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‘Anarcho-Capitalists’ Seen as Cousins of the ‘Patriot’ Movement
Posted By Leah Nelson On December 12, 2012 @ 10:46 am In Antigovernment,Extremist Propaganda | 225 Comments
Back in 1978, when the world was young and “Saturday Night Live” was only in its third season, a young comedian named Steve Martin took to the stage and told his audience how to become millionaires and never pay taxes.
“First … get a million dollars,” he said [1]. “What do [you] say to the tax man when he comes to [your] door and says, ‘You have never paid taxes?’ Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: ‘I forgot!’”
Porter Stansberry, an “investment advisor” with a knack for lining his own pockets, used a slightly different strategy in 2003. When the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) came to his door and accused him of making over a million dollars selling false “inside tips,” the self-aggrandizing financial guru claimed that it was his First Amendment right to tell his subscribers whatever he wanted — even if what he wanted to tell them was, as the SEC put it [2], “baseless speculation and outright lies.”
The courts disagreed. In 2009, after years of very public litigation, a federal appeals panel upheld the SEC’s charges and fined [3] Stansberry $1.5 million.
Stansberry — who had enjoyed some respect in financial circles and whose First Amendment argument (though not his conduct) was endorsed [4] by respected news outlets who feared the case would set a precedent for punishing the press for publishing incorrect financial analysis — did not take the verdict well.
He did not stop peddling advice — but these days, it’s about more than get-rich-quick schemes. Evidently soured on the government by his brush with the law, Stansberry has turned from scam artist to antigovernment radical, using various Internet publications to mix dubious investment advice with apocalyptic warnings about a coming era of tyranny that will destroy America.
His most recent insight? According to a YouTube video distributed across a multitude of far-right websites and discussed with great seriousness by figures like antigovernment conspiracist Alex Jones [5], President Obama is planning to overthrown the Constitution, implement socialism, and seize a third term in office.
According to Stansberry, Obama won’t even have to use force to do it. Instead, the president plans to buy his third term with untold profits gained from mining America’s vast shale oil deposits, which will lead to an era of extraordinary prosperity unlike anything America has seen before.
“All of this new wealth,” Stansberry says, “will seem like a gift from the Prophet Muhammad to the administration of Barack Obama.”
And his supporters will eat it up. Once the black gold really starts flowing, Stansberry claims, the president will execute a Hugo Chavez-like [6] power grab, distributing money and favors to friends, cronies, and political allies, who in return will cheer for him in the streets as he seizes an unconstitutional third term — and, possibly, even a fourth — in office. During his reign of terror, Obama will replace America’s market economy with a socialist dictatorship and “punish and tax those who work hard,” using the wealth they create to “buy favors and luxuries for millions of Americans … who have done nothing to earn it.”
America, of course, will be ruined.
Stansberry is not the only ultra-libertarian to promote such ideas. One of his most prominent fellow travelers is Doug Casey, an antigovernment “investment guru” who on Nov. 29 told subscribers to his newsletter that being a taxpayer in America today is analogous to “being a Jew in Germany in the mid-1930’s.”
On the surface, Casey (who often cross-promotes Stansberry’s articles on his various websites and newsletters and who is described by Stansberry as a friend and mentor) seems a cheerful misanthrope, whose breezy manner and self-deprecating wit (he often says Uncle Scrooge McDuck is his hero) is a refreshing change from the pompous grandiosity of his close cousins in the far-right “Patriot” movement.
But scratch that surface and it’s clear that this self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” who in 2009 outlined a plan to privatize a small country and take it public on the New York Stock Exchange, is courting the same audience of government-fearing radicals. Though he puts a fresh face on tired conspiracies and a new spin on old animosities, Casey’s message is the same: The government is your enemy, and if you don’t prepare, it will destroy you.
If you stripped the Patriot movement of its pseudo-legal rhetoric, conspiracist malarkey and allusions to supposed Christian virtue, you’d end up with an ideology much like the one espoused by Stansberry, Casey and their compatriots. Often described as “anarcho-capitalists” or “voluntaryists,” their belief in essence is that government — any government — is by its very nature tyrannical and unnatural. They propose instead an essentially stateless society in which all relationships, economic and otherwise, are voluntary and untaxed. Services like roads and mail delivery would be built and maintained by private entities that would charge market-based fees for those who desired to use them. Government in any recognizable form simply would not exist.
In some respects, Casey and Stansberry’s rhetoric sounds like laissez-faire capitalism taken to its logical extreme. But Casey, Stansberry, and similar ideologues espouse beliefs that are even further out than that.
Mainstream conservatives often allege that the balance between states’ rights and federal power has tipped too far towards the latter, with the federal government exercising powers the framers of the Constitution never dreamed of. But Casey actually believes that the Constitution itself “was essentially a coup.”
Explaining this assertion in the same Nov. 29 newsletter in which he compared being an American taxpayer to being a Jew in Nazi Germany, Casey said: “[T]he delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government — only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place.”
They “calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the ‘United States of America’ – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union … and the wrong side won.”
In other words, as Casey sees things, the Constitution and its built-in plan for a national government caused the Civil War.
“I’ve always suspected that U.S. and world history would be different – and better – if those delegates had done as they were told and just smoothed over the rough spots in the Articles rather than replaced them with the Constitution,” Casey explained in an April 2012 article. “Greater independence among the states could have led to more innovation, and I doubt there would have been the unpleasantness of 1861-’65. People with differing ethical values and economic interests would not have been forced to obey the same laws.”
Translation: Confederate partisans — people whose “ethical values and economic interests” included buying, selling, beating, raping and killing other human beings whose skin color happened to be different from their own — were unjustly stopped by overweening federal power that was built into the Constitution from Day One as part of a long-acting stealth coup to steal power from the states.
This is one place where Casey and portions of the Patriot crowd very definitely part ways.
Patriot ideologues tend to revere the Constitution — at least up to the 14th Amendment — as an almost divinely inspired document, and talk about the founding fathers as near-infallible prophets. In some ways, Casey’s pseudo-history of the United States is the political inverse of the one promoted by Christian pseudo-historian David Barton [7], who contends that the American Revolution was fought to free slaves and that the founding fathers “already had the entire debate on creation and evolution” and chose creationism. Casey, who once described Santa Claus as “God on training wheels” and who jokes about saying grace to Crom, the fictional deity featured in Conan the Barbarian, would not likely get along well with Barton.
Yet in a Venn diagram of antigovernment extremists, Barton is one of the few who would fall clearly outside of the overlap between Casey- and Stansberry-style anarcho-capitalism and Patriot ideology.
The areas of overlap, particularly with the radical “sovereign citizens” movement, are significant – and not unknown to adherents of anarcho-capitalism, or “voluntaryism,” as it is called by some. Carl Watner, who has been publishing a newsletter called “The Voluntaryist” since 1982 and who appears to be the godfather of Casey and Stansberry’s hyper-antigovernment ideology, grapples with many of the same issues that sovereign citizens do.
In a 1994 article titled “Un-Licensed, Un-Numbered, Un-Taxed,” Watner wrote approvingly of what he called “conscientious objectors” (sovereign citizens, as readers of this blog would call them) “who prefer to remain individuals rather than embrace a statist system which licenses, numbers and taxes them in hundreds of ways.”
Watner’s essay focused on the “Embassy of Heaven [8],” an Oregon-based sovereign citizen group and church that sells fake passports and licenses for so-called “Ambassadors of Heaven.” As Watner explains it, members of the “Embassy” consider themselves to be residents of Heaven and subjects of Christ – and like ambassadors from anywhere, they reason, they are entitled to live within the United States without being subject to its jurisdiction.
Voluntaryists and sovereign citizens are not identical. One difference Watner identified between his approach and that of the Embassy of Heaven “is that the church relies upon the Christian religion as its bulwark in resisting the State.”
Not all sovereign citizens belong to an organization like the Embassy of Heaven, but many do carry licenses identifying them as members of nonexistent nations – a concept Watner does not approve of, as it suggests that people properly ought to carry identification in the first place.
“Whereas the Church says its members are not residents of the state, thus escaping its jurisdiction, the voluntaryist says that the state should have no jurisdiction over any one at all,” he wrote. “The state is a coercive institution, completely at odds with the moral laws that decry thievery, slavery and murder. Evil in any form should not be legitimized, so the voluntaryist refuses to grant validity to the state’s claim of jurisdiction, even over residents.”
Still, he managed to find common ground with the “conscientious objectors” of the Embassy of Heaven: “Voluntaryists believe in challenging the state head-on, yet they and other conscientious objectors share a common philosophical insight with the members of the church: might does not make right. The state rests on might: therefore it should be rejected.”
The Embassy of Heaven, therefore, “will then receive our praise for living by the voluntary principle, even if we do not choose to personally endorse it by becoming a member.”
Today, Casey, Stansberry, and other like-minded ideologues continue Watner’s tradition of conceding overlaps between themselves and Patriots, even as clear disparities exists. The two ideologies do appeal to much the same audience – and sometimes, their representatives share the same stage.
At 2012’s “FreedomFest,” for instance, Casey was listed as a keynote speaker together with a plethora of Patriot bigwigs, including Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News personality and 9-11 “truther” [9] who thinks the government was behind the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and G. Edward Griffin, co-author of a popular Fed-bashing tome called The Creature from Jekyll Island [10]. FreedomFest was organized by Mark Skousen [11], a friend of Patriot ringmaster [12] Glenn Beck [13] and nephew of the late W. Cleon Skousen [14], a hugely influential figure in Patriot conspiracist circles.
And at “Libertopia 2012,” Casey was a listed speaker along with Larken Rose, a blogger who made news in 2011 with an post titled, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?” which proposed that it is acceptable to kill law enforcement officers if you perceive them to be violating your constitutional rights. Also featured at Libertopia was Ryan William Nohea Garcia, an “ambassador” for the ultra-libertarian SeaSteading Institute [15], which envisions building custom floating countries in international waters.
Stansberry also has shared platforms with Patriot nabobs. For years, he was a financial columnist for WorldNetDaily [16], a Patriot-leaning online publication with a theocratic bent that specializes in antigovernment conspiracy theories, end-times prophecy and revisionist histories of the Civil War. And this November, he appeared on the “Alex Jones Show” to promote his prediction about Obama’s supposed secret plan to run for a third term. The same episode featured commentary from Edwin Vieira [17], a Patriot grandee and militia supporter who in 2005 called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, saying that the conservative jurist’s opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.” Also appearing was Lew Rockwell [18], a libertarian commentator and blogger with a long history of promoting neo-secessionism and other extreme-right ideologies.
The Patriot movement is noteworthy for its followers’ forceful assertion of the right to bear arms, and form private militias willing to face down tyrannical government forces when the time comes. In contrast, Casey, Stansberry, and their sympathizers make a lot of noise about opposing violence, stressing the need to bring about their desired revolution through education and activism.
But in a 2011 essay titled “The Corruption of America,” Stansberry began to sing a very different tune. “The nation will soon face a choice between heading down the path toward fascism … or turning back the power of government and restoring the limited Republic that was our birthright,” he wrote. “What gives me confidence for the future? Gun sales, for one thing. U.S. citizens legally own around 270 million firearms – around 88 guns per 100 citizens (including children) today. That’s a hard population to police without its consent.”
Sounding very much like his Patriot cousins-in-arms — and very little like a proponent of nonviolent resistance — he continued: “[I]f the government attempts to take our guns … my opinion would change immediately. … But that’s one right the Supreme Court has been strengthening recently.”
“It gives me hope,” Stansberry said, “that most people in America still understand that the right to bear arms has little to do with protecting ourselves from crime and everything to do with protecting ourselves from government.”
Article printed from Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center: http://www.splcenter.org/blog
URL to article: http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/12/12/anarcho-capitalists-seen-as-cousins-of-the-patriot-movement/
URLs in this post:
[1] said: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77imono.phtml
[2] as the SEC put it: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp18090.htm
[3] fined: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/03/09/worldnetdailys-financial-columnist-faces-15-mil/161414
[4] endorsed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04sun3.html
[5] Alex Jones: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-jones
[6] Hugo Chavez-like: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/why-chavez-was-re-elected.html?ref=hugochavez&_r=0
[7] David Barton: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/david-barton
[8] Embassy of Heaven: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2009/spring/return-of-the-sovereigns/incident-lis
[9] 9-11 “truther”: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/11/24/fox-host-napolitano-is-a-9-11-truther-it-couldn/173763
[10] The Creature from Jekyll Island: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias
[11] Mark Skousen: http://www.salon.com/2009/09/16/beck_skousen/
[12] Patriot ringmaster: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots/the-enablers
[13] Glenn Beck: http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/27/in-new-novel-glenn-beck-warns-of-squirrel-worshipping-socialists/
[14] W. Cleon Skousen: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/spring/fringe-mormon-group-makes-myths-with-glenn-becks-help
[15] SeaSteading Institute: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/summer/the-old-man-and-the-sea
[16] WorldNetDaily: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-daily
[17] Edwin Vieira: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,3
[18] Lew Rockwell: http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/12/14/lew-rockwell-website-warns-of-coming-us-civil-war/
[19] : http://weaselzippers.us/2012/12/12/interview-with-hot-dog-vendor-attacked-by-union-goons-attacker-wore-occupy-style-guy-fawkes-mask-hurled-racial-epithets/
[20] : http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/steven-crowder-no-charges.php?ref=fpb
[21] : http://www.clintontarver.com/About.html
[22] : http://www.scribd.com/doc/53739065/64/Empirical-evidence-for-labour-theory-of-value
[23] : http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121212/POLITICS02/212120459/1361/Money-pours-in-to-replace-hot-dog-vendor-s-equipment-destroyed-at-Capitol
[24] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOGq_1710U4
[25] : http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/wicks5.html
[26] : http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston-arch.html
[27] : http://seunfakze.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/stateless-societies-the-igbo-the-fulani-the-somali-by-prof-g-n-ayittey/
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225 Comments To "‘Anarcho-Capitalists’ Seen as Cousins of the ‘Patriot’ Movement"
#1 Comment By Shadow Wolf On December 12, 2012 @ 11:12 am
The tidbit about how “Obama will buy his third term” is hilarious. This snake oil-salesman makes these feeble antigovernment nuts look dumber than they already are. He makes it sound easy to dupe these radical extremists for profit. What better way to make quick cash, than to instill fear in the weak minds of the lunatic fringe. Getting them trembling at the knees while opening up their wallets to buy doomsday schemes……
Hahaha……
#2 Comment By Music Box On December 12, 2012 @ 11:42 am
Wow! Great article! These extremists are the number one reason why I don’t believe in their religious God, ideology, and the hate that is steaming from their tiny brains. The comment about by Shadow Wolf is exactly what I was thinking about. Fringe groups, radical extremists, and a bunch of those so-called ultra-libertarian organizations (no offense to some of the ones I know who are not extreme) have no problem promoting fear to people who will open up their wallets and buy into bullshit doomsday, conspiracy theories, and…you get the idea.
#3 Comment By Reynardine On December 12, 2012 @ 12:13 pm
And amidst all this, where is John Galt? Down some Little Street, sawing a twelve-year-old kid in half?
#4 Comment By Twiddle On December 12, 2012 @ 12:22 pm
Following along with the previous posts, “pot calling the kettle black?”
#5 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 12, 2012 @ 1:15 pm
Oh these guys are a trip. They can’t comprehend that you can’t have anarchy and capitalism. Capitalism requires a state, and most importantly, clear and concrete property laws.
Not to mention they have no sense of history. Many of the things they call for(such as private police) have been tried, and were a disaster.
#6 Comment By Reynardine On December 12, 2012 @ 2:05 pm
Well, I think when a feudal lord had private police, they were called a “retinue”. You had to pay them in land, though.
#7 Comment By Sam Molloy On December 12, 2012 @ 3:26 pm
There has to be a balance between pure Communism, which as practiced did not work very well, and pure Capitalism, with our Robber Barons of the early 1900′s, which was also less than ideal. One thing I am sure we should avoid is anyone promising a surefire formula for Utopia.
#8 Comment By adamhill On December 12, 2012 @ 3:34 pm
LIberloopia.
#9 Comment By extremist On December 12, 2012 @ 4:01 pm
I’m sorry if it’s considered extreme or hateful, but I just want to live my life my way and be left alone. Why use force against us if we’re harming no one? The one thing about anarcho-capitalists and voluntaryists, the one “rule” that governs us, is that we don’t believe in violence except in self-defense. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t inflict violence on me – I only wish people to live in peace. So why are we the ones being labeled as hateful and dangerous?
#10 Comment By rroberts3 On December 12, 2012 @ 5:17 pm
Yesterday in Lansing, Michigan, a number of union supporters were videoed attacking a conservative leaning news crew. The union people also verbally threatened the crew, and cussed them extensively. Why don’t I see this commented upon as a hate crime?
#11 Comment By Mitch Beales On December 12, 2012 @ 5:34 pm
So where do you draw the line on “violence” extremist? Is the fraud committed by Stansberry violent? Would it be if he defrauded your granny of her life savings? How about spewing lies that others might consider justification for violent action? How about yelling fire in a crowded theater? I think it unlikely that someone will use force against you if you really are harming no one (unless of course you’re smoking weed or worshiping in a Sikh temple). You can call yourself anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, or throatwarbler mangrove and as long as you’re “harming no one” I think it is unlikely you will be labelled hateful and dangerous. If, on the other hand, you call yourself a sovereign citizen, organize a klavern, or form a New Black Panther Party cell, guilt by association is likely to get you in trouble.
#12 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 12, 2012 @ 7:17 pm
I can hardly begin to describe how wrong that article is. We anarcho-”capitalists” are not “cousins” with the Patriot movement, which tends to disagree with us on foreign policy and civil liberties, and only ever-so-slightly agree with us on certain fiscal matters. They borrow our rhetoric sometimes, but that’s because they are not, by and large, intellectuals, and do not really understand the full impact of the rhetoric they sometimes borrow. Conservatives have never preferred a devolution of power from the federal government to the states, and one needs merely look at their reaction to marijuana legalisation to verify that I am correct. Also, we anarcho-”capitalists” are not right-wingers. See “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty” by Murray N. Rothbard. Finally, neo-secessionism is also not a right-wing ideology.
Now I don’t really know anything about this Stansberry guy, but I do know I avoid Alex Jones. As for Doug Casey, what little I know about him I do like. (He wrote an introduction to The Market for Liberty in 1984.) In any event, this Stansberry guy apparently believes, according to the article, that “President Obama is planning to overthrown the Constitution, implement socialism, and seize a third term in office.” This alone would lead me to believe that this Stansberry guy is not a libertarian, but rather a conservative who wants to sound like a libertarian without fully comprehending the ideology. Obama doesn’t need to plan to overthrow the Constitution because the only part of the Constitution left merely prohibits the federal government from stationing troops in our homes. Conservatives and pseudo-”liberals” abandoned the Constitution long before I was born. Whether or not Obama plans to implement socialism depends upon how one defines socialism. I still have a tee shirt that says, “Bush is a Socialist.” Depending upon your preferred definition, one could easily say we’ve had socialism also my entire life. As for the third-term thing, that sounds conspiracy-y, but even if Obama were planning on usurping a third term, what difference would that make? It’s not nearly as bad as killing innocent people in war, which Obama/Bush/Clinton/etc. have already done, and it’s not like a Romney or a Huckabee would be much better or much worse than Obama. In short, I think it’s safe to pretty much disregard this Stansberry guy.
One misconception that a lot of people have about us anarchists/voluntaryists is that they assume we do not support law. In fact, many, if not most, of us believe law could easily exist without the state. We advocate what’s called the non-aggession axiom: essentially, a prohibition on any person or group of people initiating force or fraud against the person or the justly-acquired property of anyone else. Thus, the non-aggression axiom would prohibit rape, theft, murder, enslavement, battery, fraud, or destruction of property without the consent of the legitimate owner thereof. We also have ideas on how these laws would be enforced without a state apparatus, but I’ll let the reader do her or his own research on that. :)
Love,
Alex Peak
#13 Comment By Don On December 12, 2012 @ 8:09 pm
So you don’t like monopolies in business, but you gush and fawn to be ruled over by monopolies? Because that’s what governments are: coercive expropriating territorial monopolies.
Talk about cognitive dissonance!
At any rate, this hack article is just another in the hatemongering of the SPLC, which hates anyone who dares disagree with it.Protip: research helps. Ad hom fallacies destroy.
Signed:
Atheist anarchocapitalist. No gods. No government.
#14 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 12, 2012 @ 10:22 pm
Extremist: If you want to be left alone, get off of our internet(which began as a government project and still relies partially on a government-funded infrastructure), get off of our roads that we pay for, and GO live by yourself somewhere. Stop telling us how you want to be left alone..CONSTANTLY.
And stop hiding behind the “non-violence” principle. If you have private property, you will have to have an organization which can legally do violence so as to enforce your property rights. It’s known as a state.
@Sam “Pure Communism” has never been practiced unless you count primitive communism, which had the effect of keeping our species alive for thousands of years before the dawn of agriculture.
#15 Comment By JCF On December 13, 2012 @ 3:05 am
“I just want to live my life my way and be left alone”
Since the first fire was kept burning while someone else went to get food and water, what you want HAS NEVER EVER HAPPENED, extremist!
Human beings are a social, interdependent species. NO ONE can purely “live my life my way and be left alone”. We ARE interdependent. We WILL live together. Once you understand that, THEN we can get to the question of HOW we will live together: in the present, and into the future (because sometime you will be too old and weak to tend the fire OR get food and water—just everyone starts “too young” to do so, also).
Don’t get me wrong: I’m at heart an anarchist. When I think of government, I think of the badge-with-the-gun.
But that “How will we live TOGETHER?” question remains.
Personally, I’d like to dispense w/ government guns. But I’d still send unarmed tax collectors to your place, to get you to give your fair share! (Maybe we’ll just have a sit-in around your Kaczinsky-like cabin until you cough it up? ;-/)
#16 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 8:29 am
Rroberts, even if what you saw wasn’t a Breitbart (and, in fact, it appears to have been), one-off political squawks involving amorphous crowds are not normally within the purview of this organization.
#17 Comment By Uda Mann On December 13, 2012 @ 9:40 am
rroberts, you also saw where they attacked a black hot dog vendor and destroyed his cart all the while shouting “Uncle Tom” and “Ni**er”..if that were Repubs it’d be on the news already..shame on you deceitful media..
#18 Comment By CM On December 13, 2012 @ 9:54 am
Anarcho-capitalism in action, or Oh Those Evil Unions:
Hostess Brands Inc.’s CEO told the Wall Street Journal that as the company was sliding into bankruptcy, it took the pension contributions made by members of the Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International and used them to fund the company’s operations. Now the workers stand to lose both their jobs and their pensions, but that didn’t stop company executives from holding out their hands to demand millions of dollars in bonuses – and blaming the union for failing to halt the company’s decline.
#19 Comment By Erika On December 13, 2012 @ 10:23 am
Alex, my law school had a nutty Securities Law professor who believed that the SEC should be abolished because people would be able to take care to avoid conmen and fraud artists and deal with them without government regulated. Tellingly it was referred to even by its proponent as “the law of the jungle” – that is to say wealth and might makes right.
What you would see if there was no law other than personal regulation and private law enforcement would be vigilantism and mob justice. Quite simply, if someone committed massive fraud and there was no government and no courts, the defrauded parties would form a mob and execute the fraud artist. Unless the fraud artist was sufficiently successful to hire his own mercanaries and start shooting (kind of like what happened in some company towns during union drives). Eventually what would happen is that the few ultraelites who can afford to hire their own private mercanaries will get together and form their own government which will be a dictatorship. It would be pretty similar to feudalism in that the serfs pay their lord for the privilege of being allowed to live. A more recent and perhaps even better comparison would be to a Mafia protection racket where frightened people pay the Mafia to be protected from acts of violence committed by the Mafia. If you do not think that would be the inevitable result to your no government fantasy you are extremely naive.
If there was no form of government, wealth and might would make right – life would be as Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature, “solitary, nasrty, brutish, and short” with eventually the elites getting together to run everything and institute social control.
What you are describing is a juvenile fantasy of which James Madison made the best refutation of in The Federalist Papers: “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Because people are not angels, government is needed because all it takes is a few greedy people to destroy your voluntariness. Unless you are going to get everyone in the world to agree to abide by voluntary rules and not have one person want more.
Quite simply this would be perfect for the Top 1% who would no longer have to go through with pretending to care about other people to win elections – instead, the Top 1% would control everything directly and have private armies and police forces to kill anyone who gets in their way (or has something they want).
What good is it to gain all of the money in the world but to lose one’s soul?
#20 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 10:26 am
Ulda, I trust you were kidding, as I would hate to think you were a cretin.
#21 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 10:39 am
Reynardine, I couldn’t joke about something like that
[19]
#22 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 10:48 am
Ulda, I followed your link. You’ve been Breitbarted.
#23 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 10:54 am
I know what i posted is going off the thread subject but i wasn’t sure if rroberts knew this had occurred or not…anywhoo, carry on
#24 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 10:55 am
Incidentally, folks, I’ve discovered what kind of steeds our Great (Big) Khan rides, and we’ve been sending him the wrong kind of horseshoes. Research any article on Elasmotherium, aka the Giant Unicorn. The Kim family of North Korea also claims to have a few, even though they are all supposed to have died of a rhinovirus.
#25 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 11:01 am
oooh the rhinovirus..poor rhinos
#26 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 11:06 am
So that automatically makes the story untrue? Or in your mind is such an event impossible?..just curious
#27 Comment By A Walkaway On December 13, 2012 @ 11:19 am
I know those “Anarcho-Capitalists”. We’ve got some on our street – and they also are very much supporters of the “Militia” movement (probably members, and might even be Klan).
Until they learned I’d helped teach evolution at the university level, one couple used to rant at me over the fence on a regular basis about such topics as how evil liberals were or how my student loans came from their tax money and they shouldn’t have to pay it (or preaching their version of “Christianity”)… and disagreeing or telling them I wasn’t interested or busy only made things worse. When they learned I’d taught evolution and openly proclaimed it was an observed part of reality (it is – and for that public proclamation someone torched my workshop), I got treated to a really long rant (they’re also young earth creationists) and they’ve only spoken to me three times since then.
It’s been a relief.
What their entire ideology (IMO) boils down to is “I’ve got mine, if you don’t have what you need well then drop dead!” (To which I’d add for the disabled their “help” is to tell them “Get a job!” and recommending working at places like McDonald’s or Burger King – plus demanding of the person with the disability that they explain how they brought it on themselves.)
In other words, they’re greedy and self-centered and lacking any human kindness (or understanding of the teachings of the person they claim to follow).
The “anarcho-capitalists” are also abysmally stupid when it comes to conspiracy theories… like those spouted by the scam-artist nutcase mentioned in the article. The funny thing is that they buy up those lies, but when hit with evidence that, for instance, there is a serious problem with dominionist infiltration of the US military (or of other institutions), they dismiss it all as “conspiracy theory”.
Blind fools wanting to lead everyone else… and trying to blind those who can see as well. That’s a good description of them (and of the trolls that have infested this blog).
#28 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 11:23 am
It makes it most dubious. You know the saying, trust, but verify? In this case, just verify.
#29 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 11:29 am
My last comment was addressed to Ulda. Hi, Walkaway. About to look at the cartoon now.
#30 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 11:32 am
I don’t follow Breitbart so I wouldn’t know, to address your earlier comment..it was a link sent to me by a friend of mine..as i said, this is straying from the thread topic but I’m surprised that, even if there were no racial epithets said, that a group of white men could destroy a black individual’s means of work for no apparent reason and not draw an outcry from progressives or “anti-racists” or the media.
#31 Comment By CM On December 13, 2012 @ 11:33 am
Uda Mann = “John” etc. from the “FBI: Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Remain Relatively High” thread. So yes, Reynardine, it is a cretin.
#32 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 11:42 am
CM, you’re a marvel. Although I’ve been too out of my gourd with flu to give awards, you get the Special All-Spectrum Forensic Magnifying Glass right now.
#33 Comment By Uda aka John On December 13, 2012 @ 11:49 am
CM wheres your sense of humor w/ the names? The link i posted is a valid link and if you choose to ignore it, that’s fine..I like the different names though, provides some levity in an otherwise humorless format..
#34 Comment By Uda On December 13, 2012 @ 11:59 am
Thinking up my next screen name now…;)
#35 Comment By CM On December 13, 2012 @ 12:24 pm
Uda/John et al.:
You’re a legend in your own mind.
The link you posted goes to a Breitbart video posted on a right-wing propaganda blog, a clear case of zero plus zero equals zero. Now, there’s a name for you to consider using.
