The Unincorporated Man
Ray
World 300 years in the future, based on competing currencies,
competing protection agencies and limited government that
also competes in security but is the only agency with a Supreme Court.
Both Milton and David Freeman are given due for this system in the novel.
It's a Capitalist system but nowhere is there mention of Ayn Rand.
In this society every person is incorporated where at birth the gov
owns 5% of him and his parents own 20%.
Man spread out into the solar system. No one is hungry or want of
shelter. Corporations pretty much run everything. It's an ideal system.
Until they found and revived a frozen present day man.
The constitution said all must incorporate. He refused to become a "slave".
That's when things got interesting.
I got it as a x-mass present, in hardcover.
It's worth reading but I would wait for the paperback.
Ray
Ray
news:hhhid5$slj$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
> Has anyone read that book? It's by Doni and Eytan Kollin.
>
it hurt
> I got it as a x-mass present, in hardcover.
> It's worth reading but I would wait for the paperback.
>
Oh, I forgot to mention.
No where in this book do they mention universals or nessness.
Malrassic Park
wrote:
>"Ray" <ray...@embarqmail.com> wrote in message
>news:hhhid5$slj$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
>> Has anyone read that book? It's by Doni and Eytan Kollin.
..
>snipped myself
>it hurt
..
>> I got it as a x-mass present, in hardcover.
>> It's worth reading but I would wait for the paperback.
..
>Oh, I forgot to mention.
>No where in this book do they mention universals or nessness.
Ayn Rand mentioned it.
You do know who that is, don't you?
Do you belong on this forum, or not?
Charles Bell
> World 300 years in the future, based on competing currencies,
> competing protection agencies and limited government that
> also competes in security but is the only agency with a Supreme Court.
> Both Milton and David Freeman are given due for this system in the novel.
> It's a Capitalist system but nowhere is there mention of Ayn Rand.
>
This "utopia" sounds like a Collectivist Hell David Fridman would dream up .
.. . oh, but some anti-capitalist commentators will paste Rand's name against
it even though her Anthem-like character would be the individualist-slave
and not as the progenitor of the ideas on which that socio-economic system
is built.
"The Kollin brothers' vision...offers a rare reminder that democratic
capitalism as we know it is not necessarily the last word on how we humans
should organize our affairs."
Forbes.com columnist, Reihan Salam
You get the picture?
Jim Klein
> This "utopia" sounds like a Collectivist Hell David Fridman would dream up .
> .. . oh, but some anti-capitalist commentators will paste Rand's name against
> it even though her Anthem-like character would be the individualist-slave
> and not as the progenitor of the ideas on which that socio-economic system
> is built.
>
> "The Kollin brothers' vision...offers a rare reminder that democratic
> capitalism as we know it is not necessarily the last word on how we humans
> should organize our affairs."
> Forbes.com columnist, Reihan Salam
>
> You get the picture?
I don't know about any of that, but hopefully you know
that the whole concept of shielding liability through
incorporation is a crock of shit.
[Since this place has been nothing but trolls lately,
I figure, "When in Rome..."]
You do know that about incorporation, don't you?
Don't get me wrong...I don't think there's much to be
said for the forceful enforcement of contracts either,
and I've got plenty of problems with your imaginary
Rule of Law, as if words could stop bullets. But even
leaving all that aside, and stipulating a freedom-oriented
society governed by the Rule of Law (let's pretend with
the Consent of the Governed), that Rule of Law should not
codify the false-to-fact fantasy that there's anything
other than individuals doing anything out there.
Naturally, you'd also have to assume a semi-sane
tort system. But assuming all those givens, you
won't be able to come up with a decent non-
pragmatist argument defending shielded liability.
Or I'll put it this way. I haven't seen one yet.
jk
Ray
news:80ac5713-bcd8-463c...@p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 1, 2:08 pm, Charles Bell <cbel...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> [Since this place has been nothing but trolls lately,
> I figure, "When in Rome..."]
>
I don't know what's worse. What you just said or that which you
and Charles are competing as to who disagrees with Rand the most.
Ray is going back to drinking Irish coffee.
Charles Bell
> On Jan 1, 2:08 pm, Charles Bell <cbel...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > This "utopia" sounds like a Collectivist Hell David Fridman would dream up .
> > .. . oh, but some anti-capitalist commentators will paste Rand's name against
> > it even though her Anthem-like character would be the individualist-slave
> > and not as the progenitor of the ideas on which that socio-economic system
> > is built.
