I was making a joke without reading the whole thread and realizing how serious and angry it was.

[Edited on July 2, 2011 at 3:32 AM. Reason : My bad.]

7/2/2011 3:26:49 AM

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/adam-smith-a-progressive/

7/2/2011 9:46:17 AM

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Zls2AReVI

7/2/2011 10:46:58 AM

McDanger, Adam Smith was your appeal to authority, not mine. What you posted did not jive with my recollection all those years ago, so I asked for a citation. If you were unable to provide such, then perhaps you should have avoided the appeal.

^^ As always, the internet provides. So, Chance, how hard was it to Google that?

^ all true
If all men were angels then it would not matter what mode we used to organize ourselves. Because all men are self interested to a fault, capitalism is best.

Quote :

"Haha how the fuck do you still not understand what a workers council is? "

Because all you have said about it was "I'm simply being honest and admitting I don't have the entire system worked out from top to bottom."

[Edited on July 2, 2011 at 11:04 AM. Reason : .,.]

7/2/2011 10:56:14 AM

Quote :

"So, Chance, how hard was it to Google that? "

4-5 seconds? Googled "adam smith a progressive" and it is the third link.

And for those of us who haven't read Smith (and probably won't any time soon), this (from my skimming) would be a counter argument to my last link

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/03/misrepresenting-adam-smith.html

[Edited on July 2, 2011 at 11:21 AM. Reason : .]

7/2/2011 11:16:28 AM

Quote :

"all men are self interested to a fault"

prove it

7/2/2011 10:40:03 PM

Well, I myself spend more time thinking about myself than I do all other people combined. I then spent the bulk of the remainder of my time thinking about the people immediately around me. I spent more time thinking about how to help my friend fix his tire problems in one day than I spent thinking about the homeless of Paris in my entire life. As such, while it would be folly to put me in charge of the affairs of strangers, I seem perfectly motivated to oversee my own affairs.

Adam Smith on the subject:
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2011/03/adam-smith-on-disaster-and-virtue.html

7/3/2011 1:27:25 AM

Quote :

"McDanger, Adam Smith was your appeal to authority, not mine. What you posted did not jive with my recollection all those years ago, so I asked for a citation. If you were unable to provide such, then perhaps you should have avoided the appeal."

Oh I'm quite able to provide such; at the moment I'm currently spending some free time (here and there) working back through the texts and picking up quotations, building a firmer case. Of course I'm mostly reconstructing arguments that other people have already made, but I doubt you'll read articles that I link you to (or simply re-read Smith in entirety). It's been a fun exercise and it's always a good time reading Smith, so it didn't take much convincing to lead me to go through his works again. Thanks for the inspiration, I'm always pleasantly surprised by how intelligent and progressive Smith's thought is.

In short: I decided to make it a little personal project and so you're going to have to wait a bit. But then again you've spent 20+ years not knowing what Smith said, so you can wait another week or so until I'm finished. The mythology you keep presenting as fact is so widespread that it's a worthwhile service, I feel.

Your repeated insistence that the man's thought can and should be boiled down to a single paragraph of writing is the prime reason you do not understand Smith.

[Edited on July 7, 2011 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .]

7/7/2011 12:20:54 PM

If what you say is true, then I would not. Does not mean an appeal to Smith's authority makes your world view correct. It still isn't even clear you are appealing to authority, given Smithian quotes to the contrary. As I said, at best you are showing Smith to be a conflicted philosopher.

[Edited on July 8, 2011 at 9:01 PM. Reason : .,.]

7/8/2011 9:01:12 PM

Quote :

"If what you say is true, then I would not. Does not mean an appeal to Smith's authority makes your world view correct. It still isn't even clear you are appealing to authority, given Smithian quotes to the contrary. As I said, at best you are showing Smith to be a conflicted philosopher."

Never claimed that appealing to Smith's view made my world view correct. I was merely pointing out how progressive Smith is and how he felt about "free markets" (something that you can't look at in isolation of his views on human motivation). The reason I've been harping on Smith is because you have asserted the common mythology, that he was some free-markets capitalist apologist. Can't be further from the truth.