#36 Comment By Papa Smurf On December 13, 2012 @ 12:54 pm
Again, does that make it untrue? So, by your logic b/c it came from a “right wing source”, then the vendor fabricated the story and you were also there and saw everything that happened first hand..totally believable..
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, cm, no wonder this organization is considered a laughing stock..as i’ve said, all of you are similar to posters on the right wing sites, a kernel of knowledge here and there w/ the differing ideologies but the same state of denial when shown something that might conflict w/ their views..
Oh well not my problem…I’ll send someone to help you get your head out of the sand..
#37 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 13, 2012 @ 1:19 pm
“e person or the justly-acquired property of anyone else. Thus, the non-aggression axiom would prohibit rape, theft, murder, enslavement, battery, fraud, or destruction of property without the consent of the legitimate owner thereof. We also have ideas on how these laws would be enforced without a state apparatus, but I’ll let the reader do her or his own research on that. :)”
No no, you explain them here, now. Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
The problem with a system based on “axioms” is that real life doesn’t conform to arbitrarily made up axioms.
If you want capitalism, you MUST have a state to defend private property rights, and a larger number of people must be deprived of their own means of production to get their subsistence.
Don’t agree? Show us your society. Then we’ll talk. And don’t give me this BS about how “We WOULD but everywhere we go we would be taxed no matter what!” Well then too bad. That means humankind is not interested in your Fantasy Land utopia.
You want to be left alone? LEAVE! Stop telling us and LEAVE!
#38 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 13, 2012 @ 1:24 pm
“So you don’t like monopolies in business, but you gush and fawn to be ruled over by monopolies? Because that’s what governments are: coercive expropriating territorial monopolies.”
1. The modern republic, for all its failings, is at least in theory accountable to the public via elections, petitions, etc. Private corporations are responsible only to their shareholders.
2. Governments go hand in hand with capitalism. These are not separate but complimentary things. Most “expropriation” is done by private capitalists, and the state defends their right to do it.
3. You, like many libertarians, use the strawman/false dichotomy by saying we “gush and fawn” over government. Unlike you, I have knowledge of history and know what life was like in the 1870′s-1920′s when there was very little if any regulation of private business. Guess what- It wasn’t good, and competition didn’t stop monopolies.
#39 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 1:40 pm
Well, CM, it’s not just a cretin. It’s a lying cretin. Of course it knows what Breitbart is. Maybe that’s its employer.
#40 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 13, 2012 @ 2:08 pm
Erika writes, “Alex, my law school had a nutty Securities Law professor who believed that the SEC should be abolished because people would be able to take care to avoid conmen and fraud artists and deal with them without government regulated. Tellingly it was referred to even by its proponent as ‘the law of the jungle’ – that is to say wealth and might makes right.”
Ms. Erika, one does not need to have a state in order to have laws prohibiting fraud or courts. The SEC should be abolished along with the rest of the state apparatus, but a prohibition on fraud should remain, since fraud violates the nonaggression axiom.
Erika continues, “Quite simply, if someone committed massive fraud and there was no government and no courts, the defrauded parties would form a mob and execute the fraud artist.”
The only way I could see a society not having systems of arbitration is if some institution actively prevented people from seeking arbitration. I would have to call such an institution a state. Ergo, you are proposing an impossible scenario. There will never be, given current technology, a situation in which “there [is] no government and no courts.”
Erika continues, “If you do not think that would be the inevitable result to your no government fantasy you are extremely naive.”
When I was young, I used to think that anarchy wouldn’t work, and that another state, probably even a dictatorial one, would arise as a result. But after years of reflection, I’ve come to the resolute conclusion that I was dead wrong, that law enforcement in a stateless society would be more effective and efficient than it is in a statist society, that arbitration would be fairer, that violence would be rarer, that poverty would be greatly diminished, and that society as a whole would be far better off.
Erika writes, “If there was no form of government, wealth and might would make right – life would be as Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature, ‘solitary, nasrty, brutish, and short’ with eventually the elites getting together to run everything and institute social control.”
One, Hobbes was a fool. Two, “might makes right” is how things work under statism, not how things would work if the nonaggression axiom, derived from the natural right to self-ownership, were recognised as a natural law concerning justifiable human conduct. Three, Hobbes’ so-called state of nature is nothing like the real state of nature; his so-called state of nature is solely atomistic, and completely ignores the interdependence of the human creature. Humans can create organizations, institutions, and systems without resorting to aggression, and when they do, society flourishes far better than when aggression is condoned or even institutionalised. Four, if one does not want elites getting together and running everything, it behoves her to advocate anarchism.
Erika writes, “What you are describing is a juvenile fantasy of which James Madison made the best refutation of in The Federalist Papers: ‘if men were angels, no government would be necessary.’”
That Madisonian quote is far more juvenile than anything I have written here. If men were angels, there would be no need for anarchy. It’s precisely because men are not angels that no state, no ruler, no slavemaster can ever be trusted.
Erika continues, “Because people are not angels, government is needed because all it takes is a few greedy people to destroy your voluntariness. Unless you are going to get everyone in the world to agree to abide by voluntary rules and not have one person want more.”
Because people are not angels, anarchy is needed, because all it takes is one politician to infringe upon self-ownership and thereby violate natural law.
I’m not sure what you mean by “voluntary rules,” or why everyone on Earth would need to abide by “voluntary rules.” There is but one overarching law that I recognise: that no person may initiate or threaten to initiate force or fraud against the person or the justly-acquired property of others. Called the nonaggression axiom, this is a natural law, for it is within human nature that we are all self-owners; any infringement upon this natural law inherently yields an infringement upon self-ownership in one way or another. Now, we could say “other” laws exist as well, such as a natural law against rape, against theft, against murder, &c., but all of these “other” laws are essentially an extension of the nonaggression axiom.
People do not need to “voluntarily agree” to abide by this law, people need to abide by it because nature dictates that they ought to.
(The state is an inherently criminal institution, as I see it. It inherently violates natural law. Indeed, were it to cease violating natural law, it would cease to be a state. I must oppose the existence of the state for the same reason I oppose rape, theft, murder, slavery, &c. Were I to give up on anarchism, I would no longer personally be able to put forward any arguments in favour of law or the notion of justice. For me, the only alternative to voluntaryism is ethical nihilism. I see anarcho-“capitalism” as the epitome of the true left-wing, and all ideologies tolerant of aggression (whether fascism, state-communism, or the sort of omniarchy advocated by the fictional character The Joker) as right-wing. And, I see most people falling in a confused middle-ground, saying they believe in rights but either not understanding exactly what that means or failing to defend the concept of rights consistently. I say that not with the intention of disparaging “most people,” but simply to acknowledge what appears to me to be a reality concerning popular comprehension of natural rights and natural law.)
Back to your use of the term “voluntary rules.” Now, people may also choose to set up voluntary organisations with various internal rules, and these rules would indeed be voluntary since no one is obligated to retain membership in the organisation. But there is no reason why everyone on Earth would need to agree to the voluntary rules of some voluntary organisation; only the members of said organisation, and only for as long as they opt to remain members.
Finally, I’ve no clue what you mean by “not hav[ing] one person want more.” Why cannot people want more? It’s perfectly natural for humans to want more. Indeed, even if there were a way to force humans to not want more, it would violate the nonaggression axiom to use said force.
Erika concludes, “Quite simply this would be perfect for the Top 1%.”
If by “top 1%” you’re referring to the politicians, they would hate my proposal because I would be eliminating their ability to control over humans.
If by “top 1%” you’re referring to big business, they would hate my proposal because I would bring about a free market. Big business love the state because the various regulations the state enacts helps to insulate big business from competition. While big business can easily jump the hurdles of regulation, small start-ups usually cannot. To make matters even better for big business, it can receive protectionism through other means as well, including tariffs, corporate welfare, and bailouts. All of this helps the rich to get richer at the expense of the hapless taxpayer. The last thing big business wants to see is the development of a free market.
Respectfully yours,
Alex Peak
#41 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 13, 2012 @ 2:11 pm
Mr. Walkaway writes, “What their entire ideology (IMO) boils down to is ‘I’ve got mine, if you don’t have what you need well then drop dead!’”
When you write “their,” I do not know if you’re referring to your nutty neighbours (who, in my opinion, do not sound like any anarcho-“capitalists” I know), or to real anarcho-“capitalists” such as myself.
For sake of discussion, I will assume the latter.
If you believe that anarcho-“capitalism” amounts to an ideology proclaiming, “I’ve got mine, if you don’t have what you need well then drop dead!” then how do you explain the fact that I have not committed suicide? Although you don’t know me, I can assure you, I do not have “mine.” I am tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and barely getting by. I believe, very sincerely, that I would be far better off monetarily if not for the destructive impact statism has on the economy. Moreover, even if I were wealthy, I’d still advocate free-market anarchism because I care about the poor. I’d have to not care about others to not advocate free-market anarchism. I’m a libertarian precisely because I do care about the rights of others. I’m a free-marketeer precisely because I do care about the well-being of others. I’m an anarchist precisely because I do want people to be free from aggression.
Mr. Walkaway continues by saying, “The ‘anarcho-capitalists’ are also abysmally stupid when it comes to conspiracy theories…”
So, because we don’t agree with conspiracy theorists who claim that 9/11 was some sort of “inside job” or that vaccinations somehow “cause autism,” that makes us stupid? Not just stupid, but “abysmally” stupid?
Look, Mr. Walkaway, conspiracy theorists are rarely able to answer basic questions. The inside-jobbers, for example, are completely unable to explain how an institution as fundamentally inefficient as the state could possibly pull off such a huge operation. They are also unable to explain how the state could keep those on the inside from spilling the beans, especially considering the vast number of people that would need to have been on the inside to pull off such an event. Why is it “abysmally stupid” to refuse to jump onto the conspiracy bandwagon, to want basic questions answered that conspiracy theorists seem unable to even consider? I’m sorry, but if rejecting the absurd claims of the inside-jobbers or of the anti-vaccination folks makes me “abysmally stupid,” then so be it.
Peace,
Alex Peak
#42 Comment By david wise On December 13, 2012 @ 2:15 pm
You know its very strange, I am an OR nurse at UPMC and a few years ago I earned some extra dough by assisting with a study one of the Pitt Neuroscience labs were doing. (basically just prepping patients for an MRI and PET scans)
the findings were just outrageous, did you know that people who would see themselves as loners, outcasts, or “anarchists” or have 8 (EIGHT!) times the level of activity in their amygdala than socially well adjusted people? this part of our Lizard Brain rules fear and suspicion, I think its an easy jump from those very isolating emotions to the extremism of the “patriot” or “voluntaryist” movments.
the only question now is can we find a way, either through drug intervention, talk therapy, or both that these people can be allowed to live normal lives?
#43 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 2:38 pm
Well, “Papa Smurf” , if someone uses a source that has a documented history of libels and falsifications without verifying it independently, then one is either credulous or a scoundrel, isn’t one?
#44 Comment By NAFTA Refugee On December 13, 2012 @ 3:08 pm
Wow, thorough article. I have read parts and pieces of this story in recent history. I wasn’t aware of Stansberry’s questionable past. Thank you.
Regarding third term presidencies. Not long ago, there was a bargain being discussed. The democrats wanted a third term (for Bill Clinton). The republicans wanted the requirement of being natural born removed (Arnold Schwarzennaeger).
It didn’t get that far, but for a short time it was discussed.
We have all kinds in this country. My old poli sci professor called this country a pendulum that swings back and forth between the “right” and the “left”.
I consider Marxism to be a tired old idea. I also believe borrowing more money to run the country, again, and again and again and again is “kicking the can down the road”. I have to ask, where can our country file for chapter 13 bankruptcy? Ever hear of proposition 60?
#45 Comment By Gandhi On December 13, 2012 @ 3:18 pm
So one is a cretin for posting a link which involves a black man being harassed by white union members? hmmm, by that logic would he be an upstanding citizen if the white men in question were Conservatives? loving the leftist logic here
#46 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 3:42 pm
Call yourself lots of things, don’t you, Gandu?
#47 Comment By Sam Molloy On December 13, 2012 @ 3:50 pm
David Wise, that is extremely interesting. Was this study published? As I understand it people can become addicted to certain emotions that create endorphins or Dopamine in their brain, so it could be internally sourced. Or it could be some food or additive. Maybe the water in North Korea neutralizes this, as they seem to trust a government way worse than ours, defying any reasonable logic.
#48 Comment By Santa On December 13, 2012 @ 4:01 pm
Reynardine, I told you why I do this…To be honest, I’m surprised no one has given me a direct answer re: my link other than “it’s a right wing source”…Also curious as to why there’s no outcry from the lamestream media..but it’s cool, you and the rest of the peanut gallery are used to the foaming -at -the- mouth white supremacist types of which I’m not…I’m also very difficult to offend so I find the name calling cute
#49 Comment By CM On December 13, 2012 @ 4:26 pm
Zero,
No one is refusing to believe the video because it’s from “a right wing source,” we’re refusing to believe it because it’s from Andrew Breitbart, a known and repeated perpetrator of hoaxes and purveyor of fakery. But you knew that.
#50 Comment By Klaus On December 13, 2012 @ 5:09 pm
Actually CM, I didn’t know that so that disproves your assumption..Also, I doubt Breitbart would pay or coerce a bunch of white union workers to destroy a black vendor’s cart all for the sake of making them look like thugs..Come now CM, I expected better from you…I guess they were paid or coerced to destroy the tent and punch the reporter too?
Yes, that’s it..the reporter set it all up to get punched to cast guilt the union guys..makes sense
#51 Comment By Reynardine On December 13, 2012 @ 5:20 pm
And now you’re calling yourself Santa? Can’t keep your aliases straight, can you?
#52 Comment By Gregory On December 13, 2012 @ 7:46 pm
Oh, look! Young John has discovered that you may enter any name that you wish into the name block! My, hasn’t he thought of some clever names? And such witty puns!
/snark off
If you want to be treated as an adult then you must act like one. You probably hear this from your parents all the time and it probably sounds like blah blah blah blah. That doesn’t really matter because I am not talking to you, I am talking about you.
You may well believe that your participation is so original and unique that it has shaken us to our foundations. Most of us outgrew that youthful naiveté decades ago, so presumably you will as well.
In reality, you are more like that annoying kid who lives down the block and thinks that acts of petty vandalism are signatures of profound bravery. Your comments are today’s equivalent of the prank phone calls that were so much fun before caller ID wrecked the party. Live it up because I vaguely remember what it was like to piss off strangers. Just don’t invest too much significance into the act because ultimately it is you who will end up looking the fool.
You said that you have a thick skin. Fair enough. Hopefully it is not covering a thick skull.
#53 Comment By Gregory On December 14, 2012 @ 12:14 am
Looks like they Breitbart clones are losing their touch….
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#54 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 14, 2012 @ 12:37 am
“(The state is an inherently criminal institution, as I see it. It inherently violates natural law. Indeed, were it to cease violating natural law, it would cease to be a state.”
And who decides what is “natural law?”
” I must oppose the existence of the state for the same reason I oppose rape, theft, murder, slavery, &c. Were I to give up on anarchism, I would no longer personally be able to put forward any arguments in favour of law or the notion of justice.”
Wow. What a childish and idiotic statement. Paying taxes for stuff you benefit from is like rape. Okay. But working for a private company, producing $50 of value an hour and getting paid $7.00 out of those hours is great!
“For me, the only alternative to voluntaryism is ethical nihilism.”
Do you ever suspect that your thinking might be a false dichotomy?
” And, I see most people falling in a confused middle-ground, saying they believe in rights but either not understanding exactly what that means or failing to defend the concept of rights consistently. I say that not with the intention of disparaging “most people,” but simply to acknowledge what appears to me to be a reality concerning popular comprehension of natural rights and natural law.)”
Yup, most people are stupid sheep but not YOU! You went on the internet and discovered Austrian School Economics for White Losers who Love Blaming the Government for their Failures and don’t Want to Study Actual Economics. Now YOU know what’s REALLY going on!
” But there is no reason why everyone on Earth would need to agree to the voluntary rules of some voluntary organisation; only the members of said organisation, and only for as long as they opt to remain members.”
If people could do what they wanted, they wouldn’t create a capitalist system. They would share the means of production and give everyone access to them. Capitalism cannot have free access to the means of production. A large percentage of the population MUST be deprived of those means of production otherwise they have no incentive to market their labor power.
“If by “top 1%” you’re referring to big business, they would hate my proposal because I would bring about a free market.”
Please explain when there was a “free market.”
“Big business love the state because the various regulations the state enacts helps to insulate big business from competition. While big business can easily jump the hurdles of regulation, small start-ups usually cannot.”
This Austrian school nonsense may work on Youtube, but not in the real world. Big business spends hundreds of billions of dollars every here to support DEREGULATION, not regulation. Of course there are exceptions but most of the time that’s what business does.
Also, some of the major costs of start-ups in many industries is the cost of liability insurance and implementing safety features to avoid lawsuits from private citizens. But you don’t see that as “evil” and “violating natural law” because lawyers and insurance companies are private property and therefore Holy and good.
Another major cost of start-ups is of course the means of production themselves. So when you speak about how large corporations like Monsanto or Lockheed-Martin are big because regulation strangles start-ups, are you seriously trying to claim that without any regulation, we’d see Ma and Pa Pickles’ Big Chemical Barn, or Larry’s Discount Air Defense Systems? Please, tell me you’re that stupid.
Lastly, the history of regulation of business shows that regulation was a positive thing. See, the society you dream of has never existed, and nor will it. However, we did have a period of very unregulated capitalism known as the Gilded Age. You can balk because it wasn’t EXACTLY what you wanted but if your ideas about free markets had any merit, then a freer market should at least show some kind of benefit.
So is that how things were in the 1890s-1920s? Nope. There was plenty of competition in the food markets but the food was often rotten, horribly adulterated, and often totally mislabeled(hog fat instead of butter). What stopped this practice? Competition? Nope, it was the Food and Drug Act of 1906.
See people like you can spin your wacky ideology because you are utterly ignorant of basic American history. You have no idea what people lived like when government regulation was nearly non-existent.
” To make matters even better for big business, it can receive protectionism through other means as well, including tariffs, corporate welfare, and bailouts. All of this helps the rich to get richer at the expense of the hapless taxpayer. ”
First, what helps the rich get richer is the fact that they reap the surplus value that their employees produce. Indeed, corporations, but in fact all businesses down to the smallest hot-dog stand, benefit from government. This is a proven fact going back to the very dawn of capitalism and the acts of enclosure and game laws in England.
Of course if you go the anti-corporate route, you’re making a big mistake, because for all their evil it was the large corporations, not little start-ups, which produced capitalism’s indisputable benefits. In other words, you cannot brag about capitalism’s innovation and surplus of consumer goods of all sorts while simultaneously condemning all the corporations which produced them. If you do that, you’re basically arguing against capitalism.
Small firms become big firms- competition produces winners, temporary though they may be.
“The last thing big business wants to see is the development of a free market.”
There has never been a “free market” so they don’t have much to worry about. However, in the last 20 years or so, the WTO and IMF been forcing “free trade” and privatization down the world’s throat. It has not made conditions better.
Lastly, if everything you claim about our current system is true, it is clear that replacing that system would require violence. But you’re absolutely opposed to violence. Ergo, it’s a moot point, your ideology is a failure, and you should leave us all alone.
Also the internet was developed via government funding, it runs on equipment made by many companies which have received government funding or benefits in one form or another, and it also runs on an infrastructure with similar ties to government. So go get some volunteers and build your own internet.
#55 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 14, 2012 @ 1:55 am
Earlier, I wrote a rather long reply to Mr. Ruslan Amirkhanov. Having come back hours later, I do not see my reply to Mr. Amirkhanov, although I do see what appears to be his response to my reply. Odd.
It’s a shame that my response to Mr. Amirkhanov appears to no longer be available, especially considering that I spent many hours writing it.
In any event, Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “The problem with a system based on ‘axioms’ is that real life doesn’t conform to arbitrarily made up axioms.”
You are completely mistaken, Mr. Amirkhanov. My life indeed does conform to the nonaggression axiom. I am real, I am ailve, and I eschew aggression in my every interaction. Whether you choose to believe me or not, my real life indeed does conform to this nonarbitrary axiom of which I believe is dictated by nature.
Consider what I wrote in my previous response to you. I wrote, “last month, I accidentally stole a $1.00 danish from a grocery store in the self-check-out line. This was an accidental act of aggression, but I wanted to make things right, so a few days later, when I was back to purchase more goods, I let the customer service desk know and gave the company a dollar. Some may have said, ‘but it’s just a dollar’; but what difference does that make when my integrity, my self-respect, is on the line?” If that’s not a perfect example of my real life conforming to the nonaggression axiom, what is?
Mr. Amirkhanov continues, “If you want capitalism, you MUST have a state to defend private property rights, and a larger number of people must be deprived of their own means of production to get their subsistence.”
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop right there. :)
If I want capitalism? Whether or not we anarcho-”capitalists” want capitalism all depends upon how one chooses to define the term capitalism. If one defines capitalism as Rand did, making it synonymous with a free market, then yes, we want capitalism (even more than Rand herself, in fact, since she made the mistake of supporting a state). If, however, you define it in the same way that Brad Spangler defines capitalism, defining it as state-driven monopolisation of capital, then we anarcho-”capitalists” are completely and utterly opposed to capitalism. And, if you define capitalism as being merely private ownership of the means of production, I’d argue that we anarcho-”capitalists” are somewhat indifferent to capitalism (although, that also depends upon how one defines private). (I personally am very fond of the notion of worker-owned firms.)
I mentioned a man named Brad Spangler. I want to mention him again. Now, Spangler is an anarcho-”capitalist,” and nevertheless, if you ask him whether he supports capitalism, he will tell you he does not. Spangler has even written about how, in his view, anarcho-”capitalism” is actually a stymergic form of socialism. Spangler has also written about such topics as wage slavery, arguing that wage slavery actually does exist, but that it is a product of statist intervention into the market, not a product of the market itself. And Spangler is not alone in his views. An anarcho-”capitalist” philosopher named Dr. Roderick Long has described “libertarianism [a]s the proletarian revolution.” Professor Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson have edited a book titled Markets Not Capitalism. (Note: I have not read this book, and cannot comment on whether I actually agree with the content thereof. I merely know of the book’s existence, and plan to read it someday.) Even Murray N. Rothbard, the quintessential anarcho-”capitalist,” wrote in 1969 that there are instances where workers can justifiably seize the means of production from the owners. (See “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.”)
In any event, on to your next claim. You claim that a state is needed in order to protect property rights. I maintain that as long as a state exists, property rights cannot be fully protected. A state, in order to be a state, must infringe upon some sort of property right, whether that be the right to self-ownership or the right to some justly-acquired alienable good. If it were not doing one of these things, it would be just another voluntary organisation, and not a state.
A state is not needed to defend property rights. Rather, property rights can be defended in one of three ways, and free individuals would be free to decide upon which way best suit them. The first, and least practical or most inefficient, way would be to sit on one’s front porch all day and all night with a shotgun. I suspect very few people would choose that method. Another way would be to make an agreement with one’s neighbours to watch out for one another. And, the third way would be to hire one of the various private protection agencies that would likely spring up to supply consumers with the defence services they desire. This third method would be far more practical, efficient, and effective than the perverted police-monopoly system we have now. Monopolies, after all, are protected from competition by the government, and, having no competition to deal with, are therefore highly inefficient. Even ignoring the rampant police corruption that exists today under statism, the fact is that police departments do not have very much incentive to protect people from crime. If anything, their budgets would likely increase if crime rates skyrocketed, creating for very perverted incentives indeed. Now let’s compare the current malarky with the incentives a free market would provide. Let’s say you’re sitting at the breakfast table with your wife, and she points out that the Jones’s had a break-in. She says that the Jones’s had a subscription with protection agency B, and that they failed to obtain the Jones’s stolen bike. Let’s say you and your wife also have a subscription with agency B, and that you have been reading in the paper about similar failures on the part of agency B. What would you say to your wife? Would you say, “Honey, I know what we should do; we should sent even more money this month to agency B”? Of course not. Instead, you’d say, “Honey, the Robinsons next door have a subscription with company G, and they say they’re getting really good service. Do you think we should switch companies?” Since the various companies all want to make a profit, they will have an incentive to provide the best possible service at the lowest cost. Again, totally different from the current situation we face with our government-monopoly police system.
Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “Don’t agree? Show us your society. Then we’ll talk.”
The society I advocate exists anywhere and everywhere you find two individuals shaking hands. Every time you buy a jug of milk, that’s you being a member of my society.
Anarchy exists in between the cracks, and thank goodness it does, for society would have fallen long ago without it.
There are various historical examples I can also give. One is of a community called Modern Times, founded by the individualist anarchist Josiah Warren. It lasted for a couple decades, and was quite successful, despite Warren’s flawed view on value. (Instead of having a commodity-backed monetary system, the community used what Warren called labour notes. The fact that this community lasted as long as it did even despite this flawed monetary system just goes to show how successful anarchism can be.) Another example is given by Murray Rothbard. In his For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, he writes, “For the libertarian, the most interesting and certainly the most poignant example of the creation of a State through conquest was the destruction of the libertarian society of ancient Ireland by England in the seventeenth century, a conquest which established an imperial State and ejected numerous Irish from their cherished land. The libertarian society of Ireland, which lasted for a thousand years—and which will be described further below—was able to resist English conquest for hundreds of years because of the absence of a State which could be conquered easily and then used by the conquerors to rule over the native population.” In his The Ethics of Liberty, he writes, “Moreover, in ancient Ireland, a society existing for a thousand years until the conquest by Cromwell, ‘there was no trace of State-administered justice’; competing schools of professional jurists interpreted and applied the common body of customary law, with enforcement undertaken by competing and voluntarily supported tuatha, or insurance agencies. Furthermore, these customary rules were not haphazard or arbitrary but consciously rooted in natural law, discoverable by man’s reason.” Rothbard points out that although there were “kings,” these “kings” were essentially nothing more than religious figureheads, and that if a “king” found himself in a dispute with someone, he’d have to handle it through a tuath just like anybody else.
Mr. Amirkhanov then writes, “And don’t give me this BS about how ‘We WOULD but everywhere we go we would be taxed no matter what!’ Well then too bad. That means humankind is not interested in your Fantasy Land utopia.”
Two points need to be made.
First, I do not believe a utopia is possible given current technology. I doubt a utopia will be possible until humans are able to upload their minds into computers or simulated realities (and who knows if that will even ever happen?). Thus, as I wrote to you before, “But I am no utopian. I suspect that, even once the state is abolished and society ascends into anarchy, there will still be some crime and poverty (albeit much, much less). There will still be serial killers and rapists, there will still be disease, there will still be storms. Society can exist without a state (and in fact would thrive much better), but it cannot exist without law, or without voluntary institutions. We will still need arbitrators to settle disputes, businesses to supply goods and services, and mutual aid societies and unions to make sure nobody falls between the cracks. And, yes, we will still need property rights founded on easy-to-understand principles.”
If anything, I’m inclined to say that the statists are the utopians. They seem to believe that if they get just the right set of politicians or bureaucrats in power, if they get just the right laws and regulations passed, &c., that somehow everything will finally fall into place and everything will be hunky-dory. It’s an incredibly naïve position they take.
Second, you claim that “humankind” is not interested in my…let’s say society, since I’ve already rejected “utopia.” But, what is my society? My society is merely a society in which people do not threaten one another with needless violence. To say that “mankind” is not interested in peace is, well…it might have been your intent to say that mankind is not interested in peace, it might not have been your intent to say that mankind is not interested in refraining from pointing guns at the heads of one another, but I can see no other way of ultimately interpreting the comment. It would be truly sad to actually believe that mankind is that evil or hateful. Again, I’m sure that wasn’t your intended implication, but still.
Look, I’m realistic. I don’t expect mankind to ascend into anarchy in my lifetime. In fact, I doubt it will happen for at least a couple centuries, or even a millennia from now. I’m a short-term pessimist, but a long-term optimist. I know you and I will never be free, but if there is even a shred of a shot that writing in defence of anarchism will help future generations shed the shackles of statism, it’s got to be worth it, no?
Finally, Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “You want to be left alone? LEAVE! Stop telling us and LEAVE!”
I don’t know why you’re shouting, but okay.
First, I never said anything about wanting to be left alone. I think you’re confusing me with a different poster. I don’t want to be “left alone” per se, I just don’t want anyone aggressing against anyone else.
Second, leaving will do nothing to convince people to cease aggressing against one another.
Third, you say “stop telling us.” But, telling people that aggression is unethical is about a billion times more likely to convince people to cease aggressing against one another than merely “leaving.”
Fourth, leave and go where? Why would I leave? What has leaving got to do with anything? I’m utterly confused. (The only thing I can think of when I see you write “LEAVE!” in all caps like that is of those horrible, jingoistic conservatives who say, “America: love it or leave it.” I’ve always despised that phrase.)
