This is really getting me angry:
Common versus Government Property
Anybody who is keen enough can detect the Marxist agenda of this article. He refers to Elinor Ostrom's work, which I am not familiar with, and perhaps he is misrepresenting her work , I just don't know. But the article itself is a complete fallacy in terms of the message that it tries to deliver.
I am all open to other opinions and challenging point of views, but this is a disgrace to FEE. The author is a clear economic ignoramus, see some of his comments below the article. He compares Joint stock companies to Market Socialism! What is going on? Have they been receiving monetary contributions from Marxists?
Don't pretend you never heard of Carson, noob!
Do you have any substantial objections, or just angry bluster?
AnalyticalAnarchism.net - The Positive Political Economy of Anarchism
Because left wing garbage is now, as ever, in vogue.
“Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.” - Benito Mussolini"Toute nation a le gouvernemente qu'il mérite." - Joseph de Maistre
common property = no property
Yeah Kevin Carson is a confused one. He also believes in the labour theory of value.
"No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person." ~ Karl Hess
"look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?" ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
fancyshirtman: Yeah Kevin Carson is a confused one. He also believes in the labour theory of value.
"Look at me, I'm quoting another user to show how wrong I think they are, out of arrogance of my own position. Wait, this is my own quote, oh shi-" ~ Nitroadict
Modified LTV, with Austrian insights, but actually reading his stuff is too much work, I guess. If you're going to disagree with him (I do as well, in case you feel the need to get defensive), do it better next time.
Having read his theory, it looks like a bunch of incoherent bad economics (making him the second major Austrian crank, after George Reisman) and obsessive harping about his particular pet moralisms, none of which (when they are true) are remotely original with him (even within the Austrian school).
Liberte: Having read his theory, it looks like a bunch of incoherent bad economics (making him the second major Austrian crank, after George Reisman) and obsessive harping about his particular pet moralisms, none of which (when they are true) are remotely original with him (even within the Austrian school).
I think without all of his moralism, though, he might find some common ground with distributists & the new right (to generalize a bit, albiet).
Be that as it may, the redoubtable New Right would also find much in common with Gabriel Kolko, who has made (in more detail) basically every valid claim Carson has, without either resorting to a 'labor theory of value' or claiming himself to be an Austrian economist.
I would not be surprised if I found him less interesting whenever I get into reading some heavy Austrian econ texts, though.
I can not recommend too strongly reading both Human Action and Mises' three books on epistemology and methodology in economics. Though I disagree with him in some of his Neo-Kantian framework and dispute a handful of his economics, Mises is one of the few authors I have ever read whose writing is at the same time broad, incredibly powerful and almost never wrong.
Liberte: making him the second major Austrian crank, after George Reisman
making him the second major Austrian crank, after George Reisman
What do you have against George Reisman? (Serious question.)
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
He refers to Elinor Ostrom's work, which I am not familiar with, and perhaps he is misrepresenting her work , I just don't know.
Ostrom merely shows that the so called "tragedy of the commons" is not, in anyway, an inevitable condition of shared property. Social rules will emerge, independent of government decrees/interventionism, which limit the over-usage of depletable and shared resources (spontaneous order). Statists have used game theory to show that the problem of the commons is an unavoidable condition/market failure, which requires immediate government intervention. In fact, this was the rationale used by Roosevelt in the 30s for controlling oil and agricultural industries. Of course, her argument only makes makes sense at the micro level; common property ownership, at the macro level, is both entirely unnecessary and impossible.
She's not saying that private property is an inefficient social institution; all she's saying is that in those rare (unavoidable) circumstances, where property is not clearly defined, social arrangements will emerge and prevent Pareto inefficient outcomes. Essentially, her work is agreeable to anarchists, of all sorts.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
Carson's comparison of the emergent governance in common properties from voluntary individual interaction (Ostrom) to the economic illiteracy of top-down "market socialism" is silly, but the former point is good. There are situations in which individual private property is impractical, suboptimal, or impossible. We deal with commons problems all the time - from families to roommates to community parks to roads and so on. Ostrom's work is a sound answer to the New Institutional economists who argue that all externalities must be internalized through individualized property rights. And that's a good thing because statists can easily point out that some property is not practically or possibly individualized - air, ocean, etc.
