NationStates Jolt Archive

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:

Monopolies do not eliminate competition, they overcome it. Competitive factors still exist for the monopoly.

However, many (including me) would argue that monopolies are encouraged by government intervention.

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:and now you see why I hate labels like Right-wingers, Leftists, Conservaties, Liberals...

I believe the Act of Homosexuality is a Sin and is just wrong, but I cannot bring myself to deny anyone the rights (and responsibilites) enjoyed by others.

The Environment is important to life on Earth, but we also cannot hamstring ourselves to save a couple of snails.

we have to be harsh in both our freedom as well as security.

indeed, there really is no clear cut "simple" answer, only a balancing act between what we as a nation and what we as individuals can live with.

Monopolies do not eliminate competition, they overcome it. Competitive factors still exist for the monopoly.

However, many (including me) would argue that monopolies are encouraged by government intervention.

That's what I've been thinking. e.g. competition arises soley to be bought out by said monopoly, transportation costs increase, etc. all making it more expensive for the monopoly to function.

However, would you mind explaining why you think monopolies are encouraged by gov't intervention?

the free market invariably produces market failures and market distortions.

these must be fixed by government.


there is no room for a totally 'libertarian'/laizes faire approach imo

Monopolies do not eliminate competition, they overcome it. Competitive factors still exist for the monopoly.

:rolleyes: please.
don't try and make monopolies sound 'not that bad' or 'actually still quite competative' cos they're not.

don't forget: created barriers to entry, artifically inflated prices, supernormal profits, loss of consumer choice, loss of output (profit maximising condition output is lower than otherwise in competative market), monopsony


some monopolies are natural, though, and the industry works most efficiently as one. gas and electrisity for example (in the UK), but most are not natural and are bad (in principle)

I believe in small government, but with the ability to step in when people's lives are in danger. And I'm also against predatory monopolies. Beneficial monopolies (such as AT&T), as long as regulated, are fine.

The problem with monopolies is their ability to quash competators resulting, if left unchecked, in the mega-corporation state. Where only a few corporations control everything.

That's what I've been thinking. e.g. competition arises soley to be bought out by said monopoly, transportation costs increase, etc. all making it more expensive for the monopoly to function.

New innovation is one big thing, corporations are rather risk averse compared to upstart businesses, so the upstarts can get a jump on the established business.

But the thing is, no matter what monopolies still have to maintain the best service or product to stay on top, especially in this age of e-commerce.

However, would you mind explaining why you think monopolies are encouraged by gov't intervention?

Patents, protectionism, lobbies, limited liability. All favor big business.

Patents, protectionism, lobbies, limited liability. All favor big business.

Patents are one thing. They protect and help stimulate innovation. Plus, all patents have a sunset provision.

Everything else is bad.

All political theories have their failings. Once you understand this, you'll be much better off.

don't forget: created barriers to entry

What created barriers to entry are you referring to?

artifically inflated prices, supernormal profits, loss of consumer choice, loss of output (profit maximising condition output is lower than otherwise in competative market), monopsony

All of these result in the growth of competition.

some monopolies are natural, though, and the industry works most efficiently as one. gas and electrisity for example (in the UK), but most are not natural and are bad (in principle)

How is one good and one bad? The same conditions apply to both.

All political theories have their failings. Once you understand this, you'll be much better off.
Word.

See also ideology.

Patents are one thing. They protect and help stimulate innovation. Plus, all patents have a sunset provision.

Everything else is bad.

Patents establish legal control of production, creating a monopoly over a good. They constitute artificial "ownership" of a public idea and will always fall into the hands of those with the financial ability to bring them to their highest potential.

All political theories have their failings. Once you understand this, you'll be much better off.

*prays to new god*

Patents establish legal control of production, creating a monopoly over a good. They constitute artificial "ownership" of a public idea and will always fall into the hands of those with the financial ability to bring them to their highest potential.
But necessary to allow, thus motivate, the creators of new goods to develop and exploit them in the absence of the capital required for economies of scale, no?

What created barriers to entry are you referring to?

The barrier is created because the monolopy has SO much money and so much control over the limited resources that it is impossible to enter the market.

Take for instance clean, fresh water. If a singular company controls 80% of the world's fresh water supply, they A) are a price setter, which means that they control the industry in such a way that they, the supplier, set the price at which they sell their product not the consumer, the demander, who would technically set the price in a "Pure Competitive" Economy.


All of these result in the growth of competition.

Not in a limited resource based economy. Refer to the example above. The profit that the monolopy makes, because they set the price, completely outweighs being "bought". Not only that, because they can set the price at nearly anywhere, they can easily under sell the competition and still at least break even, where their competitors can't even hope to sustain such a sell price for long without going bankrupt and hitting what economist's term as the "shutdown" point.


How is one good and one bad? The same conditions apply to both.

Not really. Take for instance the telephone market in the United States during the 50s and up until MCI came up with transmitters. All telephones were done by wire, which meant that it was most cost efficient to have just one monopoly, than to have large control centers and circuits and operators from competative markets, especially since to connect to other areas of even a neighborhood, you would then have to have not just one, but two, three or even four+ running to your house. Therefore having multiple wires requires multiple phone bills and more installation, and more workers. IE, it's most cost-effective for both the consumer and the industry to have a well-regulated monopoly than competition.

Hope that answers your questions.

Patents establish legal control of production, creating a monopoly over a good. They constitute artificial "ownership" of a public idea and will always fall into the hands of those with the financial ability to bring them to their highest potential.

Read again. Sunset Provision. That means that after a time, usually 5-15 years, it becomes public domain. So yes, there is a short-term monopoly, but competition usually resumes because A)the other competitors develop other ways to maximizing profit and B)in the long-run anyone can use the patented item.

But necessary to allow, thus motivate, the creators of new goods to develop and exploit them in the absence of the capital required for economies of scale, no?

It takes years companies to adopt a new product, it takes years for the benefits of economies of scale to take hold. In the mean time, those innovators will have established their product.

don't try and make monopolies sound 'not that bad' or 'actually still quite competative' cos they're not.


Monopolies are misunderstood by a vast majority of people. They aren't actually the evil most people portray them as. Monopolies don't escape the natural market law of supply and demand, therefore they aren't market failures as you put it. They simply are allowed (because of lack of any other significant competitor, not because they prevent all entry), to produce less goods at a higher price. They cannot produce lots of goods at an inflated price and therefore "abuse" they system. They are bound by the demand curve.

don't forget: created barriers to entry, artifically inflated prices, supernormal profits, loss of consumer choice, loss of output (profit maximising condition output is lower than otherwise in competative market), monopsony

All those things are contingent on the permanency of said monopoly. That is not neccessarily the case. In a pure free market, unfair conditions due to government intervention would allow more small companies to chip away from the monopoly's market. Furthermore, to keep competition out, the monopoly must set selling prices lower than any potential competitor in order to maintain their dominance. If they cannot (which is more likely the larger they grow due to increased cost of capital goods overcoming profits--hence the the "u" curve of a monopoly profits), they lose their grip on the industry, more companies will enter, and the given sector will return to a competitive market.

Most monopolies are either helped by the government so that they can maintain their state while losing profits or barely making it, or are government monopolies themselves. Government monopolies are the scariest of them all because they can literally break market laws and fix prices. In the U.S. for example, the U.S. postal service is a government monopoly. IMO, the free market could deliver mail at either the same or a lower price than the government, and the government simply uses this monopoly to have the ability to track and regulate mail. Call me cynical, I just call them as I see them.

Patents establish legal control of production, creating a monopoly over a good. They constitute artificial "ownership" of a public idea and will always fall into the hands of those with the financial ability to bring them to their highest potential.

All intellectual property rights were originally offered as a bribe(sorta) to increase innovation. That is why they are only for a limited time. Without this companies and inventors would have less incentive to innovate because anybody could take that idea and use it(especially drugs which are very expensive to test). Though, now most intellectual property may be overbroad such as patenting genes that already existed and were merely discovered. Also copyright law seems to be extended whenever Mickey Mouse should go into the public domain;) .

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.
Microsoft is mainly the monopoly that it is because of software patents. And because stupid people fall for marketing schemes and/or are too damned lazy to figure out a computer themselves.

In theory, any libertarian society would by it's very nature require it's populace to think smart or get fleeced. Even M$ isn't currently a monopoly.

So you finally see the reality of it all. There is but one difference between realism and idealism: morals.

I could always blame that wench Erin Brockovich for PG&E's problems. But, that's another thing to deal with. The deregulated firms were still under tremendous scrutiny of the government, and they had a tough time upgrading their grids, production facilities and the rest because of the regulatory role the government played. And, beyond that, if you'll notice, the tales of blackouts and brownouts are gone from Cali, because the market was allowed to work.

So you finally see the reality of it all. There is but one difference between realism and idealism: morals.

I consider libertarianism a realistic ideal, as opposed to communism which is simply an unrealistic ideal. The basic tenets of libertarianism are fundamentally moral codes as well, so I fail to see the validity of your point.

It takes years companies to adopt a new product, it takes years for the benefits of economies of scale to take hold. In the mean time, those innovators will have established their product.

That just plain is untrue...

The biggest industry players can make changes to processes that would bankrupt smaller industry players.

Someone like Microsoft, presented with a new technology, can divert enormous resources... even potentially beating an innovator to market... just BECAUSE of how much of the market they 'own'.

Secondly, regarding economy of scale.... I think you are confused about the concept. The NEW company is going to have problems gaining the advantage of economies of scale, because suppliers are less willing to open up huge product streams to unknowns.

On the other hand, again, someone like Microsoft, can call any supplier in the world, and pretty much garner ALL of their product output, through leverage... and at a much lower per-unit price than their competitors.

And, does Microsoft gain immediate advantage? Yes - because every payment they make will be lower, per unit.

I consider libertarianism a realistic ideal, as opposed to communism which is simply an unrealistic ideal. The basic tenets of libertarianism are fundamentally moral codes as well, so I fail to see the validity of your point.

The problem with libertarianism, is that it is unrestrained capitalism at heart.

Basically, Libertariansim is the Republican Dream - it is about maximising profits, and minimal government intervention.

Is that a problem?

It depends.... minimum government intervention in sexual relationships is one thing... if John and Jack want to hold hands, it's not likely to spell the end of humanity. (No matter what the evangelists yell).

