I did, it was ignored in order to fallaciously ask me for impossible proof.

10/28/2010 7:36:04 PM

Pupils DiL8t,

Quote :

"Are you suggesting that the people left running the factories will be of George Bush's level of intelligence or that autocrats such as him will eventually control the means to production after all?"

The sarcasm was attempting to follow the subject. And you followed it quite well. George Bush is the type of person that wins a political battle. Who gets to sit on the national facilitation board would be a political battle. Therefore, George Bush will sit on the national facilitation board. And he will use the power of that board to hand out largess to his political friends, just as he did with the power of the Presidency. Lucky for us, the Presidency is a limited office, he was limited in the favors he could hand out by Congress, the Courts, and a lack of influence.

As President, George Bush was limited to what he could get from the national treasury. As leader of the national facilitation board, George Bush could tilt the scales on every negotiation between every production unit in the country. He would influence prices, quality requirements, quantity mandates, worker allocation, and resource allocation. It was no accident that Moscow was always better supplied than the rest of the Soviet Union: that is where the planners, their friends, and their co-workers lived. Well, it would be no accident that the citizens of Washington just happen to be able to buy more and better stuff with the credits they would get paid.

That said, as corrupt as Bush was, there would still be only so much he would get away with, even after factoring in the automatic censorship that would take hold, he would get to allocate the printing presses, ink, paper, and broadcasting equipment as "best serves the people" (publish something negative about us, and you might not get any electricity next month). No, the crushing problem is the asymmetric information problems that sank the Soviet Union. It is simply not possible to collect enough information from human beings, which tend to exaggerate and even lie, to make a central "plan" work.

[Edited on October 28, 2010 at 8:47 PM. Reason : .,.]

[Edited on October 28, 2010 at 8:50 PM. Reason : .,.]

10/28/2010 8:42:13 PM

only, no, you didn't support it. asking for some mechanism by which it might work is NOT asking for impossible proof

Quote :

"Suppose inventor A had been killed before he invented item B. Let's say I make the argument, had inventor A not been killed, he would have invented item B. This is undoubtably true, but nevertheless, impossible for me to prove."

only if you pre-suppose that inventor A would have invented it. We can make no such supposition about the wealth-gap. That is what we call a "circular argument."

[Edited on October 28, 2010 at 8:48 PM. Reason : ]

10/28/2010 8:44:29 PM

Quote :

"asking for some mechanism by which it might work is NOT asking for impossible proof"

I provided that mechanism, I was asked for an example.
Here is the reasoning I posted:
"it [the technological research required] would have never even gotten rolling if there wasn't a large number of people who could afford it. If we had a wealth gap like those in less developed countries, we wouldn't have been able to invest in these kind of technologies. With electronics it costs little to make a lot of them, but a great deal to make just one, so by reducing your consumer base you reduce the profitability of things like electronics."

Quote :

"only if you pre-suppose that inventor A would have invented it."

Perhaps you can't read, because that was directly written into the statement.

Quote :

"We can make no such supposition about the wealth-gap."

I never said we could, I was giving an example of impossible proof. Please use context.

10/28/2010 9:01:45 PM

too bad even THAT explanation was already refuted

10/28/2010 9:33:08 PM

Quote :

"The sarcasm was attempting to follow the subject. And you followed it quite well. George Bush is the type of person that wins a political battle. Who gets to sit on the national facilitation board would be a political battle. Therefore, George Bush will sit on the national facilitation board. And he will use the power of that board to hand out largess to his political friends, just as he did with the power of the Presidency. Lucky for us, the Presidency is a limited office, he was limited in the favors he could hand out by Congress, the Courts, and a lack of influence. As President, George Bush was limited to what he could get from the national treasury. As leader of the national facilitation board, George Bush could tilt the scales on every negotiation between every production unit in the country. He would influence prices, quality requirements, quantity mandates, worker allocation, and resource allocation. It was no accident that Moscow was always better supplied than the rest of the Soviet Union: that is where the planners, their friends, and their co-workers lived. Well, it would be no accident that the citizens of Washington just happen to be able to buy more and better stuff with the credits they would get paid. That said, as corrupt as Bush was, there would still be only so much he would get away with, even after factoring in the automatic censorship that would take hold, he would get to allocate the printing presses, ink, paper, and broadcasting equipment as "best serves the people" (publish something negative about us, and you might not get any electricity next month). No, the crushing problem is the asymmetric information problems that sank the Soviet Union. It is simply not possible to collect enough information from human beings, which tend to exaggerate and even lie, to make a central "plan" work."

