This misconception is that individualism proscribes collective action i.e. all collective acts are performed by collectives.
Individualism does not proscribe collective action. Collectivism proscribes individual action. You can cooperate with someone voluntarily, but you cannot be commanded to act as an independent.
Did you just try to say the great trust buster is on your side in this debate? The creator of the national parks system. The Mentor to Franklin; creator of the New Deal. Really? Did you just try and make the argument that social democracy isnt what made America the so-called "greatest nation in the world?" That all this open and free trade wasnt facilitated by more liberal economic policies? Isnt that the definition of liberal? Are you trying to say that progressive policy didnt create 70yr life spans, literate societies, and roads from san fran to new york to orangeville, PA?
Really?
Adam E Zandarski
Thats my point. Your willing to provide for family and colleagues. What about the people you arent associated with? Are you just going to let them starve?
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Pskapompos: Thats my point. Your willing to provide for family and colleagues. What about the people you arent associated with? Are you just going to let them starve?
Somebody Starving says, "I need food."
Government official grabs it from Another Person and gives the food to Somebody Starving.
Another Person says, "I now need food too. I'm starving."
Government official grabs it back from Somebody Starving and gives it to Another Person.
Somebody Starving says, "I didn't get a bite yet. I'm starving."
Government official grabs it back from Another Person and gives it to Somebody Starving.
Another Person says, "Hey, I didn't get a bite yet either. I'm starving."
Government official sighs and finally wakes up.
Government official gets tired of this never-ending story and does some labour, finally, and picks an apple from the tree. Gives an apple to Somebody Starving and Another Person. These two go out, now full in the stomach, and make some clay pots. A trading system erupts as each is now actually doing some work.
I thought we were talking about the welfare state not about socialism. You mix welfare theft, public goods, and arbitrary private goods. Consider free education. What is better: to have bad education provided for free or good education with a variety of technologies for which everyone must pay tuition? What is better: to have free healthcare which is awful or to have private healthcare affordable to all which is good? What if it could be shown that it is impossible to have good free healthcare or public schooling? Would your opinion on these issues change? Paved roads are public goods within individual cities (as well as perhaps "limited space" monopolies and producers of positive externalities). If a city imposes a 2% income tax in order to build roads, I won't be too upset. But when the feds seize 60% of a man's income in order to construct technological terrors, that is a problem. Finally, energy supplies and food and drink safety can be better provided privately.
"I got mine and damn everyone else" is not part of libertarianism. What you have asserted is a filthy calumny. Here is Mises on classical liberalism:
[Liberalism] is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim.
Libertarianism is, among other things, a fulfillment of the demands of utilitarianism. But the utilitarianism it obeys is rule utilitarianism. And one of the rules is prohibition of theft. You just can't, in practice, have a welfare state and free markets. The former undermine the principles and morals on which the latter function.
Except all the apple trees are owned by Johny and he isnt giving them up for nothing. But party A has nothing. He lost it all in the flood. And he has no family to turn to.
If your taking from the poor to give to the poor your not getting anywhere. Were trying to go after whats not being used anyway. If you can convince some rich guy that if he gives up 80 billion dollars we can feed the poor, more power to you. But he wont get anything in return.
Meanwhile, hes not doing anything with that money. Its just sitting there. And ACTUAL people are starving. People who are working are starving. Poor is not just a product of lazy. Some of these people are trying very hard, they just dont have the knowhow.
But wouldnt a 2% income tax be stealing? And yes, 60% is terrible. But in reality, after all the adjustments and deductions, it isnt really much at all. Thats why they had to create the AMT. Tax rates were at 90% and still they were finding insanely wealthy people paying no income taxes at all.
So what do you propose is too high of a tax rate?
There is absolutely no reason why we cant provide quality education to many, and at least competent education to all.
Is there not a point where the amount of wealth you hold becomes symbollic and entirely useless? .
Pskapompos:If your taking from the poor to give to the poor your not getting anywhere. Were trying to go after whats not being used anyway. If you can convince some rich guy that if he gives up 80 billion dollars we can feed the poor, more power to you. But he wont get anything in return. Meanwhile, hes not doing anything with that money. Its just sitting there. And ACTUAL people are starving. People who are working are starving. Poor is not just a product of lazy. Some of these people are trying very hard, they just dont have the knowhow.