On the other hand... if John and Jack want to cut down every tree in the Northern Hemisphere, in the name of profit, the ramifications might stretch a little further than "How do you like your eggs"?

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:

It's one of the insurmountable problems of capitalism.

Some, perhaps even most, industries are best served in terms of efficiency when highly centralized. Thus big businesses, even without manipulating the market, can often annihilate small businesses simply by being more efficient and thus able to afford lower prices. Microsoft, because of the inconvenience of having multiple incompatible operating systems, has an essential monopoly as well, and eliminating it would be highly problematic.

Centralized industry in private hands is essentially dictatorial, and thus it should not be acceptable. If there is an inherent tendency in the market towards this sort of thing, as exists regarding energy and computer technology, definitely, and other industries to a degree as well, then there must be something to counteract it. The two options typically on the table is the current one pursued in the US - annihilating monopolies through breaking them up - and my preference - nationalizing them. Breaking them up assumes that the problem is a cartel sort of structure, that is, capitalists conspiring to extort the public, which does happen, but is not always the case. There is no conspiracy behind the success of Microsoft. The proper course of action in cases where efficiency and the public good is served by centralization is, in order to prevent such private dictatorships, is democratic control, of which the preferred model today - though not necessarily the best - is nationalization.

Some, perhaps even most, industries are best served in terms of efficiency when highly centralized.

Er, and you base this assumption on what exactly?

Microsoft, because of the inconvenience of having multiple incompatible operating systems, has an essential monopoly as well, and eliminating it would be highly problematic.

It doesn't have a monopoly. "Essential" monopoly is your euphemism for, not a monopoly but you wish to make it sound like it is.


Centralized industry in private hands is essentially dictatorial, and thus it should not be acceptable....

The two options typically on the table is the current one pursued in the US - annihilating monopolies through breaking them up - and my preference - nationalizing them.

Oh right, because centralized industry in the hands of the government isn't dictatorial? The main reason people like you say that private industries are "dictatorial" is because you're anti-capitalist, not because there is anything remotely dictatorial about them.

Er, and you base this assumption on what exactly?

Well, competition, mostly - the way, say, agribusiness manages to annihilate small farms, and Wal-Mart small retail businesses.

Yes, corporate welfare, overregulation, I know. But government intervention plays an important part of it, too; the government is among the most effective ways to garner the benefits of centralization, especially since the corporation doesn't even have to pay. That's one reason the modern capitalist model has so many successes in terms of production rates; the duplicity of effort and inefficiency inherent in purely private capitalism is avoided through government intervention. Take roads, for instance. There are places where no profit-seeking corporation would ever build a road, but the government does it, and thus companies can use it to find markets. Long-term economic planning and coordination is something else the government - and other centralized institutions - can do to increase efficiency that private, decentralized industry cannot.

It doesn't have a monopoly. "Essential" monopoly is your euphemism for, not a monopoly but you wish to make it sound like it is.

Yes, it does have an essential monopoly, because compatibility is important, and using one system is by far the most convenient way to ensure compatibility.

If you don't like the Microsoft example, electricity is another. The capital involved in creating two wholly separate infrastructures for two different electricity corporations is not going to be worth it, and thus consolidation occurs.

Oh right, because centralized industry in the hands of the government isn't dictatorial? The main reason people like you say that private industries are "dictatorial" is because you're anti-capitalist, not because there is anything remotely dictatorial about them.

No, not when the government is democratically-elected and accountable to the people. Democratic governments, unlike corporations, are not, for instance, expected to extract as much profit as they can, instead seeking the common good.

Well, competition, mostly, and the way, say, agribusiness manages to annihilate small farms.

That's due to larger businesses having more wealth, not because they are centralized or more efficient.


Yes, it does have an essential monopoly, because compatibility is important, and using one system is by far the most convenient way to ensure compatibility.

No, it doesn't have any kind of monopoly, because there are other kinds of OS's on the market and that I myself use. If it was an "essential monopoly" that would not be the case.


No, not when the government is democratically-elected and accountable to the people. Democratic governments, unlike corporations, are not, for instance, expected to extract as much profit as they can, instead seeking the common good.

So says you. But what if I said a corporation seeks to benefit the common good of all it's shareholders and employees? That it's board of directors is democratically elected? That it's even accountable to the people?

I'm sure you'd simply disagree. I can smell it coming already, like a bad fart.

So i say that our current government is NOT democratically elected, and it ISNT accountable to the people, and it DOESNT seek the common good but rather the good of it's own member politicians. It's own interests. Centralized industry in this context is even worse than "private dictatorships," since this 'dictatorship' happens to have the power of law and military force behind it.

So i say that our current government is NOT democratically elected, and it ISNT accountable to the people, and it DOESNT seek the common good but rather the good of it's own member politicians. It's own interests. Centralized industry in this context is even worse than "private dictatorships," since this 'dictatorship' happens to have the power of law and military force behind it.

Can you elaborate on why you think our current government is corrupt and soforth? Also, what can be done to remedy this(if anything)?

That's due to larger businesses having more wealth, not because they are centralized or more efficient.

So then larger businesses will consume smaller ones independently of actually performing better services, and thus "competition," as far as actually producing better results for the population, is a myth in that case. That argument works too; it is another tendency towards consolidation, based purely on greed instead of efficiency. All (well, many) capitalists wants to rule an industrial empire, and the rewards are great enough that they will share (with other capitalists, generally).

No, it doesn't have any kind of monopoly, because there are other kinds of OS's on the market and that I myself use.

Thus "essential monopoly," not "complete monopoly."

So says you. But what if I said a corporation seeks to benefit the common good of all it's shareholders and employees? That it's board of directors is democratically elected? That it's even accountable to the people?

A corporation is an institution created for the sole purpose of providing profit to its owners, the shareholders. That's why people invest in corporations; they want to make profits. The employees receive wages, but they are not (typically) owners of the corporation, and thus not the people the corporation seeks to benefit. The aim of a corporation, both legally and effectively, is to provide the maximum profit for its owners, within the limits of the law.

It is true that shareholders elect the Board of Directors of a corporation. The managers of a corporation are definitely accountable to the owners of the corporation, and at least theoretically they seek to serve the owners, thus keeping their jobs.

This arrangement, however, because the super-rich in almost every capitalist country own the vast majority of the shares, is not democratic but rather plutocratic.

I'm sure you'd simply disagree. I can smell it coming already, like a bad fart.

I do disagree, and I provided an explanation as to why.

A politician does not benefit if a nationalized company extorts its consumers and exploits its workers. A shareholder does benefit if a corporation does such things. Quite simply, that is the difference.

I only wish more forums like these sprouted from time to time, instead of the typical regurgitated "dilemmas"...
I'd like to reply to most of the replies on this thread, but I'll just have to stick to a general overview I suppose...

There is no legal monopoly I know of, in the existing forms of capitalism, apart from the limited monopoly offered by Intellectual Property (patents, trademarks, servicemarks, trade secrets, etc.). Anything else is considered a monopoly, a trust. Patents serve as a double instrument in this toil, but the main one is defensive; none can produce or use or develop upon one's invention for the patent's duration, after the duration of which it becomes publically available. The other aspect is offensive, and can force litigation upon those infringing on one's patent.

There is another pervasive aspect though, and that is disclosure. The disclosure needed to pursue any patent means that you must reveal to the world several intricacies related to your invention... If the resulting product works, competition will storm in an attempt to reverse-engineer your product and perhaps come up with a better patent (which happens quite often in fact).

The legislation in the US regarding patents at least (as is generally accepted by now, I believe), is pro-inventor and then pro-business, so there is no secret conspiracy enpowering businesses further.

The fact that businesses have more power in pursuing trusts, is due to the resources they can allocate to achieve such things, and that is what might be perceived as the downside of capitalism as mentioned. Given the fact that Microsoft can allocate more resources in R&D, they will surely come up with more innovations and much faster than Jim Anyone, resulting in more patents and more impetus that facilitates and supports the "enforcement" of their "views" as they strive to consolidate their market positions...effectively seeming to bypass anti-trust legislation.

BUT, as is evident in the market, the best innovations don't usually come from megacorps, but from little Jim Anyones,
who build upon the knowledge that has been disclosed from the megacorps' R&D, which would simply not be available otherwise.

All this is a higly "dynamic process" (I've found that trying to find an alternative expression for the greed that the megacorps' have in maintaining what they have, and the lust of startups' to "make it out there" is utterly pointless...)

But the growing trend tends to be sharing, instead of trying to make it alone, in most cases.

The knowledge market drives the other markets, and only through Intellectual Freedom, can any other kinds of freedom be attained, IMO...

Best Regards, Jim Anyone

So then larger businesses will consume smaller ones independent of actually performing better services, and thus "competition," as far as actually producing better results for the population, is a myth.

Larger businesses also originate from smaller businesses due to performing better services. Competition isn't a myth.


Thus "essential monopoly," not "complete monopoly."

Thus "not any kind of monopoly." Something either is or isn't a monopoly.


This arrangement, however, because the super-rich in almost every capitalist country own the vast majority of the shares, is not democratic but rather plutocratic.

Or maybe it just happens that those who buy the vast majority of shares become super-rich. Kind of like how it just happens that those who run for President in the 'democratically elected' government of the USA happen to be super rich themselves.


I do disagree, and I provided an explanation as to why.

A politician does not benefit if a nationalized company extorts its consumers and exploits its workers.

Why not? You really think the politician gains nothing? What about his cronies and special interests? And unlike with private industry, the government doesn't have anyone to watch over it when it decides to run businesses. It exploits its consumers AND workers by taxation. I fail to see how nationalized industry has the moral high ground here. Or maybe thats just because I associate nationalization with the USSR, fascist Italy and nazi Germany. And the US Post Office.

Larger businesses also originate from smaller businesses due to performing better services. Competition isn't a myth.

You stated that big business consumed small business because of wealth; I pointed out that if that was the case, then the process was independent of better services.

In many cases centralized big business, in purely free market terms, is superior to decentralized small business, because it is more efficient and thus capable of providing better or lower priced services.

Thus "not any kind of monopoly." Something either is or isn't a monopoly.

Let's stop arguing about this, it's pointless. I already gave a different example of a "natural monopoly," Pure Metal discussed the issue above as well.