Best post I have ever seen from LoneSnark

10/28/2010 9:37:08 PM

There seem to be a lot of disjointed arguments going on in this thread right now. There's the technology thing and the argument that nothing will be invented if there is no individual profit motive for it to be invented. There are references to the inevitable consolidation of power that exists in communist countries, which (in the hands of the wrong individuals, which is also inevitable) stifles innovation and growth even more than unrestricted capitalism. Let me try to tie it together a little bit.

In our current time, energy is one of the most important issues we face as a country and a world. Suppose that, in theory, we could research and discover an applicable method of fusion power which we could then use in power plants, thereby replacing all less desirable methods of power generation. The only problem is that this will cost $1 trillion. Obviously, there is no person or even large group of people who would be willing to risk this sort of money on something that would bring so much prosperity to so many people. It would solve an astounding number of issues. Dependence on fossil fuels, basically all geopolitical problems in the Middle East, international competition for a finite fuel source. Amount of money spent on electricity, etc. Under a capitalist system, this energy source would not be discovered when "overall benefits > cost of discovery" but at the point where "profit motive > cost of discovery." Many of you will claim these are the same, but I feel as though they are not. The kinds of benefits a technology of this magnitude would create are unquantifiable. Much like the invention of the automobile or the cell phone. There are simply too many variables to have 100% accurate information.

My question to all of you is, "As the sole entity large enough to drive this sort of innovation, is it within the right of the government to research something like this using public money?" If the government was able to find a way to make this work, assume it would own the patent and allow anyone to use it freely, seeing as it is a public discovery paid for with public money.

10/28/2010 10:12:27 PM

You are wrong in one sense. A capitalist society does do work in instances where "profit motive < cost of X", it is called volunteering. Look at all the programmers who worked on Linux, or the people that wrote Wikipedia. No one made money. The profit motive was all loss, but the benefit to mankind > cost of production.

Go west and look at the Virgin Galactic project. They are spending millions, yet there is almost no chance of them making a profit, but they're doing it anyway. Why? Because it is cool, and even if they lose some money, they had fun, maybe opened space up making the world a better place, and if nothing else got exposure for the Virgin brand.

As to your question, "As the sole entity large enough to drive this sort of innovation, is it within the right of the government to research something like this using public money?" if it was somehow the case that all it took was dumping $1T down a hole was guaranteed to work, then of course the government as the right to spend its money however the legislators decide. Congress has the right to give all our money to France. It says so in the Constitution.

10/28/2010 11:27:06 PM

Quote :

"too bad even THAT explanation was already refuted"

Cool, let me know if you want to contribute to the thread.

Quote :

"Lucky for us, the Presidency is a limited office, he was limited in the favors he could hand out by Congress, the Courts, and a lack of influence."

Are you making a political argument against communism? Because that isn't what communism is.

Quote :

"A capitalist society does do work in instances where "profit motive < cost of X", it is called volunteering."

You are taking credit for something that isn't the result of capitalism, other economic systems do not exclude this kind of thing, so there's no reason you can credit capitalism with it. The fact is that in CAPITALISM that is never the case.

His point is absolutely valid. Capitalism does not take full advantage of economies of scale.

10/29/2010 1:01:11 AM

Quote :

"You are taking credit for something that isn't the result of capitalism, other economic systems do not exclude this kind of thing, so there's no reason you can credit capitalism with it."