To someone else, Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “The modern republic, for all its failings, is at least in theory accountable to the public via elections, petitions, etc. Private corporations are responsible only to their shareholders.”
Businesses are responsible to the consumers more than anyone else, for without the consumers, they have nothing. Let’s look at one example.
Various cell phone providers offer different features, prices, specials, terms, &c. If I don’t like the features and terms of my cell phone, I don’t have to email my Senator, look for others with the same complaint, sign petitions, vote for Joe Blow, wait months or years to see change exacted—all I have to do is go with a different provider. Quick, easy, painless.
If I don’t believe I need a cell phone, I don’t have to have one—nor must I pay for one via taxes.
To the same someone else, Mr. Amikhanov writes, “Governments go hand in hand with capitalism. These are not separate but complimentary things. Most ‘expropriation’ is done by private capitalists, and the state defends their right to do it.”
And who on the Internet are the biggest opponents of state-capitalism? Why, it happens to be us libertarians, as far as I can see. We’re constantly pointing out that corporatism would not persist in a free market, that big businesses hate the concept of the free market because they would be unable to rig it in their favour, that the many regulations of the so-called progressive era which everyone thought were to combat the excesses of big business were actually enacted at the behest of big business for the benefit of big business, &c. Again, I highly recommend Rothbard’s “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.”
Sincerely yours,
Alex Peak
#56 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 14, 2012 @ 1:57 am
Mr. David Wise writes, “the findings were just outrageous, did you know that people who would see themselves as loners, outcasts, or ‘anarchists’ or have 8 (EIGHT!) times the level of activity in their amygdala than socially well adjusted people? this part of our Lizard Brain rules fear and suspicion, I think its an easy jump from those very isolating emotions to the extremism of the ‘patriot’ or ‘voluntaryist’ movments.”
Why would the study group people who see themselves as loners or outcasts with those who advocate a stateless society? The two things have nothing to do with one another. One is a perception about oneself, the other is a political philosophy. That’s like doing a study on people who like the colour yellow or who date news anchors. I would be inclined to disregard studies that group entirely different things together for no apparent reason.
If I were “afraid” of the state in some sort of paranoid sense, I would not openly advertise the fact that I am an anarchist on the Internet. It’s not that the state is acting secretly to infringe upon individuals’ rights—it does so openly. Every time the state arrests some pothead, or withholds taxes from your paycheque, or locks up some prostitute, it is openly violating natural law. I oppose the state not because I fear it, but because I advocate justice.
I also find it odd that your sentence mentions the “Patriot” movement and voluntaryism as though the two were even remotely related to one another. They clearly aren’t.
Finally, there’s nothing extremist about us voluntaryists. All we’re doing is not putting guns against other people’s heads. Is that “extreme”? If you live your life also not aggressing against others, then you are acting in accordance with voluntaryist principles, regardless of whether you’re aware of the term voluntaryism or not, and regardless of whether or not it was your intention to act in accordance with any set of principles at all. One does not need to have “isolating emotions” in order to not want to harm others; in fact, if anything, I’d suspect that having “isolating emotions” would diminish one’s desire to not harm others.
Respectfully yours,
Alex Peak
#57 Comment By Erika On December 14, 2012 @ 8:16 am
Mr. Peak, i looked at your website and from that and your comments you are obviously an intelligent person – and you know how to be respectful – and you are obviously committed to your ideas.
However, like many true believers in any sort of idea you suffer from being so focused on your ideas that you are failing to take into account how real people actually act in the real world. i have to admit i was sure that you were a Ph. D level economist because that profession tends to attract people who are so focused on theory that they fail to understand that the real world is not an economic model. You should be flattered by that :)
But in any case, one of the issues with economic modeling has always been that economic modeling tends to remove all variables but one. Hence, the “free market” in widgets works perfectly if everything is ideal, everyone is rational, and you remove opportunity costs, externalities, competition in production, multiple purchasers, and everything other possible variable. The state of economics is such that someone (Coase is his name) actually won the Nobel Prize for that statement of the obvious which has absolutely no real world application whatsoever.
In fact, the problem of economic modeling becomes obvious when you realize that all economic modeling depends upon people being rational – once irrationality is added to the equation all economic modeling collapses.
The same thing holds true with any theory which says that everything will be all better if x occurs. It is a gloriously simple solution where just one step can end world hunger and poverty, eliminate crime, and lead to global peace and harmony. And that is ultimately what your theory amounts to.
The problem is that you depend upon people being rational enough to act in not only their best interest but the best interest of society as a whole. In the real world, when government is eliminated it has not resulted in people living in peace and harmony with a higher standard of living. See, Somalia.
And while i do believe that you are an intelligent person, it is pretty clear that you lack understanding of how arbitration actually works in the real world. Yes, arbitration sounds nice in theory – a way to more quickly, less expensively, and less contentiously resolve disputes without going to court and fighting for years. And it does pretty much work that way in disputes between large corporations who have ongoing contractual relationships. Thus, an arbitrator (actually an arbitration panel of 3 where each side selects one and there is a neutral arbitrator in a dispute like this) might decide if a railroad can add a fuel surcharge to a contract with a utility to transport coal from the Powder River Basin to a power plant in Illinois if the price of diesel fuel increases*. In that case, the parties are going to have an ongoing contractual relationship and they have essentially equal resources and access to counsel so arbitratrion was designed for this type of case. However, in that case, what will happen is after the arbitration panel makes its decision, one party will go to a court** to enter in and enforce the decision.
Of course, not all arbitration is between parties with similar resources who obviously have an ongoing commercial relationship they want to maintain and thus have an interest in resolving the contractual dispute in an amicable matter and both sides voluntarily want to enter into arbitration. Most arbitration takes place between massive corporations and consumers who are not given a choice thanks to mandatory arbitration clauses. Have you ever read a software agreement? Chances are you agree to take any dispute to arbitration (with the arbitrator appointed by and paid by the software company) and agree to the jurisdiction of the court where the software company is located. Now, consumers who actually get attorneys have been able to get these clauses stricken – but most consumers do not have the resources to hire an attorney, so essentially the “arbitration” is an employee of the company saying “the company wins.” Then the company goes to their local court who enters the arbitrator’s verdict without the consumer being present to object (since the consumer lives 3000 miles away). This is completely onesided and unfair (its also highly illegal but companies can get away with it because people do not have the resources or desire to fight).
You also somehow think that people will be able to have courts without a government – that simply will not happen. If in a country with a Constitution with strong due process protections, large corporations can get away with unenforceable adhesion contracts to rip people off, imagine what will happen in the absence of government. If you think the courts are slanted in favor of big business and the extremely wealthy now, just wait when the big businesses themselves own the courts and has their own private armies.
Remember what i said about the Mafia and Mafia protection rackets? The Mafia also provides a demonstration on how disputes will be settled (and loansharking and debt peonage is how banking would be conducted in the absence of government). They will give you an offer you can’t refuse – agree to see their way or get shot.
The fact that your answer to the point that everyone would have to agree to non-violence for your theory to work is that everyone would agree to that if there was no government also shows how laughably unaware of the real world you really are. i mean, you seem like a very smart person, but you are so blinded by your ideological idealism that you fail to see that people are not going to suddenly stop being the irrational and greedy creatures that we are when freed from the shackles of government and suddenly a wonderful society where everyone (not just the people who can afford to hire their own private armies and offer protection to the peasants who will likely be trapped in debt peonage) will get richer. You also believe that in the absense of government regulation there would be competition and free markets rather than monopoly – that simply will not happen. The fact is that unregulated capitalism will turn into large lumbering monopolies where most people are trapped in debt peonage and a small handful of people own and control everything. That is what happened in the Gilded Age when the U.S. had effectively unregulated capitalism and unregulated capitalism would have destroyed itself if not for government regulation.
But if you really want to know how wrong you are, i am going to recommend that you read a book: it comes in two flavors, legal treatise as Economic Analysis of the Law and designed for laypeople as Law and Economics. Its author is Judge and Law Professor Richard Posner who is absolutely brilliant and a great writer – he’s also kind of a nutcase who believes that there should be a free market in babies and body parts but brilliance and nuttiness frequently go hand in hand. Judge Posner who is*** as close as a pure libertarian or classical liberal who has been appointed (by President Reagan) to a federal court. And Judge Posner – whose views are extremely libertarian and steeped in Chicago School economics and a big fan of the free market absolutely demolishes your position.
* i have actually worked on cases like that. Talk about boring :(
** in this dispute, if you want to be technical they go to the Surface Transportation Board.
*** actually “was” is probably more accurate – Judge Posner’s views have evolved in the wake of the mortgage and banking crisis away from classical liberalism and libertarianism towards more modern liberalism.
#58 Comment By ANCAP On December 14, 2012 @ 8:44 am
This article does not portray the intellectual value of being an anarcho-capitalist. Most an-caps are atheists and do not believe in organized religion either. We are not 9-11 truthers, but instead believe in the fact that our foreign policy during the cold war with the use of proxy wars set up that situation to happen. As far as someone saying to get off the governments roads; I pay taxes, I pay social security, I pay everything the Government asks me to. Why should I get off the roads that I contributed to help build? This is the world we live in and we follow the rules. We would just like there to be different rules.
An-caps believe that there are biases in everything, either it be with the state or stateless. There will always be guns and crime and there will always be corruption. The point is that if it is stateless, the government can’t waste money on something.
#59 Comment By Reynardine On December 14, 2012 @ 9:22 am
Erika, a Platinum Sharkie, right now. But in this case, a Gold Sharkie to Ruslan, whose profession I don’t know, but whose discussion is quite sound in terms of societal law.
Also Ruslan, I apologize if we sent you the wrong kind of horseshoes. Please submit footprints of one or more of your Elasmotheria.
I have already awarded the Forensic Magnifying Glass to C.M. With it, I now award a Forensic Spyglass, so that these marvellous feats of detection can be performed at distances of however great a measure.
Kiwi has the Great Big Book Award. It has a handle for throwing at whoever deserves such chastisement.
Mr. Peake, you get two awards. One is a Golden Hurdle, for challenging our champions to new heights. The other is the Iron Chain Mace that you will need to defend yourself in the feudal society that is sure to come about. Betake yourself down to the nearest Creative Anarchisms (Whoops!) Anachronisms and start learning to use it now.
Ezra, you have received a Gold Toilet Seat imprinted with Huge Onyx Buttocks, so you may gaze upon them from time to time. But John, of course, has the handle that goes with them.
#60 Comment By Reynardine On December 14, 2012 @ 9:26 am
Damn, I must be getting over the flu. By a happy coincidence, it really *is* Friday.
#61 Comment By Erika On December 14, 2012 @ 10:36 am
Mr. Peak, please do not take this the wrong way, but have you ever actually worked in a job a day in your life? And by a job i mean one where you are working for a large predatory corporation like being a cashier at Wal-Mart – so working for your daddy’s company doesn’t count. And i also get the feeling that you are rich as well – mainly due to the combination of obvious intelligence and book learning but complete absense of any practical knowledge of how the real world operates. For example, i seriously wonder if you have ever actually signed a lease (or bought a house using a mortgage), paid your bills, or had to budget for yourself.
One example of how naive you are is your cell phone example – you realize that for most consumers its not very easy to switch plans. That is because when you sign up, you probably signed a deal which gave you a cheaper rate and a discount on the smart phone you wanted if you sign a long term contract. The contract you sign says that you will sign a commitment for a year or two (often for a set rate) and with very high (possibly illegal if you actually want to spent thousands of dollars on an attorney and hours fighting a charge of a couple of hundred dollars) penalties if you break the contract – probably adding up to hundreds of dollars. Thus, its not as easy as simply switching carriers.
The same holds true with all aspects of life from buying a house (its not like changing your hair style) to signing a lease, to getting a job, signing an employment contract, etc. – in every case there are large costs to you known as opportuntiy costs as well as external costs called externalities. In every case, people will engage in activity which tends to limit their freedom out of their preceived best interest – thus, signing a two year commitment for a smart phone plan might limit your freedom to change plans, but it saves you a signficant amount money.
And finally, i cannot figure out why it is so hard for you to realize that in the absence of goverment your private property rights will only be as good as you can defend them – all it takes is a few ultra wealthy individuals to build their own private army to roll up in tanks to take your property and your property and in all likelihood your rights are gone. And it will not only be your rights but everyone in the world’s rights that are destroyed. Your theory is the most sure way to assure a global dictatorship.
And a minor correction to Ruslan – there were in fact monopolies within the meat packing industry – one of the earliest enforcements under the Sherman Act was against the “meat trust” – if i remember correctly the Supreme Court case was U.S. v Swift & Co (1905) and i believe that Armour was also sued in the same period – one company controlled production of beef in the entire United States and the other controlled production of pork.
And thanks Rey, for the platium sharkie :)
#62 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 14, 2012 @ 1:42 pm
“You are completely mistaken, Mr. Amirkhanov. My life indeed does conform to the nonaggression axiom. I am real, I am ailve, and I eschew aggression in my every interaction. Whether you choose to believe me or not, my real life indeed does conform to this nonarbitrary axiom of which I believe is dictated by nature.”
Ok if we take your claim at face value, how does the non-aggression axiom mesh with your fallacious idea of the “laws of nature?” Nature is full of aggression.
Second, if you have private property, it is backed up by the state, and ergo there is implied aggression.
“Consider what I wrote in my previous response to you. I wrote, “last month, I accidentally stole a $1.00 danish from a grocery store in the self-check-out line. This was an accidental act of aggression, but I wanted to make things right, so a few days later, when I was back to purchase more goods, I let the customer service desk know and gave the company a dollar. Some may have said, ‘but it’s just a dollar’; but what difference does that make when my integrity, my self-respect, is on the line?” If that’s not a perfect example of my real life conforming to the nonaggression axiom, what is?”
This story is stupid. Stealing, while bad, is not “aggression.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop right there. :)
If I want capitalism? Whether or not we anarcho-”capitalists” want capitalism all depends upon how one chooses to define the term capitalism. If one defines capitalism as Rand did, making it synonymous with a free market, then yes, we want capitalism (even more than Rand herself, in fact, since she made the mistake of supporting a state). ”
Ok I’m going to stop you right there because here’s the problem. You don’t get to define capitalism however you want. Anarcho-socialists define socialism in a manner completely different than Marxist-Leninists: are you going to then become a left Anarchist? I doubt it.
Capitalism is a mode of production with all that comes with this.
” arguing that wage slavery actually does exist, but that it is a product of statist intervention into the market, not a product of the market itself. ”
Which would make Spangler full of shit and not worth paying attention to. Look, I know libertarian philosophy: Bad things come from “government”, good things come from “market.” It’s just another religion replacing God with market and Satan with government.
History shows that as long as you have a system of class exploitation, you will have some for of state, period. Slave-master society had its state form, feudal society had its own, and capitalism, from its very dawn had its state form.
” Even Murray N. Rothbard, the quintessential anarcho-”capitalist,” wrote in 1969 that there are instances where workers can justifiably seize the means of production from the owners. (See “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.”)”
Seize the means of production? Oh dear! AGGRESSION!
“ou claim that a state is needed in order to protect property rights. I maintain that as long as a state exists, property rights cannot be fully protected.”
That’s cool. Too bad it goes against all recorded history huh?
“A state, in order to be a state, must infringe upon some sort of property right, whether that be the right to self-ownership or the right to some justly-acquired alienable good.”
I have some bad news for you- there’s no such thing as an absolute right. The state may infringe on property rights but it is also necessary to define and enforce them in the first place. I live in a place where your way of thinking was put into practice in so many ways in 1991. It’s not that the government didn’t try to make laws regarding property, but the laws were simply not enforced and commercial law didn’t exist because it was formerly a socialist country without private property. Because of these weak property rights and an impotent state, property disputes were resolved with violence.
“A state is not needed to defend property rights.”
In a Communist society where all the means of production are owned in common, maybe. If you want a capitalist market system though- no. By all means show us one if you think otherwise.
” Rather, property rights can be defended in one of three ways, and free individuals would be free to decide upon which way best suit them. The first, and least practical or most inefficient, way would be to sit on one’s front porch all day and all night with a shotgun. I suspect very few people would choose that method. ”
Your suspicion would be incorrect. It’s not pleasant, but it is an effective method.
“Another way would be to make an agreement with one’s neighbours to watch out for one another.”
WHAT? COLLECTIVISM? THAT’S COMMUNISM!
“And, the third way would be to hire one of the various private protection agencies that would likely spring up to supply consumers with the defence services they desire. ”
“Would likely”- famous last words of the utopian thinker. So instead of paying taxes for POLICE, who in theory defend even those without property(again, in theory), those who can afford it can pay for-profit agencies who are accountable to nobody but those with the money to afford their services.
Sounds great, but it’s been tried before, in the US in fact, and it sucked.
“Monopolies, after all, are protected from competition by the government, and, having no competition to deal with, are therefore highly inefficient.”
Idiocy. First of all, monopolies are not “protected from competition” by the government. Rarely do you see one single monopoly, and in case you hadn’t heard, the government in the past broke a number of monopolies. The Austrian theory of monopoly simply doesn’t mesh with reality, which can be said of pretty much all Austrian theory.
Furthermore, if you exclude large corporations, you’re basically excluding the best producers of capitalism. Last year I was in China where you can visit all kinds of markets with thousands of different small businesses selling all kinds of knock-off electronics from companies you’ve never heard of. Does this competition lead to better products? Nope. Some of the knock-offs are quite good, but some are utter crap. But if you want quality, you go with a name brand from a big corporation.
See competition produces winners, even if only temporarily. The kind of system you envision is an under-developed capitalist market which has existed in the past and was far worse than what we have today.
“Even ignoring the rampant police corruption that exists today under statism, the fact is that police departments do not have very much incentive to protect people from crime.”
Oh but private corporations will certainly be without corruption because uh…COMPETITION! Right. Again, it’s been tried.
“Now let’s compare the current malarky with the incentives a free market would provide. ”
First you need to prove the existence of a “free market.”
“The society I advocate exists anywhere and everywhere you find two individuals shaking hands. Every time you buy a jug of milk, that’s you being a member of my society.”
Um nope. Sorry but it doesn’t.
“Anarchy exists in between the cracks, and thank goodness it does, for society would have fallen long ago without it.”
Nope.
Also the society of Ireland at that time you mention was not capitalist so nope.
“First, I do not believe a utopia is possible given current technology. I doubt a utopia will be possible until humans are able to upload their minds into computers or simulated realities (and who knows if that will even ever happen?). ”
Well shit why not? I mean you’ve got this wonderful idea thanks to living a life on the internet instead of the real world so lets upload our minds onto computers and then we’ll have a “free market!”
“If anything, I’m inclined to say that the statists are the utopians. They seem to believe that if they get just the right set of politicians or bureaucrats in power, if they get just the right laws and regulations passed, &c., that somehow everything will finally fall into place and everything will be hunky-dory. It’s an incredibly naïve position they take.”
For all the failings of liberal democratic states- they exist, and have done some pretty remarkable things, including producing the conditions which allow folks like you to become so disconnected from reality that you find yourself to be oppressed in the most privileged nation on Earth, and dream up nonsense like anarcho-capitalism.
I will take a society which exists and functions over some dream that isn’t based in reality.
Indeed it is possible to live without a state- mankind did it for thousands of years. But you can only do that when you eliminate class. If you have classes, you will have to have a state- nobody will allow themselves to be exploited willingly. Private property and profit are forms of exploitation, and all the Austrian school thought experiments in the world won’t make that fact go away.
“Look, I’m realistic. I don’t expect mankind to ascend into anarchy in my lifetime.”
A step in the right direction.
“Businesses are responsible to the consumers more than anyone else, for without the consumers, they have nothing. Let’s look at one example.”
Not really. Again, look at the food situation prior to the Food and Drug Act of 1906. Plenty of competition in the food market- crappy food(when it even was food).
“Various cell phone providers offer different features, prices, specials, terms, &c. If I don’t like the features and terms of my cell phone, I don’t have to email my Senator, look for others with the same complaint, sign petitions, vote for Joe Blow, wait months or years to see change exacted—all I have to do is go with a different provider. Quick, easy, painless.”
Unless all the cell phone providers fail to provide the service you want.
“And who on the Internet are the biggest opponents of state-capitalism? Why, it happens to be us libertarians, as far as I can see.”
Apparently you can’t see very far.
” We’re constantly pointing out that corporatism would not persist in a free market, that big businesses hate the concept of the free market because they would be unable to rig it in their favour, that the many regulations of the so-called progressive era which everyone thought were to combat the excesses of big business were actually enacted at the behest of big business for the benefit of big business, &c. ”
Again, prove the existence of a free market first. What you call “corporatism” is just advanced capitalism. It is the natural flow of things, and it isn’t necessarily bad. It doesn’t help consumers to have a market flooded with hundreds of different providers for virtually every consumer good, with no way of knowing which is higher quality.
I suggest you start by educating yourself in actual history, the antidote to libertarian philosophy. I would start with a book called The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible by Otto Bethmann.
Now I realize that you will just claim that there was X government regulation which must have caused Y, but my whole point is that there is ALWAYS state regulation because the state exists BECAUSE of capitalism. If there really was a free market and government is the antithesis of free market capitalism, the state never would have come to being in the first place. Yet when we look back through history we see that from the very dawn of capitalism’s development an increasingly massive state bureaucracy develops. The two go hand-in-hand, and expecting top firms NOT to use their influence on the state for their benefit is expecting them to do something which is not economically rational and goes against Austrian theories on “human nature.”
#63 Comment By Mitch Beales On December 14, 2012 @ 4:11 pm
It turns out the “Hot Dog Vendor Attacked By Union Goons” has a website for his hotdog cart. [21] I sincerely hope that posting this gets him some business. It seems that it was more a question of Mr. Tarver’s equipment being inside a tent that was torn down and/or collapsed than the personal attack on Mr. Tarver implied in the headline. It also seems that >$22,000 has been raised to replace the $400 in losses Tarver claimed. I hope he actually sees some of that money. In the Breitbart interview Tarver is told that the interviewer “heard” that racial slurs had been used. The entire interview offers an extremely disjointed story. The only clear point is that the tent came down and Tarver’s equipment is damaged. All in all it is a far cry from the implication of a personal attack on a man who depends on his hot dog cart to survive. As John et. al. pointed out the whole thing is way off topic but I thought I would save anyone who was concerned about this the trouble of listening to a long and leading interview and/or reading a slanted story about “union thugs” wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
#64 Comment By Alexander S. Peak On December 14, 2012 @ 7:29 pm
Mr. Ruslan Amirkhanov asks me, “And who decides what is ‘natural law’?”
That’s a very good question. I’m glad you asked.
Unfortunately, that question can be answered in multiple ways, depending upon exactly what you mean. I shall try to give multiple answers, therefore.
In one sense, it is every individual human’s job to decide, independently, what is and is not just in accordance with natural law. By this I mean, in the final analysis, we are all individuals with different ideas, passions, hopes, dreams, and understandings about the world, and all of these factors affect and influence our views on justice. Some may come to the conclusion, as I do, that natural law merely prohibits aggression; others may come to the conclusion, as the anarcho-pacifist Robert LeFevre did, that even defensive force violates natural law. Some may come to the conclusion that there is no moral imperative to give to the poor and needy, while others may find it morally repugnant not to give virtually everything they earn away. Some may come to the weird conclusion that engaging in homosexual sex somehow violates natural law, and therefore opt not to partake in homosexual encounters; whilst others, like I, may find that view silly. Every human has to ultimately use her capacity to reason in order to identify her values.
But, it’s quite possible that that’s not what you meant, that instead, you’re asking how we can arbitrate between individuals when there is some sort of fundamental disagreement over the dictates of natural law. For example, Person A says that natural law dictates that no person may aggress against another, and Person B says that natural law is dictating to him that he must aggress against Person A in order to prevent Person A from doing something that he, Person B, finds morally repugnant (let’s say cussing). How would such a dispute be settled?
This brings us to our second sense: arbiters can be hired to help settle disputes. (This would be similar to the court system we have now, except that it would be fairer for multiple reasons, the most obvious of which being that in our current government-monopoly courts, the government itself rules on disputes between the government and others, leading it to have an incentive to give a rather biased verdict.) Let’s say I’m Person A (the cusser) and that Frank is Person B (the anti-cussing crusader). I cuss, and Frank decides natural law dictates that he has to punish cussers, so he decides to shoot me in the leg as punishment. Since, in my view, I did not violate natural law by cussing, I cannot help but to see Frank’s actions as a violation of my natural rights, and thus I sue him for all related medical bills as well as any lost income resulting from his action. Now, if Frank doesn’t wish to appear before the arbiter, he doesn’t have to; but, Frank is smart enough to realise he’ll have a better shot of winning his case by showing up than not, and thus decides to also show up and present his case. After listening to both sides, the arbiter makes a decision, ruling in my favour. Since this court has a loser-pays system, Frank pays for all court fees. (Frank and I could also have agreed contractually prior to the arbitration that we would share the court-fees evenly, or that we would go with a winner-pays option; but, both of us were fairly confident that we would win, so we both decided to stick with the de facto loser-pays system.) Now, if Frank does not agree with the verdict, he can appeal by hiring another arbitration firm. But what if he keeps losing (as he probably will)? Will he keep appealing forever? Well, him and I may have agreed contractually prior to the first ruling that we would only have X number of appeals. But, what if we had no such contractual agreement? Chances are, even without such a contractual agreement, Frank will give up appealing. After all, he keeps losing, and that means he keeps having to pay all associated court fees.
So, when all is said and done, the arbiter has decided that people do not have the right to physically harm others for merely cussing. And this becomes “common law.”
When first delving into anarchist theory, I found I could easily accept most of it, but the private arbitration thing was one of the hardest aspects to accept. It took me over a year to really embrace it. I had fears, such as, “What if the arbiter is bribed?” I had those fears until I remembered that government judges can just as easily be bribed. In fact, if anything, it would be harder to bribe private arbiters, since their very livelihood would be dependent upon public perception as a fair judge.
Let’s say we have a private arbiter named Judge Jimmy, and let’s say he decides to start taking bribes. He begins to make very unfair decisions, decisions in favour of people who are obviously in the wrong. Would his services be very popular? No. (1) Those who know they are in the right wouldn’t want Judge Jimmy because he could easily be bought by those who are in the wrong. And (2) those who are in the wrong also wouldn’t want Judge Jimmy because the case would likely be appealed, and it would then look very suspicious that this second party had been insisting on a man like Judge Jimmy who has a reputation for unfair decisions. By making unfair decisions, or worse yet, allowing oneself to be bribed to make unfair decisions, any arbiter in the free market would necessarily hurt her own bottom line by driving customers elsewhere.
It’s also useful to remember that every aspect of libertarian anarchism has been tried in some place at some time, and successfully, too. It is my understanding, for example, that before maritime law was codified by states, it was established by the common law method, resolving disputes as they arose.
After I wrote to Ms. Erika, “I must oppose the existence of the state for the same reason I oppose rape, theft, murder, slavery, &c. Were I to give up on anarchism, I would no longer personally be able to put forward any arguments in favour of law or the notion of justice,” Mr. Amirkhanov responded by saying, “Wow. What a childish and idiotic statement.”
Wow, I’m pouring my heart out here, and all you can do is call me childish?
Really?
Okay. What I said is, basically, that I believe there is such a thing as law and justice, and that I hold these ideals above everything. What I said is, basically, that the same ideals that lead me to reject rape, theft, &c., also lead to me reject all aggression, including all acts of aggression committed by those humans calling themselves “the state.” What I said is, basically, that if I gave up on law and justice, if I gave up on these ideals I hold above everything, I would no longer have any ethical ideals, and could no longer personally offer any answers to anyone regarding what is and is not just, that indeed I would no longer even have any answers whatsoever in my own head. What I said is, basically, that not being a hypocrite is important to me, and that I cannot very well personally offer an argument that it is wrong for The Joker to kill innocent people in Gotham City if I do not also say it is wrong for Bush and Obama to kill innocent people in Iraq. What I said, basically, is that I believe in right and wrong, and that I would have to utterly give up on my entire understanding of right and wrong in order to personally cease being an anarchist; in other words, I would have to give up something so fundamental and important to me that it would leave me in a sea of utter ambiguity.
And, for that I’m childish?
I could understand calling me childish if I had said, “You’re a hypocrite for opposing nonstatist crime while not also opposing statist crime.” But at no point did I say that, or anything remotely similar. I was simply commenting about my own foundations, and what would result if those foundations were to be taken out from under me.