Or maybe it just happens that those who buy the vast majority of shares become super-rich. Kind of like how it just happens that those who run for President in the 'democratically elected' government of the USA happen to be super rich themselves.

The only way anyone could afford to buy a large quantity of shares is to be super-rich. It's wealth-based, and hence plutocratic. The person who can afford more shares has more control than the person who can afford less.

The current government is blatantly class-based.

Why not? You really think the politician gains nothing? What about his cronies and special interests?

The profits are not pocketed by the politician, since there is no "owner" of the company. There is merely management.

And unlike with private industry, the government doesn't have anyone to watch over it when it decides to run businesses.

Whatever happened to "checks and balances", "popular sovereignty," etc.?

It exploits its consumers AND workers by taxation.

In a sense, yes, by paying themselves obscene salaries, but that's negligible. And CEOs do precisely the same thing.

I fail to see how nationalized industry has the moral high ground here. Or maybe thats just because I associate nationalization with the USSR, fascist Italy and nazi Germany. And the US Post Office.

Maybe that explains it. If everyone associated private industry with Enron, we'd have a lot more socialists.

the free market invariably produces market failures and market distortions.

these must be fixed by government.


there is no room for a totally 'libertarian'/laizes faire approach imo

You couldn't be more wrong. Please check your economic facts before posting ignorant and incorrect statements.

The free market does NOT invariably produce market failures, and certainly government is not a viable answer. Consider the case of 1921 stock market crash, which in comparison to the one in 1929 was greater in initial impact. Warren Harding ran his campaign on less government intervention and it worked, the stock market rebounded, the GDP increased, unemployment fell and the economy boomed.

Now consider the case of the stock market crash in 1929. The FED raised interest rates nearly 3% previous to the crash and they stayed at that level. Worse of Hoover rose tariff rate, FDR's new deal plundged America deeper into depression by 1938. Only WWII could bring us back from the mess the government did to our economy.

PS You lose, good day sir.

O.K 2 things

Firstly in a monopoly people are forgetting about the elasticity of demand. If the demand of a product or good is highly elastic then a monopoly cannot really exploit that market because people can turn to close substitutes or simply not buy it. However if that market isn't elastic or this corportation owns all other close substitutes then they can exploit that market to their hearts content (remeber they don't care about the public good of the people simply themselves and their stakeholders) if their is no government intervention. Economics is all about resource alloctaion and consumer soverignity is seen as the most efficient way to allocate those resources. Once this is taken away the market is deemed to have failed as it no longer does what it was intended to allocate resources efficiently.

Secondly The American government is definatley class based. Look at the American Dream "From the log cabin to the white house" you have to be ridiculously wealthy and have the right connections to become president nothing to do with if your the smartest or best person for the job (take Bush Jnr for example he can't even say a speech without screwing up the words). Also the government looks after big-businesses as they are the ones who donate money towards their campaign. Its scratch my back iand I'll scratch yours. So in a sense the government does benefit by having these monopolies but also have to do it discreetly otherwise they lose the support of the people so its a delicate tight-rope walk.

Also i might add you don't exploit a nation with taxes. Taxes must be their to ensure 2 things. The Suplly of a public good and to try and prevent such a distortion in classes that it leads to the poor masses to take a stand and revolt.

First, they may be your ideals, but you got them from someone else. Don't feel so bad about it if they're "shattered."

In true laissez-faire economies, "libertarians" don't deal with monopolies. That's their problem. As ideal as the libertarian (if that means liberal in both social and economic ideals) ideas are they simply do not function on a global scale... at least not without problems such as monopolies or situations which create globalization criticisms. I'm not saying that it's only the corporations - how the governments of nations handle situations matters severely.

In order to prevent monopolies you have to prevent companies from buying each other/unifying and you have to help other companies compete with the strongest company if it looks like a monopoly is on the horizon. It's like Linux getting funding from the government to take out Windows (which doesn't happen). It may even include violating Microsoft's copyrights in the process. Perhaps, instead of saying "monopoly" for Microsoft, it should be said it has market dominance or a monopoly on operating systems that best use Windows-oriented software.

Liberal economics do not work on a world scale in regards to distributing wealth in a more equal fashion than it is being done today. All they do is remove monarchies/republican democracies and create republican plutocracies... my opinion, mostly, but that's how I think of it.

As Vittos Ordination said, "Patents, protectionism, lobbies, limited liability. All favor big business."
This is true.
And as Letila was quoted, "All political theories have their failings."
This is also true.
I would have to say that libertarianism is flawed to a point where I refuse to adopt it as any kind of personal preference for a candidate in office, but that is my own opinion. Capitalists cannot be expected to be moral. Surely you have stuck your hand in the cookie jar during dinner time... or something similar in measure.

Monopolies that are "necessary," such as train companies, wire-telephone companies, wire-television companies, should be government run/funded until they can be privatized or have sufficient competition.

I do not like libertarianism unless I am also socially free to arm myself against corporations (or any other body) in defense of what I feel is right. I do not want our nations deforested, workers victimized or someone to buy my whole block and erect a mini-mall around my house. I ask my government to do this, civilly, for me.

Just to jump into the fray...

You stated that big business consumed small business because of wealth; I pointed out that if that was the case, then the process was independent of better services.

In many cases centralized big business, in purely free market terms, is superior to decentralized small business, because it is more efficient and thus capable of providing better or lower priced services.

Big businesses arise for two reasons; better goods/services or with assistance from the government. The practice of corporatism under FDR in the New Deal Era, and continued throughout the current U.S. administration has led to the disproportionate amount of big buisnesses than if a pure free market were in place. So, to directly respond to your point, if a buisness has a better good/service they make more wealth, and further solidify their grasp on the market unless a competing firm produces a better or equally good product which almost inevitably happens. If that doesn't happen, it must be a result of another source of revenue, which only could come from the government.

There are several flaws with your second statement. First, big business is not always more efficient. Monopolies for example, produce a deadweight loss due to their ability to produce less at a higher price, thereby not producing a socially optimal amount of a good/service. Second, whether a big business is more efficient or produces a better good/service is contingent on its status within the larger scope of the given market sector. If it arises out of an uninhibited market, then it must be because it produces a better product, but in a mixed market it may be for a simple reason that the firm donated a large sum of money for favorable legislation to drive out competition. By nationalizing the market, one substitutes progress and competition with corruption and stagnation. Combining economic and political power is very dangerous and never a good idea for a free society.

Maybe that explains it. If everyone associated private industry with Enron, we'd have a lot more socialists.

I'm glad you mentioned Enron. Because they are a perfect example of how government regulation allows failing businesses to appear solvent, when in a truly pure market they would be exposed by their transparency. I hope you don't forget that a U.S. government board assisted Enron in "management" and assistance with exploiting tax loopholes.

Monopolies that are "necessary," such as train companies, wire-telephone companies, wire-television companies, should be government run/funded until they can be privatized or have sufficient competition.

Who defines what is "necessary"? I consider all your aforementioned examples to be perfectly good privatized companies. Do you seriously think the government NEEDS to control the postal service? A private company could not make a profit delivering mail--a constant, highly used service? I find such a notion absurd.

I do not like libertarianism unless I am also socially free to arm myself against corporations (or any other body) in defense of what I feel is right. I do not want our nations deforested, workers victimized or someone to buy my whole block and erect a mini-mall around my house. I ask my government to do this, civilly, for me.

You are walking on a double edged blade whenever you involve the government to "protect" people. Often times said protectionist measures hurt more people then they help. You wouldn't have to arm youself against corporations if they weren't assisted by the government, forests could be protected with taxes rather than regulation, workers can be protected from the whims of corporations of corporations stop getting handouts (that cause them to cut jobs), and your block wouldn't be able to just be "bought out" without your voluntary consent in a libertarian society where property rights are better established and enforced.

What created barriers to entry are you referring to?
patents, government influence, controlling technology and R&D... the same sort of stuff you were talking about.
also less tangiable ones like consumer product/brand identification where the consumers don't know any better to buy competitors' products because of the monopolies' market share - take microsoft for eg. when you say 'operating system' to a non-techy, they (if they know anything at all) immediatley think "windows". same is true with shopping at supermarkets.

then there's the (usually) massive economies of scale that monopolies can benefit from, and upstart companies cannot. couple that with first mover advantage and supernormal profits, and the monopoly will be sitting on resources to throw at quashing upstarts that the latter couldn't hope to dream of... look at cisco systems (massive networking firm). in 2000 i think it was, they purchased 35 seperate upstart companies to the tune of billions of dollars. how? because of their massive, monopolistic resources compared to their upstarts'. this is evidently a barrier to entry.

then there's the fact that to make a dent in the monopoly and not be immediatley driven out of the market again, upstart companies are going to have to make a sizeable (capital) investment, which is itself a BtoE


All of these result in the growth of competition.
loss of consumer choice, loss of output and monopsony results from growth of competition? sorry i don't quite follow :confused:

supernormal profits stimulate competition in a competitive market (without the monopolistic barriers to entry for a start) but supernormal profits and inflated prices are not a result of extra competition

How is one good and one bad? The same conditions apply to both.
one is bad for the reasons i've already given.
one is good because its actually more efficient (for practical reasons specific to the industry) to produce as an industry-wide monopoly. typically with homogenous products (like gas, coal mining, electrisity) where massive economies of scale can be reached without turning to diseconomies - making the monopoly more efficient than competition. just think whether it would be more efficient for each gas supplier or electic supplier to have seperate pipes/cables running into each consumer's house, or whether its more efficent to have a single economic agent running the whole lot and putting a single pipe (or wire) into people's homes.

Trans-human']All intellectual property rights were originally offered as a bribe(sorta) to increase innovation. That is why they are only for a limited time. Without this companies and inventors would have less incentive to innovate because anybody could take that idea and use it(especially drugs which are very expensive to test). Though, now most intellectual property may be overbroad such as patenting genes that already existed and were merely discovered. Also copyright law seems to be extended whenever Mickey Mouse should go into the public domain;) .

Not quite correct, it gives companies incentive to invest in innovation. Inventors and small businesses generally have innovation because they love the technology that they are working with. It gives companies who would normally not invest in innovation the ability to outdue smaller competitors.

Not quite correct, it gives companies incentive to invest in innovation. Inventors and small businesses generally have innovation because they love the technology that they are working with. It gives companies who would normally not invest in innovation the ability to outdue smaller competitors.