Really? Under socialism (see Soviet Communism), how would me and my friends set up a source-forge server to distribute our version of linux? Under capitalism, anyone with money can buy industrial goods&services and use them however they see fit. It does not matter where the money comes from. You want to buy a bus to give drunks a free ride home? Just show up and be the highest bidder.

Under socialism, all goods are allocated in accordance with the government's economic plan. As such, unless you can convince some government bureaucrat to divert non-consumer goods&services to you, then you are out of luck. Not to mention the threat of imprisonment if anyone mistakes your charity work for economic activity.

Quote :

"Capitalism does not take full advantage of economies of scale."

And socialism also takes full advantage of dis-economies of scale. A private school spends far less than half as much on management as a similarly sized public school. The difference between the two is that the public school is part of a larger organization and must shuffle paperwork accordingly, the private school is not.

[Edited on October 29, 2010 at 11:17 AM. Reason : .,.]

10/29/2010 11:14:10 AM

Quote :

"how would me and my friends set up a source-forge server to distribute our version of linux?"

You just said it, set up a source forge server to distribute your version of linux.

Quote :

"Under socialism, all goods are allocated in accordance with the government's economic plan. As such, unless you can convince some government bureaucrat to divert non-consumer goods&services to you, then you are out of luck."

That's not true.

Quote :

"A private school spends far less than half as much on management as a similarly sized public school. The difference between the two is that the public school is part of a larger organization and must shuffle paperwork accordingly, the private school is not."

Or one is encumbered by a political process, any inefficiencies come from that.

10/29/2010 12:12:17 PM

Quote :

"You just said it, set up a source forge server to distribute your version of linux."

How? You cannot legally buy a server to put it on. All the ones made are spoken for by government run enterprises. Even if you managed to construct one using consumer parts, to get network bandwidth would require more than an at home DSL line, so you as an individual need what can best be described as a business line. But there are no businesses, so no such market exists. The telecommunication industry would exist to provide connectivity to government operated web pages, not to some random guy. That is called private appropriation of state assets and is illegal.

Quote :

"That's not true."

Then what is true? Tell me the steps. Clearly I don't know them, why are you keeping it a secret? In a socialist society (see Soviet Communism), how does one individual go about getting personal control over some of the means of production for personal uses? The answer is that you cannot, it is illegal for you to try, just in case you might try to turn a profit.

Quote :

"Or one is encumbered by a political process, any inefficiencies come from that."

And how does one have the political system run the economy without becoming encumbered by the political system?

10/29/2010 2:14:01 PM

Quote :

"All the ones made are spoken for by government run enterprises."

In the USSR people were able to obtain musical instruments even though they may not have been commissioned musicians.

Quote :

"The telecommunication industry would exist to provide connectivity to government operated web pages, not to some random guy."

This is ridiculous. There is nothing preventing the people from having their own web pages.

Additionally the soviet had a system that supported this kind of invention and was very successful at it through universities and publicly funded research. Don't you think those developers would rather have support and money to get the servers they need and any other sort of resources?

Quote :

"And how does one have the political system run the economy without becoming encumbered by the political system?"

A political system doesn't run the economy.

10/29/2010 5:16:59 PM

Quote :

"In the USSR people were able to obtain musical instruments even though they may not have been commissioned musicians."

Yes, some instruments were available for sale to consumers. They were sold as consumer goods for people to play with. But you want to play in a public venue? Press an album? Now you want to distribute it!?!? Schedule an appointment with the Union of Soviet Composers and get yourself a state supervisor. Otherwise, you might be risking a prison sentence.

Quote :

"Additionally the soviet had a system that supported this kind of invention and was very successful at it through universities and publicly funded research. Don't you think those developers would rather have support and money to get the servers they need and any other sort of resources?"

So you admit it, without going through the politically run system, such as a state run university or a state run institute, whatever your idea for helping humanity, you were out of luck. Yes, if your father was a commissar in the communist party, you could do whatever you wanted to do. Just give the word, the public at large will pay for it.