There is a particular ignorant point of view (yours) which thinks that Smith is a "conflicted philosopher"; this viewpoint has been debunked multiple times in the academic literature, including an interesting article Rothschild wrote about this precise topic in 1992 ("Adam Smith and laissez-faire"). Rather, Smith demonstrates what many feel to be a typical aspect of the Scottish enlightenment (also seen in David Hume): general good sense and moderation. That he views human motivation as springing from two conflicting sources (sympathy and self-interest) is not a contradiction but a description that he lays out carefully, with a meticulous case (the fact that it would appear a "contradiction" as you put it is a definite sign of an overdose of rational-agent approaches to economics). TMS and Wealth form a very large system of thought, and overall a coherent one. The fact that you were initially unaware of this "tension" (a tension which has been explained for multiple decades now), yet claimed to have read both works "closely" means that you're a liar and like to misrepresent what you know about a subject. In other words you have no intellectual integrity or credibility.


[Edited on July 9, 2011 at 11:02 AM. Reason : .]

7/9/2011 10:58:55 AM

It is not my opinion he is conflicted. Way back in the day when I read Smith, I never got the opinion he was conflicted. But what you have been claiming he said, without quotation or citation, is contradicted by everything I have ever read or heard. As such, if what you claim he said is true, without quotation or citation, it would mean he was quite conflicted with himself.

However, as the little project you claim to be compiling has not yet been introduced to the tread, it is STILL just your word (mostly name-calling) against the internet.

So, for the love of God, weeks and a page of posts later, PLEASE post anything to back up this claim you attributed to Smith:
"Without checking greed (either through cultural/moral attitudes or through regulations), free markets don't produce equilibria that are beneficial to society as a whole."

7/9/2011 2:23:19 PM

I know the entire tactic here is to wear me down by getting me to "waste my time" but like I said, I decide to make the project larger in scope. Again: you've been ignorant your entire life, you can wait while I take my time making it worth *my* while too.

7/9/2011 6:16:35 PM

7/9/2011 9:28:19 PM

^ lol

7/10/2011 8:39:16 AM

^^ Quite hilarious, when any competent economist knows that wealth trickles up, as it is only after the capitalists have invested money building plant and providing jobs and the products we all want that they begin to gradually recoup their money over time.

7/11/2011 12:24:03 AM

We do things this way, therefore this is the way they're done Silly liberals

7/11/2011 8:32:13 AM

Government strong-arms the taxpayers into footing the bill for "too rich to fail" banks and unprofitable mega-corporations --> Call it "a failure of free market capitalism"

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 11:57 AM. Reason : ]

7/11/2011 11:57:06 AM

I think your vision of free markets would work great if we could effect a sudden, unilateral cultural change. If we could get some Smithian sympathies, you might say, it could work (just like he thought it could). Many of us don't think a free-market could exist, because the freedom inherent in it allows for domination too.

I don't really understand how you reply to the "Tamerlane" problem as Noah Smith puts it: how do you prevent the first guy with the most guns from being your new government?

Actually you know what, this would do much better in an actual "libertarianism and free markets" thread or something. I don't see why this should be discussed in a thread on socialism.

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 4:01 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2011 4:00:54 PM

Quote :

"how do you prevent the first guy with the most guns from being your new government?"

Under capitalism, you limit this by distributing firearms as freely as possible as widely as possible. Only then might the bad guys think twice about waging war against society. A war with no positive outcome, as you had to spend your own money to subjugate others which spent all their own money fighting you, so even if you win you will be poorer than you were before the war.

However, under socialism there is nothing to discuss, the guy with the most guns is already the government and can do with society as he sees fit. Far better, the guys with guns didn't need to expend their own resources acquiring the guns, as the government apparatus was available to arm and defend them in their war against the rest of society.

7/11/2011 4:15:42 PM

Quote :

"Under capitalism, you limit this by distributing firearms as freely as possible as widely as possible. Only then might the bad guys think twice about waging war against society. A war with no positive outcome, as you had to spend your own money to subjugate others which spent all their own money fighting you, so even if you win you will be poorer than you were before the war. "

I don't buy this argument; there's very little I could do with a band of armed friends against, say, Blackwater. Is there anything else you could give me here that would stroke my intuitions better than this? I don't find it a very plausible argument at all.

Quote :

"However, under socialism there is nothing to discuss, the guy with the most guns is already the government and can do with society as he sees fit. Far better, the guys with guns didn't need to expend their own resources acquiring the guns, as the government apparatus was available to arm and defend them in their war against the rest of society."

Does it even matter to you that you say things that are factually incorrect? Do you even give a mild shit?

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 4:20 PM. Reason : LS you seriously remind me of the style, rhetorical, mental, and otherwise, of monarchists.]