Do patents increase, decrease, or do nothing to innovation overall, and do small businesses and inventors not profit fom intellectual property rights? Also, what is your take on copyright rights which are the author's life plus 70 years? Is it good, bad,or good but needs to be changed?

That just plain is untrue...

The biggest industry players can make changes to processes that would bankrupt smaller industry players.

That is true, but smaller businesses are more flexible and are able to adopt new products easier.

Someone like Microsoft, presented with a new technology, can divert enormous resources... even potentially beating an innovator to market... just BECAUSE of how much of the market they 'own'.

How could the beat the innovator to market when the idea hasn't even been brought to market.

Secondly, regarding economy of scale.... I think you are confused about the concept. The NEW company is going to have problems gaining the advantage of economies of scale, because suppliers are less willing to open up huge product streams to unknowns.

On the other hand, again, someone like Microsoft, can call any supplier in the world, and pretty much garner ALL of their product output, through leverage... and at a much lower per-unit price than their competitors.

And, does Microsoft gain immediate advantage? Yes - because every payment they make will be lower, per unit.

The massive start up costs of new product lines in financing, production, and marketing divert the revenue, meaning that initial production costs are going to be astronomical.

Trans-human']Do patents increase, decrease, or do nothing to innovation overall, and do small businesses and inventors not profit fom intellectual property rights? Also, what is your take on copyright rights which are the author's life plus 70 years? Is it good, bad,or good but needs to be changed?

They increase innovation, there is no doubt about that, they free up billions in corporate R&D investment.

Small businesses profit from intellectual property rights by selling them.

As for copyrights, I don't know.

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:


Ok, three different situations.

First. Monopolies. Free trade has to be just that, free. In a truly laissz-faire economy there would be no government intervention. In a free market, the government would step in only when one company takes over an entire market. It would be important to note that Microsoft isn't really a monopoly so much as a predatory company. If you don't want to use Microsoft, you have at least three other options I can think of off the top of my head (Apple, BSD Unix, and all the flavors of Linux). Sure, these other options don't have a huge market share, but they're there. If you want an example of real monopolies (i.e. the companies that inspired the Anti-trust laws), look at the war between coal and the railroads.

Second, the power situation in California. That was a bad situation, no doubt about it. It had as much to do with what was deregulated and when than with deregulation in general. One of the big problems California has is that it needs to import alot of power; the state simply doesn't have enough power plants and a combination of irrational fear of nuclear energy and a "not in my backyard" mentality keeps new ones from being built. In that situation, a company like Enron was able artificially game the market in order to increase prices. Normally, I'd shrug, but I think that essential services like power and water need a little bit more regulation than buisness as a whole.

Finally, theres Vioxx. Its bullshit. My mother was on Vioxx until it was pulled from the market and she knew the health risks. Even if Vioxx as a specific drug was hiding the dangers, others drugs in the same class were pretty open about the risks. The problem with Vioxx wasn't that it existed, but that alot of doctors are too lazy to do research. Vioxx was not a pain medication for anyone with a sprained ankle or osteoarthritis. Vioxx was a drug for people who found that no other drugs worked on their pain. My mother, for instance, has Rhuematoid Arthritis and normal painkillers simply don't work. Even high dose opiate treatment barely lets her function. Drugs like Vioxx allow her to function relatively normally without the chance of addiction. Yes, there are ALOT of scary potential side effects, but these people choose those side effects over having to be in a wheelchair.

As for good libertarian books, Choice: The Best of Reason has a lot of really decent essays that have appeared in the magazine over the years. The Cato Policy Handbook can also be useful, but it oversimplifies alot of issues. Theres always Reason Magazine.

Read again. Sunset Provision. That means that after a time, usually 5-15 years, it becomes public domain. So yes, there is a short-term monopoly, but competition usually resumes because A)the other competitors develop other ways to maximizing profit and B)in the long-run anyone can use the patented item.

Or c) the patent becomes useless because the competitor files a better patent.

That just plain is untrue...

The biggest industry players can make changes to processes that would bankrupt smaller industry players.

Someone like Microsoft, presented with a new technology, can divert enormous resources... even potentially beating an innovator to market... just BECAUSE of how much of the market they 'own'.

Secondly, regarding economy of scale.... I think you are confused about the concept. The NEW company is going to have problems gaining the advantage of economies of scale, because suppliers are less willing to open up huge product streams to unknowns.

On the other hand, again, someone like Microsoft, can call any supplier in the world, and pretty much garner ALL of their product output, through leverage... and at a much lower per-unit price than their competitors.

And, does Microsoft gain immediate advantage? Yes - because every payment they make will be lower, per unit.

There are a few of your points that apply to traditional buisness, but not to modern tech like microsoft. The actual costs of any software is pennies, it is basically just packaging and disks. The major costs come for R&D, which you can't really leverage market share to make less expensive. Indeed, when it comes to R&D, you need to spend MORE if you want to produce a better product or produce it faster because you need to gather the best minds and as many of them as you can, which is expensive. Microsoft products are, category for category, among the most expensive on the market. What Microsoft sells is convenience and compatability. And their logo. For some reason, the buisness world respects the logo, so it comes at a premium.

Your argument about scale falls flat when it comes to technology, too. The problem isn't getting a product to market, it is finding people willing to take the chance on it. VERY stable, secure, user-friendly Linux distros have been on the market for years, and many of them are completely free. You could get for the cost of blank disks and a download time what Microsoft would charge you thousands for (Kernel, OS, GUI, Word Processing, Spreadsheats, Presentation software, Database, Web Publishing, etc), but only about 5% of the market does. Apple also has stable, secure, easy to use software, but people avoid it as well. Microsoft has earned consumer confidence in an arena where the vast majority of consumers are either afraid of the product or simply confused by it. Windows is the devil you know.

Why not? You really think the politician gains nothing? What about his cronies and special interests? And unlike with private industry, the government doesn't have anyone to watch over it when it decides to run businesses. It exploits its consumers AND workers by taxation. I fail to see how nationalized industry has the moral high ground here. Or maybe thats just because I associate nationalization with the USSR, fascist Italy and nazi Germany. And the US Post Office.

That is basically the problem with communism and nationalized industry. People will ALWAYS be corrupt and will ALWAYS try to game the system. When you have private buisness and public watchdogs, you have an adversarial relationship that ensures someone is held accountable. When you have the government watch the government, well, thats like taking BP's word that they're cleaning up the enviornment.

The only way anyone could afford to buy a large quantity of shares is to be super-rich. It's wealth-based, and hence plutocratic. The person who can afford more shares has more control than the person who can afford less.

The current government is blatantly class-based.

Umm, and what form of government isn't? Even the purest forms of socialism revolve around class warfare, they simply favor the weak (or poor) rather than the strong (or wealthy). In practice, every socialist experiment in history has failed precisely because you cannot eliminate class. There will always be those who have more wealth, more power, more land. The administrators will always take a little more for themselves than they give their brothers, the black marketeers will always find ways to trade goods or services and increase their own wealth, and the watchmen will always have their hands in the cookie jar. There will always be classes, and the higher ones will always find their way into rulership. Capitalism provides slightly more opportunity to rise than socialism, not much, but a little. In the meantime, it defends liberty far better than any totalitarian regime ever could.

The profits are not pocketed by the politician, since there is no "owner" of the company. There is merely management.

Hah! Honestly, have you ever looked at a socialist nation? Do you think Stalin slept in the same hovels as his farmers? Did Chairman Mao ever know what hunger felt like? Does Fidel Castro have the same standard of life than everyone else in his socialist worker's paradise?

Maybe that explains it. If everyone associated private industry with Enron, we'd have a lot more socialists.

Tried that, didn't like it. Honestly, if the 1900s, the 30s, the 60s, and the 80s didn't turn us on to socialism, nothing will. It isn't like large segments of the country didn't experiment with it. Look at the labor movement at the turn of the century, the political machine in Chicago, the New Deal, the Hippies, "socially responsibile buisness" and the rise of non-profits in the 90s. People keep trying, and they keep getting sick of working hard with nothing to show for it.

Capitalist Vikings:

We disagree on the nature of competition, or rather, I would say that any society, in practice, would evolve to the point where the laissez-faire notion of competition would not really hold. Imbalances of capital and the interlocking, consolidated nature of modern business interfere with competition enough to make it ineffective as far as assuring corporate accountability. Blaming this on government regulation has some accuracy to it, but still misses the point; unregulated capitalism on a national level simply would be incapable of functioning, and would ultimately benefit nobody. From the beginning the wealthy classes enlisted the government to their side, and with the rise of the labor movement the working class has done the same to a degree.

There is no doubt that there is a great degree of government complicity in and responsibility for the unfair policies of big business, and this collaboration should be opposed. It is, quite simply, government corruption, and should be unacceptable in any free society.

The point I was making, though, is simply that there are some cases (far from all) where the competitive market would favor centralized business over decentralized business, and as such ultimately erode competition by leading to consolidation and monopolies. In such cases, in order to prevent private tyranny, some methodology of collective control must be instituted, of which the most common today is nationalization.

And in reply to The Sutured Psyche:

Yes, socialism is class-based, in favor of the oppressed against the oppressors, rather than the opposite, as is the current system.

Stalin, Castro, and Mao are hardly examples of democratically-elected leaders.

We disagree on the nature of competition, or rather, I would say that any society, in practice, would evolve to the point where the laissez-faire notion of competition would not really hold. Imbalances of capital and the interlocking, consolidated nature of modern business interfere with competition enough to make it ineffective as far as assuring corporate accountability. Blaming this on government regulation has some accuracy to it, but still misses the point; unregulated capitalism on a national level simply would be incapable of functioning, and would ultimately benefit nobody. From the beginning the wealthy classes enlisted the government to their side, and with the rise of the labor movement the working class has done the same to a degree.

Can you provide me any solid evidence linking laissez-faire capitalism with the elimination of competition that does not involve government collusion in the market? You state: "unregulated capitalism on a national level simply would be incapable of functioning..." but how do you know this? Government intervention in the market has been around just as long as capitalism. The two have not been successfully separated. So your claims are unwarranted. The key is to eliminate the mutually beneficial relationship between the wealthy and the bureaucrats, a huge, but not insurmountable goal.