But, if we (more than just individuals, groups of people without influence are just as powerless as an individual without influence) for whatever reason cannot obtain any influence over the political system, we cannot obtain a political appointment to state jobs similar to what we want to do, then we are out of luck. A garage is not an option. Society will do more than just ignore our efforts, it will actively suppress us. Want to help the poor in Kenya? Good luck getting an exit visa. Even if you and your friends are willing to work overtime to pay for the stuff needed to go it alone, the means of production are closed to you. Unless you are lucky enough that everything you needed was already for sale to consumers, you needed active government help. In other words, just by ignoring your efforts the government has probably killed your efforts.

Quote :

"This is ridiculous. There is nothing preventing the people from having their own web pages."

It is ridiculous. You don't seem to know that Wikipedia is a product of more than just clever HTML encoding. We want to write a whole bunch of software and run it on the only servers with the bandwidth and power to make it useful, namely government owned servers in government run server farms, and they are going to let us do this why? They have only disincentive to do so: if what we do breaks something, it is their ass. It isn't like we somehow covered their risks by paying them to do this for us.

Quote :

"A political system doesn't run the economy."

Odd. With state ownership and running of the means of production, and every state that has ever existed being run by a political system of some sort, I clearly have no idea what you mean by this.

10/30/2010 3:06:20 AM

Snarkie, unless your memory has failed you, you should know what I was actually advocating. Do you simply prefer tearing down that straw man?

GoldenViper: I suggest anarchist communism.

LoneSnark: State communism is bad!

10/30/2010 12:28:51 PM

Golden, am I to understand you are Pupils DiL8t? The phrase "I suggest anarchist communism." has not been spoken in this thread once. Someone did post a link to "Participatory_economics", which danced around many issues to sound great, but strongly implied state communism.

Of course, you know why I cannot speak against anarchist communism: any anarchist system would seem the same: all interactions are voluntary, so you are free to work for free (or in kind) and I am free to demand a salary. No major difference.

10/30/2010 2:10:56 PM

Okay, I guess it has been a long time. We're both older than we used to be, that's for sure.

10/30/2010 2:13:28 PM

Quote :

"But you want to play in a public venue? Press an album? Now you want to distribute it!?!? Schedule an appointment with the Union of Soviet Composers and get yourself a state supervisor. Otherwise, you might be risking a prison sentence."

All of those were done in the USSR, with no prison sentence whatsoever.

The rest of this stuff is moot as you've made a strawman. I've suggested using a vehicle to get between two places and you've explained how bad a square wheeled motorcycle is to use for that purpose. I'm arguing for an interface, not an implementation.

Quote :

"You don't seem to know that Wikipedia is a product of more than just clever HTML encoding."

I assure you I do. Ultimately whether it is an application that dynamically builds a page by interfacing with a database, or its a geocities statically written page, both are html responses generated by a server.
It doesn't take a massive amount of resources to do any of the kinds of things that done through volunteering, and even ones that do manage to get by donations, these kinds of things are not excluded by any economic system, and ultimately they're fairly irrelevant considering they constitute 0.000000000000000000001% of our economy.

Quote :

"With state ownership and running of the means of production, and every state that has ever existed being run by a political system of some sort, I clearly have no idea what you mean by this."

I think goldenviper just explained it.

10/30/2010 3:22:02 PM

So ugh, not to derail the thread, but if communism is so great...why did it fail in the Soviet Union?

10/30/2010 4:02:55 PM

Quote :

"All of those were done in the USSR"

Then you know nothing of Soviet organizational history.

Quote :

"I think goldenviper just explained it."

Odd. Didn't realize Kris was an anarchist. Then it is easy. What we are talking about here is anarcho-communist activies. Such behavior is well tolerated, even a feature, of capitalist and anarcho-capitalist economic systems, and would probably work fine in any anarcho society, including anarcho-communism. But this is specifically why I made clear I was talking about command-communism, or the democracy based command economy described by "Participatory_economics", which is what started this entire conversation. A system of pure majority rule would never be mistaken as anarcho-anything.