7/11/2011 4:19:33 PM

The difference between the two parties in this discussion is the way they view democracy. Whether or not you think it is the most or least just way to organize society is the real dividing factor. If you hate socialism, you think democracy is not just messy, but unjust because it doesn't place the individual at the center of everything, independent of others. If you think you may be a socialist, you're probably a fan of the idea of democracy, equal wielding of power and so on.

If you're reading this and thinking it sounds totally foreign, you probably learned about what democracy is from watching CNN or something.

7/11/2011 4:31:42 PM

Quote :

"I don't buy this argument; there's very little I could do with a band of armed friends against, say, Blackwater."

Tell that to Blackwater. A lot of them died in a country renound for state socialism and the gun control laws its engenders.

Quote :

"Does it even matter to you that you say things that are factually incorrect?"

It would, if you ever bothered to show anything I said was factually incorrect.

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 4:45 PM. Reason : ^ quite right]

7/11/2011 4:44:51 PM

Quote :

"It would, if you ever bothered to show anything I said was factually incorrect."

You have a remarkably narrow conception of socialism. Each time I object to your Stalinist strawman (the whole of socialism as you would seem to have it) you simply refuse to learn that the socialist position is much, much wider than you give it credit for. You love chargin' them windmills, DQ.

7/11/2011 6:13:19 PM

Quote :

"I think your vision of free markets would work great if we could effect a sudden, unilateral cultural change. If we could get some Smithian sympathies, you might say, it could work (just like he thought it could). Many of us don't think a free-market could exist, because the freedom inherent in it allows for domination too."

Then we adopt similar arguments against each other. I don't think that cultural change happens quickly or all at once, but I do thing that it is something that can be worked towards. I think as long as we're rowing in the direction of non-violence and voluntary, peaceful interactions, the details can be sorted out as we go along, but we first have to recognize that violence and force are wrong, and find ways to convince other people to believe the same way.

Quote :

"I don't really understand how you reply to the "Tamerlane" problem as Noah Smith puts it: how do you prevent the first guy with the most guns from being your new government?"

Well, clearly we've already failed to prevent the first guy with the most guns from becoming the new government, because that's exactly what we have. My vision is to deliberately roll back the harmful aspects of the government until we have the closest thing to actual democracy as possible. This can be done through non-violent means, but only as a result of the cultural change you mentioned before.

This is relevant because you've failed to demonstrate how (or why) socialism, as you describe it, would ever come about. I think it's impossible for it to exist on a global scale. I'm suggesting how I think things can and should progress, but I don't see any way that workers across the globe would suddenly take over the capital, and if they're too uneducated (due to the capitalist system they're subjected to), then they're not going to be able to manage production anyway.

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 7:16 PM. Reason : ]

7/11/2011 7:10:22 PM

Quote :

"I don't buy this argument; there's very little I could do with a band of armed friends against, say, Blackwater. Is there anything else you could give me here that would stroke my intuitions better than this? I don't find it a very plausible argument at all."

It also presupposes that everyone has a personality type that disposes them to being on a militia, which is senseless. By and large the average person wants to get drunk, watch tv, and hang out with their friends. It's this fact of humanity that the power brokers manipulate to keep and gain power, and it was government that emerged thousands of years ago to balance this out.

Unfettered free marketers are either people who want to try to keep the secret that pure capitalism functions to keep wealth among an oligarchy or people gullible enough to be swayed by these weak arguments, blinded by the promise of easy money-- if only the government didn't exist.


It's very similar to religion in that it provides comfort by making the world easier to understand by assuming simplistic, naive models of how the world works. It almost seems like people with slightly above average intelligences have a harder time accepting that they really can't fathom an entire system, and desperately cling to a system presented to them that they can understand, when really they are only seeing a small part of the bigger picture.

7/11/2011 7:25:58 PM

Quote :

"It also presupposes that everyone has a personality type that disposes them to being on a militia, which is senseless. By and large the average person wants to get drunk, watch tv, and hang out with their friends. It's this fact of humanity that the power brokers manipulate to keep and gain power, and it was government that emerged thousands of years ago to balance this out. "

The governments that emerged thousands of years ago were brutal and barbaric, and generally some form of despotism or dictatorship. Those governments, like the governments of today, were designed to benefit the elite few at the expense of the many. The people at the highest levels of government are not looking out for you and me. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can stop worshiping at the altar of the state.