"Sitting there"? Now we are getting somewhere. Unless money is used as a store of value, in which case keeping a cash balance is useful as protection against the uncertain future, the rich guy's money is used in investments, in productive activities, and in particular, in paying wages to the very people who are allegedly starving.
You should read Mises's brilliant chapter on poverty in Human Action: pp 835-840. And don't come back to this forum until you have read it. The point: under capitalism "there are no ablebodied paupers."
Pskapompos: Except all the apple trees are owned by Johny and he isnt giving them up for nothing. But party A has nothing. He lost it all in the flood. And he has no family to turn to. If your taking from the poor to give to the poor your not getting anywhere. Were trying to go after whats not being used anyway. If you can convince some rich guy that if he gives up 80 billion dollars we can feed the poor, more power to you. But he wont get anything in return. Meanwhile, hes not doing anything with that money. Its just sitting there. And ACTUAL people are starving. People who are working are starving. Poor is not just a product of lazy. Some of these people are trying very hard, they just dont have the knowhow.
Well then Johny doesn't trade with anybody. He doesn't monopolize the apple trees. Plenty of them around. And again, the market is warped and that's why somebody has 80 billion dollars and somebody else none due to government regulation that helps the corporate 80 billion dollar dude and penalizes everybody else via taxes to give even more to the 80 billion dollar dude. Since you've admitted you haven't read hardly anything on what libertarian and Austrian economics is about I'm have no need to flood this forum with ideas you can read, hey even for free, right from this website. Once you've learned about libertarian and Austrian economics, then maybe I will find it worthwhile to discuss with you. If your not willing to learn, even when you can be educated for free (isn't that what you want), then you prove the point. Nobody can force anybody else to do anything unless that man or woman submits to the force. But I'm not forcing you. But under the state, if you still don't submit, well, the one doing the forcing will have to rely upon criminal activity such as stealing and murder but hey, that's the state for ya. And those finding this criminal activity to be legitimate are co-conspirators to this criminal racket and are by law criminals also, and since all law is moral (but not all that is moral is law), then by definition you saying the state being legitimate in its criminal activity, you, are also immoral. Until next time...
Pskapompos:But wouldnt a 2% income tax be stealing?
Technically, yes, but the situation is much less clear here. A city is the largest natural human community. Just as the members of a condominium settlement can impose a $100/month fee or head tax, so the citizens of a town can legitimately, in my view, have a small tax (it will be small, because of intense competition among cities for citizens and businesses) to finance a few genuine public goods. But the fact that a trivial tax for a specific purpose may be called for in certain special situations does not entail that the enormous amount and variety of taxes on the level of half a continent as a whole are not completely illegitimate.
Pskapompos:There is absolutely no reason why we cant provide quality education to many, and at least competent education to all.
Oh, you'd better believe there are reasons and plenty of them, if the education is government-run. But we can easily provide quality education to many, indeed, the vast majority, if education is, like cabbages and houses, privately produced.
But Johnny has alot of other people to trade with. Its just party A that lost everything and has noone to turn to. And Johnny owns the land the trees are on. There is no government authority providing him with additional apples. And if you watch the orchard, at least ten percent of the apples end up just rotting away, uselessly. What I want to do is convince Johnny that he doesnt always have to profit, and that he could easily give up a small percentage of his apples to those who cant pay.
Pskapompos:What I want to do is convince Johnny that he doesnt always have to profit, and that he could easily give up a small percentage of his apples to those who cant pay.
By all means, try to convince him to do so. I would hope he would donate to charity rather than let it go to waste. But it would still be wrong to steal from him. You have heard of private, voluntary charity, correct?
Pskapompos:But Johnny has alot of other people to trade with. Its just party A that lost everything and has noone to turn to. And Johnny owns the land the trees are on. There is no government authority providing him with additional apples. And if you watch the orchard, at least ten percent of the apples end up just rotting away, uselessly. What I want to do is convince Johnny that he doesnt always have to profit, and that he could easily give up a small percentage of his apples to those who cant pay.
If you want to convince Johnny to "give up" some of his apples, go right ahead and preach your gospel to him. The practice of "gleaning" is well-known. (See the Book of Ruth in the OT, for example) But what you are doing instead is trying to convince the government to take from Johnny by force and give to those who can't pay. Are you completely blind to the difference?