There is no doubt that there is a great degree of government complicity in and responsibility for the unfair policies of big business, and this collaboration should be opposed. It is, quite simply, government corruption, and should be unacceptable in any free society.

I am glad you agree. However, how can you object to this obvious corruption, only to have your solution be more government regulation on a NATIONAL scale? It seems a bit counterintuitive.

The point I was making, though, is simply that there are some cases (far from all) where the competitive market would favor centralized business over decentralized business, and as such ultimately erode competition by leading to consolidation and monopolies. In such cases, in order to prevent private tyranny, some methodology of collective control must be instituted, of which the most common today is nationalization.

You agree that a minority of cases in the competitive market favor centralized business (such as monopolies), but why nationalize these industries rather than determine first if a) they arose because they produce a better product, or b) they are natural monopolies and they represent the most efficient market result of a given area. Nearly all monopolies in a free-market economy would fit into either one of these two categories. Even if a centralize business somehow exploited the market rules without government intervention (I don't know how, but for the sake of the argument...), then why choose nationalizing it (giving a direct feed to the government), rather than just breaking it up with laws?

And in reply to The Sutured Psyche:

Yes, socialism is class-based, in favor of the oppressed against the oppressors, rather than the opposite, as is the current system.

Stalin, Castro, and Mao are hardly examples of democratically-elected leaders.


No, but then again, socialism doesn't exactly have a very good record when it comes to democratic elections. Yes, occasionally you get socialist leaders elected in free states, but those states are still primarily capitalist states. See, my problem with socialism has always one that is more in practice than in theory. Socialism in practice tends to end with a few people who are extremely poor on the bottom, a few who are very rich at the top, and a huge middle class that is not quite miserable enough to revolt.

Beyond that, I have a lot to lose in a socialist system and a lot to gain in a capitalist meritocracy. I got lucky in the genetic lottery, I'm fairly well socialized, my parents instilled a strong work ethic in me when I was young, I have a good education (which is made better by the fact that I had to fight for it rather than it be handed to me), in my spare time I read and learn independently, and if it all goes to hell I'm a big guy with a decent 100 yard shot. If I work hard, I have a pretty good chance of ending up with an above average life for my family and for myself in a capitalist society. Under the doctrine of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" I'm just a resource with little to show for it.

Honestly, socialism ends up looking like Harrison Bergeron to me. I don't like the idea of being reduced to the least common denominator, i don't like the idea of my work being no more highly valued than someone who does less. I really dislike the idea that I should feel guilty because I decided to work hard to gain extra skills and go to nearly a decade of extra school, that I somehow "owe" the guy down the block who never had more ambition than to flip burgers and smoke pot.

note: Harrison Bergeron can be found here: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Why do people have this idea that government has a different mindset from everything else? Bureaucrats act in their own interests given a certain framework.

Why do people have this idea that government has a different mindset from everything else? Bureaucrats act in their own interests given a certain framework.

Maybe they've yet to have to go to the DMV? No, seriously, I used to be a big fan of public service until I actually had to go see bureaucracy up close. Between contesting parking tickets, renewing drivers licenses, and seeing police bribed on more than one occasion, my faith in the public sector is virutally nil.

You couldn't be more wrong. Please check your economic facts before posting ignorant and incorrect statements.

The free market does NOT invariably produce market failures, and certainly government is not a viable answer. Consider the case of 1921 stock market crash, which in comparison to the one in 1929 was greater in initial impact. Warren Harding ran his campaign on less government intervention and it worked, the stock market rebounded, the GDP increased, unemployment fell and the economy boomed.

Now consider the case of the stock market crash in 1929. The FED raised interest rates nearly 3% previous to the crash and they stayed at that level. Worse of Hoover rose tariff rate, FDR's new deal plundged America deeper into depression by 1938. Only WWII could bring us back from the mess the government did to our economy.

PS You lose, good day sir.

Wow... rude, much?

Also - couldn't it be argued that the 1921, 1929 and 1938 economic difficulties were, at root, all the SAME problem... just being temporarily salved in various fashions?

That is true, but smaller businesses are more flexible and are able to adopt new products easier.


This makes no sense... and is certainly not borne-out by any model I've ever seen.

Let us imagine a small business that, for the sake of argument... makes sandwiches.

Where is the 'flexibility' that enables them to leap into the 'powder coated metals' market? What part of the small business model makes it easier for them to adopt a new product like synthesising polymers?

On the other hand, should someone like Microsoft, BP, or McDonalds wish to divert some production value into those things... what obstacles do you see them encountering, that our 'sandwich makers' don't encounter?


How could the beat the innovator to market when the idea hasn't even been brought to market.


Quite simple. Most products have some kind of prototype or trial period. They also have to register patents.

A company like Microsoft or Exxon can literally monitor all new patents, see something they like, and set an R&D team to it, with a whole industry of backing... and all they need to re-patent it, is a 'significant improvement on an existing technology'.

Not only can they easily BEAT an innovation to market... they CAN actually BLOCK a new product, by outmoding it.


The massive start up costs of new product lines in financing, production, and marketing divert the revenue, meaning that initial production costs are going to be astronomical.

But still, much easier for the larger industry, than for the smaller.

If I run a company, and want to take advantage of economies of scale, I have to convince a supplier to provide for me, I have to find sufficient liquid assets to cover the 'scale', and I have to have facilities to allow for the shipment of 'scale'.

As a sole trader, this is a limited position, and much MORE limited if I wished to access a second or alternate supply stream.

For the bigger industry, all the resources are on tap, all the assets are there to be liquidated, all the resources are already there. It is a simple matter of redesignation.

Can you provide me any solid evidence linking laissez-faire capitalism with the elimination of competition that does not involve government collusion in the market?

No, since as you say "government intervention in the market has been around just as long as capitalism."

You state: "unregulated capitalism on a national level simply would be incapable of functioning..." but how do you know this? Government intervention in the market has been around just as long as capitalism.

I can't see how any hyper-competitive system would function without massive inefficiency through overproduction, and without government influence in some areas the quantity of capital required to start new businesses might end up being far beyond reasonable. Furthermore the short-term unrestrained pursuit of profit could well end up obstructing long-term planning, which typically requires coordination on a large scale.

The two have not been successfully separated. So your claims are unwarranted.

And I could say that true socialism has never been tried, and therefore your claims as to what would happen are also unwarranted. Ultimately this is a theoretical debate, as are all debates between radicals.

The key is to eliminate the mutually beneficial relationship between the wealthy and the bureaucrats, a huge, but not insurmountable goal.

I think it's definitely insurmountable, the powerful will usually seek to use the government against the powerless, and the powerless will ultimately tend to band together and use it against the powerful.

I am glad you agree. However, how can you object to this obvious corruption, only to have your solution be more government regulation on a NATIONAL scale? It seems a bit counterintuitive.

Can you imagine a leftist asking you, "how can you object to this obvious corruption, only to have your solution be less government regulation in favor of the poor and the oppressed?"

We are looking at this issue from different lenses, not opposite ones; we are thinking about two different scales. I am not "pro-government intervention." I am in favor of using democratic institutions - like the government, though hardly the most democratic of institutions - to oppose and ultimately eliminate the sorts of private power that cause class hierarchies. I am against using any institution, especially institutions paid for by the population as a whole, to benefit those at the top of this hierarchy at the expense of those at the bottom.

Ultimately the national government is a rather clumsy way of doing it in some respects. It will take a synthesis of government intervention and more libetarian options like parecon and libertarian socialism to ultimately both maximize efficiency and accountability, and eventually it may be that centralization, even if the more efficient of the options, is simply not worth the costs in accountability and homogeneity. Assuming real socialism can work on the national level, an open question from an empirical perspective, my guess would be that this question would be the focus of the political debate.

You agree that a minority of cases in the competitive market favor centralized business (such as monopolies) but why nationalize these industries rather than determine first if a) they arose because they produce a better product, or b) they are natural monopolies and they represent the most efficient market result of a given area.

If they are still being competed against, that is, if an even better product would be able to unseat them, then in the first case there would be no real necessity to nationalize them based on this particular argument.

If they are the "most efficient market result of a given area" they should be nationalized, because that means there is no serious market alternative to having one company totally dominate a certain area, an option that reduces accountability through competition to an unacceptably low level.

Even if a centralize business somehow exploited the market rules without government intervention (I don't know how, but for the sake of the argument...), then why choose nationalizing it (giving a direct feed to the government), rather than just breaking it up with laws?

Because if it arose without government intervention, why let it arise again?

Beyond that, I have a lot to lose in a socialist system and a lot to gain in a capitalist meritocracy.

Rather: you have a lot to gain in a meritocracy, capitalist or whatever, and a lot to lose in a society that produces complete equality of results.

There is nothing inherently anti-meritocratic about socialism, in fact one could say that capitalism is far more anti-meritocratic. In capitalism if you're born to a rich family you have, independent of any labor, countless advantages over most other people that free you from actually having to work very hard. Or if you manage to have enough stock, the profits you achieve will keep you from actually having to do work. On the other hand, if you're a worker in the wrong place, you could work ceaselessly at several full-time jobs for your entire life, with all the potential and capability that you might have completely wasted.

With the elimination of class divisions such opulence and such economic entrapment would cease.

You stated that big business consumed small business because of wealth; I pointed out that if that was the case, then the process was independent of better services.

No, because wealth itself comes from better services. And there are other factors involved as well. It's not so simple.


The current government is blatantly class-based.


I believe you might find that the current PLANET is 'class-based.


In a sense, yes, by paying themselves obscene salaries, but that's negligible. And CEOs do precisely the same thing.

Tax is when you are forced to hand over money and if you do not, the would-be recipient can throw you into prison. That sounds an awful lot like being mugged to me. And definitely "precisely the same thing" as simple employment.

Rather: you have a lot to gain in a meritocracy, capitalist or whatever, and a lot to lose in a society that produces complete equality of results.

There is nothing inherently anti-meritocratic about socialism, in fact one could say that capitalism is far more anti-meritocratic. In capitalism if you're born to a rich family you have, independent of any labor, countless advantages over most other people that free you from actually having to work very hard. Or if you manage to have enough stock, the profits you achieve will keep you from actually having to do work. On the other hand, if you're a worker in the wrong place, you could work ceaselessly at several full-time jobs for your entire life, with all the potential and capability that you might have completely wasted.