Quote :

"and ultimately they're fairly irrelevant considering they constitute 0.000000000000000000001% of our economy."

Bullshit. The Mozilla Corporation alone constitutes 0.00045% of our dollar economy. Have you never heard of the red cross? And this ignores the actual benefits to mankind all this volunteer work produces, even while most of it does not appear in GDP statistics.

Quote :

"these kinds of things are not excluded by any economic system"

All evidence to the contrary? command-communism is an economic system, and it excludes quite a bit of anarcho-communist activity (known inside capitalist societies as volunteer work, charity, or loss-leading activity).

10/30/2010 4:19:58 PM

Quote :

"Then you know nothing of Soviet organizational history."

You know nothing of actual soviet history, you simply imagine a political system that never existed.

Quote :

"Didn't realize Kris was an anarchist. Then it is easy."

I'm not, that's a political system.

Quote :

"I made clear I was talking about command-communism"

I made it clear I was talking about the economic system, not a political system. I'm not going to defend command-communism, it's a strawman.

Quote :

"The Mozilla Corporation alone constitutes 0.00045% of our dollar economy."

That's a pretty small number, even smaller if you rightfully compare it to the world economy. But again, you're arguing a strawman, economic systems don't exclude these things, only a political system would.

Quote :

"command-communism is an economic system"

No, it's a combination of the two, just the same as anarcho-communism.

10/30/2010 5:46:33 PM

Communism or socialism could never come directly from anarchy, nor is either system compatible with anarchy. Marx posited that you could not have communism before socialism, nor could you have socialism before capitalism. State-controlled communism is the only form it can take. Even in a best case scenario, 49.9% of the population will find that the other 50.1% is getting a better deal than them. That's why a small elite, usually in conjunction with an army, has to force communism upon the entire population. No one can be allowed to leave, because the system demands that the few are exploited by the many. Communism and socialism set the unrealistic expectation that people will be altruistic, yet anyone that takes an honest look at themselves will realize that we are not an altruistic species.

What's next? Anarcho-syndicalism? Yes, we'll replace our government overlords with a unionized hierarchy and call it anarchy.

10/30/2010 5:57:42 PM

Quote :

"Communism or socialism could never come directly from anarchy, nor is either system compatible with anarchy."

I would say the same thing about capitalism.

Quote :

"State-controlled communism is the only form it can take."

But how does the state function?

I've explained my ideas in other threads, and it is not a command-communism system, nor is it anarcho-communism.

10/30/2010 6:09:15 PM

Quote :

"I would say the same thing about capitalism."

Capitalism is compatible with anarchy, though. If everything is privately owned, and thus all property is used for private use or profit, that in no way comes into conflict with there being an absence of government. Capitalism undoubtedly did come directly out of anarchy, which did exist for billions of years on earth, as soon as humans were able to find material goods and exchange them for other goods or services.

Quote :

"But how does the state function?"

You'll have to clarify, though I think you're intentionally being vague.

10/30/2010 6:22:12 PM

You dont know what capitalism is. Ownership does not exist without a government to define it. Capitalism did not exist before goverments existed to define and enforce property rights. Without ownership there cannot be trade.

10/30/2010 7:49:15 PM

Quote :

"Ownership does not exist without a government to define it."

... Really? Even under complete True Anarchy™ ownership exists. How strong or permanent that ownership is may be up for debate, but it's existence is given and needs no government to define it.

10/30/2010 8:51:13 PM

^ Bourgeois property needs either enforcement or an unlikely general social agreement. Above all, ownership is an idea. No law of physics mandates the construct.

10/31/2010 1:39:57 AM

^ We might be talking about different things, but if you think the concept of ownership is nothing more than a bourgeois construct, you've clearly never tried to take a toy from a baby. Resource control is ultimately ownership, whether or not it's explicitly stated.

10/31/2010 9:03:39 AM

Quote :

"Above all, ownership is an idea. No law of physics mandates the construct."