To call my statement “idiotic” implies that I would not, in fact, be left in a sea of ambiguity were my foundation to be taken out from under me. But this seems to imply that you know more about me than I know about me. I am fairly certain you do not, and that, were my foundation to be taken out from under me, and not replaced with any new foundations, I very truly would be left with no comprehension of justice, as was my original, “childish,” “idiotic” claim.
Mr. Amirkhanov continues, “Paying taxes for stuff you benefit from is like rape. Okay.”
Now you are putting words into my mouth, Mr. Amirkhanov.
(1) I at no point claimed that theft (or “paying taxes”) was as bad a rape.
(2) No human, in my opinion, has ever “benefitted” from paying taxes, not even those who may have received more from the government than they paid into it.
(3) I wasn’t talking about taxation at all. I was talking about the state as an inherently criminal institution. While taxation and regulation impoverish us all, there are certainly worse things the government does. The worst thing I can think of that it does is murder. It then calls this “war,” as though changing the name makes it somehow better. So, perhaps you would prefer to compare rape to war? (Of course, such a comparison would be rather interesting, since rape is often used in war.)
(4) But, there’s no point in making such a comparison at this time, since all such comparisons completely miss my point. My point was about my ethical foundation. In order for me to give up on anarchism, I would necessarily have to give up on this ethical foundation I hold (because there is obviously no way for me to abandon anarchism while continuing to hold onto this specific ethical foundation); but, in the process of giving up this ethical foundation I hold, I would lose my entire view on ethics, on justice, on right and wrong, leaving me utterly philosophically confused. A person cannot rationally believe in right and wrong without some sort of philosophical base. Some choose God as that base. I choose man’s self-evident nature as a self-owner. Others may choose other things. But if a person has absolutely no foundation, that person cannot very well say murder is wrong, because when someone asks why murder is wrong, that person would have no response. Since I lack faith, and since natural self-ownership appears to be the only non-arbitrary foundation that I can personally discern at this time, I’ve no alternative but to cling to the nonaggression axiom for as long as I wish to continue making arguments in favour of the idea that right and wrong really do exist.
Then Mr. Amirkhanov continues by saying, “But working for a private company, producing $50 of value an hour and getting paid $7.00 out of those hours is great!”
I do not understand this non sequitur. It seems to imply that I, Alex Peak, am of the view that everything not prohibited by natural law is therefore inherently “great!”, that the only non-”great!” things in the universe are acts of aggression. But I do not think the colour teal is “great!”, nor do I think the movie Date Movie is “great!”, nor do I think working is “great!”
Just because I view X to be bad does not mean I view non-X to be inherently “great!”, or even good for that matter. My view that aggression is evil says nothing about my view on everything else in the universe. I despise racism, for example, even though racism does not violate the nonaggression axiom. And there are some songs I absolutely cannot stand, even though writing, releasing, and singing them also does not violate the nonaggression axiom.
Once again, my comment was about my ethical foundation. It had absolutely nothing to do with what I do and do not consider “great!”
Since you mentioned working, let’s discuss it a bit, just for the fun of it. Working sucks. Hopefully, we’ll one day develop the technology to upload our brains to computers or artificial realities, at which point both working and scarcity will come to an end. But, unfortunately, given current technology, I have to continue working in order to survive. I hate it, but I’m not going to simply wait around for the aforementioned technology to be developed, for I suspect I’d die waiting.
Because we do not live in a free market, businesses have more power over workers than they would if we did live in a free market; so, when discussing matters such as this, it’s important to keep that in mind. (Some libertarians make the mistake of defending current business–worker relationships as though we actually had a free market. We real libertarians typically call these other libertarians “vulgar libertarians,” and their conflation of the free market with the current corporatist reality “vulgar libertarianism.”) Now, we can discuss worker relations with one eye on the current corporatist system and with another on our free market goal.
First, let’s consider exchange in a purely free market, which we do not have. In a purely free market, without any aggression, all exchanges would be a product of voluntary mutual consent. The only exchanges that would occur are those in which both parties would benefit from the exchange. If you have a pencil but would prefer to own my pen, and I have a pen but would prefer to own your pencil, and we make a trade, we both benefit, because we both gain something we wanted more than the thing we gave up. In short, we both profited. (Only when aggression is introduced to the equation can one person benefit at the expense of another.) So, let’s say you own Widget Enterprises, and you and I decide to make an agreement. I make twenty widgets a day, and I give them to you in exchange for five ounces of silver a day. You then sell these widgets an profit from them. Am I being exploited? No. I could have tried to sell the widgets on my own, instead of give them to you for the silver wage, and maybe, if I were lucky, I might end p making six ounces in silver. But, I know nothing about the widget market, and might end up selling none of them, thus being stuck with widgets I do not want, and no silver. Since I anticipate being happier with the five ounces of silver than with the twenty widgets, I willingly make the exchange, and profit thereby. Likewise, you prefer the twenty widgets over the silver because you do know the widget market, and how to distribute. Thus, you, too, profit. And, it’s a good thing for me that you do, since you’re taking a risk off of my shoulders. You might still end up not selling a single widget, in which case you’re out five ounces of silver. If I didn’t prefer you take that risk over me, I wouldn’t have made the exchange. Of course, we don’t have a free market, so let’s look at the reality of the situation.
In our current corporatist system, thanks to regulations that benefit big business at the expense of smaller competitors, big business can exploit the climate to pay workers below their market value. Since regulations and taxes can keep smaller competitors from getting off the ground as quickly as they would (or sometimes even at all), there are fewer businesses competing against one another for the purchase of labour, and as such, they do not need to offer as much monetary incentive to potential employees as they otherwise would. Since these regulations also lead to unemployment, underemployment, and malemlpoyment, wages drop even further, since there are even more potential workers vying for this shortage of jobs.
(Also, I’m going to once again recommend Rothbard’s “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.” People have this weird misconception that anarcho-”capitalists” and other libertarians are inherently “pro-business,” but Rothbard points out that there are instances where it is completely legitimate for workers to take over a firm.)
After saying that there is voluntaryism on the far left, ethical nihilism on the far right, and a vast field of confused, “middle-of-the-road” opinions in the middle—what we could call a trichotomy—Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “Do you ever suspect that your thinking might be a false dichotomy?” I do not see how a trichotomy could ever be a false dichotomy. Interestingly, Mr. Amirkhanov took my view out of context, ignoring the entire middle-ground at first, in order to make his suggestion that I might be engaging in a false dichotomy.
If Mr. Amirkhanov is intending to imply that I am engaging in a false dichotomy on the supposed grounds that I do not acknowledge the possibility of someone falling outside of the two extremes, I would happily point out that I indeed do acknowledge the possibility of someone falling outside of the two extremes, and that in fact I claim most people in fact do fall outside of the two extremes. Thus, I’m definitely not engaging in a false dichotomy on those grounds.
Contrariwise, if Mr. Amirkhanov means to imply that I am engaging in a false dichotomy because I only accept that the two extremes are logically consistent (one extreme saying that natural rights do exist, the other saying that natural rights are fictional concepts), and because I fail to see any logically-consistent third position, I can readily admit that I indeed do not see any logically-consistent third position, but would be hesitant on agreeing that I had engaged in a false dichotomy until a logically-consistent third position is presented to me.
Mr. Amirkhanov writes, “Yup, most people are stupid sheep but not YOU!”
I am extremely offended that you are putting these disgusting words in my mouth. I have tried to engage in an intelligent discussion with you and others, and to remain entirely respectful, and here you go accusing mer of saying something that, not only did I not say, not only have I never said, but which I explicitly tried to make clear I was not saying.
Most people have not studied philosophy, ethics, or natural law theory. This makes them technically ignorant, but not “stupid.” And it certainly doesn’t make them “sheepish.” Nobody has an obligation to study philosophy, ethics, or natural law theory. No one has an obligation to deeply consider these topics. And nobody is a “sheep” for failing to do so. Nobody is “stupid” for failing to do so! When I say people are, by and large, confused about the notion of rights and natural law, I am simply saying they haven’t studied these concepts or thought about them at any great length. To ACCUSE me of calling people “stupid” or “sheep” simply because I say humans are often confused about subjects they have not studied or thought about at great length is not only absurd, it’s deeply offensive.
I explicitly said I had no intention of disparaging anybody. Clearly, if I were calling someone “stupid” or “sheepish,” that would be disparaging. How could I have been more clear that I was not saying that people are “stupid” who are in the confused middle-ground?
My emotions are running high right now, after that false accusation, but I’m going to try to continue. I hope this was an honest misinterpretation on Mr. Amirkhanov’s part, and in accordance with the principle of charity, I will assume it was. Just, please be aware, Mr. Amirkhanov, that I’d absolutely no intention of implying in any way, shape, or form that I am better or smarter than those in the middle-ground. I say that with utter sincerity.
Mr. Amirkhanov then goes on to say, “You went on the internet and discovered Austrian School Economics for White Losers who Love Blaming the Government for their Failures and don’t Want to Study Actual Economics.”
(1) Wait, white? Is that supposed to be a comment about race? Race does not exist, it’s a social construct. The only race I recognise is the human race.
(2) I’ve absolutely no clue why you are bringing up the Austrian School of economics, which has absolutely nothing to do with what we were discussing. We were discussing ethics, not economics. The Austrian School of economics has no theory of ethics, just as the nonaggression axiom makes no requirement that people recognise that the labour theory of value is flawed. The Austrian School of economics doesn’t deal with questions of right and wrong, it deals with questions of what economic policies will lead to the most prosperity for society. I, by contrast, had been talking about my ethical foundation, which has absolutely zero to do with economics.
(3) When the state kills an innocent person and calls it “war,” I blame the state. Should I actually say, “This was my failure”?
(4) Your comment implies that Austrian economics is not real economics. I disagree.
I need a break.
Love and peace,
Alex Peak
#65 Comment By Reynardine On December 14, 2012 @ 8:07 pm
I may have accidentally awarded the Gold Toilet Seat to Ezra instead of Eugene. If so, get up, Ezra; let the real * be enthroned.
#66 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 14, 2012 @ 11:33 pm
Strangely there is one industry for which you never see libertarians screaming for deregulation- air travel. Come on guys, stop supporting big business and open it up to competition to anyone who can get their hands on something that flies(ok sure, planes are far more expensive than most people can afford, but that initial cost is determined by the Holy Market and therefore good).
Of course occasionally planes will crash due to negligence and total disarray, but then consumers can vote with their feet(assuming they are still alive, and still have their feet).
#67 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 15, 2012 @ 6:22 am
@Erika, the small producers of food I was mentioning did not include the major meatpacking firms, but still, I’d love to see our anarco-capitalists explain what government regulation created those monopolies. Or what government regulation caused child labor up into the 1920′s, for example?
As for the issue of free markets and rational actors, Austrian schoolers, according to the busted clock principle, do at least somewhat correctly assert that actors in a market have imperfect information, which is why the market is needed to provide them with proper information to make their decisions. Among other problems with this theory however, is the fact that it is basically a tautology. Individuals can’t know everything so they must rely on a market which can supposedly provide them with information they can’t actually know. It’s especially messed up when you combine that with their subjective value theory.
Moreover, Austrian school theory basically says that economics can’t be empirical because human behavior can’t be predicted, but then says that any economic model should be based on “self-evident axioms”(what they consider to be self-evident), which is akin to saying that human behavior can be predicted.
#68 Comment By Samantha On December 15, 2012 @ 12:19 pm
Apparently writing for SPLC, means
You don’t have to actually do any research, and you can just make crap up. I don’t even know why I’d expect anything else.
Anyone even VAGUELY familiar with anarcho-capitalisim, knows there is absolutely NO religious connection in beliefs at all. As matter of fact, most anarchists in general see religion as a laughable matter, and as dangerous as statisim.
It makes me giggle that our anti-government stance is considered “radical right,” yet anarcho-communists also believe in a stateless society, and they get a pass because they’re on the left? Hmmm. Nope, no hypocrisy here.
#69 Comment By Ken On December 16, 2012 @ 12:25 am
> Ok if we take your claim at face value, how does the non-aggression axiom mesh with your fallacious idea of the “laws of nature?” Nature is full of aggression.
It’s rather sad that your entire argument rests on this fallacy. There’s a difference between Natural Law and the Laws of Nature. If you are not aware of the difference, I suggest that you educate yourself before making such a fool of yourself.
#70 Comment By Phillip Rhodes. On December 16, 2012 @ 1:22 am
What’s with this trolling, linkbait article from SPLC? This article is so misinformed and poorly researched as to be completely useless. If a 5th grader turned it in as a middle-school writing assignment, they would receive an “F” for it.
Protip: If you’re going to talk about anarcho-capitalists & voluntaryists, try actually talking to some ancaps and voluntaryists. Just because some conservative wingnuts try to position themselves as aligned with us, does not make it so.
#71 Comment By metamemetics On December 16, 2012 @ 7:44 am
@Ruslan
> Capitalism is a mode of production with all that comes with this.
Capitalism is simply the “private ownership of the means of production”. Nothing more and nothing less.
Marx’s interpretations of the end results of a system featuring the private ownership of the means of production are by no means authoritative.
Marx’s theory of intrinsic and objective economic value, Socially Necessary Labor Time, is certainly more outdated and discredited than the position of subjective value as posited by the Austrian school. The Austrian School is much closer to modern, mainstream economics and Marginilist school by comparison.
“Again, prove the existence of a free market first.”
ebay.com is a free market. Any number of participants are *free* to enter as buyers or sellers. There is no intermediary which uses coercion and threats of violence to bar entrance and participation. There is no intermediary which applies an enlightened algorithm on each good exchanged to determine whether the value a buyer or seller have agreed upon is “fair”. The result is a boon for small business, not for cartels.
#72 Comment By A Human Being On December 16, 2012 @ 1:32 pm
Ruslan Amirkhanov,
You’re asking questions aimed at disproving an-cap philosophy, but that’s outside the scope of this blog. No one cares if you agree with anarcho-capitalism. We’re not out to convert you. We just take offence at being targeted by the SPLC on a blog called “HateWatch”.
You say: “Ok if we take your claim at face value, how does the non-aggression axiom mesh with your fallacious idea of the “laws of nature?” Nature is full of aggression.”. But this isn’t the place to have a debate about the natural law. If you doubt Alex Peak’s committment to the non-aggression principle: Why? What reason do you have to believe he is violent? If you don’t doubt him: Then why are you defending the author of this column? Why don’t you join us in criticizing her identification of “Anarcho-Capitalist” groups as hate groups?
Doesn’t anyone else think it’s inappropriate for the SPLC to target non-hateful individuals and organizations for public ridicule? If you want to take on libertarians for debate, do it somewhere else and not under the banner of an important organization like the SPLC. It devalues the rest of the work they do fighting real bigotry when you make this column a battleground for petty ideological squabbles.
#73 Comment By Matt On December 16, 2012 @ 2:05 pm
Note to “sovereign citizens” and the like: you’re welcome to claim you’re not a citizen of the United States.
You’re also welcome to GTFO and stop using resources you refuse to help pay for, though I can’t think of any country the average “Patriot” would want to live in that would also put up with his gun collection…
#74 Comment By Der Landstreicher On December 16, 2012 @ 2:39 pm
The dirty little secret of all libertarians and “anarcho”-capitalists is that the state rules with mass support — including, for all practical purposes, theirs. It is simply fulfilling the terms of its contract, however implicit it may be.
This isn’t to say that the State isn’t as unsavory (and, indeed quite more so) than the libertarians say it is. But it does suggest that the state is important in something much larger: it is a visible protrusion of the logic of submission that dominates modern society. Coercion isn’t the problem; the social institutions and subconscious moral spooks that allow the policeman to beat, torture, and kill innocents and the boss to reap the materialized life-force of his unwitting slaves (distinguishing the two as separate forms of oppression is pure intellectual dishonesty) that are the true culprits. These festering malignancies can include work, morality, legality, (organized) religion, scientism, and positivism, among other things.
#75 Comment By Halina Reed On December 16, 2012 @ 9:35 pm
I’m really disappointed by this. I’ve always been a supporter of the SPLC and am a left-libertarian voluntaryist. Everything has a context and I don’t disobey laws against aggression or implied social contracts. I’m a valuable member of my community and stand up against injustice, persecution of immigrants, and bullying in my community. I’m also not a truther, birther, or any other fundie conspiracy theorist. The fact is that most of the voluntaryist community is good, ethical, and compassionate just like I am. Please, I urge you to research the issue further and see that the majority of us don’t subscribe to extremism. We are activists against injustice and believe in the empowerment that can happen in communities when people are mindful of and engage in consensual private commerce. That’s all.
#76 Comment By Free Market Capitalist On December 17, 2012 @ 5:04 am
To be perfectly candid, I believe that the trouble with today’s capitalism is that there is little honest capital left in it. It has been drained away by quackery, debt and fraud. Real capitalism requires solid capital – money you can trust. But real money disappeared nearly 40 years ago. That was when the last traces of gold were removed. Since then, all currencies have been “managed.” No longer fixed measures of real wealth, they have become tools…supposedly used by the authorities to promote full employment and growth…but in fact little more than monetary felonies.
#77 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 8:54 am
“Marx’s theory of intrinsic and objective economic value, Socially Necessary Labor Time, is certainly more outdated and discredited than the position of subjective value as posited by the Austrian school. The Austrian School is much closer to modern, mainstream economics and Marginilist school by comparison.”
Actually Marx’s labor theory of value has been proven empirically, whereas neo-classical models and Austrian theories haven’t been.
Here’s a paper on that.
[22]
While Austrian school economics may share some key features of neo-classical economics(namely Marginalism), the ways in which the two differ are significant. More importantly, no society has put Austrian school principles into action and prospered like any of the existing capitalist powers.
ebay.com is a free market. Any number of participants “are *free* to enter as buyers or sellers. There is no intermediary which uses coercion and threats of violence to bar entrance and participation. There is no intermediary which applies an enlightened algorithm on each good exchanged to determine whether the value a buyer or seller have agreed upon is “fair”. The result is a boon for small business, not for cartels.”
It’s not a “free market” because you can’t sell slaves. Selling slaves was an essential part of the free market in the 19th century and the abolition of slavery represents an intolerable government regulation on the free market.
See how easy that is? A free market is a subjective thing.
@Ken who wrote: “There’s a difference between Natural Law and the Laws of Nature. If you are not aware of the difference, I suggest that you educate yourself before making such a fool of yourself.”
By all means, explain the “laws of nature.” I love hearing your fallacious arguments.
@A Human Being
“ou’re asking questions aimed at disproving an-cap philosophy, but that’s outside the scope of this blog. ”
The burden of proof is on an-caps to show a functioning capitalist society without a state; it is not a burden on me to disprove it.
#78 Comment By B.L. Zebob On December 17, 2012 @ 9:29 am
“Casey, Stansberry, and their sympathizers make a lot of noise about opposing violence”
lol, I suppose to those not understanding the concept of the non-aggression principle their discussion would be relegated to the status of “noise”.
“government-fearing radicals” though is an interesting way to put it.
Certainly in today’s environment one is “radical” in fearing government(as most in the U.S. do not). The question is whether they are sane for doing so though. Unfortunately that isn’t discussed in this write up.
#79 Comment By ILoveThisBlog On December 17, 2012 @ 10:40 am
SYCOPHANTS UNITE! DEM ONES ARE BAD! DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR IDEAS. KEEP SENDING YOUR MONEY TO MORRIS DEES’ HEDGE FUND, ER, NON-PROFIT
#80 Comment By aadila On December 17, 2012 @ 10:40 am
Now that subscribers apparently were pinged to this comment thread, I would like to point out that I know of someone who was flat out cheated out of their “lifetime” subscription by Stansberry & Associates.
After Stansberry pocketed a handsome fee, of course.
Wait, don’t send money yet, there’s more!
Jeff Clark, one of the “premium” newsletter offerings from Stansberry claimed a job title that did not even exist according to information I received. A _very_ highly placed source at the bank said not only did no one remember who Clark claimed to have been, but the job didn’t even exist.
Jail suit anyone?
#81 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 11:06 am
While I already provided a longer response, I have to say it was rather fitting that the example of a “free market” given was Ebay. I often note the strong connection between libertarians of all sorts and the internet, in addition to their strong disconnect from reality.
#82 Comment By W J On December 17, 2012 @ 11:29 am
[23]
Never seen more name-calling and hate-filled responses than right here at SPLC. Merry Christmas.
#83 Comment By aadila On December 17, 2012 @ 11:44 am
@Halina Reed
The problem is not that there may indeed be honest, ethical people who are passionate enough about levels of taxation to form a political movement.
In fact that is what we saw with the media-created Tea Party wing of the Republicans. If you look back, you will see that originally the Tea Party claimed to be all about lower taxation, open to everyone, not formed along right-wing social issues, and so on.
And yet, as time went on there were almost never any people of color involved, hardly any progressives or anyone else who did not walk in lock step with the hard right social diktat. And all the while, the Tea Party said, not us, not us! We’re free and open.
Then the racists like the CCC started to recruit directly from the Tea Party gatherings, distributing literature and finding like-minded white people of conservative enough ideology to adhere to racism.
You see, Halina, the problem is not that there are ethical, honest people in groups like this. The problem is they do nothing to stop the extremists like Stansberry from taking shelter in the political umbrella, while disseminating unethical and dishonest practices.
If you wonder why America scorns your movement, look to how you have coddled the enemies of America in your rank and file, always claiming innocence.
#84 Comment By Johnny On December 17, 2012 @ 12:05 pm
Subsidy of railroads: Now pure capitalism.
Okey-dokey.
#85 Comment By Jenkie On December 17, 2012 @ 12:06 pm
Wow, I was expecting much more vitriol and aggrandizement from these suspicious anarcho-capitalists, yet all the venom is spewed by their detractors.
Here we have up-front and open voluntaryists, or whatever they wish to call themselves, taking the time to express their worldviews, to engage in poignant philosophical discussion, and to (attempt) to clear up any misperceptions that may have been posited by an apparently hasty and overly-obtuse blog post.
To witness their patient efforts in the face of ad-homs and underhanded insults may actually disprove their societal theories; facing such pettiness from those who regard themselves as “progressive”, maybe we should concede that society is not ready for voluntary parameters.
#86 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 12:15 pm
Let me just say that while I think anarcho-capitalism is a stupid fantasy adhered to most commonly by young white males who spend too much time on the internet and who have too little actual real life experience(as is evidenced from their own ideas), I don’t really see them as “hate group” material. Ron Paul may have his racist supporters but there are many libertarians who are more or less harmless other than the fact that they spread bogus economic theories and historical ignorance. None of this really justifies grouping them with militias or hate groups.
#87 Comment By Larry On December 17, 2012 @ 12:21 pm
Ruslan said:
“This story is stupid. Stealing, while bad, is not “aggression.””
Everyone should just stop trying to reason with this person. They clearly have no moral compass whatsoever, and no clue about libertarian ideas at all.
#88 Comment By martin On December 17, 2012 @ 12:22 pm
The author forgot to mention that anarcho-capitalists eat kittens for lunch.
#89 Comment By Erika On December 17, 2012 @ 12:22 pm
*sigh* Mr. Peak, your further explaination of arbitration merely proves how little understanding you have of how arbitration works. First, you still do not understand that arbitration has the exact same fundamental flaw as a civil litigation system – namely unless parties have essentially the same resources, one side will have a fundamental advantage over the other. The “loser pays” system which are touted by gigantic corporations actually dramatically increases the influence of resources because it makes the risk of filing a law suit against a major corporation as an individual person so high. In fact, far from eliminating the influence of money and resources on results in the legal system, your proposal would increase it dramatically. Quite simply, an arbitrator is ultimately the employee of whoever is paying her – that is why when corporations go to arbitration they have an arbitration panel of three arbitrators two of which are party arbitrators, one of which is paid by both sides equally. In your system, who is right would be decided by who had enough money to keep fighting and appealling until they got the answer they had.
Second, you are incredibly naive if you believe that corporations will not be able to take control over arbitrators especially in the complete absense of any law prohibiting bribery. The West Virginia Supreme Court has already been directly purchased by a major coal company and Skadden Arps was able to get their preferred parties on the Delaware Supreme Court. Imagine with no laws prohibiting bribery – and the insane and inane “loser pays” rules. People who try to sue a company for selling cocaine as infant medicine* would wind up not only losing, but having to pay the company’s exorbiant legal bills when the corporate employee “arbitrator” rules in the company’s favor.
Or at least they would be in theory – but that brings the most obvious problem with your theory – enforcability. Basically an arbitration award is useless (not worth the paper it is printed on) if it is unenforceable. That is why companies after going through arbitration get a court order to enforce it. ARbitration without enforcement is useless and enforcement will not be able to get done privately. Quite simply, only a total idiot would show up at your arbitration hearing in defense. A much smarter choice for someone upon receiving the arbitration notice would be to rip it up and toss it in the trash. And then after the arbitration award comes, do the exact same thing with it – quite simply, no one in their right mind would bother with your silly system because without a state enforcement mechanicism the arbitration would be a pointless exercise which people are free to ignore.
Then you have your fourth problem which is that somehow you envision there would be a common law of arbitration – yeah, that would work well. Do you even know what common law is? Common law is unwritten judge made law – it is only present within legal systems which have a basis in English law (as opposed to the legal systems based upon a civil law system which includes much of Europe and many counties (and even the State of Louisiana) who use systems based upon civil law. Common law is most definitely part of the law – although in the U.S. and even by this point in the U.K. and Commonwealth Counties, common law has been extensively modified by the legislatures or even rejected by the courts as being repugnant** to a free society. i mean, why have legislatures making laws – or even apply judge made laws over centuries when you can cut out the middle man and let WAl-Mart make the laws directly?
i can’t wait to live in such a society where arbitrators who are employees of Exxon Mobil set environmental laws, employees of GM set automotive safety laws, employees of Altria set laws for food and tobacco, Wal-Mart sets consumer protection laws, etc. What a fine country that would be. If you thought that 19th Century railroads and coal mines were dangerous you will love what happens when Massey Energy gets to set workplace safety laws. And of course, if the workers complain, you can just send in the private “security guards” to shoot them just like they used to do in West Virginia when the unions tried to organize. Wow what a marvelous world there would be.
And of course, there will always be the barter economy. But again, nothing to make sure that the silver you received for your widgets was not actually steel and even if there is there is nothing you can do about it. Then there is the fact that only those who can afford security or private guards will have any protection.
So basically, you take the worst parts of the Middle Ages and mix them with the worst of the Gilded Age with a whole lot of firearms and chaos – and there you have it – anarcho-capitalism :P
i understand why you are frustrated with modern society and looking for a change, but acting like removing one thing (government) will eliminate all of society’s problems is simply naive.
* lest anything thinks this is completely farfetched, such a product was actually sold in the late 19th and early 20th Century – Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, if i remember correctly.
** an example: the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the common law rule that it was impossible for a man to rape his wife due to the wife implicitly consenting to sex. The court held that giving husbands free reign to rape their wives was repugnant to the Bill of Rights.
#90 Comment By Eugene On December 17, 2012 @ 12:26 pm
Exactly Samantha,
aadila, Ruslan, Matt, Mitch, Erika, Reynardine, Kiwi, and all the rest … they’re all losers. None of them have ever had a decent job or owned a home. They’ve all probably living in some crummy little apartment in a college town somewhere. These are all far left-wing Communist types who want to change the world and create a utopia. It’ll never happen. Just ignore everything they type and only post your comments. Their hero Mark Potok makes a big salary. So does Morris Dees. The SPLC is a money generating scam only for the top dogs. Then, they’ve got a bunch of flunkies working in their office who are paid very little. These are the ‘true believers’. They haven’t realized it’s all a scam yet.
#91 Comment By CM On December 17, 2012 @ 12:47 pm
Eugene/Ezra/Annie/Jason, here you go again pasting in the same lies that you’ve been repeating here all year. You obviously know nothing about anything, or you wouldn’t have to rely so totally on your warped imagination for things to say. Save yourself the effort and just shut up.
#92 Comment By John Satos On December 17, 2012 @ 1:20 pm
About 80% of this article is truth, 20% is wrong or oversimplified..
Anarcho-capitalism is pure right-libertarianism. Anarcho-capitalists like me prefer to separate from the term libertarian. A true libertarian believes in the Non-Aggression Principle. That is that it is wrong to initiate violence and only self-defense and/or contractual defense is morally justified. A government by definition breaks this rule, they tax and pretend collectivist nonsense like a “social contract” is a legitimate concept. Collectively owning people from birth based only on there geographic location is ridiculous.
-Theft is wrong (taxes, fees, eminent domain).
-Fraud and counterfeiting are wrong (politics, forced central banking).
-Murder is wrong (assassination, indiscriminate warfare).
-Enslavement is wrong (conscription, compulsory schooling, mandates).
-Kidnapping is wrong (victimless crime arrests, jails).