With the elimination of class divisions such opulence and such economic entrapment would cease.

You're falling into the same problem most socialists fall into. There are basically two kinds of people in the world, those who work hard and those who leech.

Socialism proposes to put leeches on the bottom, whereas capitalism puts them on the top. Sure, I don't like that someone born to the right family has an easier time of it than I do, but at the same time I'm willing to put up with it if that means I have a chance to get ahead. Maybe I want my kids to have an easier time of it than I do. Maybe I would like my children to not ever have to hear mommy and daddy arguing about whether electric or heat is more important. Perhaps I think that if I can contribute something to society me and mine should benefit first. Is it greedy? Yeah, a bit, but lifes a bitch and I'm not willing to force my family to endure privation.

Some of the hard workers are skilled workers, some are unskilled labor. I take offense to the very idea that an individual who creates a great work of art or invents a vaccine is equal to an individual who mows a lawn or digs a ditch. Complete equality of results means that these two individuals will be rewarded in the same way, even though their contributions are of vastly differing value. Take my situation. I could have very easily decided to coast through life. I could have taken what was given to me and ended up a working class menial laborer. Instead, I decided to study, work hard, and enter a field where I will eventually heal the minds of others. Is that of no more value than if I had decided to go from highschool to an assembly line and pound out widgets for eight hours a day? Is a doctor of no more value than a line cook?

Your proposal that aspiration or that excellence is of no value is personally repugnant to me. It is also socially damaging. What incentive do I have to excell if the results will be the same as if I coast? Why would anyone take a dangerous or unplesant job? Without an objective valuation of labor, there is no incentive to work hard, take risks, or innovate.

You're falling into the same problem most socialists fall into. There are basically two kinds of people in the world, those who work hard and those who leech.

Socialism proposes to put leeches on the bottom, whereas capitalism puts them on the top. Sure, I don't like that someone born to the right family has an easier time of it than I do, but at the same time I'm willing to put up with it if that means I have a chance to get ahead. Maybe I want my kids to have an easier time of it than I do. Maybe I would like my children to not ever have to hear mommy and daddy arguing about whether electric or heat is more important. Perhaps I think that if I can contribute something to society me and mine should benefit first. Is it greedy? Yeah, a bit, but lifes a bitch and I'm not willing to force my family to endure privation.

Some of the hard workers are skilled workers, some are unskilled labor. I take offense to the very idea that an individual who creates a great work of art or invents a vaccine is equal to an individual who mows a lawn or digs a ditch. Complete equality of results means that these two individuals will be rewarded in the same way, even though their contributions are of vastly differing value. Take my situation. I could have very easily decided to coast through life. I could have taken what was given to me and ended up a working class menial laborer. Instead, I decided to study, work hard, and enter a field where I will eventually heal the minds of others. Is that of no more value than if I had decided to go from highschool to an assembly line and pound out widgets for eight hours a day? Is a doctor of no more value than a line cook?

Your proposal that aspiration or that excellence is of no value is personally repugnant to me. It is also socially damaging. What incentive do I have to excell if the results will be the same as if I coast? Why would anyone take a dangerous or unplesant job? Without an objective valuation of labor, there is no incentive to work hard, take risks, or innovate.

I think I see your point.... but I have to disagree...

Which do you perceive yourself as? The leech, or the worker?

Not an insult... but, I perceive myself as the worker.

Now, the job I do at the moment is skilled, over a thousand lives are in my hands every day. I need to have special qualifications for what I do.

And yet, my job pays almost nothing, in the big picture.

So - why did I gain that set of qualifications, why did I work so hard?

Why do I work so hard at other things? Why do I teach myself 'dead languages'? Why do I spend hours every day researching subjects as diverse as religion, politics, art, etc?

I'm not doing it for the 'big pay off', am I?

In your case, you say you COULD have done 'menial' work... you could have taken an 'easy' route... but you didn't. Was your motivation the bottom line? I mean - money is important (vital even), but is that what has driven you?

It doesn't automatically follow that - if everyone was treated equally, fed equally, clothed equally, housed equally - they would all be 'slackers', does it?

Bach wasn't in it for the money. Leonardo was satisfying a passion. "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" wasn't about a bottom line. Pasteur wasn't just looking to get paid.

Is a doctor more 'important' than a cook? Depends how hungry you are, I suspect. Should one be 'glorified' because his/her job is perceived as 'better'?

Perhaps it comes down to one thing. If every job in the country paid EXACTLY the same, I would still be 'happy' doing my job... even though it is taxing, difficult, potentially dangerous, and has responsibilites that FAR outweigh the 'benefits'.

Would you still do the job you do, if ALL work were paid the same?

I'm gonna jump in here into the mix of things. Socialists have no problem with the problem you brought about assuming that the socialist state in question is a democracy. All of the communes within Utah and Switzerland and throughout europe have problems, but people not working is not one of them. Whereas your so called capitalism is driven specifically by consumption. You honestly think that a bigger television equals a better life? Hegel, the dude who wrote about capitalism was a fan of libertarianism as that's pretty much what his state dictated, but then he fell away from this because it was inevitable in a lasse faire state to keep from monopolies. Ricardo, Jevons, Keynes, Smith and ever Robbins would agree with this problem. I don't agree with socialism, but I sure as hell don't agree with libertarianism.

I think I see your point.... but I have to disagree...

Which do you perceive yourself as? The leech, or the worker?

Not an insult... but, I perceive myself as the worker.

Now, the job I do at the moment is skilled, over a thousand lives are in my hands every day. I need to have special qualifications for what I do.

And yet, my job pays almost nothing, in the big picture.

So - why did I gain that set of qualifications, why did I work so hard?

Why do I work so hard at other things? Why do I teach myself 'dead languages'? Why do I spend hours every day researching subjects as diverse as religion, politics, art, etc?

I'm not doing it for the 'big pay off', am I?

In your case, you say you COULD have done 'menial' work... you could have taken an 'easy' route... but you didn't. Was your motivation the bottom line? I mean - money is important (vital even), but is that what has driven you?

It doesn't automatically follow that - if everyone was treated equally, fed equally, clothed equally, housed equally - they would all be 'slackers', does it?

Bach wasn't in it for the money. Leonardo was satisfying a passion. "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" wasn't about a bottom line. Pasteur wasn't just looking to get paid.

Is a doctor more 'important' than a cook? Depends how hungry you are, I suspect. Should one be 'glorified' because his/her job is perceived as 'better'?

Perhaps it comes down to one thing. If every job in the country paid EXACTLY the same, I would still be 'happy' doing my job... even though it is taxing, difficult, potentially dangerous, and has responsibilites that FAR outweigh the 'benefits'.

Would you still do the job you do, if ALL work were paid the same?
I'm pretty sure that the person in question is refering to the problem that the Soviets had with their workers. They had way too many people to do a bunch of menial jobs. This lead to a bunch of people not doing their work and everyone else doing their jobs for them. This is the general consensus in most capitalistic countries. Problem is, Russia was nothing like socialism. It was a communist regime. People don't understand that socialism does not equal communism. You can have a sociocapital state. Socialism simply states that the workers have access to the capital necessary to be used by the provider. Not that everyone gets the same thing. Read Capital by Marx... great read.

I think I see your point.... but I have to disagree...

Which do you perceive yourself as? The leech, or the worker?

Not an insult... but, I perceive myself as the worker.

Now, the job I do at the moment is skilled, over a thousand lives are in my hands every day. I need to have special qualifications for what I do.

And yet, my job pays almost nothing, in the big picture.

So - why did I gain that set of qualifications, why did I work so hard?

Why do I work so hard at other things? Why do I teach myself 'dead languages'? Why do I spend hours every day researching subjects as diverse as religion, politics, art, etc?

I'm not doing it for the 'big pay off', am I?

In your case, you say you COULD have done 'menial' work... you could have taken an 'easy' route... but you didn't. Was your motivation the bottom line? I mean - money is important (vital even), but is that what has driven you?

It doesn't automatically follow that - if everyone was treated equally, fed equally, clothed equally, housed equally - they would all be 'slackers', does it?

Bach wasn't in it for the money. Leonardo was satisfying a passion. "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" wasn't about a bottom line. Pasteur wasn't just looking to get paid.

Is a doctor more 'important' than a cook? Depends how hungry you are, I suspect. Should one be 'glorified' because his/her job is perceived as 'better'?

Perhaps it comes down to one thing. If every job in the country paid EXACTLY the same, I would still be 'happy' doing my job... even though it is taxing, difficult, potentially dangerous, and has responsibilites that FAR outweigh the 'benefits'.

Would you still do the job you do, if ALL work were paid the same?


You make some valid points but, again, I must disagree. I just have very a very low opinion of human beings in general. You are right that there will always be people who do their job for love. It is likely that I would be working towards the same goals even if a payoff wasn't involved at the end of the line, but I have seen quite a few people who are, well, less driven.

It has been my experiance that most people do the bare minimum in life. I was always astounded in college that there were so many people in every class I took who just didn't seem to care. Maybe they'd show up, maybe they'd do work, maybe they'd study, or, maybe not. Solid 'C' students who never read a book they couldn't skim. Civil servants who do just enough to keep them from getting fired but who aren't about to strive for perfection. Even alot of my friends from back in high school, only about half of us bothered to go to college.

How many people do you know who would never read a book that wasn't a TV guide? How many people do you know who can name the leaders of more than a half dozen other countries in the world, if that? How many people do you know that could carry on a conversation about the differences, evolution, or or basic tenets of major world religions? Socialism, on a basic levelk, require a confidence in your fellow human beings that I am simply not able to muster. I have seen far fewer people ion my life who have a real drive for anything than people who would rather just sit.

Also, experiance might have something to do with our disagreement. Socialism is the definition of big government, and big government means lots of beureaucrats and functionaries. I grew up in Chicago and as a result I have been exposed to the worst excesses and abuses that beureaucracy can present. I mean, one of the reasons I'm a libertarian is because I have NEVER seen a layer of government that wasn't practically crippled by cronyism and corruption. I mean, I've never been a criminal and I am familiar with the proper protocol for bribing a police officer. That kind of enviornment isn't exactly conducive to a growing confidence in the ability of a government to even create equality in theory, much less practice. I just have this horrible feeling that my hard work is going to be used to pay for a no-show job for the mayor's second cousin's best friend's son.