Read dchernik's post again. Apples may rot uselessly. Money doesn't.
Johnny, with his wealth, is - directly or indirectly - paying someone's salary with that money. If you take it to feed person A, then person B loses his job.
I think your position, Adam, is that Johnny ought to contribute to charity or tithe or whatever, and if he doesn't, then he is morally depraved. If the government forces him to do what is his duty to do anyway, who cares that Johnny is being coerced? Well, have you ever heard the expression "vices are not crimes"? Just because Johnny is a bad and stingy person does not mean that it's OK to steal from him. That would be a crime, whereas Johnny's behavior is merely a vice and "does not rise to the level" of a crime. A breach of a moral duty is not necessarily a breach of a legal duty, and that is precisely the case with Johnny.
I can imagine you, Adam, driven by the logic of your position, stopping strangers, who make more than, say, $40,000 per year, on the street and yelling at them: "You owe me money, motherfucker! I own you! Pay up now!" You really think you are special and privileged, ain't ya?
I think that private property is a contract with the people. To hoard your wealth while others starve is a breach of contract and is a crime. Smoking is a vice, not greediness. Serving oneself at the behest of all others violates peoples basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and is a crime.
Its not about ME. You are the ones protecting the self here. Its about US. WE owe EACH OTHER a decent civilized life.
Pskapompos:I think that private property is a contract with the people. To hoard your wealth while others starve is a breach of contract and is a crime. Smoking is a vice, not greediness. Serving oneself at the behest of all others violates peoples basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and is a crime.
And that's precisely where the knowledge of economics would prove useful to you, if you had any. Adam, I'm done with you.
We have literature on this, you could listen to our arguements on the subject, but you won't do this.
Pskapompos:I think that private property is a contract with the people.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
How is private property a contract with the people?
Private property is simply the extension of your own self-ownership. Just as you own your body, you own anything that you consume. For example, if you eat an apple, it is fair to say that that apple in your stomach is yours. That apple is yours as soon as you pick it off a tree (if it is unowned previously) or as soon as you pay someone who owns it to hand over the rights to the apple to you. Likewise, property is yours if you mix your labor and efforts with it or purchase it from someone who did so. For example, if I move to empty, unowned land, and begin farming, isn't it fair to say that that land is mine, since I was the one who put the sweat, blood, and tears in cultivating that land? Doesn't that ownership follow naturally from my self-ownership, as I mix my efforts with the previously unowned land, thereby making the land my own?
To hoard your wealth while others starve is a breach of contract and is a crime.
How is hoarding a breach of contract?
Smoking is a vice, not greediness. Serving oneself at the behest of all others violates peoples basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and is a crime.
When you serve oneself, you ultimately serve others. That's how free markets work. At the very basic level, all exchanges in free markets are, by definition, voluntary. I exchange $1 for a newspaper, the newspaper saleman exchanges the newspaper for $1. We both benefit, since I value that newspaper more than the dollar and the salesman values that dollar more than the newspaper. Likewise, other efforts to seek out your own self interest by working hard, earning high pay, saving, investing your money, etc. all benefits others since my work, my consumption, and my saving/investment either provides others with goods, jobs, or capital.
Political Atheists Blog
First of all I would like to thank those with formal arguments for engaging me in this philosophic debate about the fundamental nature of society. Juan, your not productive to this engagement at all. Dmitry, you consistently run away when someone challenges your worldview (you say I need an education in economics but what you dont realize is that your faith leads you to believe only those educated in austrian economics are educated in economics). But all the others... thank you for engaging a non-libertarian, becuase those are the only people everyone else debates with.
Im thinking its well established thought that private property is a contract. If so, then who is it a contract with. Nobody has a natural right to the land, and private property is a contract with the great collective that you will not use it to harm the citizenry. Saving wealth is great, hoarding wealth you couldnt use anyway is harmful to the citizenry at large.
Pskapompos:only those educated in austrian economics are educated in economics
thats true though.......
Pskapompos:Im thinking its well established thought that private property is a contract.
i dont think you are right. but i havent done a poll, yet even if you were, it would just mean the majority of people are wrong.
Pskapompos: Im thinking its well established thought that private property is a contract. If so, then who is it a contract with. Nobody has a natural right to the land, and private property is a contract with the great collective that you will not use it to harm the citizenry. Saving wealth is great, hoarding wealth you couldnt use anyway is harmful to the citizenry at large.