-Fencing stolen goods is wrong (government ‘services’ & subsidies).
There are countless in-depth ethical and utilitarian arguements for anarcho-capitalism but I won’t go into those here. Rather or not anarcho-capitalism is possible, isn’t a point I will make. A society of consent and non-violent solutions is something worthy for any sane and ethical person to strive for. You want a system where people tell you what to do? Okay but let us opt out.
#93 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 1:34 pm
“Everyone should just stop trying to reason with this person. They clearly have no moral compass whatsoever, and no clue about libertarian ideas at all.”
Typical libertarian tactics:
1. Claim to be owners of “reason” when in fact one’s ideology flies in the face of reason.
2. Re-define things to your heart’s content. Your theories would work if only the world would accept all those arbitrary re-definitions and “self-evident” axioms!
3. Strawmen, strawmen, strawmen.
4. Remember kids, if they don’t accept the libertarian faith(Bad = government, Good = market), it means they worship the state. They are stupid sheep.
Seriously Larry- Stealing is not aggression. It’s bad but it’s not aggression. Therein lies the problem for your ideology. Suppose workers in a factory decide that since they made the shoes, they are going to keep a certain amount of pairs for themselves to sell in the free market, to supplement their wages(which saves the owner the hassle of paying higher wages at least). The owner may not like it but they are not initiating aggression; they are just walking out with the fruits of their own labor. The raw materials and machinery were just the fruits of other workers’ labor. This is clearly not aggression, but if the owner uses force to prevent this, he would be initiating aggression.
#94 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 1:36 pm
Eugene, you sit behind that computer and dream of the life I live. In reality, you’re a complete loser who has nothing in this world save for white skin, and your pathetic attempts to defend your sad ideology is reduced to copy and paste.
I also doubt your newfound anarcho-capitalist friends would approve of an ideology which restricts freedom of association as yours would.
#95 Comment By aadila On December 17, 2012 @ 1:52 pm
Erika, righto regarding your society of self regulators!
Let’s add to the list bankers being allowed to compensate themselves as much as they please.
Whoa, totally trippy…
That’s the society we already have!
#96 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 2:25 pm
Taxes are theft but private property is not theft. Interesting. Just more arbitrary nonsense anarcho-capitalists want to accept in their dream world.
#97 Comment By Will On December 17, 2012 @ 3:10 pm
This blog post is absolutely hilarious, if only for the fact that it seems to suggest all anarcho-capitalists appear to be conspiracy theorist tin hatters who follow Alex Jones and want to destroy Obama.
Alex Peak has attempted to be amitable and respectful in his responses while posters who disagree with him preface their posts by capitalizing “EXTREMISTS:” or “you are a loser” as if its intended to hurt their feelings or something.
The complete and total philosophical ignorance of some of the posters above on the actual topics of anarchism, structure of law, ethics is obvious on first read and makes this whole debate little more than the shouting of “but who will build the roads!” and other catchalls that just irate people who have already spent much of their time reading literature explaining that very question.
#98 Comment By Aron On December 17, 2012 @ 3:37 pm
Will,
Alex Peake has been nothing but verbose. In three comments, Alex has expended close to a thousand words and said absolutely NOTHING OF ANY VALUE.
Humanity will never follow any ‘axioms.’ We are selfish. We are mean. We are Hobbesian.
I am a perfect example. I am an unpleasant bastard of a five-foot, three-inch young man. The utter embodiment of a life that is short, brutish, and nasty.
I also have history on my side. You Austrians have a lot of pretty numbers, but no real pragmatism. I’m a business owner. I know how this stuff works. You need to get off the Internet and into the real world.
#99 Comment By GrayCat On December 17, 2012 @ 3:45 pm
So, what is wrong with the non-aggression principle, that no one has a right to initiate violence, trespass, coercion against anyone else?
What is wrong with my holding you up at gunpoint and taking all your money — to buy medicine for my ailing wife, of course! It would ONLY be for a good cause! — but if it’s government doing that, it’s not wrong?
This is what anarcho-capitalism and voluntaryism are actually all about. That others who simply want to exempt their un-anarcho-capitalist, anti-voluntaryist dogmas while using the language of anarch-capitalism and voluntaryism doesn’t negate the truths and purity of anarcho-capitalists and voluntaryists — any more than those who claim to be non-racists and defenders of minorities’ rights can also claim that having rulers and using force to exterminate racists and others who disagree with them is justice.
This is the true essence of the issue.
Only government/the state can initiate force against others and be glorified for it. Only government/the state can steal at gunpoint and be lauded for it, with the excuse that it benefits others.
Please explain this cognitive dissonance, and the justification for Machiavelli’s principle that the ends justify the means — all the while maintaining your high moral grounds and sense of superior ethics.
Why should anyone be forced to participate in and support what they do not want to? Why should any peaceful, non-violent person be subjected to coercion and theft just because a “majority” of his neighbors thinks he should? How is that in any way just, let alone “for the greater good”?
#100 Comment By Bob Robertson On December 17, 2012 @ 3:51 pm
How dare you deny Crom! You are some kind of hate-filled extremist.
Crom laughs at your baby games.
But seriously, how is your calling Crom “fictional” any less a hate crime than someone who calls the christian or jewish gods “fictional”?
Why do you get a pass with your hate speech?
#101 Comment By aadila On December 17, 2012 @ 4:13 pm
Meanwhile, America’s true patriots have to contend with cackling nincompoops and unrepentant scofflaws while trying to restore order to the ruin of boom-and-bust capitalism.
#102 Comment By Erika On December 17, 2012 @ 4:24 pm
Will, it seems that you subscribe to the belief that criticizing someone’s views as being unrealistic and unworkable equals a personal attack.
i’m sorry, but no matter how well meaning and sincere Mr. Peak might be in his beliefs, his beliefs are completely unrealistic and unworkable. That is not an insult, it is a description. Quite simply, if you think in the absence of any legal enforcement mechanism that you can protect your life, your rights, and your property from infringement by someone who wants to take them you are extremely naive.
i’ll explain it this way – if someone would start camping in my back yard, i could call the local police department and have them removed from trespassing on my property. If there was no local police force and the only available means to protect my property was this arbitration which had no means of enforcement or self help, what do you think my best choice is? Quite simply, the only way i would be able to protect my property and quite possibly my life in that scenario is to engage in self help. The reason why we have legal means such as ejectment, court orders, and police forces with the power to arrest is precisely to prevent people from having to use self help in order to keep someone from moving into their house.
Otherwise, the trespasser can not only camp out in my back yard, but would be able to actually kick me out of my own house – and of course, if the trespasser had a gun, it would also be rational for me to just let him have my house to since i would be unarmed. The only people who would have any rights at all in the anarcho-capitalist system would be the people willing to take other people’s rights by force. Owning property is useless if you are not able to defend it against the world. In our current legal system, i can defend my right to own my house against the rest of the world. In the anarchocapitalist system, i could not.
However, what does seem like an intentional insult is you dismissing substantive and respectful criticism of Mr. Peak’s comments as irrational insults.
#103 Comment By Erika On December 17, 2012 @ 4:36 pm
GrayCat, what you ignore is that without the government, anyone would be able to steal and rob you at gunpoint with inpunity and immunity. At least now, your tax dollars can pay for a jail cell for the thief who steals hundreds or a prison bed for the thief who steals thousands.
Of course, the theives that steal millions and billions still have the free run of this country – but at least with the government there is a counterbalancing force which we have a slight voice in. Plus, the billionaires do have to toss us in the middle class an occassional bone or two. With no government, the theives that steal billions will be able to run the world with no interference and no need to toss a bone or two to us in the middle class.
Quite simply, with no laws a kleptocracy would soon develop. Idi Amin would be proud.
#104 Comment By Sam Molloy On December 17, 2012 @ 4:55 pm
Welcome, Samantha. To you, and Br’er Eugene, no group is perfect. I support the SPLC overall, although most complaints against them are also at least partly valid.
#105 Comment By Erika On December 17, 2012 @ 5:23 pm
i really should give my best example to why uncontrolled ability to use property will destroy value to all – in fact, the free market people love to point to the “tragedy of the commons” to justify private property without noting that the problem of the commons can also be solved through government regulation and even in the tragedy of the commons, the personal property rights are still controlled by government.
In any case, in the textbook example of the tragedy of the commons you have a body of water with fish – the theory says that if everyone has unrestricted access to fish in that body of water, all of the fish will be caught and die out and nobody will have any fish. The free market people claim that the way to solve this issue is through giving private people fishing rights in the water which can be sold – when private people have fishing rights as a property right, they will according to free market proponents stop overfishing.
Of course, that is silly – first, it really ignores that not only does commercial fishing operate through a license process, but the license is also limited and regulated – thus, the free market people miss that. Second, a licensee could decide that the short term profit of catching all of the fish in the lake outweighs long term gains. Third, it ignores that even when there are limited licenses in national waters there is a tendency to overfish especially in the absence of government regulation.
Hence, one of the free market proponents favorite examples actually refutes their points in that the tragedy of the commons can not only be solved through government regulation, even if there is private property rights it still reflects government regulation.
In any case, what the anarcho-capitalists fail to understand is how quickly your property right can be rendered useless based upon your neighbor’s actions in ways other than theft. Once again looking at my house, how do you think my property valuse will be effected if my next door neighbor opens up a hog rendering plant on his property? Or dumps chemical waste? Or starts an explosives factory.
The government solution to these issues is zoning upheld by a very conservative Supreme Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty – the reason of course, is that without some restrictions on permissive use of property (such as residential houses only) everyone’s property value benefits mutually. Hence, while i might lose the right to open a hog rendering plant in my back yard, i gain by knowing that my next door neighbor cannot open a hog rendering plant which would destroy my property’s values.
Now yes, this could be controlled by private contract – see homeowners associations however, even more rights are given up – and of course, if someone can freely dump toxic waste upstream it can all go for naught (ask people in Niagra Falls what Love Canal did for property values). They are also much less efficient than local government regulation. And of course, contracts are not worth the paper they are printed on if you are unable to go into court to enforce them.
Naturally, this runs into problems of the free market since the most efficient way to protect people’s property rights are through governmental regulation – in fact, the free market would not exist as we know it without governmental regulation – anti-trust laws were among the first regulatory actions in the late 19th century.
Quite simply, the anarcho-capitalists would have us take it on faith (in what, the free market) that free market forces would keep my neighbor from entering into a contract to store nuclear waste in his backyard or opening up a hog rendering plant (or even, store nuclear waste in the backyard causing the hogs from my hog rendering plant to start glowing) – of course, what they are really calling for is the tragedy of the commons where everyone can use what they want without regard to other people or even with their rational long term interest.
That is a recipe for disaster – people are not rational and with no one able to enforce their rights to exclusive use of their property and no assurance that externalities will be avoided, personal property will become worthless – even with governmental regulation, we see companies dumping toxic chemicals into drinking water and the atmosphere without regard to the long term consequences if it means a higher return to their investors – with no governmental regulation at all and indeed no government, things will be much worse.
#106 Comment By concernedcitizen On December 17, 2012 @ 6:07 pm
American taxpayer to being a Jew in Nazi Germany, Casey said
That is a very bad comparison. And a slap in the face to the Jewish community given the severity of Auschwitz.
#107 Comment By Devil’s Advocate On December 17, 2012 @ 6:18 pm
Now hold on, I thought the SPLC was about exposing racist hate mongers like Tom Metzger and his skinhead ilk. Why are you targeting people who have no apparent racist views? Because they distrust a government that has been on an anti-muslim killing spree for the past decade? Because they oppose a drug war that disproportionate focuses on african-americans? Because they oppose immigration controls that are becoming more and more anti-latino? Are you doing this because they question an affirmative action system that adversely impacts Asian Americans and have no faith in the social welfare system?
Are you trying to tell us something? Is the Southern Poverty Law Center not about creating a tolerant society? Does the SPLC now want to create an obedient society?
#108 Comment By concernedcitizen On December 17, 2012 @ 6:35 pm
I can’t believe how worked up racist get over having a black man and really a mulatto, but even being half white wasn’t good enough for the supremacists in this country.
They are too stupid to realize that we are a country with many different types of people but we are supposed to stand together. Instead it has bread fear mongering radicals that do nothing more than spread fear based on their anxieties over change.
So I suppose they are gods and all knowing and can see the future, if they have such great abilities to foretell everything that Obama will do and become over the next few years then why don’t they use their “super powers” to stop some of the most heinous crimes that we have seen happen in America over the past few months?
I guess their super powers of future telling only work in foretelling the future of Obama and nothing else.
Any intelligent person would be greatly suspect of such individuals.
#109 Comment By CM On December 17, 2012 @ 8:16 pm
In Len Deighton’s superb 1964 novel Funeral in Berlin, there’s a wonderful conversation between the unnamed British spy (in the movie, he’s called Harry Palmer, played by Michael Caine) and Col. Stok of the Soviet Union (played by the great Oscar Homolka in the film).
Not to get too deep into the plot, but in the background of this conversation is the understanding that these men, like most of us, just want to live, to enjoy life, to cook a good meal and drink a good wine, to make love and have someone nearby in the night.
But these two men are spies, and they meet in the midst of a sort of chess game in which both are pieces being moved around the board by others who are at a higher pay-grade, though they aren’t necessarily smarter or wiser.
“Capitalism,” says Col. Stok, “is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is exactly the opposite.”
Stok goes on to say that capitalism assumes that men are angels, while communism assumes that they aren’t, in agreement with our friend Ruslan.
He then relates a fable about two villages in Africa: In one, the villagers make a living by standing knee-deep in crocodile-infested waters. In the other, the villagers make a living by selling wooden legs.
The point of it all, it seems to me, is that most people just want to live and do the things people have always done, to enjoy life, and give life to another generation. But the theorists and ideologues and revolutionaries and fanatics keep getting in the way. Our enjoyments, they tell us, are unworthy, or else there is someone who is preventing us from fulfilling our right to be happy, and we must join a movement to get them out of our way, and THEN we will all find ecstasy. We’re all getting everything wrong, and we need them to tell us how to get it right.
What this has to do with anarcho-capitalism (and I find it hard to imagine a more ugly and inhumane name) is simply this: Your theories are not more real than real life. Human nature is the same as it always has been. The pushy and greedy still push and take as much as they can, and the majority of us band together as much as WE can to stop them from stripping us naked and robbing us blind.
Anarcho-capitalism, like all extremisms, is a reductio ad absurdum – in this case, the final disproof of the logic of utilitarian economic theory, in which “rational agents” freely seeking their “maximum utility” must automatically coalesce into the ideal socioeconomic pattern. It’s a way of thinking that was created by and for the mercantilist and imperialist strata of Anglo-American society, and that’s who it still serves.
In the real world, of course, these “rational agents” chase their fantasies like all of us, convincing themselves that Internet stocks will always go up (the dot-com bubble of 1999-2000), that real estate prices will always rise rapidly (the bubble of 2003-2008), etc. etc. etc. Just to name a couple of recent examples, though one could easily cite others going back to tulipomania.
Several people have gotten very verbose here about the details of anarcho-capitalism, inviting us to answer their extremely detailed expostulations in equal detail. Sorry, but I have a life – a tasty meal to cook, a new wine to try out, friends and family to talk with, a universe to enjoy and love.
#110 Comment By Anton Sherwood On December 17, 2012 @ 9:14 pm
There’s a movement of people opposed to having violence used in their name against people who disagree? How scary!
I kick myself for not predicting, as soon as I heard of this article’s existence, that it would smear devolutionists by calling them advocates of slavery. I guess the northern abolitionists who advocated secession, so that slavery would no longer be enforced with their taxes, were pro-slavery too.
#111 Comment By Kiwiwriter On December 17, 2012 @ 9:24 pm
Oh, this gets easier and easier….
“aadila, Ruslan, Matt, Mitch, Erika, Reynardine, Kiwi, and all the rest … they’re all losers. None of them have ever had a decent job or owned a home. They’ve all probably living in some crummy little apartment in a college town somewhere. These are all far left-wing Communist types who want to change the world and create a utopia. It’ll never happen. Just ignore everything they type and only post your comments.”
Hey, Eugene/Ezra/Jason/Annie…care to give us your massive proof of this statement that you have made before, and I have grilled you on?
Please tell us where we live, what jobs we hold, and how we’ve voted. Based on your immense research (based on Wikipedia), and those resumes you asked us to provide you with. Oh, and while you’re at it, you can answer those questions I’m testing you on.
And if you ignore everything we type, how do you know our names?
And when ARE you going to make that web page with your world view…with the wikipedia references, the whining, your Ph.D. dissertation, and our resumes?
And you still have a test to complete. You haven’t, so you have failed.
Some additional comments on your latest extrusion…I asked you if you know what “projection” means. How about the term “sour grapes.”
You do realize that smacking you around in public is unbelievable fun for us. I’m not sure what’s funnier…hearing you whine that you don’t read our work, your silly anthropological studies in the A&P, your lack of proofs, your pomposity, your ignorance, or your coming back for more.
Definitely your coming back for more. You honestly believe that you can come here and win adherents, when instead you just wind up looking silly and whining about how you don’t read us and that we’re all “deviants” who live in “crummy apartments.” The masochism is great…do tell us about the dominatrixes you hire…or given your pansexuality and fascination with homosexuality, to you prefer a male dominator?
Do send us that e-mail address for those resumes of us you wanted…I’ll get you hooked up with Wanton Wanda and her Wicked Whips. You’ll enjoy that. It’s the cultural portion of the show.
You do realize that we’re not debating you, just ridiculing you? Or are you that stupid?
#112 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 9:38 pm
I think this conversation makes it quite apparent that the “non-aggression” principle is just a trope these people use to brow-beat their opponents away from pointing out how logically and theoretically flawed their ideas are. When you point out how unfeasible their society would be, they respond with “BUT THE NON-AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE!!”
In any case, it is clear that their society, right or wrong, could not be at the very least established without aggression, or at least by provoking aggression(which can be the same as initiating it), and thus their whole ideology is rendered moot.
#113 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 17, 2012 @ 10:14 pm
“A government by definition breaks this rule, they tax and pretend collectivist nonsense like a “social contract” is a legitimate concept. Collectively owning people from birth based only on there geographic location is ridiculous.”
I should have pointed this out before but better late than never. See the liberal democratic capitalist state(based on the concept of a social contract) may not be perfect, but it’s done pretty damned good for humankind in spite of that. And I say this as a Marxist, because any real Marxist does not deny the very real, revolutionary accomplishments of capitalism. In fact it was this liberal thought, coupled with massive prosperity in the US thanks to WWII, which made fantasies like libertarianism possible. In other words, capitalism in some countries had become so successful that many people could disconnect from reality and live in a fantasy world. If you want to dismiss all this because of the existence of a state, then you are dismissing capitalism itself, in which case you might as well become left-wing anarchists.
Moreover, governments do not “own” you. I’m living proof. In your world, employers would practically own employees, as they did in the Gilded Age up through the 1930s, particularly in mining.
“But…but…the NON-AGGRESSION principle!!!”
#114 Comment By steve On December 18, 2012 @ 12:26 am
Sure, swallow everything the SPLC says. Because our current situation is working out, really, really well.
And we don’t have genuine capitalism in this country. We have crony capitalism, the occupation of 130 countries, drone bombing of innocent foreigners (the SPLC loves to denounce slavery unless it’s non-whites overseas), and the destruction of the dollar’s value; sure there’s far more, and these policies which are still being practiced have huge consequences for America and the world. No reasonable person is only blaming Obama. No one man can be solely responsible for a system that has spawned “unsustainable” foreign involvement over the last 100 years. Americans are born into this system; they did not vote for most of it.
SPLC readers will never be capable of entertaining opposing views (the mark of an educated person), unless they seek out scholarly revisionist information. Read Harry Elmer Barnes, G. Edward Griffin, Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, etc. See what they have to say. Don’t just take the word of a 1000 word article at face value. Read books published in various periods of time and learn history through the eyes of those who lived it. Don’t get your history from textbooks at any educational level. Textbooks are garbage.
By the way, the North had slavery too, and was just as racist. Never forget that. The folks who signed up, willingly did so to “preserve the Union,” not end slavery. As I recall, civil rights movements occurred north and south. Lincoln himself, in his inaugural address, vowed not to touch slavery. Find Lincoln’s own words and actions. You won’t be assigned to read them in school or college.
#115 Comment By Bruce Majors On December 18, 2012 @ 6:16 am
Bravo! Another truly Goebbelsian smear piece from SPLC. Must be fundraising time eh? For anyone who actually wants to know about anarcho-capitalism, a political philosophy that has roots going back to American anarchists like Voltarine de Cleyre, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, as well as others like economist Gustave Molinari, the are many books by and about anarcho capitalism, from David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom to Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty to Robert Noick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia.
#116 Comment By Bruce Majors On December 18, 2012 @ 6:57 am
Rusian wins the prize for being the first to trot out the old canard that if you use the transportation monopolized and badly provided by the state you cannot dissent and should be exiled. Heil!
In fact critics of state power have every right to use any (badly provided) state service they have already been forced to pay for.
And you even slip in another myth, that government created the Internet. The Internet was created by the market, which makes use of resources, including the detritus of liquidated failed government investments like those at DOD’s DARPA. The government actually pushed for Internet protocols that kept the net retarded for years.
#117 Comment By Bruce Majors On December 18, 2012 @ 7:22 am
Erika your post about the SEC is funny. I actually had a friend who worked at the SEC (who incidentally though of himself as a Marxist), a Harvard educated attorney. He o erase ENRON’s filings (you know, Paul Krugman’s old employer). I asked him about that and he said their filings were always perfectly I order.
Agencies like the SEC and FDA make people think they are being protected and prevent the emergency of consumer controlled advisory groups that would give real information.
#118 Comment By Bob Robertson On December 18, 2012 @ 8:15 am
I must say the article and positive comments are very consistent.
The Non-Aggression Axiom is simple. It is wrong for everyone to initiate coercion against another.
To deny this is to assume that Might Makes Right, that it’s just fine to punish someone who has done nothing. Most funny of all that if there was no way to kill, rob or imprison people who have done no wrong, “civilization itself” would collapse.
The SPLC is a hate group, directing its most dire ire against those who would live without harming others. I’m surprised there isn’t a special report on that globe-spanning preacher of the Non-Aggression Axiom, a self-styled “priest” that doesn’t even believe in Christ, his “Holiness” the Dalai Lama.
#119 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 8:16 am
Merrily we troll along! What has made the mosquitos emerge en banc? Are they afraid it will turn out that Mrs. Lanza was an anarcho-capitalist?
#120 Comment By Michael Shanklin On December 18, 2012 @ 8:38 am
It is truly sad how a few nutcases of a peaceful, educational movement are made to look like they are the WHOLE movement….
Statism is a version of slavery…. if you are so concerned with human rights, maybe you should address the crimes that occur in the state itself instead of passing them off as minimal negative side effects…
[24]
#121 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 8:43 am
Now the Dalai Lama is an anarcho-capitalist?
#122 Comment By aadila On December 18, 2012 @ 9:01 am
“Is the Southern Poverty Law Center not about creating a tolerant society? Does the SPLC now want to create an obedient society?”
Uh oh. Slippery slope. Fallacy. Next!
#123 Comment By Gregory On December 18, 2012 @ 9:27 am
Rey,
In answer to your query, the Paultroons have to go somewhere. I haven’t seen Rothbard and Rockwell referenced so frequently since Paul was a candidate.
#124 Comment By aadila On December 18, 2012 @ 9:37 am
People can realize that acting aggressively out of anger or greed or jealousy or fear or hate is wrong, but not know how to deal with these feelings.
The Non-Aggression Axiom is therefore meaningless.
#125 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 9:51 am
I am left with the deepening impression that these trolls are not who they say they are, and do not believe what they say they believe.
#126 Comment By Aron On December 18, 2012 @ 10:53 am
Erika,
I for one welcome our adorable new glowing piggy friends. I think the only way piggies could be made MORE adorable is if they did in fact glow in the dark. We need to look into that.
And Rey, I think Aadila mentioned earlier that this post had been referenced in one of those wonderful newsletters being circulated, so we’re ending up with a similar situation to the Redditards coming to defend Mens’ Rights.
And Gregory, I must thank you for giving me a new word. While I liked Rongoloid, Paultroon is SO MUCH MORE intellectually fulfilling!
#127 Comment By aadila On December 18, 2012 @ 11:03 am
Yes, Rey, what we are seeing is an elaborate attempt to justify ripping people off. That is what Stansberry & Associates does best.
Also to Aron, I don’t know if it was referenced in the newsletters but I guess that it was judging by the wave of anarcho-capitalist commentary similar to what happened with the men’s rights issue as you mention. Just a hunch is all.
#128 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 12:02 pm
Alas, I know of noplace that would be as satisfying to these types as Onancock was to the MRA’s.
#129 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 18, 2012 @ 1:02 pm
“ON DECEMBER 18TH, 2012 AT 6:57 AM
Rusian wins the prize for being the first to trot out the old canard that if you use the transportation monopolized and badly provided by the state you cannot dissent and should be exiled. Heil!”
And I’d award you a prize for a typical strawman and false dichotomy but I’ve already given them all away. Sorry but it was first come first serve.
“In fact critics of state power have every right to use any (badly provided) state service they have already been forced to pay for.”
Awww…It’s so terrible how you have been forced to pay for roads. If it weren’t for that, I bet you wouldn’t be an utter failure peddling a fantasy ideology custom-tailored for middle-class white males with poor understanding of history and economics.
Here’s a little problem. If the state did not build the roads, private companies would have to do so. That might be fine for a few large firms who need them(but the largest firms inevitably have help from the government and ergo you would prevent them from arising in the first place), but the fact is this infrastructure would greatly serve a lot of capitalists and private citizens who can’t afford to invest in such fixed capital projects. The state spreads the cost among not only firms but all citizens, thus everyone benefits and no individual or group is on the hook for the whole thing.
“And you even slip in another myth, that government created the Internet. The Internet was created by the market, which makes use of resources, including the detritus of liquidated failed government investments like those at DOD’s DARPA. ”
Where did you get the idea that these projects failed? Of course you attribute the internet to the market. You like the internet, and therefore the Holy Market created it.
#130 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 1:10 pm
So, IS the non-aggression principle wrong? Simple question.
WHY would you FORCE someone who does not want to participate in or contribute to something you want him to?
WHY, if someone does not want to be included in something you want to be included in, would you insist, to the point of coercion, that he conform?
Please explain.
#131 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 18, 2012 @ 1:10 pm
“And we don’t have genuine capitalism in this country. We have crony capitalism,”
When did we have “genuine capitalism” in your country? Pick a year, and choose wisely.
” the occupation of 130 countries,”
Have you heard of something called the British Empire? You know Britain was the birthplace of capitalism right? And it began with state intervention.
Oh that doesn’t count because it was state imperialism? Cool, let’s talk about King Leopold of Belgium and his private colonies in Africa.
” unless they seek out scholarly revisionist information. Read Harry Elmer Barnes, G. Edward Griffin, Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, etc. See what they have to say.”
Yes, be sure to only read material from a small coterie of conspiracy theorists, gold bugs, and Austrian schoolers. Anyone who opposes their theories must be an evil “statist!”
#132 Comment By aadila On December 18, 2012 @ 1:31 pm
Don’t worry about that, Rey. Baltimore is punishment enough.
#133 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 1:35 pm
Gray, I don’t normally neuter cats, but certain ones are too defective to perpetuate their kind.
#134 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 18, 2012 @ 1:36 pm
“So, IS the non-aggression principle wrong? Simple question.
WHY would you FORCE someone who does not want to participate in or contribute to something you want him to?
WHY, if someone does not want to be included in something you want to be included in, would you insist, to the point of coercion, that he conform?”
Capitalism forces actors to engage in market transactions. Not engaging in the market means starvation. Property laws are backed up by force, whether you initiate the aggression or not.
Please explain.
#135 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 2:22 pm
So, Ruslan, that’s the best you can do: bait and switch?
Do two wrongs make a right?
“Capitalism” did not, in fact, originate in Great Britain. You might just deign to crack a little history research outside your own “small coterie of conspiracy theorists.”
Was Soviet Russia an imperialist state? How did it differ from either Great Britain or the United States over the last 160 years or so? (Other than implementing Marxism faster than has happened here, of course.)
Is the non-aggression principle wrong?
Why would you use force against someone who does not agree with you and does not want what you want them to want?
#136 Comment By CM On December 18, 2012 @ 2:23 pm
Aron said:
” I think Aadila mentioned earlier that this post had been referenced in one of those wonderful newsletters being circulated, so we’re ending up with a similar situation to the Redditards coming to defend Mens’ Rights.”