His major project, the attempt to integrate cost-of-production classical theories (as well as the related attempt to replace marginal productivity in pricing of wage factors), his bizarre denial of opportunity costs, his ridiculous notion of 'wealth' as an 'objective value' as the object of economics (as opposed to subjective preferences', his attempt to fuse the logically and epistemically incoherent Objectivist Pulp Philosophy with Austrian and Classical economics - oh, and his conviction that Google is out to censor him.
The man is 1) not a good economist; 2) a Randoid; 3) full of outlandish conspiracy theories and totally unrealistic views of society and 4) completely crazy.
In other words, he belongs on the Mises.org forum.
Here is a post on my blog about him.
suboptimal
Meaningless.
Your screechings about people at this forum leaves me wondering whether you find people here worse than elsewhere or whether you simply hate everyone everywhere.
I hate almost everyone everywhere (when I am not utterly indifferent); I do like some of the people on this forum but, as a rule, they also tend to hate most of you. They just aren't as belligerant about it as I am.
Cal: There are situations in which individual private property is impractical, suboptimal, or impossible. That's a baseless assertion that is just accepted by most people but like everything else, is totally false. Cal: from families to roommates Odd choice of examples Cal: community parks to roads and so on All of the above are economic goods and there are no special laws of economics for the goods above, as oppose to food, shoes, cloths, and iPhones. All of the above can be, and were at some point in the past, privately owned. "the emergent governance in common properties from voluntary individual interaction (Ostrom) " Again, I'm not familiar with Ostrom, however, by no means does this imply that such type of "ownership" is a third way. By this logic, collectivist tribal economics is also a viable third system, since it has existed in the past for thousands of years. When we are saying that that there is no alternative to private property, we are referring to a modern industrial complex society. Not tribesman running around naked fishing with their bare hands. | Post Points: 20
There are situations in which individual private property is impractical, suboptimal, or impossible.
That's a baseless assertion that is just accepted by most people but like everything else, is totally false.
Cal: from families to roommates
from families to roommates
Odd choice of examples
Cal: community parks to roads and so on
community parks to roads and so on
All of the above are economic goods and there are no special laws of economics for the goods above, as oppose to food, shoes, cloths, and iPhones. All of the above can be, and were at some point in the past, privately owned.
"the emergent governance in common properties from voluntary individual interaction (Ostrom) "
Again, I'm not familiar with Ostrom, however, by no means does this imply that such type of "ownership" is a third way. By this logic, collectivist tribal economics is also a viable third system, since it has existed in the past for thousands of years.
When we are saying that that there is no alternative to private property, we are referring to a modern industrial complex society. Not tribesman running around naked fishing with their bare hands.
I hate almost everyone everywhere (when I am not utterly indifferent)
what a badass
The cool kids.
I hate almost everyone everywhere (when I am not utterly indifferent) what a badass
Liberte sees controversy as an end in itself.
it's funny...even the mises forums are held to the natural laws of females on online forums.
lol.
I do like some of the people on this forum but, as a rule, they also tend to hate most of you.
Are you making the presumption that the forum users are all on the offensive with each other, and that it's a rule that everyone's out to get you per se?
Caley McKibbin: common property = no property
hahaha
I don't really want to comment or read anything here.I have near zero in common with many of you.I may return periodically when there's something you need to know.
Near Mutualist/Libertarian Socialist.
"In any case, it irks me that such a generalization occurs, even if I agree with disagreeing with Carson. It reminds me of the Tea Partiers proclaiming socialism to Obama, when even Ron Paul rebuked this by correctly calling him a Corporatist. "
It's like that all the time here.Criticize An-cap or come to a leftist conclusion or even just USE leftist words and you must be a commie sympathizer.