Quote :

"Unfettered free marketers are either people who want to try to keep the secret that pure capitalism functions to keep wealth among an oligarchy or people gullible enough to be swayed by these weak arguments, blinded by the promise of easy money-- if only the government didn't exist. "

It's becoming clearer by the day that you are not actually familiar with the writings or positions of free market economists.

7/11/2011 7:38:58 PM

Quote :

" The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can stop worshiping at the altar of the state. "

They're looking out for you and me more than Goldman Sachs, IBM, or ExxonMobil is.

7/11/2011 8:01:10 PM

I don't really want to pick through what's been said already (a bit too fatigued to quote bomb). I don't understand how we're supposed to arrive at a peaceful free market solution (affect any real cultural change) without some form of government that's coercive (at least against employers). You do realize that, as it stands, slackening the chains on corporations (by weakening government) isn't going to increase everyone's liberty, right?

I understand the desire to get away from barbaric practices altogether (and I agree there's a degree of barbarism to coersion), but defanging government really removes any and all protections that normal people have against the power of private capital. Do you really think corporations are going to play fair and nice without a government, and that the lack of any barriers to their actions at all is going to improve things from here?

Another question: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-education-public-good.html Without public education ("coersion" against the insanely wealthy by taxing some of the duckets they didn't earn in order to educate people who will have to work to survive) how do you expect a cultural shift to happen? Given the points in the link I just provided, how do you imagine a satisfactory free market solution for education will emerge?


[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 8:14 PM. Reason : .]

7/11/2011 8:11:39 PM

Quote :

"They're looking out for you and me more than Goldman Sachs, IBM, or ExxonMobil is."

Let's see - Goldman Sachs has representatives in the highest levels of government. Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers both have strong ties with Goldman Sachs. Furthermore, Goldman Sachs is currently one of the Fed's primary dealers. You know what that means? They can borrow through the discount window at the fed for .25% (or whatever it is) and then do "God's work" (read: gamble) with the money.

Exxon is an LLC, meaning that their liabilities are capped by the government. When we're talking about environmental damage, that seems like an all around bad idea. I'm not sure what your beef is with IBM, but they're likely in bed with government as well. Point is, the problem isn't honest business, it's corporatism. That's what you have a problem with, whether you realize it or not, and the government isn't putting a stop to corporatism, it has been ramping up operations for some time now.

Quote :

"I don't really want to pick through what's been said already (a bit too fatigued to quote bomb). I don't understand how we're supposed to arrive at a peaceful free market solution (affect any real cultural change) without some form of government that's coercive (at least against employers). You do realize that, as it stands, slackening the chains on corporations (by weakening government) isn't going to increase everyone's liberty, right? "

Perhaps it isn't possible to arrive at a peaceful free market solution without having government first, but we have government now, and it's doing a lot of bad things. It's up to us to figure out what those bad things are and put a stop to it.

It's interesting that you equate slackening the chains on corporations with weakening government. My reply to moron is very relevant here. In so many ways, and I'm sure you would readily admit this, government power has grown in tandem with corporate power. The war machine, while destroying wealth in other countries, has enriched select corporations. Subsidies have allowed companies like Monsanto to grow unchecked, primarily because barriers to entry created by government have barred smaller competitors from the marketplace. Tax policy has created moral hazard and false incentives which has resulted in price distortions.

Quote :

"I understand the desire to get away from barbaric practices altogether (and I agree there's a degree of barbarism to coersion), but defanging government really removes any and all protections that normal people have against the power of private capital. Do you really think corporations are going to play fair and nice without a government, and that the lack of any barriers to their actions at all is going to improve things from here?"

I have never advocated the immediate end to civil society. I want a methodical, peaceful transition away from the current model where the state has a monopoly on force. Whenever we allow the state to police itself, liberty is eroded and state power expands without restraint. That's why we need to introduce competition into every area. If rights are not protected, then yes, power vacuums will occur and they will turn into a government.

Quote :

"Another question: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-education-public-good.html Without public education ("coersion" against the insanely wealthy by taxing some of the duckets they didn't earn in order to educate people who will have to work to survive) how do you expect a cultural shift to happen? Given the points in the link I just provided, how do you imagine a satisfactory free market solution for education will emerge?"

How effective has public education been so far? It seems to me that people are more complacent than ever. When the state manages education, do you really expect ideas that are inherently anti-state to make it into the curriculum?