It got attention on Lew Rockwell’s own blog, which helps explain Gregory’s observation about seeing so many references to Rockwell. We’re being visited by the hard-core believers, and I’m glad so many of the regulars have given them the welcome they deserve.
#137 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 2:29 pm
Rey, that’s really intelligent. Thanks.
Ruslan, you still haven’t answered the questions.
Is the non-aggression principle wrong?
Why is being “forced” to participate in “capitalism” wrong, but being forced to contribute to “government” you might disagree with not wrong?
#138 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 2:42 pm
Ruslan is quite capable of answering you, but since he might be at the end of a long day, I’ll try to explain it to you tersely.
In a representative democracy, government is a hotchpot. Everybody puts something into it, and everybody dishes out. Sometimes it’s not in proportion, but that’s the principal. But in the society you’re envisioning, you put in and somebody bigger and stronger eats.
#139 Comment By Justen On December 18, 2012 @ 3:00 pm
I particularly liked this:
“Translation: Confederate partisans — people whose “ethical values and economic interests” included buying, selling, beating, raping and killing other human beings whose skin color happened to be different from their own — were unjustly stopped by overweening federal power that was built into the Constitution from Day One as part of a long-acting stealth coup to steal power from the states.”
Nowhere is mentioned that bullying, selling, beating, raping and killing people are completely contrary to libertarian and anarchist ethics – the only difference between us and any decent person being that we don’t tolerate these things when government officials do them either.?
It’s amazing how easy it is to smear a movement based in peace and non-violence as a “hate group” when you project your own seething hatred on everybody who doesn’t agree with you.
#140 Comment By Aron On December 18, 2012 @ 3:13 pm
Justen,
We don’t ‘hate’ anyone. We may have extreme disdain for your movements and the pseudo-intellectuals that populate it, but we certainly do not hate you.
Mockery and derision is hardly the same thing as hatred.
Now scoot on back to Lew Rockwell. I’m sure he’s so proud that all of his little acolytes have come to defend his honor!
#141 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 3:32 pm
Rey, thanks once again for your “terse” input.
Forgive me, but it’s “hodgepodge,” not “hotchpot.” Just FYI.
The difference between what you describe and what I’m asking is voluntary cooperation versus coerced membership.
I’m asking how you justify coerced membership in anything for any reason.
Is the non-aggression principle wrong?
#142 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 3:35 pm
So, aron, let me get this straight: mocking and deriding are not hate as long as it’s not directed at people of color or gays?
How?
#143 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 4:40 pm
The term of art is “hotchpot”. It’s a legal concept. It also derives from a kind of communal soup made in the Scottish Highlands, and during a hard winter, that’s how the clan ate. And yes, it took a good chief to see it was run properly: that the miserly did not hold out, that the greedy did not take another’s share, and that children, the old, and those in need were fed. And a good chief was prepared to be emphatic about enforcing the common good of the clan.
There is no security without governance, and no good governance without input from the governed. As for you, Justen, don’t think that without government, you’d be sitting on the veranda, sipping juleps. You could well be one of the enslaved, the violated, the killed.
#144 Comment By Aron On December 18, 2012 @ 5:02 pm
GrayCat,
If you can’t take any kind of derision, perhaps you should t have chosen to follow such a fringe eco-political philosophy.
Aside from that, your comment isn’t even worth mention.
(Oh, just one thing. What about your compatriots who call all of us non-whackos that we’re sheep? Is that not mockery and derision? Are they not engaging in your bizarre definition of ‘hatred?’)
#145 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 5:06 pm
Ahhh-h, Rey. Forgive me for not noticing this is a forum for ancient Scots. And how was that chief selected, and was his authority unlimited?
Is the non-aggression principle wrong?
#146 Comment By GrayCat On December 18, 2012 @ 5:14 pm
Oh, aron, no; it’s law now that hate crimes are defined as against people of color and gays. Not from me, sorry.
Do two wrongs make a right?
Is the non-aggression principle wrong?
How do you justify coerced membership in anything for any reason?
#147 Comment By Aron On December 18, 2012 @ 5:42 pm
GreyCat,
Yes, the non-aggression principle is wrong. It goes against human nature. You cannot have capitalism without aggression of some sort.
Do you want to buy out that company? That is aggression.
Do you want to fire an under-performing employee? That is aggression.
I could go on, but frankly you aren’t worth my time.
And take your ill-earned snark elsewhere. Lew is getting lonely.
#148 Comment By Reynardine On December 18, 2012 @ 5:42 pm
Though a chiefship was hereditary, a chief had to be accepted by the clan, and he could be removed by the clan, which he would be, if he did not carry out his duties properly. And non-aggression is wrong in the face of aggression.
#149 Comment By aadila On December 18, 2012 @ 6:29 pm
GrayCat you seem to be very dense. You keep asking questions which have been answered.
Or is it a personality disorder and not just being dense? That seems more likely.
#150 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 19, 2012 @ 2:51 am
“So, Ruslan, that’s the best you can do: bait and switch?
Do two wrongs make a right?”
Real life doesn’t boil down to little folksy sayings.
““Capitalism” did not, in fact, originate in Great Britain. You might just deign to crack a little history research outside your own “small coterie of conspiracy theorists.””
Wow, what a childish and ignorant response.
“Was Soviet Russia an imperialist state? How did it differ from either Great Britain or the United States over the last 160 years or so?”
You seriously need to ask me that? You need someone to tell you how Soviet Russia differed from Great Britain or the United States in the last 160 years? Please tell me you’re that stupid. Go ahead, write it.
” (Other than implementing Marxism faster than has happened here, of course.)”
Let’s see, the USSR abolished private property in industry in 1918, and began collectivization in 1928. Until Perestroika, there was no official right to private property in terms of capital. Since the dawn of capitalism, both the US and UK recognize the right of private property, capital investment, etc. So if these countries are allegedly trying to implement Marxism as you claim, they’ve been doing a really terrible job.
And maybe you can explain why the “crony capitalists” would want to implement a system which would expropriate their wealth and make them actually have to work for a living.
“Is the non-aggression principle wrong?”
Yes. If it’s being used as some kind of absolute axiom to deflect attention away from your ideology’s massive theoretical flaws and internal contradictions then yes, it’s very wrong. It’s also wrong when you arbitrarily define aggression in such a way so as to justify your “defense” of property and the exploitation of labor in capitalism, yet you call taxation theft and by extension aggression. It is manipulative and it is a form of moral cowardice.
Either your theories stand on their merits or not; you don’t get to hide behind some lofty principle. I say as a Marxist that capitalism and the liberal democratic republic have definitely done some great things in history, far more than your flavor-of-the-month libertarian-rebranding theory has ever delivered. The capitalist system and the state it necessarily generates to preserve itself provided a life so luxurious compared to past generations that people like you could get completely disconnected from material reality and endorse such childish nonsense.
#151 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 6:20 am
Isn’t Lew Rockwell that guy who most believe used to ghostwrite Ron Paul’s extremely racist newsletter which shared its mailing list with various hate groups?
Is he any relation to George Lincoln Rockwell? Because maybe its just me, but that is what i think of whenever anyone cites Lew Rockwell (who like Ron Paul himself’s his past and never renounced association with various Klansmen and the White Citizen’s Counsel/Counsel of Conservative Citizens should put him beyond the pale of civilized society).
And btw, his past association with Ron Paul’s extremely racist newsletter is why Lew Rockwell and you anarcho-capitalist idiots he runs with are here. Since we do not live in an Arnacho-capitalist society the past cannot simply be erased by whoever has enough resources to do so.
#152 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 6:28 am
GrayCat, subcribing to the non-aggreesion principle in the absence of laws is as guaranteed to be at least as successful as the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
(oopsie, history doesn’t work for anarchocapitalists because it has not been sufficiently privatized [yet!]* and decided by the free market)
* i’m really looking forward to the Exxon Mobil remake of The History of the Standard Oil Company or the Tyson Foods remake of The Jungle
#153 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 6:33 am
GrayCat, is deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction wrong?
Because if there are no laws, i totally want to get my hands on some intercontinental ballistic missles in case my neighbors start getting the impression that i might be weak and make dibs on what body parts of mine to eat. Flamethrowers, guns tanks, and landmines are simply not enough personal protection in the anarcho-capitalist world, you like totally have to go nuclear ;)
#154 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 9:45 am
Aron, your comment about glowing pigs made me think of something and suddenly see the brilliance of ararcho-capitalis.
See, i was thinking that my atomic piggies would be useless because i was using conventional thinking, but under an arnarco-capitalist system there would be no system so conventional thinking is out of the window. Thus, there is nothing to stop me from selling radioactive pigs and even tell people that radioactive pig meat is essential for proper nutrition. And once that is apparent, the path to my being able to turn a small pork products concern into being able to take control of the entire world is clear
So i now present my 13 point plan to use Anarcho-capitalism for my advantage and rule the world :)
Step 1: Create a corproate entity named Cavaet Emptor Farms which specializes in production of pork products.
Step 2: bring my next door neighbor aboard to start a radioactive waste dumping business.
Step 3: Use the abolition of govermment to secure the services of several respected former government nuclear scientists for cheap. Also be sure to secure several surplus government nuclear missles and warheads as well since they might come in handy later during the negtioation and takeover process when Caveat Emptor Foods expands.
Step 4: Any good plan for world domination needs some henchmen – fortunately, the abolition of all governments in the world will create a steady market in henchmen with all of the former military, spies, terrorists, etc. having no work – Cavaet Emptor Farms will need all of the above for the plan to work. Ultimately, Cavaet Emptor Farms will secure its own private army, air force, navy, marines, spy force, and even its own terrorist group and all of the weapons needed to carry out its mission.
Step 5: Secure positive media coverage through the seizure using my loyal henchmen of a radio and television network and using other loyal henchmen to neutralize the opposition primarily using high explosives planted at the base of competiting radio stations antennas.
Step 6: Crank up the signal strength of my radio and television stations to provide coverage to all of the world and broadcast programs which are sure to be popular in the new climate as well as the news that i want everyone else to know – mainly comments from my purchased scientists about how radioative bacon is the key to proper nutrition. “If the Pig’s Not Glowing Send it Back” will be the motto. In the absense of any govermental regulation or compeiting media thanks to my henchmen this message will be easy to bring to the mases.
Step 7: Caveat Emptor Farms is pleased to announce the release of Erika’s Radioative Bacon (TM).
Step 8: After the successful rollout of Erika’s Radioactive Bacon (TM), introduce other new pork products as well as various products of the new related business the Peach Bottom Peach and Bikini Company (Mottos: “Our Bikinis are more powerful than the H-Bomb” and “Glowing Peaches from the Heart of Georgia”) – the Chernobyl Cobbler (TM) is sure to be a big seller
Step 9: As the money from sales of Radioactive Bacon rolls in, use a combination of henchmen, media control, and profits from Atomic Saugage (TM), Bikini Atoll Ham (TM), and Three Mile Island Tripe (TM) to consolidate control over the entire food industry.
Step 10: Now that i control the world’s food supply, it is easy to take over everything else. It may even be accomplished without much violence by Erika’s Army of loyal henchmen.
Step 11: Crown myself Queen Erika and extract large financial settlements from all of my vassels.
Step 12: Use my loyal henchmen to eliminate any opposition to the rule of Queen Erika.
Step 13: Reward henchmen handsomely by giving them their own countries and vassels..
And then: THE WORLD IS MINE HAW HAW!!! ;)
#155 Comment By aadila On December 19, 2012 @ 10:07 am
Typhoid Mary should be the poster child of the anarcho-capitalist movement, given their aim is to eliminate all public health infrastructure.
#156 Comment By Aron On December 19, 2012 @ 10:32 am
Aadila,
Don’t forget, Typhoid Mary was arrested at least three times, and before she was permanently quarantined, she had already pledged to the judged that she would never work in food service again.
We all know how well that worked out…
#157 Comment By Anarcho-Capitalist On December 19, 2012 @ 11:07 am
Trying to explain anarcho-capitalism to statists is like trying to teach calculus to chimpanzees … they will shriek and hoot and throw body fluids at you … but they will never get it.
#158 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 11:35 am
Anarcho-Capitalist, please tell me what your plan for achieving world domination in an ararcho-capitalistic society is. Its possible that there might be available senergies with Cavaet Emptor Farms or at least if you offer sufficient skills you might be able to become one of Queen Erika’s loyal henchmen which is sure to be highly profitable.
Otherwise, you will just be another vassel servant of Queen Erika assuming that the Three Mile Island Tripe (TM) doesn’t kill you first.
#159 Comment By CM On December 19, 2012 @ 11:45 am
GreyCat,
Your non-aggression/non-coercion principle isn’t “wrong,” but within your own ideological system, it’s superfluous, self-negating and silly.
To put it as briefly as possible, non-aggression doesn’t arise as necessary or self-evident from your ideology’s basic axioms. Instead, it’s an extraneous add-on, created in response to all of us who have ever pointed out that unconstrained agents seeking to maximize their personal good have a nasty tendency to accumulate wealth/power and use it to increase their personal benefit, to the detriment of others who have less wealth/power.
So okay, you say, we’ll make it a “principle” that acting like that is bad and no one should do that, even though it doesn’t derive from your other principles. But having imposed this non-aggression/non-coercion “principle” for extraneous reasons, you then face a dilemma: How do you make it effective? You can’t coerce people into abiding by it, obviously, because that would violate this very principle. You can try to convince them through rational argument, but as you see, many people find your ideology’s arguments unpersuasive as a whole (though some of your fellow-travelers seem smugly inclined to attribute that to mere stupidity on the non-believer’s part rather than to any shortcomings of the ideology itself ).
You might argue that “the market” will work its magic and eventually remove or punish violators of this “principle,” but that’s just shifting the coerciveness away from yourself as an individual and granting it to the group. In effect, you’re wishing for a collective movement to emerge that will take onto itself the task of coercing conformity with your “principle.”
Which is the sort of thing that led people to create societies and states in the first place and leads us to continue to want to live within them, voluntarily: so we can be assured of a stable, reliable, safe environment in which to carry on the business of living. It’s true that in specific cases, the social order can become unduly constraining and even abusive, but that’s not an argument for replacing order with disorder.
#160 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 19, 2012 @ 1:09 pm
“Trying to explain anarcho-capitalism to statists is like trying to teach calculus to chimpanzees … they will shriek and hoot and throw body fluids at you … but they will never get it.”
Remember kids, when you get called on your BS, just accuse your opponents of being “statists!” From there on use strawmen, special pleading, false dichotomies, and every other fallacy under the sun.
Seriously though, comparing your ideology to calculus is ridiculous. Calculus is useful and has real-world application, your fantasy gum-drop land utopia isn’t.
I can’t be the only person who notices the irony of people who support capitalism, a system whose apologists(including Austrian schoolers) claim is based on inherent human nature and which celebrates cut-throat competition and any action which furthers private gain, also at the same time hide behind a “non-aggression” principle which makes no sense in the real world and seem to believe that everybody will voluntarily come together to preserve the capitalist mode of production without a state.
#161 Comment By Gregory On December 19, 2012 @ 1:17 pm
On the contrary, Anarcho-Capitalist, we get it. BTW, chimps are a pretty good judge of character. If they fling poo at you, then you may not be as clever as you think.
#162 Comment By aadila On December 19, 2012 @ 1:45 pm
“Trying to explain anarcho-capitalism to statists is like trying to teach calculus to chimpanzees … they will shriek and hoot and throw body fluids at you … but they will never get it.”
No, not really.
It’s more like trying to teach mathemeticians to shriek and hoot and throw bodily fluids…they get it, but just see no legitimate reason to do so.
#163 Comment By aadila On December 19, 2012 @ 2:10 pm
CM thank you for expressing my thoughts more eloquently then I could do so myself. That is exactly the origin of the non-aggression axiom: paying lip service to principles when greed is the name of the game.
I hope they all get audited and slapped with a lien.
It’s amazing we live in a society so self indulgent that people have the wherewithal to wallow in such buncombe with a straight face.
#164 Comment By Erika On December 19, 2012 @ 4:08 pm
Its entertaining to see how quickly the anarcho-capitalists abandon their claimed principle of “non-agression” to engage in petty name calling when confronted with actual economics and facts.
Also interesting that anything other than petty name calling has ceased by our anarcho-capitalist friends (and hmm, pointing out the racist history of Lew Rockwell seems to have silenced them).
If the proponents of anarcho-capitalism can’t even act in a civil manner on a comment section how do they possibly expect to get the entire world to act in a civil manner in the complete absence of any government or meaningful consequences for violent and aggressive behavior?
Of course, the old legal saw is that if the facts are on your side, you pound the facts, if the law is on your side you pound the law, if neither is on your side, you pound the table – the vapid anarcho-capitalists have long passed the point where they are pounding the table.
So anyone for some Bikini Atoll Ham from Cabaet Emptor Farms?
#165 Comment By GrayCat On December 19, 2012 @ 4:12 pm
CM, thank you for finally acknowledging that the principles of non-aggression and non-coercion are not “wrong.”
Evidently, though, most here believe that anarcho-capitalism means no laws. Where would anyone get that idea? Who says that?
And it seems most here cannot imagine a society where essential laws — against initiation of violence, murder, theft, fraud — are established and respected without over-arching government rulers. Why?
Is there no scenario where people simply cannot live and trade in peace, without rulers controlling them and what they do?
Does the consumer have no power in a market? Should the market exist without that power over it? Should consumers not expect to have their needs and wants met at the cheapest possible price? Shouldn’t consumers determine quality and price, and be able to take their business elsewhere if they choose?
If there were no government/rulers tomorrow, would you come after me with a gun or knife or “enforcer” to take from me what you want, without my willing and voluntary permission or agreement?
Do you believe I would do so to you? If so, why?
It also seems that most here believe that the non-aggression principle assumes complete pacifism, that individuals are not allowed to defend themselves, their family, friends, and property against aggressors. Where does that idea come from? Where in the non-aggression principle, which simply states that no one has the right to INITIATE violence or force or trespass against another, is the idea that self-defense is ruled out?
Only nation-states can wage wars; individual local communities of like-minded people cannot, but more importantly, have no incentive to ruin trading relationships with their neighbors.
Why is a voluntary society, founded on the non-aggression principle and peaceful trade, so threatening?
And why are profits a de facto bad thing? Does any of you actively seek lower wages and higher prices on goods and services? Without government protectionism, even the biggest companies would have to either stand or fall strictly on the quality of their products or services, and their ability to attract the most valuable and skilled workers. Only with government protections, subsidies, funding, and favoritism can companies become the obscenely huge and abusive corporations that are in control of most of government and the economy now. This is known as crony-capitalism, or “crapitalism.” Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, are NOT in favor of this, but just as against it as any of you are.
Have any of you read Democracy: The God That Failed, by Hans Hermann-Hoppe? Or his The Private Production of Defense, or The Myth of National Defense? Or Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable? Or his other works, as well?
I don’t understand a position that contends that just because something hasn’t been tried (at least recently, and here) it cannot conceivably succeed, just because what we have now is all we know.
Ireland for over 1,000 years resisting English conquest, Iceland in the Middle Ages, and Native Americans, just to name a few, all existed quite well and happily as anarcho-capitalists.
And I don’t understand how clinging to theory in the face of practical reality — the theory of democracy says it will work, if only we get the right people in power and get the right laws passed — when it’s plain that the practical reality contradicts all of it, and instead gets worse and worse, no matter who’s elected or what laws are passed.
Do you support the USA PATRIOT Act, the NDAA, “our” invasions and wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and “our” sanctioning of Iran, Guantanamo, etc., and attempts of the government to control the Internet — just to barely scratch the surface? Do you realistically foresee any future in which the “democratic” form of government we have is going to undo these and other wrongs?
Are over 70,000 pages of laws (in small print) in the National Register, really better than “no laws,” much less the minimal necessary laws advocated by anarcho-capitalists?
Is it logical to expect that a society of peaceful self-governing people would not recognize and obey the societal principles of no murder, no violation of your neighbor or his family or property, no theft, no fraud?
Is government really your protector and servant?
Would you personally initiate violence against me for not paying taxes? Would you personally coerce me to accept a program or action you believe I should?
Does any person have the right to initiate violence against anyone else for any reason — in schoolyard terms, start a fight with someone who does not want to fight and offered you no harm?
Does any person have the right to force anyone else to relinquish his person, property, or earnings for any cause?
#166 Comment By Jason McClinsey On December 19, 2012 @ 4:37 pm
It is interesting that anarcho-capitalists, aka voluntaryists, are introduced in this article by focusing on that quack Porter Stansberry. Instead of focusing on the principles of the movement (that the initiation of force is always a moral evil), this article does its best to tie the movement to other movements that are far easier to attack. This is good news, because it must mean that the movement is really catching on. Is it a terrible thing that many people are embracing the principle of non-violence? Is it so terrible that so many of us are raising our children peacefully?
#167 Comment By Reynardine On December 19, 2012 @ 5:10 pm
Evidently, Gray Cat, your idea of winning an argument is to just repeat the same words over and over again, without letup, until your audience has to go eat dinner, take a whizz, get some sleep, or just do something more productive than attempt to teach the unteachable. Then you tell yourself your dazzling arguments and stellar intellect have won the day. It’s called argumentum ad infinitum et ad nauseam.
#168 Comment By GrayCat On December 19, 2012 @ 5:42 pm
Sorry; I wrote:
“Is there no scenario where people simply cannot live and trade in peace, without rulers controlling them and what they do?”
I meant, “Is there no scenario where people can simply live and trade in peace, without rulers controlling them and what they do?”
#169 Comment By PabloKoh On December 19, 2012 @ 9:47 pm
Anyone who refuses to pay taxes for drone strikes around the world (the greater good) should be put in jail. Freeloaders!
#170 Comment By Lookeehere On December 19, 2012 @ 10:24 pm
According to you, Erika, “if someone committed massive fraud and there was no government and no courts, the defrauded parties would form a mob and execute the fraud artist.” WHOA! WOW! You made quite a leap there girlfriend! My head is spinning! Where did you say you went to law school? Whittier?
#171 Comment By Lookeehere On December 19, 2012 @ 10:30 pm
Erika said, “If the proponents of anarcho-capitalism can’t even act in a civil manner on a comment section how do they possibly expect to get the entire world to act in a civil manner in the complete absence of any government or meaningful consequences for violent and aggressive behavior?”
Why do statists somehow always come to the conclusion that governments are populated with angels and not mere humans? And, what exactly are “meaningful consequences for violent and aggressive behavior?”
#172 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 19, 2012 @ 10:38 pm
“Evidently, though, most here believe that anarcho-capitalism means no laws. Where would anyone get that idea? Who says that?”
No, we don’t mean that, but the fact is that capitalist society as it has existed, like all class based societies, has a state to enforce its laws. If you can’t enforce the laws, they aren’t laws.
“And it seems most here cannot imagine a society where essential laws — against initiation of violence, murder, theft, fraud — are established and respected without over-arching government rulers. Why?”
Because you also want capitalism, a system which puts all individuals in competition with one another, which entails exploitation and the denial of the means to live to millions of people so as to have a pliable workforce which has no choice but to accept whatever wages it can get to survive.
If you were like real anarchists, this wouldn’t be a problem. Real anarchists understand that class must be abolished in order to eliminate the state. Where we clash in that case is how quickly the habits of capitalism can be eliminated, along with class, after a revolution. In any case, revolution means the initiation of coercion.
“Is there no scenario where people simply cannot live and trade in peace, without rulers controlling them and what they do?”
Please put your violin away. First of all, in order to trade people have to have something to trade(or money to buy). Capitalism forces everyone to participate in the market, unlike past modes of production. Secondly, you no doubt live in the West and I know for a fact that you are not “controlled” by your rulers every step of the way. Did Barack Obama bar you from using Ebay or Craigslist?
“Does the consumer have no power in a market? Should the market exist without that power over it? Should consumers not expect to have their needs and wants met at the cheapest possible price? Shouldn’t consumers determine quality and price, and be able to take their business elsewhere if they choose?”
Yeah that sounds like a great idea, until you actually have experience with those sorts of markets. People will still be ripping each other off left and right, and you won’t figure it out until you lose money. In the case of medicines, medical treatment, food items, and especially airplanes, customers can “vote with their wallets” only after many other people die or become seriously ill.
“If there were no government/rulers tomorrow, would you come after me with a gun or knife or “enforcer” to take from me what you want, without my willing and voluntary permission or agreement?”
That depends. Are you a factory owner who steals the products that your worker makes, then paying them a small fraction of the value they create, all because of the bourgeois right of private property?
“Do you believe I would do so to you? If so, why?”
I would, except you’re too lazy. This is who Anarcho-Capitalism, like Austrian school BS in general, appeals to. White males who spend all their time on the internet and think the world revolves around them, and who compare paying taxes to being a Jew in Poland during WWII.
“It also seems that most here believe that the non-aggression principle assumes complete pacifism, that individuals are not allowed to defend themselves, their family, friends, and property against aggressors.”
Nope, nobody suggested that. Once again a strawman. Since you believe in private property, you believe in the right to use force to deny people food, land, and substance they might very well need. Ergo you initiate coercion when you defend certain productive property, particularly that which you did not actually work for.
” the right to INITIATE violence or force or trespass against another, is the idea that self-defense is ruled out?”
Nobody cares.
“Only nation-states can wage wars; individual local communities of like-minded people cannot, but more importantly, have no incentive to ruin trading relationships with their neighbors.”
Only nation states huh? That’s interesting because I’m pretty sure there were some wars prior to the development of the nation state,which is often dated to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Also there are gang wars, clan wars, and so on.
“Why is a voluntary society, founded on the non-aggression principle and peaceful trade, so threatening?”
I love how you arrogant, pompous morons assume that just because you are a laughing stock of the internet and real world, it must be because you are “threatening.” You are laughed at because your ideology isn’t based in reality, you can’t adequately articulate how you would bring your society about, and all the while you compensate for that by hiding behind some lofty moral phrase like “the non-aggression” principle.
It’s exactly like if I proposed some kind of society where everyone is happy and satisfied and nobody has any conflicting interest whatsoever, but when you question as to how we would implement this idea, I just start screaming: “THE GOLDEN RULE!! YOU BELIEVE IN THE GOLDEN RULE, RIGHT?!”
“And why are profits a de facto bad thing? Does any of you actively seek lower wages and higher prices on goods and services?”
Because profit is surplus value from labor you did not perform, and because workers are forced to accept these wages or die. Add your private police to the mix, and you get the initiating of coercion. Oh wait, it’s not initiation of coercion because you say it isn’t. Nearly forgot.
” Without government protectionism, even the biggest companies would have to either stand or fall strictly on the quality of their products or services, and their ability to attract the most valuable and skilled workers. Only with government protections, subsidies, funding, and favoritism can companies become the obscenely huge and abusive corporations that are in control of most of government and the economy now. This is known as crony-capitalism, or “crapitalism.” Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, are NOT in favor of this, but just as against it as any of you are.”
“Crony capitalism” is a made up word used by libertarians to apologize for actual capitalism. This is also known as the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. By all means, show us an actual capitalist society in history and let us judge it.
The truth is that industrialization and the rise of corporations has always gone hand-in-hand with state intervention. But has this all been bad? Many of these companies get perks from the state because they rose to the top of their fields, and the produce great products. If you want to excommunicate them from “true capitalism”, you are essentially throwing away every real, concrete argument in favor of capitalism. The advantage the US had over the late USSR in consumer goods becomes irrelevant.
Moreover, smaller and more competition, including more choice, is not necessarily better for the consumer. If you visited a place like China you would learn this.
“Have any of you read Democracy: The God That Failed, by Hans Hermann-Hoppe? Or his The Private Production of Defense, or The Myth of National Defense? Or Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable? Or his other works, as well?”
Oh wow, books from guys? This theory must be sound!
“I don’t understand a position that contends that just because something hasn’t been tried (at least recently, and here) it cannot conceivably succeed, just because what we have now is all we know.”
Well then you have a lot to learn about the world. We can do things which are unprecedented but the problem is you want two things which are mutually exclusive. Any exploitative, class based society, requires a state. Moreover, any time we look back in history and find something remotely close to the society you want, it turns out to be a nightmare compared to modern society. Of course you will scream that this is because there still was a state, or government intervention, and all that nonsense, but the fact is that just because your society hasn’t been implemented 100% to a T doesn’t mean that elements of the society you want haven’t existed before. If it’s not a cure all, it ought to be a cure some.
“Ireland for over 1,000 years resisting English conquest, Iceland in the Middle Ages, and Native Americans, just to name a few, all existed quite well and happily as anarcho-capitalists.”
Um, no, they didn’t. There was no “capitalism.” See what you’re doing, in true Austrian school form, is re-defining well established terms in order to fit your ideology. This is not allowed. Words like capitalism and capitalist have a meaning. Where was the wage labor in those societies? Industrialization? In any case, modern America is industrialized.