Bullshit. Under anarchy, there is no monopoly on violence, so the rules are whatever the individuals in the immediate context agree on under threat of immediate violence. If I shoot at and drive off everyone that comes onto my property, then my property is secure. That the system fails occasionally (marauding invaders) does not negate the security of property any more than the occasional imminent domain abuse negates property here in America.

^ It is kind of a theory of physics. Even before guns, but especially after guns, it is far easier to defend a fixed position than it is to invade one. This is why property rights were remarkably stable in western expansion long before statehood.

But good job changing the subject.

Quote :

"You know nothing of actual soviet history, you simply imagine a political system that never existed."

Forgive me if I take the account of historians over you. I will once again refer you to the book used here at NCState to teach European History, An economic history of the Soviet Union

Quote :

"I made it clear I was talking about the economic system, not a political system. I'm not going to defend command-communism, it's a strawman."

When it is the political system that runs the economy, such as here in America, it is absurd to try to discuss one without the other. This is a silly attempt on your part to dance around the issue. You said there was no such thing as an economic system that excludes these things, now you yourself admit that there are lots of economic systems that exclude these things, once they are combined with a political system. Well, I have never heard of an economic system that existed without a political system, even if that system was anarchy, especially when the economic system is "Government ownership of the means of production", or do you not believe this is an actual economic system?

[Edited on October 31, 2010 at 9:23 AM. Reason : .,.]

10/31/2010 9:22:52 AM

I really do believe is either one of the most deluded intelligent individuals on the site, or he is clearly and without a doubt the best troll here, hands down.

10/31/2010 9:25:53 AM

Quote :

"Even under complete True Anarchy™ ownership exists."

That's like saying crime exists under anarchy, which isn't true. Sure things we consider to be crime would happen, but without a legal system to enforce their definition of what crime is, it simple wouldn't exist. In the same way, ownership doesn't exist, sure people would posses things and exclude others from them, but without a legal system granting them that right and defending it if need be, they do not own it.

Quote :

"the rules are whatever the individuals in the immediate context agree on under threat of immediate violence"

Ownership is a term everyone agrees on, and is enforced as such, everyone can't have their own.

Quote :

"Even before guns, but especially after guns, it is far easier to defend a fixed position than it is to invade one. This is why property rights were remarkably stable in western expansion long before statehood."

But we have missles and planes and shit, we kind of defeated that whole thing, about the only advantage that still stands is hiding, and that is being slowly beaten down by UAVs and such.

Quote :

"you yourself admit that there are lots of economic systems that exclude these things"

Those are not economic systems, those are combinations of the two, and I assure you it is the political part of the system that make it the way you are trying to strawman.

Quote :

"I have never heard of an economic system that existed without a political system"

You never see a car on the road without wheels, that doesn't mean they aren't separate things.

10/31/2010 11:25:18 AM

Quote :

"You never see a car on the road without wheels, that doesn't mean they aren't separate things."

Fine, let us use your metaphor. I have said some cars work poorly when it comes to letting their users do a certain task, say tow a boat. Your response is that no tire has ever made it hard to tow a boat. This is true, and totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

I made it clear from the very start what I was attacking: "Under socialism (see Soviet Communism)" What part of "Soviet Communism" implied to you that I was talking exclusively about communism the economic system (tire) and not a political-economic system as implemented in an historical example (car), the Soviet Union? If you don't want to defend the USSR, you don't have to, just admit I have a point in one historical example and then explain why your preferred form of political-economic system does not suffer the same failures.

Quote :

"but without a legal system to enforce their definition of what crime is, it simple wouldn't exist."

More semantics. If some element of society hunts you down and punishes you as retaliation for some offense, I don't see what the effective difference is. Social norms of behavior are still being enforced. People would most likely still refer to them as crimes, even if there is no state-sanctioned police or courts around to agree with them.

Quote :

"Ownership is a term everyone agrees on, and is enforced as such, everyone can't have their own."