It's the digital age - information should be free and more accessible than ever before. Non-profits have done a great job at educating those that choose to be educated. I won't pretend to have all the answers here, but I think it's clear that we can't trust the state to imbue a sense of skepticism or anti-authoritarianism in school children. History seems to indicate the opposite.

[Edited on July 11, 2011 at 8:46 PM. Reason : ]

7/11/2011 8:46:10 PM

Education-wise in the US, things have been getting better across the board for the most part.

Quote :

"How effective has public education been so far? It seems to me that people are more complacent than ever. When the state manages education, do you really expect ideas that are inherently anti-state to make it into the curriculum? "

"it seems to you"
i guess that's the problem...

7/11/2011 10:17:31 PM

So, me and McDanger are discussing how the general, working population could ever become educated enough to effectively manage the capital (means of production) that they employ while laboring. I make the point that state-run education will intentionally not educate students in a way that would allow them to do that, as the state capitalist system needs the common people to remain stupid in order to persist.

Participation rates and SAT scores, though, don't really indicate improved education, at least in the context of what we're discussing. A very small fraction of the general population understands what's in the Constitution, what kind of legislation gets passed each year, and the specifics of how many government-related institutions function. If people did understand those things, then "we the people" would demand a much different government, if we demanded one at all.

7/11/2011 11:33:45 PM

Quote :

"Whenever we allow the state to police itself, liberty is eroded and state power expands without restraint. That's why we need to introduce competition into every area."

How do you suppose we introduce competition into 'every area' when those participating in the competition will attempt (with every incremental increase in their power) to shove out other competition? You won't use the regulatory powers of state, so what other mechanism is there?

Quote :

"I make the point that state-run education will intentionally not educate students in a way that would allow them to do that, as the state capitalist system needs the common people to remain stupid in order to persist."

I agree the current system needs people to be stupid; but given that private schools have the same incentive you've pointed out, how do you expect this to be addressed? At least in a government the people can have a say; in a privately owned organization, nobody but the owners have a say (UNLESS there's a government that regulates what ownership can do).

7/11/2011 11:50:26 PM

Quote :

"How do you suppose we introduce competition into 'every area' when those participating in the competition will attempt (with every incremental increase in their power) to shove out other competition?"

Simple. Their power is an illusion. Until they pick up guns and begin acting like the state, corporations have no real power over anyone. Their customers and employees can always walk away.

Quote :

"I agree the current system needs people to be stupid; but given that private schools have the same incentive you've pointed out, how do you expect this to be addressed? At least in a government the people can have a say; in a privately owned organization, nobody but the owners have a say"

If the owners do not give customers what they want then customers will find someone that will, even if that means starting their own school from scratch (a cooperative if you will). Such is the beauty of capitalism. Under state socialism such an act is criminal.

[Edited on July 12, 2011 at 8:46 AM. Reason : ./,]

7/12/2011 8:41:19 AM

You assert that they can, but they can't even walk away in today's environment (with a poor job market). What is the reason they can "just walk away"? Because nobody's holding a gun to their heads to stay? What if somebody did?

I seriously don't see what's stopping a private entity from accumulating and wielding power that way. You simply telling me "It won't happen" isn't convincing.

Also, hell, even with a government that is supposed to be regulating environmental concerns, companies can still score massive money by polluting the fuck out of the states they frack in. How do you imagine these companies will be limited in scope at all if there's no regulatory agency overseeing them with the power to fine them and/or shut them down for violations?

[Edited on July 12, 2011 at 8:46 AM. Reason : .]

7/12/2011 8:44:14 AM

Once again, what two systems are we comparing? I am a libertarian, which has a night-watchmen state, so if someone threatens violence you can either threaten violence back or call the police (whichever serves you best).

Destroyer, I believe, is an anarcho-capitalist, so in his system it would be a bit more complex. An employer that threatens violence against his own employees tends to alienate them and runs the risk of destroying his own organization for very little gain. While he may succeed in enslaving his own employees, outside society would respond forcefully, as breaking "the law" results in pariah status even if you escape arrest and makes it impossible to conduct business as contracts become unenforceable in court and customers refrain from your products for fear of the violence which becomes ever more severe wherever your company attempts to operate. To sum up, once you cross the boundary and stop being a corporation and attempt to use force against others, whatever voluntary interactions you had been enjoying with society ends and you either achieve state status (build a fiefdom) or you die. Of course, I believe this is the same rule in all systems, as many a drug lord and succeeded in building a fiefdom in various U.S. cities.