Well I'm glad you just sort of skipped over the part where it was explained that there is no such thing as "hoarding", at least not with money.
For what it's worth, I've never heard of private property being described as a contract. I don't see why a contract is necessary to establish property - a piece of land is unowned; I work that piece of land; it is now my farm. You may need a contract to *defend* that property from aggression, which is the way that Locke (which, you'll be happy to hear, is not an Austrolibertarian; perhaps you would deign to read his work) describes government. I'm not too well-read on the position held by an-caps, but I suppose they believe you don't need a contract with all of society to defend your property.
Nirgraham do you realize how religous about anarchocapitalism you made yourself appear to be? "if you dont agree with me you're wrong."
And before you lay that charge on me I think I have repeatedly spelled out how I dont think youre wrong, I think your policy is based on idealism. That it would only work in a what-if world.
In fairness to Adam, Mises might have agreed that private property is useful only insofar as it serves human ends:
Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had previously not been anybody's property. Again and again proprietors were robbed of their property by expropriation. ...
Ownership in the market economy is no longer linked up with the remote origin of private property. Those events in a far-distant past, hidden in the darkness of primitive mankind's history, are no longer of any concern for our day. For in an unhampered market society the consumers daily decide anew who should own and how much he should own. The consumers allot control of the means of production to those who know how to use them best for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. ...
The meaning of private property in the market society is radically different from what it is under a system of each household's autarky. Where each household is economically self-sufficient, the privately owned means of production exclusively serve the proprietor. He alone reaps all the benefits derived from their employment. In the market society the proprietors of capital and land can enjoy their property only by employing it for the satisfaction of other people's wants. They must serve the consumers in order to have any advantage from what is their own. The very fact that they own means of production forces them to submit to the wishes of the public. Ownership is an asset only for those who know how to employ it in the best possible way for the benefit of the consumers. It is a social function. (HA, 683ff)
For Mises society is not just a spontaneous order but is an outcome of an explicit ideology. It is part of the liberal ideology that private property is a means to greatest happiness for the greatest number. In this sense it could be considered a "social contract" entered into by all people with the purpose of making social cooperation both possible (as contrasted with socialism) and most efficient (as contrasted with interventionism).
Pskapompos: Nirgraham do you realize how religous about anarchocapitalism you made yourself appear to be? "if you dont agree with me you're wrong." And before you lay that charge on me I think I have repeatedly spelled out how I dont think youre wrong, I think your policy is based on idealism. That it would only work in a what-if world.
what do i care of appearances? if you want to pick a point, start a thread on it, focus a second. feel free to challenge me.
also, you're not wrong, you are just too *blah de blah* is really irrelevent. as if you concede that i am not wrong, but right.
then i am right, and ballerina's often dance to music.
and i am right and im idealistic
and i am right and im pragmatic.
and if you disagree with me on a topic, and you think im right on it. then you have surely found a way to be wrong somehow. this is how we play the logic game.
dchernik: For Mises society is not just a spontaneous order but is an outcome of an explicit ideology. It is part of the liberal ideology that private property is a means to greatest happiness for the greatest number. In this sense it could be considered a "social contract" entered into by all people with the purpose of making social cooperation both possible (as contrasted with socialism) and most efficient (as contrasted with interventionism).
And thus why somebody that doesn't want to morally or lawfully work with others in a more moral and thus lawful society, that man or woman would be ostracized. I'm glad I live where I can use the honest system still. Out this way there are farms that leave corn out without any man or woman to give your money to and get the corn. People are so honest here this system works. You honestly leave the money and grab as much corn as the selling price written on the sign and leave.
I would almost put money out that says those farmers are provided subsidized assistance, and therefore can afford to rely on an honesty system. I would bet the bulk of their selling is to large stores, etc. And only provide this service becuase they first can afford it, but most importantly are good people.
Pskapompos: I would almost put money out that says those farmers are provided subsidized assistance, and therefore can afford to rely on an honesty system. I would bet the bulk of their selling is to large stores, etc. And only provide this service becuase they first can afford it, but most importantly are good people.