Bullshit. Ownership, like most social law, is a negotiation. No two judges will rule the same way in every case, so why should people?

10/31/2010 1:29:43 PM

Quote :

"I have said some cars work poorly when it comes to letting their users do a certain task, say tow a boat. Your response is that no tire has ever made it hard to tow a boat. This is true, and totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand."

I have said that tires don't have anything to do with towing a boat, yet you keep saying that cars are bad at towing boats. This is how you are building a strawman. You are trying to get me to say cars are good at towing boats.

Quote :

"I made it clear from the very start what I was attacking"

No you said communism didn't allow volunteering.

Quote :

"If some element of society hunts you down and punishes you as retaliation for some offense, I don't see what the effective difference is. Social norms of behavior are still being enforced. People would most likely still refer to them as crimes, even if there is no state-sanctioned police or courts around to agree with them."

Semantics is right, you are trying to remove all meaning from the word "crime".

10/31/2010 1:41:40 PM

Quote :

"^ Bourgeois property needs either enforcement or an unlikely general social agreement. Above all, ownership is an idea. No law of physics mandates the construct."

Rothbard would agree with you. He refers to property as a praxeological matter, rather than strictly physical. Property has to be created through human action. It's not as if we're working on a "dibs" system; man must combine labor with land, and the resources that he acquires legitimately to use that land are his property. In other words, property is conceptual, rather than defined by rigid dimensions and boundaries, as we normally think of land.

10/31/2010 3:20:37 PM

Quote :

"1337 b4k4: We might be talking about different things, but if you think the concept of ownership is nothing more than a bourgeois construct, you've clearly never tried to take a toy from a baby."

Bourgeois property has a specific meaning within Marxist theory: the private control of the means of production. Your baby's toy definitely does not count as such.

Quote :

"LoneSnark: Bullshit."

Nothing you wrote even addresses the issue of property as an idea, much less refutes it. Objectively, a factory is just a factory and a coat is a just a coat. Countless ways to conceptualize access to resources exist. The notion of ownership at some level or another has obvious advantages for owners under current and historical circumstances, hence its existence. Under different different social and material conditions, it may fade away. Consider abundance, for instance. Presently almost nobody thinks about owning air or sunlight. Information ownership in the digital age creates paradoxes and controversy.

Quote :

"Under anarchy, there is no monopoly on violence, so the rules are whatever the individuals in the immediate context agree on under threat of immediate violence. If I shoot at and drive off everyone that comes onto my property, then my property is secure."

Anarchist society as traditionally conceived requires the general absence of coercion. Without some of level of agreement on legitimate property claims, your notion shooting to control territory could quickly lead to a reemergence of the state. Fierce competition between would-be tyrants does not anarchism make.

10/31/2010 4:20:08 PM

Quote :

"No you said communism didn't allow volunteering."

No, I said Soviet Communism didn't allow for volunteering. And instead of either agreeing or disagreeing, you play games with semantics.

Quote :

"Anarchist society as traditionally conceived requires the general absence of coercion."

Maybe in some Utopian visions of anarchist society. But anarcho-capitalists believe civil society cannot exist without the threat of violence and that mechanisms exist for civil society to shoot just enough people to get the incentive structure right (private property, enforced contracts, etc) all without an official government. I strongly suggest a book entitled The Machinery of Freedom.

10/31/2010 4:47:30 PM

Quote :

"No, I said Soviet Communism didn't allow for volunteering. And instead of either agreeing or disagreeing, you play games with semantics."

Actually I misspoke, you said capitalism was the cause of volunteering, I disagreed and you then suppressed the correlative by stating that soviet communism did not allow for volunteering.

10/31/2010 5:09:00 PM

^^ Anarcho-capitalism represent a bit of departure from the earlier anarchist tradition, as contested as that was. Even Benjamin Tucker - whose thought resembles Rothbard's in many ways - suggested the limitation land ownership by use to ten acres.