As for your system, we still have no friggin' clue what that is, you refuse to describe it. So I can't help you there. If you were kind, you could tell us what to do if "management" (a majority of the workers at a firm) votes to use force against other workers.

[Edited on July 12, 2011 at 9:08 AM. Reason : .,.]

7/12/2011 9:06:08 AM

Quote :

"An employer that threatens violence against his own employees tends to alienate them and runs the risk of destroying his own organization for very little gain."

Employers play hardball with their employees all of the time, and there have been cases of pretty rough strike-breaking that didn't result in poverty or failure for the employers.

Quote :

" While he may succeed in enslaving his own employees, outside society would respond forcefully, as breaking "the law" results in pariah status even if you escape arrest and makes it impossible to conduct business as contracts become unenforceable in court and customers refrain from your products for fear of the violence which becomes ever more severe wherever your company attempts to operate."

Are you so sure? At the moment people are sitting around idle as rural people are poisoned by gas companies; in fact, the same people getting cancer from benzene in their ground water are the people that charge to the streets to protest that the oligarchy doesn't have enough privileges, not enough power to harm them.

Quote :

"To sum up, once you cross the boundary and stop being a corporation and attempt to use force against others, whatever voluntary interactions you had been enjoying with society ends and you either achieve state status (build a fiefdom) or you die. "

Facts not in evidence with strike-busts in the 20th century. If you think that people can just retreat from industrialized America and find a viable option subsistence farming then I don't really know what to say. Where do they walk to, again? The other shitty employer down the road, since there are no checks to employer power?

The arguments you give for why corporations would be friendly *fail now*. Why would they work when there's no government whatsoever to check their power?

Quote :

"As for your system, we still have no friggin' clue what that is, you refuse to describe it. So I can't help you there. If you were kind, you could tell us what to do if "management" (a majority of the workers at a firm) votes to use force against other workers."

I'm not exactly anti-state and a night-watchmen state sounds like a good idea for any sort of libertarian setup; you wouldn't want an angry mob at a factory trampling over some folks, obviously, and there has to be some general ground rules that people are willing to abide by. So long as the state stays out of planning industry it'd be fine; but the only possible counterbalance to state (and private) power is prolific education.

This criticism of yours is tired as fuck; I'll even send you the short pamphlet lying out the majority of the position if you'd like. How many times do I have to say the same thing over and over again? Something tells me you just like the rhetoric you're using and no matter of fact, offered by me or otherwise, will get you from using the same string of symbols that your dad taught you as a pup.

[Edited on July 12, 2011 at 9:15 AM. Reason : .]

7/12/2011 9:14:25 AM

Quote :

"Employers play hardball with their employees all of the time, and there have been cases of pretty rough strike-breaking that didn't result in poverty or failure for the employers."

Such firms did do poorly, as what was being fought over was usually damaged and customers wanted no part in it. That said, it was often the workers initiating the violence.

Quote :

"Are you so sure? At the moment people are sitting around idle as rural people are poisoned by gas companies"

You asked about guns and apparently had not defensible response so you have yet again changed the subject. The mechanism is different from law abiding firms harming others: they get sued in court and pay damages. What would happen under your preferred system where worker owned fracking activities poisoned the water table? And I am still waiting to hear what to do if "management" (a majority of the workers at a firm) votes to use force against other workers.
That said, on the tangent, no one is being poisoned by fracking. While accidents happen, the companies settle and pay damages to the harmed land owners.

Quote :

"Facts not in evidence with strike-busts in the 20th century"

A strike is an attempt to use violence to prevent an employer from replacing you. The violent party is the initiator of violence, personified in a strike-bust by the workers attempting to attack non-striking workers.

Quote :

"The arguments you give for why corporations would be friendly *fail now*. Why would they work when there's no government whatsoever to check their power? "

Facts not in evidence. Everywhere I have ever worked and everyone I have ever known tacitly liked the way their employer treated them or they quit and found an employer they did like. We all wish we were paid more, and sometimes we accepted poor treatment in exchange for higher pay, but the system seems to be working to me.

Quote :

"Why would they work when there's no government whatsoever to check their power? "

There is no such thing as "no government", not even in Destroyers anarcho-capitalist system. There will always be a government of some kind, the question is over centralization or decentralization. Society needs police and it needs courts and it will have them, the question is whether such courts have the right to keep out competing courts. Under a centralized system such as my libertarianism or the current political system they do, no matter how unjustly they function. Under anarcho-capitalism they do not, competing police and courts rise and fall in accordance with their ability to attract voluntary customers.