I wasn't talking to you.
wilderness: dchernik: For Mises society is not just a spontaneous order but is an outcome of an explicit ideology. It is part of the liberal ideology that private property is a means to greatest happiness for the greatest number. In this sense it could be considered a "social contract" entered into by all people with the purpose of making social cooperation both possible (as contrasted with socialism) and most efficient (as contrasted with interventionism). And thus why somebody that doesn't want to morally or lawfully work with others in a more moral and thus lawful society, that man or woman would be ostracized. I'm glad I live where I can use the honest system still. Out this way there are farms that leave corn out without any man or woman to give your money to and get the corn. People are so honest here this system works. You honestly leave the money and grab as much corn as the selling price written on the sign and leave.
dchernik, my apologies. This would be more correctly stated as this: I'm glad I live where I can use the honor system still.
Juan, your not productive to this engagement at all.
Juan:Juan, your not productive to this engagement at all. Come on kid. Explain what gives you the right to give orders to your 'brothers'.
Logic and facts are for greedy, selfish oppressors of the poor! If the facts don't fit the theory, obviously the former need adjusting.
Ya rly! Go figure.
Except all the apple trees are owned by Johny and he isnt giving them up for nothing. But party A has nothing. He lost it all in the flood. And he has no family to turn to. If your taking from the poor to give to the poor your not getting anywhere. Were trying to go after whats not being used anyway. If you can convince some rich guy that if he gives up 80 billion dollars we can feed the poor, more power to you. But he wont get anything in return. Meanwhile, hes not doing anything with that money. Its just sitting there. And ACTUAL people are starving. People who are working are starving. Poor is not just a product of lazy. Some of these people are trying very hard, they just dont have the knowhow.
Oh noes, poor little Johny! What contrived nonsense. Perhaps "Johny" better make himself useful and get a skill. And as for this bullshit of the money "sitting" there, what the hell are you on about? Maybe when I'm idling about my body is just "sitting" there, so maybe it should go to some desperate loser who "needs" sex. Rubbish. It's not your money to take, and it's not your job to proclaim ex cathedra whose wants are more urgent or not, i.e. "needs".
There is. The state can spend lavish amounts of money on education to provide "quality" education. In so doing it will strip more urgently wanted goods of their funding, and waste.,
No.
Yes, from egomaniacally driven violation.
Nobody has a natural right to the land, and private property is a contract with the great collective that you will not use it to harm the citizenry. Saving wealth is great, hoarding wealth you couldnt use anyway is harmful to the citizenry at large.
Which assumes the collective has prior ownership over this land. Question-begging nonsense. "Hoarding" wealth is not harmful, as people can simply switch to another medium of exchange and will benefit from lower prices when you're not spending. So please put a modicum of effort into your arguments. There is no "collective" to which any duties are owed.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
wilderness:Government official gets tired of this never-ending story and does some labour, finally, and picks an apple from the tree.
Your allegory is flawed though. In between each step, the government takes a bite of the food. They have no insentive, nor desire to do the labor in procuring new food. They're getting full off people "hiring" (electing) them to steal from others.
Pskapompos:I think that private property is a contract with the people. To hoard your wealth while others starve is a breach of contract and is a crime.
By its definition, "private" property implies the full right of the private individual to do with his property as he wants (as long as it isn't towards causing aggression against another individual).
Certainly, it could be seen as some sort of intersocial contract, that is to be respected between peaceful individuals. But your idea is not private property at all. You're talking about communal property. Your idea is that I can "controll" the things I produce to the degree that the community around me allows. That if I use things I produce in a way that others don't deem socially beneficial, they are right in depriving me of those products. In what way is this different from slavery? You're claiming that I am bound to do labor to the interests and specifications of my peers absent of my own.
Pskapompos:Serving oneself at the behest of all others violates peoples basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and is a crime.
On the contrary, it is the fulfillment of such rights. Failing to service others is not a violation of someones life.
banned: wilderness:Government official gets tired of this never-ending story and does some labour, finally, and picks an apple from the tree. Your allegory is flawed though. In between each step, the government takes a bite of the food. They have no insentive, nor desire to do the labor in procuring new food. They're getting full off people "hiring" (electing) them to steal from others.
True. The government would take a bite of the apple. When the government official got tired of the never-ending story and did some labour, I was saying the government stepped down, folded up, and disappeared. The guy that went to pick the apple from the tree. He wasn't a government official anymore. He was an apple farmer. My story did end in a dream world.