10/31/2010 6:22:48 PM

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2010/wp10268.pdf

I don't really want to comment on this paper's accuracy But I thought some might like to read it, it proposes a model that connects wealth inequality and economic collapses.

12/15/2010 2:35:45 PM

Well I'm not going to read it but it was obviously written by poor people who are angry at rich people because they work so hard and get paid the huge sums of money they so rightly deserve.

12/15/2010 2:45:59 PM

Well, here we have a wonderful experiment being run in volunteerism.

The capitalist world has created Wikipedia, "Founded in 2001 in Cuba's long-time ideological enemy, the United States, Wikipedia is a multilingual, free-content encyclopaedia. It encourages editorial changes from everybody who comes to the site, although restrictions exist on about 2,000 controversial articles. Wikipedia has more than 3.5 million entries in English and 682,000 in Spanish, and some attracts 78 million visitors a month."

The communist world, namely Cuba, has created a competitor. "The new Spanish language website will be officially launched later on Tuesday but it is already up and running with nearly 20,000 entries on ecured.cu The site says the aim is to spread knowledge without a profit motive. Updates will apparently be allowed with the administrators' approval but it is not clear who actually runs the site."

Let us see which one contributes more to mankind.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101214/02194212268/cuba-tries-to-create-its-own-wikipedia-might-have-difficulty-seeing-it-as-it-blocks-internet-access.shtml

12/15/2010 4:49:14 PM

talk about a disingenuous comparison.

12/15/2010 4:56:12 PM

Are you trying to make a point? You should probably qualify it.

12/15/2010 4:57:33 PM

Quote :

"Are you trying to make a point? You should probably qualify it."

I think it's fairly clear what he's saying. This:
Let us see which one contributes more to mankind.

Is not a fair comparison. It does, however, blow Lonesnark's argument in this very thread of "communism does not allow volunteering" out of the water.

12/15/2010 6:22:03 PM

Nope, he said "soviet communism".

...but I guess that's what happens when you start a debate founded on pseudo-intellectual semantics rather than actual substance.

12/15/2010 6:37:43 PM

How many times have we said that a free society would allow people to participate in a communist system? I mean, if you're a hard worker, you'd be an idiot to do so, but it would be allowed. Communism cannot be sustained without the state, because it opposes human nature, and abolishes the profit motive which is integral to a healthy economy.

12/15/2010 6:44:57 PM

Quote :

"Communism cannot be sustained without the state"

No system other than complete anarchy can be sustained without the state.

Quote :

"opposes human nature"

Humans have no nature, they merely have an environment and are subject to conditioning.

12/15/2010 6:50:25 PM

Quote :

"No system other than complete anarchy can be sustained without the state."

capitalism can exist without the state.

12/15/2010 6:52:03 PM

Quote :

"Humans have no nature, they merely have an environment and are subject to conditioning."

Humans rarely demonstrate sincere altruism. We're selfish creatures, and from an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense. Communism, without a state, asks that individuals work hard just for the sake of doing it. There isn't a soul on this message board that likes to work hard and not be rewarded properly for it. That's why communism must have a state imposing the will of a few onto the many. Without that, communism reverts to feudalism, hilariously enough for Marx.

You call anarchy a system, which it is not. It's only the absence of a state. Capitalism is perfectly compatible with anarchy, because even in the absence of a state, people will still labor in exchange for goods or services. The value of their labor will scale with the amount of goods and services they receive.

[Edited on December 15, 2010 at 7:58 PM. Reason : ]

12/15/2010 7:55:07 PM

Quote :

"capitalism can exist without the state."

Capitalism requires private ownership, ownership requires property rights, property rights require government.

Quote :

"Humans rarely demonstrate sincere altruism."

The environment rarely encourages altruism. But when it does, humans demonstrate it, just like all other animals.

Quote :

"Communism, without a state, asks that individuals work hard just for the sake of doing it."

No, there's a gain there, but it's complicated to explain.

Quote :

"people will still labor in exchange for goods or services"

Why would they, when the stronger could just take it?

12/15/2010 10:36:12 PM