7/12/2011 10:05:05 AM

Quote :

"Such firms did do poorly, as what was being fought over was usually damaged and customers wanted no part in it. That said, it was often the workers initiating the violence. "

"I believe the media propaganda that comes about whenever society circles its wagons around private ownership"

Quote :

"You asked about guns and apparently had not defensible response so you have yet again changed the subject. The mechanism is different from law abiding firms harming others: they get sued in court and pay damages. What would happen under your preferred system where worker owned fracking activities poisoned the water table? And I am still waiting to hear what to do if "management" (a majority of the workers at a firm) votes to use force against other workers. That said, on the tangent, no one is being poisoned by fracking. While accidents happen, the companies settle and pay damages to the harmed land owners. "

Except that doesn't even happen under today's setting. As it stands now, they don't "settle and pay damages to the harmed land owners"; they mostly walk away without cleaning up. Not that I'd expect you to know the situation with hydrofracking in PA ... I'll just expect you to continue to pretend to be an expert just like with everything on this website.

Again, the worker owned industry would have little incentive to come in and fuck up their own groundwater, because they cannot acquire personal wealth beyond measure like in today's system. When the result of your labor much more accurately reflects *what you did*, and when everybody who has a share puts in a day of work, so to speak, then there's no incentive to overproduce and go bonkers convincing people to consume insane and unsustainable amounts. The reason why hydrofracking companies are currently polluting the fuck out of PA is because they investors don't have to rest their heads here, and they get to take that surplus-value elsewhere to relax and enjoy it. Thus they want as much as possible, and to offset the costs (making that profit larger) as much as they can. It's what they currently do, and Republicans like Corbett here are dedicated to allowing it to happen; while they directly benefit, I often wonder what house slaves like yourself stand to gain except an occasional flat-screen and the pompous delusion you are similar to your boss. The reason why the poors flock to these companies is because they're in a situation so tight with money that it makes sense to them to gamble the future's possibilities (even if they're probabilities) against today's hunger. You see a similar sort of exploitation going on in the third world. Only people as ignorant as you believe this to be a great system.

Again: given that many powerful people evade meaningful prosecution in today's environment, how the hell do you suppose this to work when you eviscerate government even further? You're just like most libertarians: set up some silly, fussy morality-based argument and then shrug your shoulders when it amounts to nothing more than a naked defense of privilege.

Quote :

"Facts not in evidence. Everywhere I have ever worked and everyone I have ever known tacitly liked the way their employer treated them or they quit and found an employer they did like. We all wish we were paid more, and sometimes we accepted poor treatment in exchange for higher pay, but the system seems to be working to me. "

Facts not in *your* evidence. Do you really expect me to believe the shitty anecdotes of some southerner who clearly never gets out? If you've never met a single person that fits that bill, then you come from a fairly privileged pack. If the majority of you aren't at least moderately rich then you must be truly stupid people.

Quote :

"There is no such thing as "no government", not even in Destroyers anarcho-capitalist system. There will always be a government of some kind, the question is over centralization or decentralization. Society needs police and it needs courts and it will have them, the question is whether such courts have the right to keep out competing courts. Under a centralized system such as my libertarianism or the current political system they do, no matter how unjustly they function. Under anarcho-capitalism they do not, competing police and courts rise and fall in accordance with their ability to attract voluntary customers."

Am I the only one that thinks that market-driven police will do a shitty job, a priori?

[Edited on July 13, 2011 at 9:33 AM. Reason : .]

7/13/2011 9:25:15 AM

*raises hand but refuses to interrupt argument*

7/13/2011 9:28:10 AM

Go ahead there's not even an argument going on, just LoneSnark "playing the liberal's word games".

7/13/2011 9:33:59 AM

The more you read actual economists, the more you realize that he's full of shit. I think he stopped taking classes in it after 201 and just started reading Reason magazine.

7/13/2011 9:35:27 AM

The majority of his belief structure consists of ideas that have been laughed at since the 19th, it would seem. Well, laughed at by honest intellectuals; power and privileged have always kept lapdogs to say precisely what LS does (with all of the inconsistencies and aversion to data).

LS cracks me up though. He just loves flexing his a priori reasoning without ever stopping to look at the real world. People who are good at this are called mathematicians; people who suck at it are conservative economists, apparently.