Your emotional reaction against the way socialists use "the commons" is blinding you to the perfectly valid point the article appears to be making about "the commons":
If you and your neighbors all bought a plot of land to use for the grazing of sheep, you would HAVE a "commons". It would also be a form of private property.
In what I've read of the article so far, that's exactly what he appears to be saying:
You had some feudal landowner with a thousand acres of land. He lets his 4 children, then his 16 grandchildren, all have a house on his land, but they share "common areas" on it. When he dies, those commons remain commonly owned. Eventually, the origin of the "common" part is forgotten, and it's usurped and violated in some way, perhaps by the "village elders" that his descendants ended up organizing to manage the common areas, or through "privatization".
The original "commons" was indeed private property, in that scenario. Its distribution was as valid as anyone's will being used to divide up their estate, today.
Likewise, any group setting up a "colony" in the New World were able to CHOOSE to set up "common areas", the way you and your neighbors could.
If you and your neighbors buy up a vacant lot and use it for sheep herding, and the City comes along and condemns it to build a strip mall, then your private property rights are being violated, because the Commons was violated.
Don't have such a knee-jerk reaction to collectivism. What is evil is coercion. VOLUNTARY collectivism is absolutely valid, and in fact would be common in a free market, free society.
For example, families, covenant neighborhoods, real corporations (not to be confused with the socialist "public corporation" of today), et cetera. They are forms of collective that would be inevitable and sometimes really good for society.
Since we're sharing, I'll share a few things in the libertarian community that bug me:
That people consider it acceptable to deviate miles to the right, but freak out about deviancy to the left
That even quoting a leftist scholar in a paper is considered somehow being a socialist
That too often, quoting an idea and following it with exclamation marks is supposed to substitute for a rebuttal
That too many libertarians don't know what Marxism is, or what Keynesianism is, or think the Tea Party is libertarian, or think Obama is a socialist
That some students or non-specialists think it sensible to attack, in simplistic ways, scholars doing hard work on subtle points. It is not a scholar's fault that you don't understand the the ins and outs of some detail in their field, and think you can refute them using 101 concepts - as if they hadn't heard about those
That the debate can get just as shrill and issue-focused as is the norm on the HLN network
That somehow Michelle Bachmann is more acceptable than Mike Gravel
That sometimes young people are encouraged to think that they have nothing to learn from their teachers/professors, simply because they aren't libertarians. Would you think this is a good idea if people were saying there's nothing to be learned from Dr. Block because he is a libertarian? This is a peculiar strain of anti-intellectualism and refusal to learn about other schools in a world that is, by and large, far more intellectual and open than any other
I don't have a problem with vigorous scholarly debate. It doesn't bother me to read good critiques of Kevin Carson; the reviews by Robert Murphy and Walter Block come to mind. They made clear that they reviewers had read the book, taken it seriously, and were debating points they disagreed with for real reasons. They weren't denunciations or angry insistances that Kevin should be silenced because they didn't like things he said.
How did this ancient thread get back to life?
JAlanKatz:They weren't denunciations or angry insistances that Kevin should be silenced because they didn't like things he said.
Not being fond of the idea that FEE is giving Carson a platform to propagate his syndicalist ideology does not mean he needs to be silenced. That's a fallacy.
BTW, more so then giving him a platform, I think the article is dishonest. He is trying to sneak in his anti private property ideology. NO, most people won't realize it. That's why it's dishonest.
Read the first couple pages of his book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (I think that's what it's called). You won't be dissapointed.
DD5: This is really getting me angry: Common versus Government Property Anybody who is keen enough can detect the Marxist agenda of this article. He refers to Elinor Ostrom's work, which I am not familiar with, and perhaps he is misrepresenting her work , I just don't know. But the article itself is a complete fallacy in terms of the message that it tries to deliver. I am all open to other opinions and challenging point of views, but this is a disgrace to FEE. The author is a clear economic ignoramus, see some of his comments below the article. He compares Joint stock companies to Market Socialism! What is going on? Have they been receiving monetary contributions from Marxists?