“And I don’t understand how clinging to theory in the face of practical reality — the theory of democracy says it will work, if only we get the right people in power and get the right laws passed — when it’s plain that the practical reality contradicts all of it, and instead gets worse and worse, no matter who’s elected or what laws are passed.”
There are a lot of ideas about democracy and many ways to run it. Many arguments against modern liberal democracy allege that it is not democratic at all. Your ideal system would mean total power in the hands of those with capital and property, and total enslavement of those without it. In other words, an even worse Gilded Age.
“Do you support the USA PATRIOT Act, the NDAA, “our” invasions and wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and “our” sanctioning of Iran, Guantanamo, etc., and attempts of the government to control the Internet — just to barely scratch the surface? Do you realistically foresee any future in which the “democratic” form of government we have is going to undo these and other wrongs?”
The problem, from my(but not necessarily my own) point of view and historical observation, is that the state exists to serve the ruling class. This is the concept you cannot understand, which is totally natural seeing as how capitalism often promotes a distorted view of things. In this case, people view the state as the ultimate authority when in fact it is answerable to a higher authority- the ruling class of property owners, investors, bankers, etc.
“Are over 70,000 pages of laws (in small print) in the National Register, really better than “no laws,” much less the minimal necessary laws advocated by anarcho-capitalists?”
Well you see, everything looks easy from the outside. The Bolsheviks had a very simple plan to make Russia democratic and destroy class. But when the White Guards resisted and imperialists invaded, things got a bit more complicated.
“Is it logical to expect that a society of peaceful self-governing people would not recognize and obey the societal principles of no murder, no violation of your neighbor or his family or property, no theft, no fraud?”
No, no it isn’t, especially when you get your ideas from a group of people who tell us that capitalism works because it’s based on “selfish human nature.” If Communism or anarcho-socialism is impossible because it requires humans to be so altruistic(it doesn’t but that’s the argument), then the same applies to your ideology.
Moreover, listing fraud and theft as forms of aggression is just nonsensical. Many people who commit fraud don’t believe it’s fraud. For example, many people make money selling “alternative medicine” that doesn’t really do anything. Should they be forced to have real clinical trials? Heavens no!
“Would you personally initiate violence against me for not paying taxes? Would you personally coerce me to accept a program or action you believe I should?”
First, the government would. Second, ANY society must produce a surplus if it is going to survive. That means any society is going to require some kind of deduction which might be called a “tax”(especially if you call Native Americans capitalists). Taxes in a capitalist society typically pay for things which are necessary but which no capitalist or group of capitalists wants to pay for.
“Does any person have the right to initiate violence against anyone else for any reason — in schoolyard terms, start a fight with someone who does not want to fight and offered you no harm?”
Again, stupid scenario. You sound like those Christian fundamentalists I know who say that everything would be perfect if people would just follow Christ’s words. Well they don’t. Period.
“Does any person have the right to force anyone else to relinquish his person, property, or earnings for any cause?”
Do you have a right, as a factory owner, to appropriate the products which others labored to produce? No. If the workers decide to walk out with some of that product, they are not stealing, they are just appropriating more of the value they produced. If you call your private goon squad on them, this would be initiating coercion. Of course you will claim it’s not, but that’s the problem- your whole ideology relies on arbitrarily re-defining terms like capitalism, aggression, etc.
So that’s why the “non-aggression” principle in this case is “wrong.” Because you don’t truly believe in it. You’re just using it as a moral shield to defend yourself from questions you can’t answer.
Perhaps if you travel around a bit and get some real life experience you will see the absurdity of “anarcho-capitalism.”
#173 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 20, 2012 @ 3:32 am
Let’s give the anarco-capitalists a little bit of pity. A few years ago they were big advocates for our current government, in the sense that they were supporting Ron Paul. Then there was the split, between die-hard Paul cultists and those who supported Gary Johnson. Now they’re trying to re-brand themselves by hijacking a long-established ideology which has always been associated with socialism. They’re going to make some mistakes in rhetoric.
The good news is that Ron Paul probably will have at least one more presidential campaign, meaning that many of these an-caps will once again turn into supporters of American electoral democracy…until Paul loses the primaries again.
#174 Comment By Erika On December 20, 2012 @ 6:23 am
GrayCat, i kind of get the impression that you have no idea what laws are. See, one hallmark of laws is that they are enforceable by someone – and that someone is always a government. Even in the case of voluntary associations such as homeowners associations, restrictive covenants, contractual arrangements, etc. it still requires governmental action in order to enforce. That is why in Shelley v. Kramer (1948) the Supreme Court held that racially restrictive covenants were null, void, and unenforceable as unconstitutional – because to enforce the racially restrictive covenant, a party would have to go to court – and that created state action bringing the private arrangement under the Fourteenth Amendment.
With no state, there can be no legal enforcement mechanicm. With no legal enforcement mechanicism there can be no law. In fact, in the absence of government the only way to enforce a law will be “self help” or as it is often more properly known vigilantism – or if many people are involved, it would be lynch mobs.
So now, where does that leave an anarcho-capitalist society which supposedly has a rule of non-aggression and the ability to defend against aggression? However, unlike most self defense laws the anarcho-capitalists would not only provide self defense to save one’s own life or the life or another – but would also provide self defense to protect one’s property (even to stop a child “trespassing” by cutting across your lawn). By all indication – especially the fact that to an anarcho-capitalist taking a penny from another is just as bad as taking one’s life – it would be lethal self defense. And in any case, with no legal enforcement mechanicism, no courts, no police forces, no government to answer to, a person can shoot first and answer questions never.
In fact, in an anarcho-capitalistic society, everyone (including violent prisoners and mental patients who will have to be released once government is abolished since they did not voluntarily choose to be subject to the laws of the state who put them in custody) will become the judge, jury, and executioner with the ability to decide for themselves when lethal force is needed to protect not only their person but their property as well.
That will not end well.
Quite simply, at its very core the anarcho-capitalist position comes down to “i want the ability to decide all laws – including the ability to kill people if i so desire myself.” Basically what the anarcho-capitalists want is the ability for them – and them alone – to be able to decide who is worthy of living and who dies. With no government there is nothing to stop mass murderers from saying “i felt threatened” or “they threatened my profits by organizing a boycot of my dangerous products” – and under the claimed tenants of anarcho-capitalism that is perfectly acceptable. Of course, what the anarcho-capitalists fail to realize is that not only they will have that right, everyone in the world will have that same right. That will result in complete lawlessness and produce a culture where might makes right and people will have incentive to engage in preventive violence if they think their neighbors might have designs on their property. A more idiotic position is difficult to imagine.
And no – i do not trust my neighbors to act properly in the absence of law. Quite simply, the only way for me to keep my neighbors from stealing all of my property and raping me would be my willingness to use lethal force – and i’m non-violent (which means that my Cavaet Emptor Farms plan is available for the taking, although i presume that you would not crown yourself Queen Erika (which has a good ring to it). i definitely do not trust massive corporations to act properly in the absence of law. Anyone who does so is a fool who is completely ignorant about history.
In law school, i learned that much of American law developed due to the rail industry – specifically because railroads were really the first large interstate companies which led to the development of corporate and securities law (yes, those corporations are products of the state and extremely recent inventions) – and also because 19th Century railroads were so dangerous and lethal that the common law tort rules were simply inadequate to cope with the carnage which resulted. Eventually, the number of deaths and maimings of railroad workers was so large, that even Congress had to take action in passing the Federal Employees Liability Act in 1906. In fact, much of the notions of modern tort law such as comparative risk can be traced to FELA. Workers compensation laws also developed in the same time period, because while railroads were the most dangerous industry (measured by number of deaths and injuries – per capita, coal mines were much more dangerous) many other industries were extremely dangerous.
The very stupidity of anarcho-capitalism (and those people who try to claim that our Constitution set our laws in stone in 1789) is readily apparent by the fact that to an anarcho-capitalist (or most conservatives now) the scandal wasn’t that thousands of workers a year were killed and maimed while working in extremely dangerous jobs during the Gilded Age – it is that since that time, companies have been forced to pay compensation to maimed workers and give pensions to the widows (or rarely widowers) and orphans of industrial accidents. And not only that, that companies now have to follow regulations and laws which help limit the creation of more maimed workers and orphans. To an anarcho-capitalist that is simply unacceptable because it appropiates the property of another which is according to you anarcho-capitalists NEVER acceptable under any circumstances. Profit apparently take precedence even over human life.
In the perfect anarcho-capitalistic world, under their “non-aggression” axiom one could be actually be killed for saying that maybe the company should spent $200 on guards for their machinery that will prevent 5 deaths and 10 serious injuries per year because that threatens the company’s property right in that $200. Never mind that the company’s actions will lead to much larger social cost by dooming 5 workers to death and 10 to serious injury than the $200 – social costs do not and cannot matter in an anarcho-capitalistic society because ultimately there is no society. The only interest is one’s personal self interest and when the only protection you have is what you can buy, the incentive to be selfish is overwhelmingly high.
Instead, the anarcho-capitalists try to claim that in the absence of social and legal controls and the elevation of private gain and interest above all else all hell will not break loose into mass chaos with murders, looting, rape, and the ultra rich running off with everything while everyone else becomes serfs (with a very high risk of being raped). Their entire argument ultimately comes down to “trust us” – that in itself is stupid. Anyone who trusts anyone who elevates greed and self interest to the highest moral position (as anarcho-capitalists do) is a complete moron. However, not only do they say “trust us” they say “trust everyone in the world” who are sure to behave once freed from the shackles of government. Yeah right. Even with governmental regulation, a somewhat functional tort system, laws, mass media, and shareholder lawsuits corporations repeatedly get caught engaging in lawbreaking which often kills people. Billions of dollars of people’s money just vanishes into the hands of crooks and conmen. People high on drugs (which will all become legal with no government) rob the convenience store looking for money for more fix and shoot the clerk due to drug induced psychosis.
All of that sort of thing will increase dramatically without social controls – in fact, without government all social control will break down extremely quickly because no one in their right mind would trust anyone in such a system. Not when you can literally rape mem run off with my property, or shoot me with no legal or social consequences. Not when the only axiom that society lives by is “greed is good” (in fact, the first step to an anarcho-capitalistic society will likely be the forceable extermination of all religions and burning of religious texts due to the fact that just about every religion i am aware of contain teachings that indicate that believers have an obligation to society – so its likely that there will be mass murders of religious people in order to eliminate such subversive and dangerous to personal property notions as “love your neighbor as yourself” and “the love of money is the root of all evil” – again, this is your “non-aggression” in action).
So to answer you question – i do not trust any ideology whose entire basis is “ignore everything you know about history, humanity, and society and trust us.” i do not trust any ideology who would give free reign to psychopaths to rape and murder women and then claim they acted in self defense and never have to answer for that absurd claim (and if you do not believe in the absence of any government that large numbers of women will be raped and murdered by sexual psychopaths, please see Cuidad Juarez and the entire state of Chihuahua, Mexico where the absence of effective non-corrupt government led to massive numbers of women being raped and murdered – anarcho-capitalism will make Cuidad Juarez look like Disneyland). i do not trust any ideology who would allow my neighbor to shoot me in my back and then claim that i cut across his property so it is okay and have society say “that’s right.” i definitely do not trust any ideology whose proponents appear way too eager to be able to appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner of everyone else in the world.
#175 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 20, 2012 @ 9:00 am
So the same people who tell us socialism and Communism can’t work because people are inherently selfish believe that this can be rectified with a simple “non-aggression” axiom which people will follow..because?
#176 Comment By aadila On December 20, 2012 @ 9:42 am
“According to you, Erika, “if someone committed massive fraud and there was no government and no courts, the defrauded parties would form a mob and execute the fraud artist.” WHOA! WOW! You made quite a leap there girlfriend! My head is spinning!”
Sometimes, it’s better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your beak and prove it.
Written laws were formed exactly for the reason Erika describes. Without a written code of justice and an organized government to enforce it, society settles its disputes through revanche. A good contemporary example of this is Somalia, which only now is showing signs of improvement due to the establishment of a Parliament and rule of law.
There is, though you are ignorant of it, a rock solid body of knowledge formed over centuries that concerns exactly this topic. You think you are the first person to ponder government?
Revanche leads to interminable bloodshed, which is the point that Erika is obviously making, and one which clearly went right over your head. There are countless examples of history which contradict your airy-fairie theory of the peaceful anarchist.
#177 Comment By Reynardine On December 20, 2012 @ 11:21 am
This Friday, there will not be enough gold or silver for the heroines and heros who have spoken out.
#178 Comment By Imperialist Lackies On December 20, 2012 @ 1:39 pm
You speculate on what *might*happen without the hyper-violent US government you worship, but you statist “progressives” have kept loyalty to this state even after the American genocide in Iraq that killed over 1,000,000 people.
How can you stay loyal, have faith in and support an institution that does that? And you American Imperialist state worshippers dare call anti-war dissidents against this evil government “extremist” or “violent”?
Progressive US Government worshippers are much more a threat to the peace and safety of the victims of US Government imperialism than authentic conservative or libertarian anti-imperialists.
It is your continued support of government that has murdered millions of Muslims and others in the non-American world you care so little about that is truly hateful and extremist.
If you have ANY moral decency it is time to rebel against your government before it kills millions more!
In eternal enmity to that government which killed those Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Yemenis, Somalis and others as well as their loyal lackies,
An American Anti-imperialist
PS don’t tell me its just Republicans, either, your Dear Leader Obama has killed far more kids than the psycho in Sandy Hook… yet to you being *anti* that killer government is extremist to you not being *pro* a government that has killed and hurt far more innocent people than any “hate group” (political dissident group, especially anti war and anti imperialist) you track for that evil government.
#179 Comment By aadila On December 20, 2012 @ 2:24 pm
“This Friday, there will not be enough gold or silver for the heroines and heros who have spoken out.”
That’s because the nasty little goldbugs in the forum are hoarding like dung beetles instead of sharing and caring like decent folk.
#180 Comment By Aron On December 20, 2012 @ 2:35 pm
Wow. Imperialist Lackies, you really take the cake for crazy.
None of us WORSHIP the state. We simply know that without it, society as we know it would end.
Feel free to rebel against your hated government. I’ll be there to ensure you get a proper burial.
#181 Comment By GrayCat On December 20, 2012 @ 5:23 pm
Well, I certainly stand upbraided and exposed.
Can anyone explain the differences between the origins of the Great Northern Railroad and that of the establishment of the rest of them?
#182 Comment By Ruslan Amirkhanov On December 20, 2012 @ 11:56 pm
Notice that “Imperialist Lackies’” post demonstrates what I have been saying, namely that “anarcho-capitalists”(last year they were die-hard Ron Paul supporters) cannot coherently defend their views without resorting to ad hominems(“statist”), stawman arguments, false dichotomies, and of course, arbitrary re-definitions of words and ridiculous revisions of history.
If you don’t accept their wacky re-branded libertarianism(certainly their heroes such as Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard never advocated “anarco-capitalism” with no state whatsoever; some would call them mini-archists), it means you must “worship” the state.
This is why we can casually dismiss them as a crowd of self-entitled butthurt white males who think that the world revolves around them. Strange that such self-centered people would believe that they can have a capitalist society where people don’t rip each other off due to some “non-aggression axiom.”
#183 Comment By Erika On December 21, 2012 @ 4:51 am
aadila, exactly :)
Although i’m starting to get suspicious that for some of the anarcho-capitalists giving people free reign to take even the most petty grievances into their own hands up to the point where deadly force is allowed to those who have “wronged” them (which for some appears to even include forcing them to pay for necessities) is the idea. As an ideology based upon elevating sheer self interest above all else, it is bound to attract some sociopaths who are out to con people. The well documented connections between their heros and known racists also lends credence to that contention.
Of course, what they forget is that if they have an essentially unlimited right to shoot people for taking their property that everyone else in the world has that exact same right.
And quite simply: that will not end well. It may even end life on earth.
#184 Comment By aadila On December 21, 2012 @ 7:12 am
Imperialist you cannot be taken seriously. It is clear your attempt to mock progressives by “turning the tables” is the product of a feeble mind.
Obviously the state commits abuses and obviously of all political parties and groups, the left wing, liberal, progressive, whatever you choose to call us, is at the vanguard of standing up to those abuses and protecting the oppressed.
So instead of your puerile tantrum, the response is not to tear down the government but act as agents of progressive change, using the power structures which exist to end the Republican line.
It is the Republicans in virtual exclusivity who are responsible for cranking up the war machine, scaring the hell out of everybody, and insisting on “enforcement” with disregard for rights codified in law. Republicans are happy to strip $4 billion from education but want to militarize our schools. Republicans throw firebombs at women’s health clinics but insist upon the sanctity of life, all the while peddling firearms to crooks.
Republicans hate America and so do you.
#185 Comment By Joel Otto On December 21, 2012 @ 11:24 am
After reading this shallowly researched attack article I found the following description of the SPLC, pasted below. So why did the SPLC attack us? The anarcho-capitalist movement supports SPLC goals. From our perspective, the Democratic liberals and the Republican neoconservatives are the same party, both pushing for a large and powerful government to advance social agendas.
Want civil rights? So do we.We are the ultimate defenders of rights. Gun control was instituted to deny guns to minorities. Guns are the great equalizer, and arguably gave women the vote. Extending gun ownership to minorities is an excellent way to protect their and our rights.
Children at risk? Anarcho capitalists want to end the war on drugs which is disproportionately incarcerating minority children.
Hate and extremism? Prejudice is always to be condemned, but is much worse when carried out by armed agents of the state. We would deny the state the power of abuse.
Immigrant justice? We don’t believe in national borders, which allow state agents to categorize some people as “illegal immigrants” who are subject to persecution and lack the protection of law.
LGBT rights? Anarcho capitalists do not believe the state should interfere in any relationship between consenting adults.
Teaching tolerance? Great idea!
From the SPLC website:
Who We Are
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.
The SPLC was founded to ensure that the promises of the civil rights movement became a reality for all. Since our founding in 1971, we’ve won numerous landmark legal victories on behalf of the exploited, the powerless and the forgotten.
What We Do
Children at risk: Across the country, thousands of children are languishing in abusive prisons and jails. These youths are disproportionately African American and Latino. Most live in poverty.
Hate and extremism: The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. We’ve crippled some of the country’s most notorious hate groups by suing them for murders and other violent acts committed by their members.
Immigrant Justice: Immigrants perform some of the hardest, most dangerous jobs in our economy – for the least amount of pay. But they are routinely cheated out of their wages and denied basic protections in the workplace. They face bigotry and discrimination in their communities and are vulnerable to hate crimes.
LGBT Rights: The SPLC is dedicated to defending the rights of the LGBT community. Our current work has a national reach but is primarily focused on the Southeast where relatively few organizations advocate for this community.
Teaching Tolerance: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program reduces prejudice, improves intergroup relations and supports equitable school experiences for our nation’s children. We provide free anti-bias resources to teachers.
#186 Comment By aadila On December 21, 2012 @ 1:17 pm
Alright Joel Otto, since you feel that way, why don’t you donate some anarcho-capital to the SPLC as your good deed for the year?
#187 Comment By Gregory On December 21, 2012 @ 2:09 pm
OK, Joel, I’ll bite. Just how did gun ownership contribute to women’s suffrage in the US? This should be entertaining, especially when the mean grrls show up.
#188 Comment By Erika On December 21, 2012 @ 2:50 pm
Apparently Joel is confused between women’s suffrage which has absolutely nothing to do with guns and women suffering domestic violence which is very closely related to guns
#189 Comment By GDWilliams On December 21, 2012 @ 4:48 pm
Wow! That’s an awful lot of reading on a topic of some interest to me, having studied rather intently the underlying psychological profile that leads to a particular sociopolitical stance. And its worth noting that the expected variations in experience and cognitive development are found among persons who identify as far-left communists, anarchists, on through socialists, social democrats, as well as right-wingers whose beliefs in social dominance arise from their sense of self-interest given they are members of the aristocracy, or receive benefits of that system they wouldn’t in an egalitarian society.
But there is a sociopolitical group that supports and promotes the beliefs and values of a right-wing elite despite no benefit to them or the larger economic class they fit in. Indeed, despite rather blatant evidence of being abused by the ruling elite, they seem to double-down in their support of their abusers in a manner one researcher likened to those who experience a brutal hazing by the group they aspire to become, suddenly showing even more loyalty and submission than before their mistreatment.
That sociopolitical group is of course self-identified “right-wing conservatives”. If one browses the psych journal literature it will immediately become apparent that the it isn’t just the one seemingly irrational tendency that attracts so much attention and curiosity from social scientists, but as it turns out, there’s a long list of cognitive and emotional traits that typically occur together only in those who usually also adopt conservative beliefs.
And what I see above is a lack of understanding that the beliefs circulating among conservatives almost always were adopted because they meet some emotional or perceptual criteria having little or nothing to do with its content or fact. Rather, beliefs are adopted on the basis of in-group conformity, prior beliefs, and its ability to give them closure or certainty on the issue given how ambiguity or uncertainty about something causes a fear response. And its the need to find certainty that often compels them to adopt a belief or seize on a solution with no real evidence for it, and to stubbornly hold onto that belief despite evidence to the contrary. And maintaining that belief is greatly enhanced by the presence of a conservative “echo-chamber” where RWAs reiterate, confirm, and re-affirm beliefs fed them by their own authority figures, who are very often charismatic, yet uneducated people whose only interest is in their own welfare, but who knows enough about the conservative psyche to frame issues in simplistic, Us vs Them terms, using themes of patriotism, duty, God, and a return to past glories if they just do what is needed for national security, the purity of the religion, race, or neighborhood.
I this way RWAs can be convinced that Rush Limbaugh knows more about climate than climate scientists themselves, or take as true what the age of the earth is or whether evolution is real from a local cleric trained at Bob Jones U in Divinity alone.
Poor development at the critical stage of social-intellectual growth near adolescence leaves them with the same authority-dependent worldview we all have as children who depend on a guardian for life itself, but which diminishes upon social interaction and the different demands it places on a mature adult able to cooperate and converse. That lack of development often results in limited ability to predict the behavior of others; to foresee likely outcomes of new laws, or even to accurately assess their own behavior, leading to some remarkable examples of engaging in the very behavior they just scolded liberals for eg,.
“Low cognitive complexity, compartmentalization of ideas, inability to think in abstractions or maintain logical processing of multiple concepts simultaneously, increased fear, hostility, and needs for order and regularity; risk averse, tend to “seize and freeze” on wrong solutions…
.I could go on here, but I think the idea should be clear here. And that is that you cannot really know where conservatives are coming from by simply listening and arguing with them. They seldom know why they believe and do something…although they will shout and scream that non-conservatives “just dont get it” because we’re stupid, confused,have heads cluttered with liberal propaganda, etc,etc, , imagining that the clarity of thought they see isn’t what we know is actually a reduced version of reality achieved by dismissing 3/4 of the details that are actually needed to solve some social ill plaguing society. They tend to see only “legal and illegal”, “right and wrong”, and will take their cue on these by noting what “good” conservative patriots want to see happen to the guilty. Jail. Simple. Problem solved. (almost never in fact).
Conservatism, despite the ideas of Burke spelling out what he believed were it’s principles, is really much more of a psychological syndrome than it is an ideological position they arrived at after considered thought on various matters. And the sooner society as a whole internalizes that realization, the sooner we can get about saving the planet, the economy, and likely the very future of mankind now that our technology places us outside the ability of nature to evolve our brains quickly enough to suppress the “fight or flight”, alpha male urges now compelling modern man to “hunt and gather” mankind straight into extinction by leaders with overactive amygdalae and underused intellect.
#190 Comment By Shepard Humphries On December 21, 2012 @ 8:10 pm
Leah, you have discredited what was once viewed as a reasonable organization. For the most part, your tone and content was mocking, disrespectful and illogical. For thinking individuals to take the SPLC seriously, they must see that you are combating bad people with mean hearts that pose some danger to innocent people. Wacko conspiracy theorists, students of government’s constitutions and peace-lovers like voluntaryists do not fit that mold. The KKK, the Islamophobes , the gay-bashes? Yes. Attacking voluntarists with such enormous prejudice is like attacking a rabbit when there are plenty of wolves to be fought. I am an extremist in regards to my fidelity to my life partner and to my frequency of stopping to assist stranded motorists, but is all extremism bad? Is it bad to be extremely dedicated to stopping violent racists?
I can’t use a few government enthusiasts like Mao & Hitler to PROVE all government employees are bad. (Basic logic). Overall (80%), we voluntaryists are easygoing folks. We love listening to lectures, we love debating and we love social science. We are addicted to logic and reason and our two biggest conclusions for a preferred way of life are; 1)Keep your word & 2)Don’t initiate violence against anyone. Simplistic? Perhaps, but it is a pretty darn good moral foundation, isn’t it? If you have a few hundred hours, we would love to respectfully and logically debate with you, hoping that we both learn from our conversations. :)
We are VERY much UNlike the Right in almost every way, as a matter of fact, our closest cousins are probably Liberals. Unlike the Conservatives, we are not very passionate about various constitutions or technicalities like capitalized words. We think Patriotism is stupid and we think the Patriot Act was stupid. Like a rabbit, we seek only to live our lives without “being messed with.” If you chase a rabbit through the woods and put your hand in their den-hole, yep, you might get bitten. I suggest that chasing us, or a rabbit that has not harmed you or anyone else, is unfair – we did nothing to deserve being chased! We pay our debts, stick to our word, create jobs, don’t harm folks and are good neighbors.
I am offended by this hit piece. We don’t hate, we are peace-loving folks! I can’t speak for folks on the Right, but bee stings kill more people in a year than bona fide voluntaryists do in a decade. One of Carl Watner’s favorite philosophers is Gandhi. We would love to have a respectful dialog with you and discuss why we think there are better options for organizing society than governments. We might be wrong, but might YOU also perhaps maybe possibly be wrong? Only through respectful logical dialog backed up by evidence can we know.
Now, are there a minority (20%) of those claiming to be voluntaryists that are knuckleheads? Absolutely! Much like people with straight hair or those with 5 fingers on each hand, some individuals claiming to be part of any group do do bad things. I would further add that Leah and I also do bad things sometimes. I bet we both try to minimize those bad things and be as good as we can. Some average people have some excellent ideas and some bad ideas. Leah and her supervisor obviously have the right to focus on people rather than ideas to make THEIR point, but I don’t want to defend Larken or Barrack or Leah or that wacko Alex Jones! If Leah or Alex says something, let’s examine THAT THING, not make a fallacious ad hominem attack. They have both made some inaccurate claims and probably some true claims, it isn’t about them. Just because some bad homosexual advocate some years ago molested a child does not mean that the other 99.999% of homosexuals do that bad thing. That is crazy and prejudiced.
I have invited you to find a thoughtful voluntaryist with which to have a spirited, logical debate. I suggest Joel Otto, me, or Carl Watner. I think you will find us enjoyable to chat with, but really, that is less important than the validity of our ideas, right? :) Your unfair and inaccurate article is an embarrassment to the SPLC, as is a comment a few before this one that asked for the defense of a claim, then insults the unknown response by saying, “…this should be entertaining…”
While we can certainly be described as philosophically radical (Radical: A person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform.), we are far from the Right and we are far from being hateful. I ask that you investigate our philosophy objectively, count the victims left in our wake (if you can find any) and then offer an apology and remove us from the position beside truly ugly hate groups on your site.
#191 Comment By some guy On December 21, 2012 @ 8:48 pm
“@Erika, the small producers of food I was mentioning did not include the major meatpacking firms, but still, I’d love to see our anarco-capitalists explain what government regulation created those monopolies.”
I’m not on anarcho-capitalist (I consider myself to be left-wing), but I think there’s actually a strong argument to be made that a lot of the regulations from the so-called “progressive era” that modern liberals love so much were actually internal tendencies of capital and as such were not some kind of victory foisted upon capital. One of the main examples of this tendency was the legislation regarding meat inspection, which the packing companies had actually lobbied for decades prior to Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. They were interested in this legislation because tainted meat scandals had left them vulnerable from competition by Argentina and Europe.
Have you heard of or read “The Triumph of Conservatism” by Gabriel Kolko? He talks about this extensively in the book, as well as other issues. His argument is essentially that there was a huge difference in the late 19th century/early 20th century between the propaganda of big business (which loved to portray monopoly as a rationalizing force in an irrational marketplace) and reality, which was that there was an effect of demonopolization during this time period due to low-cost startups which benefited from state law and a lack of regulation. And as such many of the laws from the “progressive era” were designed to drive competition under with regulation. It is ironic that this era is today seen as an attack on monopoly power when essentially it was monopoly power in the form of the House of Morgan etc which drove a lot of it.