>
> > "The Kollin brothers' vision...offers a rare reminder that democratic
> > capitalism as we know it is not necessarily the last word on how we humans
> > should organize our affairs."
> > Forbes.com columnist, Reihan Salam
>
> > You get the picture?
>
> I don't know about any of that, but hopefully you know
> that the whole concept of shielding liability through
> incorporation is a crock of shit.
>
Try this from an amazon.com 2/5 star reviewer:
"More tedious is the simplified, but oft-repeated, anti-government
free-market capitalist philosophy that haunts the book like the ghost
of Ayn Rand."
Get the picture of association of libertarian anarcho-capitalist
bullshit with Ayn Rand?
> [Since this place has been nothing but trolls lately,
> I figure, "When in Rome..."]
>
> You do know that about incorporation, don't you?
>
What I know is that any concession on the principle of individual
ownership one's self is anathema to individual liberty.
It seems to me that incorporation for the purposes of limited
individual liabilty *ought to be* at all times voluntary as it is not
always in the best interests of the individual. Moreover, I sometimes
see the POV of anti-corportist left-libertarians who see the tendency
therefrom to fascism, but I also see that their form of collectivism
is no better than right-libertarians' form of collectivism.
> Don't get me wrong...I don't think there's much to be
> said for the forceful enforcement of contracts either,
> and I've got plenty of problems with your imaginary
> Rule of Law, as if words could stop bullets.
Actually I have no idea how this relates to what I have said exactly.
You are probably getting me mixed up with Prescott, another matter
about which I have no idea how you come about inasmuch as I hold the
opposite view from him.
Charles Bell
> I don't know what's worse. What you just said or that which you
> and Charles are competing as to who disagrees with Rand the most.
>
As I said to Klein:
<< Try this from an amazon.com 2/5 star reviewer:
"More tedious is the simplified, but oft-repeated, anti-government
free-market capitalist philosophy that haunts the book like the ghost
of Ayn Rand."
Get the picture of association of libertarian anarcho-capitalist
bullshit with Ayn Rand? >>
I am *not* disagreeing with Rand here. I am disagreeing with the
premise of the book (though admittedly I have not read the book) and
the notion that libertarian anarcho-capitalism is anything other than
opposed to what Rand wanted in democratic capitalism.
Jim Klein
> > You do know that about incorporation, don't you?
>
> What I know is that any concession on the principle of individual
> ownership one's self is anathema to individual liberty.
It's anathema to the facts. In common lingo, it's not that we
/should/ have individual ownership; it's that we /do/.
Yes, I know you know that, plus that the should follows
from the is, in not-so-common lingo.
> It seems to me that incorporation for the purposes of limited
> individual liabilty *ought to be* at all times voluntary
That doesn't make sense since whomever the tort was
against, didn't take that voluntary limiting.
> as it is not
> always in the best interests of the individual.
In the end, it's just another way to pretend that we don't
really have individual ownership...whether of ourselves
or that which we create.
Which would be fine, except that we do.
> Actually I have no idea how this relates to what I have said exactly.
It doesn't, which is why I mentioned, "When in Rome..."
I figured might as well troll for something interesting!
> You are probably getting me mixed up with Prescott...
That would be quite a mixup and thankfully I'm not
quite that senile yet.
jk
Charles Bell
> On Jan 2, 8:22 am, Charles Bell <cbel...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > You do know that about incorporation, don't you?
>
> > What I know is that any concession on the principle of individual
> > ownership one's self is anathema to individual liberty.
>
> It's anathema to the facts. �In common lingo, it's not that we
> /should/ have individual ownership; it's that we /do/.
>
> Yes, I know you know that, plus that the should follows
> from the is, in not-so-common lingo.
>
> > It seems to me that incorporation for the purposes of limited
> > individual liabilty *ought to be* at all times voluntary
>
> That doesn't make sense since whomever the tort was
> against, didn't take that voluntary limiting.
>
This discussion is handicapped by the fact that neither of us has read
the book. I expect a long car trip ahead so I will probably download
the book and listen then -- making it hard to quote from it later, if
necessary, but from the description not only is it an anarcho-
capitalist society but it is one with a god-damn Supreme Court. If I
ever would want to see anarchy, I want to see one where the lawyers
are the first to the scaffold.
Maybe one day I will have the words to convey to you what I see as
Friedman-Sunstein-Obama jurisprudential tyranny.