I'm gonna jump in here into the mix of things. Socialists have no problem with the problem you brought about assuming that the socialist state in question is a democracy. All of the communes within Utah and Switzerland and throughout europe have problems, but people not working is not one of them. Whereas your so called capitalism is driven specifically by consumption. You honestly think that a bigger television equals a better life? Hegel, the dude who wrote about capitalism was a fan of libertarianism as that's pretty much what his state dictated, but then he fell away from this because it was inevitable in a lasse faire state to keep from monopolies. Ricardo, Jevons, Keynes, Smith and ever Robbins would agree with this problem. I don't agree with socialism, but I sure as hell don't agree with libertarianism.

Because working equals survival or continued membership. I don't know about you, but I want more than bare subsitance out of life. I want to be able to read books, listen to music, eat good food, and get a tighter grouping at the 100 yard range. I'm simply not comfortable with the concept of a state dictating how far my life can go regardless of how hard I work or what the value of that work is.

People don't understand that socialism does not equal communism. You can have a sociocapital state. Socialism simply states that the workers have access to the capital necessary to be used by the provider. Not that everyone gets the same thing. Read Capital by Marx... great read.

The problem is, you cannot scale socialism to a national level without a communist regieme. Socialism requires a high degree of management and authority, when you try to scale that to a nation, you end up with communism. One of the major flaws in socialist thought is the time period it came from. We are not in the industrial revolution anymore. Raw labor is no longer all that valuable. Skilled labor is what our society turns on, high level tasks and problems that require more than a strong back or a working knowledge of an engine. It is easy to talk about giving power to the proletariat when you're talking about a steel mill or a slaughterhouse. It is a somewhat harder task to envision when you are discussing software development or biotech research.

There is one final problem, with socialism, as a concept. Socialism is a collective ideology. It is an ideology in which the individual must submit to the group to a very high degree. Socialism requires a certain subserviance which I find unpalatable. It is very easy to talk about limiting the power of private ownership, but it is that very principal around which all of our rights revolve. A situation of collective ownership renders many of the rights we value worthless. You cannot have a right against searches or seizures, you cannot have a right to privacy. You likely cannot have a right to assemble, print, or criticize the government because any interference in the efficiency of the machine might result in injury to the collective. Your rights as an individual must be subverted to the common good for socialism to work, and once that monster begins to move, it cannot be stopped. For me individuals rights are, to quote that big comic book brute Marv, "worth dyin' for, worth killin' for, worth goin' to hell for."

This is like arguing that you can't stop war because people will cause it. It is only people who want war that make it necessary. There have in fact been many socialist countries that were not communist. Switzerland was at one time a very socialist country. America is coming closer and closer to being a socialist democracy. With the uprising of a social welfare state we gained the ability to stamp out socialism, but we tend to not look at the fact that communism and socialism are not the same. I will explain socialism to you from a marxist perspective, because where it seems that you're open to listening, you're not as well informed as maybe you'd like to be, so maybe I can help this. Marxian socialism is not communist at all. Actually it was a way to change hegelian capitalism so that coercion was no longer in play. All that socialism claims is that it is impossible for workers to garner what they deserve because they will never have the political power that capitalists do because they don't have the money to buy it. In a socialist state one does not ban freedom, in fact one encourages these things. In volume three of capital marx talks specifically about how to make art greater in socialism than it is in capitalism. If you're taking the Nietzschiean point of view that one cannot create great art if all people are treated equal then maybe you are correct. But if you are truly arguing for the ability to be free, socialism is exactly that... a political plan built upon equality. I don't really understand your idea about communism here either. There is no reason a person cannot be completely and totally artistic in communist countries. This is what I meant when I said that you cannot compare Soviet Russia with socialism. A fascist regime is not the same as communism. Communism was created for the exact opposite purpose actually. When Marx created socialism it was because he believed that people weren't able to think for themselves and that they could never be free to produce to their greatest abilities if they were held down by worrying about other people's opinions. Think about a world without worrying about being poor. Think of a world where working became about living and living wasn't about work. Think of a world where the only thing stopping you from doing the most amazing things you could think of was your own intellect. That is what Communism is about. I should note I am not communist, nor am I am socialist, but I do accept that they are not the evil things that people make them out to be. If you honestly believe they cannot exist in society, ok, but that's like telling me that I should stop striving for better things because consumerism is what I should want. Don't think that you are free because of your lazyboy recliner. Don't think that you are free because of your computer. Realize that if you were truly free you wouldn't be worrying about this conversation right now.

No, because wealth itself comes from better services.

Which could be because of efficiency, hence your rebuttal was not a rebuttal at all.

I believe you might find that the current PLANET is 'class-based.

Yes, that is a major tenet of socialism.

Tax is when you are forced to hand over money and if you do not, the would-be recipient can throw you into prison.

And capitalism is when you are forced to work and if you do not, you starve to death.

You are forced to hand over money for food, and if you do not, you starve to death.

You are forced to hand over money for clothing and shelter, and if you do not, you freeze to death.

That sounds an awful lot like being mugged to me.

It's part of an incentives-based concept of human nature, all of it - mugging, government-based socialism, taxation, corporate capitalism. Perhaps the only exception is true, anarchist communism.

And definitely "precisely the same thing" as simple employment.

The point is, politicians unethically extract huge salaries from money belonging to the government, because they have the power to do so.

Similarly, CEOs unethically extract huge salaries from money belonging to the corporation, because they have the power to do so.

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:

"in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise." <-- Patently incorrect, the government is there as a police man, to ensure that there is a free and open market place so that companies can come and go, rise and fall according to market forces of supply and demand - and yes, this does include ensuring that no one company gets too much power, as one company can distort the market place and thus reduce market efficiencies.

Regarding California, that has already been shown to be caused by the actions of Enron and their deliberate shuttign off of power stations and supplies to artificially boost prices due to an artificial shortage in eletricity - that is, distorting the supply resulting in price hikes - that it been properly regulated and the process made transparent as to how electricity is traded, this would never have happened in the first place.

The government should be seen as a traffic cop, if things are going to smoothly, it'll stand back, but if trouble is on the horizon, a little action is taken.

Which could be because of efficiency, hence your rebuttal was not a rebuttal at all.


And it could be more complicated than "bigger = more efficient," as I said. You're right, it COULD be because of efficiency, but based on my knowledge of business I totally disagree that bigger is more efficient.


And capitalism is when you are forced to work and if you do not, you starve to death.

You are forced to hand over money for food, and if you do not, you starve to death.

You are forced to hand over money for clothing and shelter, and if you do not, you freeze to death.


The difference is, those are aspects of reality. Money just represents time, energy and information. If you aren't willing to put forth any of those, you starve to death. That happens to be true throughout nature. If you don't invest anything into clothing, shelter or food, you will experience bad things. Fact of life.

Taxation is not. It is not willing. It is forced by an actor, the government. If you resist it, guys with guns come to you and forcibly if need be put you in prison where you have no freedom. If you resist hard enough they just shoot you. It's the equivalent of a mafia protection racket.

Government is far more corrupt than any employer. Power corrupts, and no employer, not even your dreaded Microsoft, has that much power.


It's part of an incentives-based concept of human nature, all of it - mugging, government-based socialism, taxation, corporate capitalism. Perhaps the only exception is true, anarchist communism.

Anarchist communism and 'truth' are mutually exclusive. Unless of course human nature changes, in which case we'd hardly need anarchist communism to live our happy, non-incentive-based life of effortless wealth and happiness...


The point is, politicians unethically extract huge salaries from money belonging to the government, because they have the power to do so.

Similarly, CEOs unethically extract huge salaries from money belonging to the corporation, because they have the power to do so.

I agree, but based on my earlier statements I view the corporation's money as more legitimate, since it originally comes from consentual deals instead of taxation-theft.

Would you still do the job you do, if ALL work were paid the same?
Yes. I'm an entrepreneur when it comes down to it. The little guy.
The fucking dreamer. And I've done pretty well making it (somehow) toward middle class. Let's face it; the arguments are always about the outrageously rich and poor. It's rediculous. I'm arguing with cockwipes who can afford (or who have afforded for them) computers.
With (moe often than not), broadband access to the fucking net.
Doesn't a minority-majority school need it elsewhere?
There's an honest group, and a very slick, but dishonest group here.


(And the fact is, those intellectual heroes didn't exist within a secure environment that fostered ennui.)

Socialism simply states that the workers have access to the capital necessary to be used by the provider.

Workers' access to capital equals socialism? Rubbish. In capitalist systems the workers have huge access to capital, bank accounts (the banks invest/loan money which is capital), insurance policies (premiums are invested to make money, and pay claims), and direct ownership.

Of course what distinguishes this from socialism is that all the above is the result of voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. In socialism, the state steals capital, ostensibly to give to the workers but the state always ends up keeping the capital itself.

Socialism's basic contradiction is that it seeks to decentralise power ... by centralising power.

This suggests to me that socialism is not a real, positive economic system, merely an attempt to negate capitalism based on hatred and envy, and socialists gain support they can keep the prosperity of capitalism (and even gain more), while removing the structures that support that prosperity.

And I could say that true socialism has never been tried, and therefore your claims as to what would happen are also unwarranted. Ultimately this is a theoretical debate, as are all debates between radicals.


However, as you freely admit before, the concentration of economic and political power is a threat to a free society. Therefore, wouldn't socialism (government-economic planning) be even more a threat than a separation of economic and political power? How would you prevent politicians from "centralizing" politically favorable industries rather than out of a genuine concern for the populace. You run into this interesting problem of creating a system out of cynicism towards humanity that relies on the innate goodness of a select number of powerful political individuals to act in accordance to the benefit of society. This, I'm afraid, is even more impossible to hold than my view that economic and political power can be separated. It defies human nature in the most profound sense.

I think it's definitely insurmountable, the powerful will usually seek to use the government against the powerless, and the powerless will ultimately tend to band together and use it against the powerful.

So the obvious solution is to have the government completely control the economy through centralized planning. That way, with all the economic power in the hands of a few subjective politicans nothing could go wrong! :rolleyes:

Can you imagine a leftist asking you, "how can you object to this obvious corruption, only to have your solution be less government regulation in favor of the poor and the oppressed?"