(Kolko himself is hardly an anarcho-capitalist, though, he was part of the “new left” and praised Paul Mattick in the book. Marx too, although a large section of the book is dedicated to a critique of Marx’s theory of the state, although Kolko mentions that the concept of the state as “the executive body of the ruling class” is probably Marx’s strongest statement on the matter.)
I don’t really get the assertion of one poster that because “anarcho-capitalism” is a “radical” idea that automatically justifies scorn and derision. I think AC is dumb as hell, but there was a time period in which being an advocacy for democratic republicanism meant that you were a “radical” too, so…not to mention the “radical Republicans”, etc.
#192 Comment By Joel Otto On December 21, 2012 @ 10:56 pm
In an unarmed society, those who are bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more violent, or capable of getting that type of person to work for them can control smaller, weaker, or more isolated people. Men tend to be bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than women. Until about 100 or so years ago, when guns became more affordable and accessible, women were practically chattel in many situations.
Wyoming, a frontier state where firearm ownership was common for both men and women, was the first state to incorporate women’s suffrage. A 100 lb woman with a revolver needs to be taken very seriously by a 250 lb man. Guns shift the balance of power.
Domestic violence is a separate issue. Both men and women are victims.
I am not a financial supporter of the SPLC because while their stated goals are laudable, their methods are largely counterproductive. Supporting oppressive government action to counter oppressive government action is a hit-or-miss proposition at best.
#193 Comment By Sean On December 23, 2012 @ 1:07 pm
Being anti- anything is a failure of the imagination. However, being pro-liberty and pro-republic is really important, more-so than being a government apologist.
Our founding fathers understood that government is force, and as such will compel you to do almost anything they deem “appropriate”. This is the primary reason for the constitution, its provisions, and the amendments. As a nation we must stand together and not let the government take our natural rights away from us.
Our constitution is all about limiting government, and what they can do. The state is a machine, and machines just grind and grind until they get the desired outcome. As free-thinking and unique people we need to fight against all forms of tyranny, foreign and domestic. Unfortunately, throughout history tyranny at home always seems to be worse than abroad.
Reading about, and understanding history is very important to know that governments that take power away from its citizens will invariably become tyrannical. Prevent such actions, read a book and then go back for another one.
#194 Comment By brutus On December 23, 2012 @ 1:09 pm
It seems rather counter-intuitive to me, that the people who advocate peaceful, mutually-voluntary social cooperation should be considered as the “extremists,” whereas the people who believe that one group of people have a legitimate right to impose arbitrary compulsions & restrictions on the rest of society, under the threat of overwhelming deadly force, are apparently not so extreme.
Weird.
#195 Comment By GrayCat On December 23, 2012 @ 2:57 pm
There is no room for reason as long as minds are certain of their conclusions beyond all reasonable doubt.
I used to be skeptical that there were people who would not even consider another point of view, who would vilify someone just for considering a contrary point of view, and who would unquestioningly use violence to force the holder of a contrary view to conform to their wishes. It just seemed unreasonable that there could be such people.
Well, this site has certainly taught me that there really are those people.
Why? Who is qualified to rule others?
#196 Comment By Chris Cantwell On December 23, 2012 @ 8:58 pm
More garbage from the SPLC. Why am I not surprised? You people endorse so much violence by the state, then act like you’re the peaceful ones.
Ancaps simply believe they should be able to do as they see fit so long as they harm none. For this, you label them violent extremists who need to be stopped.
Anyone who believes in non aggression, is necessarily an anarcho capitalist, because once initiatory violence is eliminated from the list of options, the only things left are reason, free trade, and voluntary interaction.
I don’t expect hard core, state dependent slaves like yourselves to change your minds because of a comment on your hateful post, but I do hope some of your readers will notice that we’ve advocated nothing but peaceful and voluntary interactions, while you advocate nothing but government force.
You are the hate group, SPLC. Not the ancaps.
#197 Comment By Reynardine On December 26, 2012 @ 10:27 am
The kind of people who come here and keep iterating and reiterating, or maybe idiating and re-idiating, the same talking points without ever responding to the answers they claim to be demanding, should not be surprised when they are regarded as being (a) tiresome; (b) in bad faith.
#198 Comment By Erika On December 26, 2012 @ 11:01 am
Joel, honey, the only thing which firearms make equal is the ability to kill someone in a fit of anger. Or to shoot an unarmed person by mistake. Or to shoot people for fun. Resorting to the gun removes any opportunity for a peaceful resolution and is a one way ticket to prison or the cemetary.
The fact is that outside of the few people who still engage in subsidence hunting, the main reason why people have guns is due to insecurity – almost always male insecurity. Basing policy on a macho fantasy of being able to buy toughness is stupid.
The fact is that real men (and women) can solve their disputes without resorting to violence – little boys however turn to guns because that gives them the fantasy of being real men. If they lack other reasons to feel like men, at least they can have their very phallicly shaped subistute hidden away hoping that some punk makes their day and then giving them the excuse to shoot someone. You gun people care nothing about self defense – all you want is the ability to kill someone. Killing someone doesn’t make you big and strong – a weak little child can kill someone if you give them a loaded weapon (and depressingly enough that has happened many times) However, you gun nuts reveal yourself by being all too eager to shoot people as a first and only resort. Your little macho fantasy of wanting to play your school yard cowboy games with real guns and live ammunition shows what you really are – simply scared little boys who dream of living out the worst action movie cliches without thinking of the consequences.
The fact is that there will always be someone out there with a bigger gun. Once you accept that, sweetie, maybe you can leave your personal insecurity out of policymaking and leave the rest of us alone.
In fact, if you are so insecure that you feel the need to have a gun to leave the home, do us all a favor and stay at home. It doesn’t matter how many guns you an-caps have, you are still a bunch of whiny insecure little boys who seem way too eager to have the freedom to be able to shoot anyone you want to.
In fact, the more you anarchist capitalists post the more it is clear that about the only freedom you really care about is your freedom to decide who lives and who dies. Apparently simply voting Republican and killing people by denying poor people health care or eliminating workplace safety laws is not enough for you. You want to take a more active approach in killing the less fortunate.
Maybe if you little boys would stop hiding under your bed and try to find girlfriends you’d realize how stupid your little boy fantasy really is. You an-caps are almost as ridiculous as the men’s rights movement losers – infact, i’m betting that there is quite a lot of overlap – after all, in an an-cap society rape would be legal.
Some freedom there in the anarchy-capitalistic world – the freedom to be raped and killed by some little boy who is looking to turn the entire world into a real life version of Grand Theft Auto.
#199 Comment By Aron On December 26, 2012 @ 12:17 pm
Erika,
I must admit, a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto would be quite spectacular: the ability to commit any crime with near impunity is a very interesting concept.
Also, in one of the games there were jet packs. And dammit, it’s the future already; I want my jet pack!!!
#200 Comment By Gregory On December 26, 2012 @ 12:20 pm
Perhaps Joel is actually a Maoist, since he seems to be suggesting that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
#201 Comment By Joel Otto On December 26, 2012 @ 6:09 pm
Political power comes generally from the consent of the governed, since the political class is always a minority. Anarcho-capitalists recognize that majority choice doesn’t change the morality of an action. We seek to expand this understanding to a larger audience, and we are succeeding. Theft, threats, fraud, assault, and murder do not become moral acts simply by majority approval vested in agents of the state.
Erika’s fallacious, naive, and puerile attack is typical of those opposing an armed citizenry. Guns are not a necessary part of violence. They do change the balance of force whether they are actually fired of not.
Because most people are good, and vicious criminals relatively rare, expanding a simple means of self-defense to the general populace places criminals at a disadvantage. An armed populace is also less likely to tolerate totalitarian measures from the political class, leading to a more peaceful and prosperous society.
#202 Comment By Aron On December 27, 2012 @ 1:47 pm
Shazbot and Joel,
If the AnCaps are so smart and we’re all so stupid, why is it you’re considered the fringe of the fringe, and we’re mainstream?
You can keep beating that dead horse as long as you want. Erika dissected every single one of your arguments. And yet you continue to call her a liar.
Now please tell me which of us is committing the Big Lie?
#203 Comment By Gregory On December 27, 2012 @ 2:38 pm
Looks like it is 2008/2012 all over again, with the Paultroons now rechristened as AnCaps. Lots of sound and fury on the intertubes and then….. nothing. How did that rEVOLUtion work out?
#204 Comment By Reynardine On December 27, 2012 @ 2:40 pm
Well, well, look at that, folks! When the ancaps can’t wear us down with the argumentum ad nauseam et ad infinitum, they have tantrums and throw balls of [Hays Office].
#205 Comment By Joel Otto On December 27, 2012 @ 10:14 pm
Erika said:”…the only thing which firearms make equal is the ability to kill someone in a fit of anger. Or to shoot an unarmed person by mistake. Or to shoot people for fun.”
Erika dear, have you no concept of self-defense? It is so sweet that you live such a sheltered life. Like a child. Even though you hate guns and don’t want to carry, you benefit from those who do – police, soldiers, and armed citizens. Because some of us carry, criminals can not be sure it is safe to make you a victim.
What would your response be to a violent assault on yourself or a loved one? Dying for your belief in “macho insecurity”? Why do you think police and soldiers have guns? More insecurity? Or do wimps with guns become real men when wearing a uniform of the state, the better for you to lick their boots.
Real men and women do solve their disputes without resorting to violence. It is called civil society. Voluntarists such as myself seek to expand civil society. As soon as government becomes involved, civil society ends. Everything the government does is based on the use of force. Criminals and governments resort to fraud and violence. Good guys with guns discourage that.
Do you think there was no violence, no crime, and no murder before guns were invented a few hundred years ago? Have you seen the crime statistics from Japan and Great Britain where guns are illegal? Criminals can still get guns, and when they can’t they use knives, clubs, or brute force. The whole point of a gun is that it is just as effective for a weak person as a strong one, unlike fists.
Erika, have you ever been to a shooting range and met some of the “…scared little boys who dream of living out the worst action movie cliches without thinking of the consequences.”? First, you may find that the shooting sports are fun and challenging, and then you may find that shooting enthusiasts are some of the nicest people you could meet. Prejudice based on stereotypes is ugly regardless of your target, as anyone on the SPLC site should know.
#206 Comment By Hank Kerchieff On December 27, 2012 @ 10:46 pm
This is such an accurate and informative article. I’m glad I spent my time reading it. Often, when I see someone on the street with a Gadsden flag or a shirt with a picture of an economist like Mirray Rothbard or Milton Friedman, I avoid them as much as possible. These people are not fit to live in our society. Most of them are dangerous!
#207 Comment By Erika On December 28, 2012 @ 6:27 am
Joel,. your clinging to your childish gun obsession like a security blanket and spouting every riduculous and easily refuted argument from the NRA basically proves my point. Every argument you make is based upon an incorrect premise. Ultimately all that remains is sheer insecurity and lack of trust of people.
The fact is that your main objection to government seems to be that in a Democratic government you sometimes lose. Rather than acting like an adult about it, you act like a little child who wants to go home and cry to mommy that the mean girl is picking on you. Given that your position is compltely and totally nuts it is easily understandable.why the majority of people reject it.
Ultimately you and the other anarchy-capitalists position is nothing but a temper tantrum. You rant and rave that you live in a totalatarian society and yet you want to adopt principles that would inevitably lead to totalatarianism. Of course, the sum total of your complaint seems to be that you have to pay taxes – what do you think you’d have to pay if you lived without government? You’d have to pay a private company for every service that the government provides – likely a much higher price.
You’d also constantly live in fear because you know that there will always be someone out there with more guns, better guns, a better shot, etc. who could shoot you and take your things without legal consequence. Maybe you’d pick on the weaker some and maybe even get to fulfill your obvious dream by shooting some people.
The fact is that nothing will be leveled – instead billionaires will have their own private army and with no government force to stop them they will send in your private army take your precious bodily fluids oopsie, i mean guns and enslave you.
Your gun does nothing to protect you – those who live by the gun, die by the gun. Many very free societies (often much freer than the United States in many respects) have strict gun control – and more peace and prosperity than the U.S. The U.S. is also a very prosperious country but not always peaceful primarily because insecure morons like you cling to your guns like a security blanket through some childish fantasy that you with your deer rifle could hold off the 101st Airborne Division.
While we are overall a very free country (if you are white) – evidenced by the fact that we tolerate anti-government wackos like you. The fact is that we have an atrociously high murder rate and an atrociously high number of people in prison. Of course, because you are only concerned with rich white people who don’t want to pay taxes (and your entire complaint comes down to “i have to pay taxes and if i just shoot my neighbor because i don’t like the music she listens to, i’ll go to prison” – i’m also guessing that there are quite a few icky perv pedophile types in the anarchocapitalists ranks as well who object to the fact that the government doesn’t let them rape children (which after all, would be perfectly legal in the anarcho-capitalist world – the fact that rape would go completely unpunished in an anarcho-capitalist world is likely why the anarcho-capitalists tend to be male).
Of course, it is extrmely doubtful that you care about the fact that you would give a free reign for rapists and pedophiles because the primary victims of them will be women and you simply do not care about women. After all, they just laughed at you in high school and continue to laugh at you today – because you insecure little boys in man’s bodies are completely icky. Yuck! In fact, it is hard to imagine a more mysognistic position than seeing guns as a solution to the domestic violence problem. At best, the woman will wind up in prison or a mental hospital (you do realize that battered women syndrome qualifies as a mental illness and that rather than getting off a woman who prevails on that argument will be found NGRI and sent to a mental hospital right?) for taking the law into her own hands rather than going through legal channels to escape her batterer – at worst, the woman will wind up dead. Guns are a primary cause of the domestic violence problem and that is amply proven by statistics. Most batterers are in fact armed and use the guns to threaten the victim and often the children so she is placed in fear and cannot escape.
Guns might be useful for hunting, but place them in the hands other than legitimate authority and they are nothing but a tool to create create terror and oppression. Whether that illegitimate authority is a non-democratic government, a criminal, a terrorist, or a little boy in a man’s body who imagines himself a cowboy but is really a want to be vigilante does not matter – in every case, guns are being used for the purpose of oppression. You do not want your gun for protection – you want to use your gun to oppress people. Quite simply, you want to use the gun to get your way. Your gun is not there for protection – there are other much more effective ways to have protection than handguns. Having a dog is much more effective protection for your house than having a gun – and that is well shown by statistics. Buglar alarms are also fairly effective and inexpensive as well. Both dogs and buglar alarms will not accidential shoot your daughter coming home from her date either.
Your side reveals its true motive by not going with open guns (which if purely for defensive purposes is what you want. To quote Dr. Strangelove “what good is a Doomsday device if no one knows you have it?” – its the same with a gun. If you were being purely defensive with your guns, you would walk around carrying your shotgun or wearing a holster just like the real (movie) cowboy that you dream of being. Instead you want to have concealed weapons – your justify that by saying then the criminals will not know who is armed, but the fact is that a concealed weapon only serves as a weapon of offense. There is no legitimate protection purpose to have a concealed weapon – it is not even good defense or personal protection if you are concerned because the gun may not be easily assessible. It is also merely reactive rather than proactive. The fact is the reason why you morons want concealed weapons is precisely because they are offensive weapons. You gun nuts dream of being able to shoot someone. The concealed weapon is there so you can.
And proving what a childish infantile idea you anarcho-capitlists have, when people point out how childish and unrealistic anarcho capitlistm is and how such a system would destroy itself quickly you react with all the charm, wit, and alliance to facts that you’d expect from a preschooler throwing a temper tantrum.
But i guess you guys want to arm teachers so when that preschooler gets out of control in her tantrum, the teacher can just shoot her. And i thought that being paddled was bad :P
Most people grow out of throwing temper tantrums as they grow older and mature – not you anarcho-capitalists. That is perfectly consistent with the fact that your entire governmental system is based on an idea so childish that it is difficult to believe that anyone is actually stupid enough to believe it.
Yes, capitalism and the “free market” can bring great things if the market is balanced through a strong and fair tort law and/or governmental regulation to assure competition and safe products. In fact, i basically agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand, and Richard Posner that a strong and fair tort law would be preferrable to government regulation since a strong and fair tort law would provide better incentives for companies to adopt new innovations when government regulation does not keep up with technologies. The fact that businesses – including gun manufacturers and dealers but this is especially bad in the pharmaceutical industry – now are successfully lobbying for immunity from tort suits if their products comply with government laws and regulations (which already are largely written by the large corporations themselves) which may well become outdated. However, we do not have a strong and fair tort system and it is probably impossible to obtain since litigation is expensive and deep pockets will always have an advantage. That is why governmental regulation is needed – otherwise, the free market system would destroy itself.
All of that governmental regulation that you hate did not destroy capitalism – it saved capitalism. It was not designed to protect big business – it was designed to set up a contervailing power which can (at least in theory) stand up to big business (see also unions).
You anarcho-capitalists would simply remove the middle man and create government by corporations. In political theory there is a name for a government where corporations and the government are merged into one. Let’s see, what was it?
All together now: Facism.
That is the real face of anarcho-capitalism. And if you think that once Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart take power directly they will let you keep your guns you are delusional. After all, with a gun you might rob the cashier at your local Wal-Mart and that threatens their profits which according to you anarcho-capitalists is worse than killing someone. Smile when the jack booted government thugs from Wal-Mart take the guns and ammunition (which ironically enough you could have bought there)
Good thing that its likely that every adherent to anarcho-capitalism in the world has posted their screeds here – and of you guys, Mr. Peak was the only guy who showed any intelligence and politeness (of course, as a supporter of ESOPS he was also a bit of an anarcho-socialist and he was young and extremely naive – but he seems to mean well). the rest of you just seem to be looking for an excuse to turn your guns on unarmed people with no legal consequence and to not have to pay taxes. The rest of you anarcho-capitalists have all of the substance and charm of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
#208 Comment By Reynardine On December 28, 2012 @ 9:09 am
A life-size solid platinum Sharkie to Erika this week, to hang over her mantel.
#209 Comment By Reynardine On December 28, 2012 @ 9:15 am
Because I never got around to it last week, I hereby award a solid steel Hammer and a solid steel Sickle to Ruslan. Their workmanship is superb, but they are not tools. They’re weapons. Ruslan, you clearly know how, where, and to whom to apply them. Bon appetit (so to speak)!
#210 Comment By Reynardine On December 28, 2012 @ 9:20 am
And a solid gold fountain pen, filled for good and all with Endless Ink, to Kiwi!
#211 Comment By Erika On December 28, 2012 @ 10:40 am
No Joel, you are seeking to destroy civil society. Civil society is government and laws. Forcing people to have to carry guns around to protect them is the very definition of a lack of civil society. In fact, what you really want is to turn the entire world into a real life version of Grand Theft Auto. But in real life, when you get blown to bits or shot repeatedly you do not show up at the hospital having generated a new life.
To entrust your rights to self help, unenforceable “voluntary associations,” “private contractors” (mercanaries), large corporations, and ultra wealthy individuals is stupid and silly. There is no other way to put it.
And rey, thanks for the shark – it better be a small shark breed though, my mantal isn’t that big (and hopefully no anarcho-capitalist tries to steal it) :).
#212 Comment By Reynardine On December 28, 2012 @ 1:15 pm
One of these little sand sharks, Erika, about the size that can scoot into shallows and bite people’s ankles.
#213 Comment By Joel Otto On December 29, 2012 @ 9:55 pm
Erika, you sound like you are really mad at someone. It’s not me. You don’t know me. You sound like you are full of hate and lashing out blindly. I don’t vote Republican. I don’t believe in violence against women. You have created a straw man argument. Look that up, then re-read my posts. Are you being willfully ignorant, or do you have difficulty with reading comprehension and following simple trains of logic?
Voluntarists are not as you are describing. I haven’t met anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Communist who meets your stereotypical description.
Majority rule doesn’t work for finding facts. Just because all your friends are telling you that you are right, doesn’t make it so.
#214 Comment By Erika On January 2, 2013 @ 6:17 am
That should be the right size, Rey :)
On another note, i still have to marvel at the psychology involved in anarcho-capitalism. Here you have people who totally distrust government – yet, they want to have private corporations conduct all of the functions of government. Hence, private security guards, private armies, etc. In fact, they even advocate giving private companies powers that are much more extensive than what governments do today and would rightly be condemned by privacy advocates.
i recently read something by a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist advocating for private toll roads using microchip technology to track movements of the car and automatically deduct the tolls from a bank account or a credit card account (although as usual the anarcho-capitalist gave no details on how you would be able to have a bank or a credit card when the banker could just flee with all of your money or the consumer would be free to tear the credit card statements up and toss them in the trash and never be forced to pay).
Of course, forcing everyone to put satellite tracking technology on the windshield of their car to track where they drive has some pretty major privacy concerns. No doubt, the anarcho-capitalists would be the first to howl if the government provided such a program – imagine a government supercomputer somewhere with all of your personal travel and financial information on it somewhere. They would actually have a point that that would be an extremely scary development. Some religious types might even claim that that mandatory window chip for driving is way too close to the Mark of the Beast for comfort.
But to the anarcho-capitalist, despite the major privacy concerns such a consideration would entail, it would be perfectly okay to have that – if rather than government satellites, government roads, government microchips, and government computers, the satellites would be owned by a private company – say Halliburton. They would have no problem turning up all sorts of potentially intrusive private information which can be used against them to Halliburton. Of course, to me, giving Halliburton all of my private information is much scarier than the government. See, there are controls like laws, oversite, judicial review, and elections to provide protection against the government from setting up such a system and even then to keep them from misusing it. Halliburton would have no such controls.
And in any case, the reason why the gas tax was chosen over toll roads to fund roads was that it is way more efficient. The gas tax is included in the price of gasoline paid for by the consumer. Its actually a very efficient tax (much cheaper and more practical than toll roads) – its also been way too low for decades according to every mainstream economist which encourages overconsumption and has not been able to keep up with road mainatanance – but anyone who thinks that giving Halliburton the control over roads will make things better is delusional.
That is the real face of anarcho-capitalism. Even the anarcho-capitalist probably realize that advocating taking several economic steps backwards to a barter economy makes them sound stupid – so instead their solution to the obvious lack of money is to go with much more intrusive solutions. i’m sure that somewhere there is an anarcho-capitalist arguing for an actual Mark of the Beast where people must have a microchip inplanted in them to buy or sell anything. Really – what would BungalowBud say about that? i doubt it would be “its okay because its not the government doing it” :)
What the voluntary doctorine ultimately comes down to is essentially the equivilent of homeowners associations. That again makes me suspect that the anarcho-capitalists never ever bought a house. Homeowners associations are voluntary associations where people give up their right to use their property in the name of increased property values. In many people even pay extra for the privilege. Many do maintain some sort of benefit – maybe lawn mowing, a clubhouse, a pool, rent a cops, etc. However, people must give up their rights to receive it – for example, in a homeowners assocation you often must paint your house a certain boring color. That for me is already a dealbreaker because i want to paint my house in watermelon pink with bright green trim. Your lawn must have a certain type of grass (and kept extremely neat). Only approved flowers, bushes, and trees allowed. Noise levels are heavily restricted (much more so than normal) with private security guard patrols to enforce them. Some restrictions that homeowners assocaitions have would be blatantly unconstitutional if done by a government – such as restricting visitors, banning flags, signs (even political signs), lawn decorations, visible holiday decorations such as Christmas lights, sometimes even bumper stickers on cars. In fact, all of the restrictions are designed to assure a certain type of ant-like conformity of the residents.
The fact that such developments which restrict everything and assure ant-like conformity of residents (which i remind you, people have to pay extra for the prvilege of giving up their rights) are popular really should show you the flaw in your thinking. Already people are voluntarily giving up their rights to have higher property values, more prestige, a better school district (almost all of the houses in the best school districts here are subject to those riduculous agreements). Only a fool would assume that even if people enter into voluntary agreements that it would not be more restrictive of rights than is currently the case in the U.S. Especially since the most common instace of voluntary assocaitions (Homeowners Assocations) are in fact much more restrictive than the rules set up by the government. And of course, only a fool would enter into a voluntary agreement when there is no recongized enforcement mechanism.
The fact that you anarcho-capitalists would tolerate extreme restrictions in freedom and extremely intrusive actions as long as they are done by corporations and not governments says all we need to know about you. i hate to break it to you, but even with no government, the rich are not letting you into their clubs. And they are going to be able to afford mercanaries to keep you out.
And while i said that Mr. Peak seems really young, i looked at his website again and he’s almost as old as i am so he should really be old enough to know better. So read young as “immature” and likely “inexperienced in the real world” – if Mr. Peak is still around (and for all other college students/recent college graduates out there), a word of advice – no matter how desperate you get, law school is not the solution :)
#215 Comment By Reynardine On January 2, 2013 @ 8:59 am
Mr. Otto, by now, attacks like yours are such a cliché that they don’t even deserve rebuttal.
#216 Comment By Aron On January 3, 2013 @ 9:45 am
How did that last post make through moderation? I don’t think anyone here is interested in finding divorce lawyers in Las Vegas.
That’s the first real spam I’ve seen on the site. It doesn’t bode well.
#217 Comment By Reynardine On January 3, 2013 @ 10:30 am
Aron, you don’t suppose they have something on autopilot, do you?
#218 Comment By Erika On January 3, 2013 @ 2:11 pm
Aron, it was actually much more intelligent than most of the recent comments by anarcho-capitalists
#219 Comment By Aron On January 3, 2013 @ 4:26 pm
Rey and Erika, you make good points. Though I must say that some of the AnCap rants were getting pretty funny, if only for their wackiness.
#220 Comment By Erika On January 4, 2013 @ 6:51 am
i’m pretty sure that rather than a divorce attorney, an anarcho-capitalist would pursue “Second Amendment solutions” to end their marriage
(and yes, i realize that marriage and divorce are products of the state and in anarcho-capitalism therefore there would be no marriage which lends more creedance to my belief that these anarcho-capitalists are mainly men’s rights mysognists but i still think the point holds (in fact that the anarcho-capitalists are men’s rights mysognists makes domestic violence much more likely)
#221 Comment By Bruce Guthrie On January 7, 2013 @ 11:35 pm
I’m against racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. But let us remind ourselves that Rosa Parks sat on a government bus. Harriet Tubman was prosecuted by the government. More recently, the federal drug war has massively racist impact. And then there is war, and the bad US foreign policy. Face it, the government is not our friend. That is why I am an anarcho-capitalist. I’m also a huge fan of Doug Casey, and a subscriber to his investment newsletter. Calling anarcho-capitalists racist is really foolish. As is hoping that the government will ever take the side of the poor, or minorities.
#222 Comment By deah On January 8, 2013 @ 1:04 am
I understand those who are opposed to the “leave me alone/everything private” way of speaking that many libertarians use, and it’s true that some of us need to improve that to include the networks, community organizations, and mutual aid societies that most of us do believe constitute a thriving, dynamic, involved life that cares for those around us.
I wasn’t going to comment here, but since I ran across it elsewhere tonight, I want to mention this Frederick Douglas quote (new to me), which uses much of that same “let them alone” language. Of course, that language does not mean the interdependence of humans is unimportant.
“What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated?… Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by ever interference, and succeed best by being let alone.”
As for that interdepended-ness, check out the Robert Wicks article ‘Anarchy and Chaos in Black Communities’ [25] or, while I’m on the topic of black anarchists, the very extensive Wilton D. Alston archive [26]
I just became aware of the Nigerian economic professor George Ayittey’s blog [27]
At any rate, I (a woman, btw) hope you commenters are open minded enough, charitable enough, to consider that maybe – just maybe – this discussion is much broader, and involves many more thinkers and writers around the globe, than is presented in the SPLC’s blog.
#223 Comment By Aron On January 8, 2013 @ 10:23 am
Deah, when you can bring us sources a little more reputable as Lew Rockwell and some obscure Nigerian economist, then we’ll talk.
#224 Comment By aadila On January 8, 2013 @ 11:52 am
Bruce Guthrie,
Government also gave you the opportunity for a free public education. Government made sure first responders were there in case of a fire or other emergency. Government was there to make sure your place of employment did not expose you to unsafe conditions. Government was there to ensure that your food was of edible quality and that your medicine was tested and found safe before consumption. Government was there to make sure your sewage didn’t accumulate on your street and that your water was drinkable. Government, through the judiciary, was there to appeal to if your rights were violated or you were cheated in a transaction. No, it is not a perfect institution, but having government is very much preferable to no government at all.
#225 Comment By aadila On January 8, 2013 @ 11:55 am
Deah, I don’t think Frederick Douglas envisioned paying smaller salaries to teachers of students of color than teachers of white students within the same school district. Doing nothing doesn’t solve that problem, which goes directly back to slavery.