Charles Bell
Political anarchists will argue that there exists a distinction
between lawlessness of anarchy that results in the breakdown of
government and society at large and the anarchy of their utopias of
perfect law. Consequently, they exhibit no intellectual embarrassment
when failed states like Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti fall into
anarchy.
However, why do these high-minded individuals not endeavor to
establish their right kind of anarchy from the ashes of these failed
states? This is the stuff of futurist dystopias/utopias that
perfection follows on collapse. Even Ayn Rand understood that
particular grandiose appeal to the optimist in /Atlas Shrugged/. In
the present example, /The Unincorporated Man/ by Kollin & Kollin an
anarcho-capitalist society not only spanning the globe but out into
the solar system lasting three centuries into the future is fully
established and humming along beautifully until . . . the thawing out
of a cryogenically preserved Justin Cord who died roughly in these
present times.
To be accurate, though, the world government in /TUM/ is not an
anarchy, but rather an ideal libertarian minarchist state as
envisioned by Milton, rather than David, Friedman. David Friedman's
lot is presented in the book as a political minority called the
Eliminationists who would be given Venus in a century that it takes to
terraform it.
/TUM/ is an entertaining and competently written book in the sci-fi
genre of the thoughtful kind much like by Robert Heinlein and Philip
K. Dick but without their succinctness and tight plots. There are
many neat-o gadgets and a plausible society except for, at least, one
thing.
In /TUM/ one is incorporated at birth, and that in order to get a job
or an education, one must trade stock up to 75% of oneself because
automatically 5% goes to the government and 20% to the parents. It is
a rare thing for anyone not from a wealthy family to "obtain majority"
by buying back one's stock until late in adulthood. Meaning that in
childhood and early adulthood one must trade at least 26% of one's
stock to advance. Before one obtains majority, all investors decide
where one can work and where one can live.
The first words of the book quotes:
<< The counterpart for education (financing) would be to "buy" a share
in an individual earning prospects; to advance him the funds needed to
finance his training on condition that he agree to pay the lender a
specified fraction of his future earnings. There seems no legal
obstacle to private contracts of this kind, even though they are
economically equivalent to the purchase of a share in an individual's
earning capacity and thus to partial slavery. >>
-- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
A defining principle for both anarchism and severely minarchist
government one finds to be that people collectively seek to glue their
social and cultural systems together --- and do not have to be
constrained or coerced into so doing even when those systems conflict.
In other words, there exists a "social imperative" for cooperation and
to obey not only societal dictates but also inter-societal dictates.
One may find a society of slave-owners and their slaves outside the
dictates of one's societal norms, but trading on one's future earnings
for present benefit in a legally binding way is "partial slavery"
that may be in one's societal norms.
The anarchist norm for such trade-offs in societal imperatives is the
imperative itself. The definition of the imperative varies widely from
"historic destiny" to "class destiny" to "the greater good" to
"survival of the species" but invariably involves a collectivist
standard of an imperative and never questioning the existence of the
imperative itself.
Considering the following from /The Unincorporated Man/ (p. 217) which
I consider to be the operative force in the imaginary society the book
has constructed which has, more than halfway through the book, no
visible malcontents. On the matter of a social misfit, the child
pornographer:
<< "So then tell me, Neela," Justin said, still shocked at where the
conversation had drifted. "What happens to our social misfit?"
"This person would not be able to hold a job," Neela stated, "a
marriage, or his friends. He'd be completely and thoroughly
ostracized. And believe me when I tell you, fear of that happening is
far more effective than any laws you could conceive of. We learned the
hard way that you can get around a law far easier than a societal
imperative. Of course, once the perpetrator was corrected by the
psyche audit, he'd be able to rebuild his or her life elsewhere." >>
The "psyche audit" consists of "nanobots" rewiring the brain of the
person being audited.
* * * Spoiler * * *
The book ends with the Randian hero, Justin Cord, gone limp into a
sort of Mel Gibson/William Wallace shouting "Freedom" to the
disaffected proletarian "pennies" (for penney-stock working-class
persons) for no reason other than it seems like a better thing not to
have the incipient slave-owing society. The thesis of the book really
is none at all. The ideal libertarian-economic system works, of
course, but at the cost of a society increasingly run by greedy
corporate types and the majority of the population willing to enslave
itself. The alternative presented (other than from the anarchist
Eliminationists about whom nothing is said and who play no role in the
plot) is a sort of going back to the old ways but maybe without all
the government.
This thought-provoking sci-fi novel is nearly void of any enduring
ideas and carried by a hero without any enduring heroic traits.