DD5, can you point out any economic errors in the article _before_ the part that starts with the title 'the trouble with muddy waters', where I, indeed, detect some miscomprehensions. (The idea that shareholders don't control their firm is, indeed, wrong.) Because at first glance - as someone familiar with Ostroms work - I don't see any real problems (I could be wrong, I just glanced over it), but I could understand some misconceptions, due to lack of knowledge of Ostroms work. :)
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.
On how it came to life, dunno. When I looked at the most active forum threads, it was on the top 5. So I read it.
Fine, you're not calling for him to be silenced, you're calling for libertarian foundations not to have a top libertarian scholar publish his work. That's reminiscent of how Koch treated Rothbard.
I think your claim of dishonesty and your reading of Kevin's motives are mistaken. He's not sneaking anything in anywhere - he's claiming that a certain set of beliefs about libertarianism and property are incompatible. If this is the case, it needs to be pointed out. If it isn't the case, let the truth out. The appropriate place to have that discussion is within libertarian circles, so saying libertarian organizations shouldn't publish the argument is tantamount to attempting to win it by fiat.
That's not true - although, not necessarily. There is a (commonly) used definition in economics that sees 'common property' as a subdivision (a kind of) private property. Historically; the English commons where exactly that: a kind of private property.
A property shared by a lot of people, with each their own incentives and 'maximizing behavior' but on the other hand there was shared control regarding the rules that governed it. It's private property, because they could exclude others who weren't owners of that common, but it was still a common.
If it was the entire planetary population you could still say that because in concept they could exclude men in flying saucers that might visit Earth at some future date. It's just twisting interpretation. Give communists a term and whatever concept was represented by it will be a forgotten relic.
AdrianHealey:DD5, can you point out any economic errors in the article _before_ the part that starts with the title 'the trouble with muddy waters', where I,
The article's [hidden] message is basically this: The private property vs. State ownership is a false dichotomy. There is a third way.
Now, if FEE is going to publish a challenge to what praxeology and economics has already firmly established, I would like the economists' claims (as Mises would put it) actually addressed. Not ignored like there is no such thing as economic science, and then begin to assert your case with a bunch of quotes from this or that historical work.
AdrianHealey:It's private property, because they could exclude others who weren't owners of that common, but it was still a common.
Could they sell their share?
If they could it would not prove ownership. In the case of stock market shares, you have limited privileges that you can exercise. "Share" does not mean that you own anything real. You can't drive a forklift out the factory because it's value is assessed as the same percentage of book value as your share is of market cap. Incorporation is a limited version of nationalization.
My guess is that this Ostrom is basing all of this on the corporatist Scandinavian model of state.
Bugs...
So, they are correct in the comparison:
He compares Joint stock companies to Market Socialism!
But stock shares are not ownership in anything.
DD5: AdrianHealey:It's private property, because they could exclude others who weren't owners of that common, but it was still a common. Could they sell their share? I have no idea regarding the rules that governed the transmission of the shared ownership of the old commons. Why would 'being able to sell' in any way be relevant for the question if it's a private property relationship? I take it you imply that it's impossible that 'selling' is a necessary condition for it to be private, but that seems weird. The common examples that Ostrom uses in her works, in any case do not hint at any way that they weren't able to sell there share of the deal. The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is. | Post Points: 20
DD5: AdrianHealey:DD5, can you point out any economic errors in the article _before_ the part that starts with the title 'the trouble with muddy waters', where I, The article's [hidden] message is basically this: The private property vs. State ownership is a false dichotomy. There is a third way. Now, if FEE is going to publish a challenge to what praxeology and economics has already firmly established, I would like the economists' claims (as Mises would put it) actually addressed. Not ignored like there is no such thing as economic science, and then begin to assert your case with a bunch of quotes from this or that historical work.