[Edited on July 13, 2011 at 9:53 AM. Reason : .]

7/13/2011 9:49:40 AM

Actually the recent insurgence of right-wingers into this thread to argue for and against their favorite systems is a great thing to happen under the header of "socialism". Wouldn't quite be the socialist experience without constant right-wing harassment.

7/13/2011 9:56:36 AM

Well, no, the last economics course I took at NCState was a 500 level. But I do read an awful lot of reason magazine. So you got me at least half right.

Quote :

"Again, the worker owned industry would have little incentive to come in and fuck up their own groundwater, because they cannot acquire personal wealth beyond measure like in today's system...then there's no incentive to overproduce and go bonkers convincing people to consume insane and unsustainable amounts...The reason why hydrofracking companies are currently polluting the fuck out of PA is because they investors don't have to rest their heads here"

Illogical. The workers don't live there either, they drive to work. As for overproduction? Either hydrofracking wrecks the environment or it does not, reducing production would not eliminate all the pollution. That said, it doesn't seem to me that we are over-producing. People want natural gas to heat their homes and produce electricity. Are you seriously arguing this is only due to brainwashing?

Quote :

"Again: given that many powerful people evade meaningful prosecution in today's environment, how the hell do you suppose this to work when you eviscerate government even further? "

The question depends on what proportion of powerful people evade meaningful prosecution BECAUSE there is a strong government protecting them through limited liability laws and acceptable pollution standards. According to the EPA the biggest water polluting industry in the country are municipal water and sewer systems most of which voted themselves sovereign immunity for any damage they do. The Mexican state-run oil company PEMEX knowingly dumps many tons of gasoline and diesel into the ground water every year, killing people every year from fires and explosions without a care in the world because it is a state agency and granted itself immunity from lawsuits.

7/13/2011 10:06:46 AM

Quote :

"municipal water and sewer systems most of which voted themselves sovereign immunity for any damage they do."

Munincipal systems routinely pay state and federal fines for breaking their discharge permits, just like industry.

7/13/2011 11:01:47 AM

Honestly, the pre-mid 1800s property rights system did give better rights to lawsuits in the case of environmental pollution. I doubt we'd go back to a system wherein if you got sick from coal dust, you could close a mine. It would be nice, but literally no one short of some consumer advocates.

It's also not exactly useful in countering climate change. I mean, I guess I could see people in coastal Bangladesh bringing a class action or something, but it's harder to prove CC's violation of personal rights, at least right now. Plus the right's decided that they're going to act like it doesn't exist. And no one's going to accept a carbon tax. That's how people can get off proposing it to protect themselves from criticism: the bill will never come due for them and they'll never see that policy.

[Edited on July 13, 2011 at 3:15 PM. Reason : x]

7/13/2011 3:13:12 PM

I don't get it...you're bashing someone with an opposing viewpoint while simultaneously claiming the overwhelming majority of Americans are brainwashed into liking what they chose to like and claiming that people (socialist systems) will eventually be smarter than people (capitalist systems) with education?

Let me state this again.

You think I'm brainwashed into consuming what I consume, not because I genuinely like what I'm consuming?

And you think that the same people that are brainwashed in the capitalist system and make stupid decisions over and over and over are suddenly going to be unstupid under a socialist system? The same people that collectively will step on each other to get to a higher status are suddenly going to stop doing that?

[Edited on July 13, 2011 at 5:59 PM. Reason : freenor ]

7/13/2011 5:57:51 PM

If you aren't being brainwashed into consuming what you consume, why do you think marketing is a 300 billion dollar a year business? Or did all those commercials featuring old people gleefully running across a beach in B&W lead you to objectively conclude that the featured heart medication was ideal for you?

7/18/2011 10:30:07 AM

Quote :

"If you aren't being brainwashed into consuming what you consume, why do you think marketing is a 300 billion dollar a year business?"

To answer your question with a question: how come when the state deregulated to allow advertising in the optometry business did consumer prices fall?

The answer is quite obvious to everyone but yourself: advertising allowed consumers to effortlessly discover alternative competitors and prices. Capitalist competition requires the distribution of market information, a process carried out by advertising.

You don't need to brainwash people into liking Coca-cola, otherwise known as sugar-water.

7/18/2011 12:41:04 PM

Quote :

"Capitalist competition requires the distribution of market information, a process carried out by advertising. You don't need to brainwash people into liking Coca-cola, otherwise known as sugar-water."

7/18/2011 1:09:30 PM