city burns down.
>
> Is that really likely? Most people insure their homes and insurance
> companies have found it cheaper to put fires out than pay for damages.
> There is no reason to believe that in the absence of the State fires
> will
> commonly rage out of control, it would cost too many people too much.
> Now it's true that insurance subscribers would pay for much of the fire
> protection of non-subscribers, but not all of it. There would be a
> free
> rider problem, but there is no reason to believe it would not be
> overwhelming.
>
> > This is what happened in the
> > Chicago fire of the 1870s.

We have the exaple and lessong from past experience. Putting in
regulations (limiting freedom) and universal fire coverage (collective
security.) In the past cities would burn down there are many examples.

Roads are another function of government
> > because it is dificult to exclude people from using them except for
> > major highways and to make a profit.
> >
> But it's easy to charge money for putting billboards on them.
> Private
> roads are often profitable and when they're not it's often because the
> road simply isn't worth it. Currently Australian governments charges
> much more than the cost of providing and maintaining roads, even if
> there
> was wastage most people would be better off paying for the roads
> direct.

It is possible for a highway system but average paved roads in which we
all benifite. That trip from your house to the store in the next
neighaborhood, who builds than road? If it for profit how are
non-payers kept off the road?

>
> > Yes, standing armies are problems for liberity because you have a group
> > of people that are so much better armed and trained than the general
> > population. It is the basic problem of government the need to impose
> > force to ensure rights and making sure that that force is not used to
> > repress rights. The short answer the founders of the US came up with
> > was power without privelage and dividing of powers. The executive
> > controls the military and the legslature pays for it.
> >
> > Your point about militias is valild up until the modern age of
> > mechanized warfare where small groups of well trained and equiped units
> > can overwhelm much large forces.
>
> Like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam etc? The death of the
> militia
> has be exaggerated.
>
> > See Conquistadores, Panzer Divisions
> > and a modern Mechized force such as in Iraq. Even well trained lightly
> > equped units can defeat much larger untrained forces like Executie
> > Outcomes did in Africa where about 80 defeated an army of 10,000.
> >
> An army of 80 defeated a gang of 10,000, and they probably bribed
> most
> of their commanders (I would). See how little control a much bigger
> army

Nope, it was 80 of the best SF types against an army that was mostly
modivated by drug use and brute force.

> is having versus people who are _motivated_. The US had more than 80
> people in Somalia, and they ran.

The basic point is that warfare today is a specialized skill with
specialized equipment can defeat much larger forces. There are many
examples of that. The examples you site are where political
constraints and non-support what was necessary for victory can cause.
In Vietnam it was not a military victory but political. Somilia again
political. If the Black Hawk Down battle was a very small number of US
troops who were ambused by odds more than 10:1 and still they were able
to get most of the people out. The way to defeat the US is not
military it is polical.

In Iraq few Americans have been killed the enemy has won no battles and
the terrorists are responsible for most of the civillian killing and
still there is this perception of defeat. I am curious how this
perception spreads.

>
> > I favor many liberitarian ideal but not the more extreme abstract
> > concepts such as no governemnt. The problem I have with the basic idea
> > is that people do bad things if they it in their interest and can get
> > away with it.
>
> Indeed, but the State enables that behaviour, it doesn't generally
> restrict it.

I agrue the contrary. We are compelled to pay taxes. We are compelled
to provide this and that to people. Most laws are what we are not
allowed to do. These laws abre based on restricting behavior that
endangers other people.

>
> > There is no sure way to ensure rights but over time we
> > get better a perfecting ways to do it. I have made the argument that
> > there needs to be a combination of force and persuation. Have a
> > culture that defines a good then promotes that while having laws that
> > when broken force can be used.
>
> But force can be used without a monopoly of it. Indeed people
> without a monopoly of force are more likely to use it only when they have
> justification.

That is a good argument. I am for collective security and policing. I
am not opposed to people having the abilty to defend themselvs. If we
want freedom we don't want an omi-police presence stopping every
potential crime. Again people do bad things and my family should not
be killed because the police were not in the area. There is nothing
wrong with somone shooting some one in defence. The problem is that we
are still accoutnable for that action to ensure it was in defence and
for it to be in line with some princples.

I have given the extreme example of defence and accountability. For
example, I am paranoid wuss and some meanicing muscle guy move in with
a mullet and every day when I see him I feel intimidated. I shoot him
in defence. Obviously, I am wrong and I have to be accountable for
that action.

Another way I might disagree with monopoly of forec would be that the
government negociates with powerful factions rather than confronthing
them. That gang is too powerful we won't arrest their members. The
use of force is very powerful and morally neutral. It really
persuation that is most important. That is devlope a culture with
morals and respect for human rights, have a military that refrains from
politics and have a prosperous stable country where the there dosn't
devlope a need for military intervention.