No, that's a complete misunderstanding of at least Ostrom's work (which could be Carsson's fault), nor do I think that's Carsson's idea.
The dichotomoy between one _specific_ kind of private property vs state ownership is a false dichotomy, and he's completely right in that regard. Think the typical 'tragedy of the commons' story (Hardin). The traditional conclusion is either 'privatize' the bunch (in different parcels) or let the state control it. What Ostrom analyzed - and what Carsson promulgated - is that (1) different incentive structures (which is relatively unlike a normal firm that just ones to maximimze profit) are still compatible with a (2) general use of it. 'Common' property - multiple owners with equal 'share' of a certain object - is a kind of private property. If you want, I'll take some time to give an example I read about her by heart.
The reason why I asked to point out any mistakes before the part on 'muddled waters' is that from this he concludes that a typical stock market firm would be antithetical to this idea, which doesn't really make much sense to me. But everything he wrote until that point, made perfect sense to me.
I don't see any real challenge to Mises/Praeology up until the part he discusses a typical stock market firm. If you see any before that, could you please point them out?
Cal: There are situations in which individual private property is impractical, suboptimal, or impossible.
DD5:That's a baseless assertion that is just accepted by most people but like everything else, is totally false.
I'm sorry DD5, but I don't think you've understood the claim here.
Ostrom's work - where Cal is hinting on - doesn't deny (Austrian) economics or invalidate's it in anyway.
Read what Cal says: sometimes _individual_ property right's are 'impractical, suboptimal or impossible'. It doesn't say 'private property is impractical, suboptimal or impossible'. It talks about an individual claim to something. Again: the common example that Long used in the Carsson article is a good way. Sometimes it's true that a property right structure arose that is private but common, meaning a bunch of people together own it, but they have excludable powers to others. Sometimes connected to geographical locations.
It _can_ be true - according to the preferences of the people themselves - that it's a better idea to organize these commons in a _joint_ way rather than splitting the commons up in _individual_ property rights (so that each owns a little common). Sometimes it's better to organize this common with certain rules (like; everybody get's to use one part of the parcel and we rotate it, and there are rules governing what each of us can do with the part they are holding on to) than just split the parcel up. This doesn't seem all that weird as a claim: these decisions are happening in the world right now, within a (hampered) market structure. (Some of the commons Ostrom uses are about a 1000 years old (the youngest was around a 100) and all of these times these rules worked and adapted to changing situations: those are market decisions.
So when Cal says 'impractical, suboptimal or impossible' he's really saying that 'common owners didn't resolve to strict individual private property rights but controlled the common private property in a property way. (Based on their demonstrated preferences, they thought an other property rights structure was suboptimal, else they could have chosen to split the commons up into individual private parts.)
Again; the 'commons' Ostrom talks about is a specific kind of private property regime, that can operate in a fully functioning market economy (like Esuric said). These kind of commons have a specific use and can be analyzed in strictly Austrian terms.
You might say 'well, this is also a kind of individual property rights' and you wouldn't be mistaken. But I think it does make sense to be aware of the fact that this kind of property is also possible.
Austrian economics shows that property rights are necessary for economic calculation (and thus everything). It doesn't show if this private property right has to be 'individual' at any given time. It could be that in some empirical cases a 'common' works better, guided by rules different from the workings of the market process of contractual transactions. But it doesn't invalidate Austrian economics in any way.
Caley McKibbin: My guess is that this Ostrom is basing all of this on the corporatist Scandinavian model of state.
Lol. You might want to read Ostrom before you enter baseless assertions.
http://www.amazon.com/Governing-Commons-Evolution-Institutions-Collective/dp/0521405998
<= here is the book with some of the empirical commons she analyzed. Where do you see the Scandinavian corporatist model of the state? :?
The commons Ostrom talks about are private organizations.