If a leftist were to ask me this I would laugh. If the collusion of government and firms cause massive corruption, then wouldn't the logical solution be the separation of these powers? Besides, I think it is ridiculous to claim that a free market economy would hurt the poor and oppressed but thats a different topic all together.

I am in favor of using democratic institutions - like the government, though hardly the most democratic of institutions - to oppose and ultimately eliminate the sorts of private power that cause class hierarchies. I am against using any institution, especially institutions paid for by the population as a whole, to benefit those at the top of this hierarchy at the expense of those at the bottom.

Oh come on! Do you seriously think that the government is an institution that doesn't benefit those of the top at the expense of the bottom? Have you never heard of "pork-barrel" politics? The whole point of most politicans is to bring benefits to their given select consitutency to ensure their maintaining power. Politicians are human like the rest of us, and generally act out of self interest. I maintain that because capitalism is the only system that creates good out of selfishness then it is way more democratic than any government. When you vote on an issue you have to choose between a few choices. But in the market you choose from many given product choices, or even no choice at all! Imagine if someone tried to force you to buy either a green or red shirt. You would probably just walk away. However, when a vote comes up on a ballot, while you are not forced into voting, you are forced into a narrow set of possible decisions, none of which completely reflect the general will of the populace. Therefore, a government institution will never be as representative as the free market.

If you don't know by now, I am a libertarian. however i have discovered a problem.

monopolies and privatisation of energy (for example)

in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise. this is bad because it leads to higher price for a product and lower quality as there is no competition -- Microsoft.

yet, certain aspects of the economy seem to be better off without competition. the energy sector comes to mind -- e.g. California with deregulated power companies but had blackouts and price gouging etc.

i'm at a loss. how would a libertarian society deal with this?

what about ethics? Vioxx for example; how would that be dealt with? people are dying, so their right to life is being infringed upon... should the government step in?

also, if someone could recommend some good libertarian books to pick up, i'd be happy!

:confused:
Relaaax man. Here, have a taco.:cool:

You make some valid points but, again, I must disagree. I just have very a very low opinion of human beings in general. You are right that there will always be people who do their job for love. It is likely that I would be working towards the same goals even if a payoff wasn't involved at the end of the line, but I have seen quite a few people who are, well, less driven.

It has been my experiance that most people do the bare minimum in life. I was always astounded in college that there were so many people in every class I took who just didn't seem to care. Maybe they'd show up, maybe they'd do work, maybe they'd study, or, maybe not. Solid 'C' students who never read a book they couldn't skim. Civil servants who do just enough to keep them from getting fired but who aren't about to strive for perfection. Even alot of my friends from back in high school, only about half of us bothered to go to college.

How many people do you know who would never read a book that wasn't a TV guide? How many people do you know who can name the leaders of more than a half dozen other countries in the world, if that? How many people do you know that could carry on a conversation about the differences, evolution, or or basic tenets of major world religions? Socialism, on a basic levelk, require a confidence in your fellow human beings that I am simply not able to muster. I have seen far fewer people ion my life who have a real drive for anything than people who would rather just sit.

Also, experiance might have something to do with our disagreement. Socialism is the definition of big government, and big government means lots of beureaucrats and functionaries. I grew up in Chicago and as a result I have been exposed to the worst excesses and abuses that beureaucracy can present. I mean, one of the reasons I'm a libertarian is because I have NEVER seen a layer of government that wasn't practically crippled by cronyism and corruption. I mean, I've never been a criminal and I am familiar with the proper protocol for bribing a police officer. That kind of enviornment isn't exactly conducive to a growing confidence in the ability of a government to even create equality in theory, much less practice. I just have this horrible feeling that my hard work is going to be used to pay for a no-show job for the mayor's second cousin's best friend's son.

I think... one of my favourite things about debating with you... is that we agree on almost nothing, my friend. It's refreshing. :)

However, I agree that there have been those will-not-work types. I met them at university... the rich kids, who had no reason to work at the course... because, if they failed, they'd just be back again next year.... and the year after that... and the year after that.... etc.

However... if you think about it, it is BECAUSE of the capitalist approach, that those people are ABLE to behave like that. The rich kid who can screw around getting drunk/stoned/laid all through college, and STILL get a job in daddy's business.

Let us envision a situation where each person 'earned' a professional position, through their hard-work, through their passion, through their ABILITY.

Would you still be doing the same job... very possibly. Especially if you are good at it. Now - what about those wasters who coasted through school, and never applied themselves. Are they going to be brain-surgeons? Maybe... but not likely. More likely... those who acquired less skills, will end up in less-skilled work.... without the safety net of 'family money', for example... to give them a cushy office suite.

So - even if all jobs pay the same... who becomes the lawyer? The person who WANTS it... and the person who is GOOD at it.

Who becomes the doctor? The person who CARES, and the person who can do the work.

Who becomes the teacher? The person who is able to communicate to children... the person who MAKES that happen.

And - what about those who will not make that kind of effort? Well... there will always be people needed for the menial tasks. Which will leave them feeling unfulfilled, perhaps? And - if they seek fulfillment, they will pursue it.

I think the way it HAS to be made to work... is to stick to the credo "Each according to ability". If you WANT to take the benefits of the society, you HAVE to put in the work. If you have people who just WILL NOT work (I'm not talking about the damaged and the sick), they cannot expect to be fostered by the society.

If that person is so lazy, they WILL NOT apply themselves beyond flipping burgers.... well, factory labour, fast-food labour, etc. will always be needed.

And, those who DO seek to excel, that wish to work at it, will always find themselves employed in some capacity.

Let us envision a situation where each person 'earned' a professional position, through their hard-work, through their passion, through their ABILITY.

Actually, overall that is how capitalism works. Those people who aren't good, fall through the cracks, leaving the best to succeed. If you ask me, the government complicates a rather simple process with programs such as affirmitive action, as well as political nepotism as a result of people being influenced by money. Sure, nepotism occurs without the aid of government as well. The "rich" kids are guaranteed a job by their hardworking parent, but not only is that a small percentage of the workforce, but it does not take into account the simple truth that if the kid sucks at his job, then he might not keep it. The whole point is, you use a minority of situations (like many anti-capitalists do), to justify government control over industry.

"in a laissz-faire economy the government is not there to insure competition, thus monopolies arise." <-- Patently incorrect, the government is there as a police man, to ensure that there is a free and open market place so that companies can come and go, rise and fall according to market forces of supply and demand - and yes, this does include ensuring that no one company gets too much power, as one company can distort the market place and thus reduce market efficiencies.

Regarding California, that has already been shown to be caused by the actions of Enron and their deliberate shuttign off of power stations and supplies to artificially boost prices due to an artificial shortage in eletricity - that is, distorting the supply resulting in price hikes - that it been properly regulated and the process made transparent as to how electricity is traded, this would never have happened in the first place.

The government should be seen as a traffic cop, if things are going to smoothly, it'll stand back, but if trouble is on the horizon, a little action is taken.


Does anybody else agree with this? Is it the government's job to keep the market free and open in a laissez-faire economy?

Can anyone tell me why anyone would be worried about deforestation? Common sense dictates that if the lumber industry is lucrative and profitablet that private companies would replant trees in order to sustain their business. Tree farms. Environmental issue one out of your way. Pollution: well, pollution and what not is an initiation of force. thus, in a libertarian society, it's safe to say that any corporation damaging another person will be forced to pay the consequences. besides, our government produces the majority of pollution anyway... and finally, there's no need to take either extremes. moderate Libertarianism is my cup of tea, but I harbor no worries for the environment, nor do I truly care.

Actually, overall that is how capitalism works. Those people who aren't good, fall through the cracks, leaving the best to succeed. If you ask me, the government complicates a rather simple process with programs such as affirmitive action, as well as political nepotism as a result of people being influenced by money. Sure, nepotism occurs without the aid of government as well. The "rich" kids are guaranteed a job by their hardworking parent, but not only is that a small percentage of the workforce, but it does not take into account the simple truth that if the kid sucks at his job, then he might not keep it. The whole point is, you use a minority of situations (like many anti-capitalists do), to justify government control over industry.

I disagree. I don't see that as 'how capitalism works' at all... because your model is only functional if EVERY person who is smart, able and wants to work makes it to 'the top'.... and if every person who is 'at the bottom' is there because they are too lazy or incapable to be worthy in any other position.

I do agree that 'Affirmative Action" is a flawed entity. Any system that awards or denies employment on superficial grounds must be fundamentally flawed.

I am not using minority situations. Even the most cursory examination of the 'structure' of capitalism SHOULD show two basic principles:

1) There is no way an economy based on resources, can grow forever. Thus - the capitalist trend towards inflated economy must be finite..

2) The 'shape' of capitalism is a pyramid. Every 'top' office must be supported by a number of lower 'offices', supported by a greater number of even lower 'offices', etc. Thus - in order for capitalism to have degrees of 'have', there MUST be those who 'have not'.

Capitalism is, at heart, therefore.... both shortsighted AND selfish.

I disagree. I don't see that as 'how capitalism works' at all... because your model is only functional if EVERY person who is smart, able and wants to work makes it to 'the top'.... and if every person who is 'at the bottom' is there because they are too lazy or incapable to be worthy in any other position.

No, that IS how capitalism works, because no generalized economic rule is 100% accurate. There are always exceptions, but they don't invalidate the whole thing.


1) There is no way an economy based on resources, can grow forever.

Why not? The universe may be infinite. There are more resources than we could ever harvest. The most basic resources, like energy, are in fact also infinite, practically speaking. Unless of course the sun goes nova before it's scheduled to.
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2) The 'shape' of capitalism is a pyramid. Every 'top' office must be supported by a number of lower 'offices', supported by a greater number of even lower 'offices', etc. Thus - in order for capitalism to have degrees of 'have', there MUST be those who 'have not'.

Hogwash. You're saying that a capitalist system has the structure of a tall business organization AND that if two people don't make the same amount of money, one of them must be in poverty. Neither is true. To have degrees of 'have,' there only MUST be those who 'have MORE.' The rest don't necessarily need to have 'not.'


Capitalism is, at heart, therefore.... both shortsighted AND selfish.

I disagree with your assumptions and therefore the conclusion.

Why not? The universe may be infinite. There are more resources than we could ever harvest. The most basic resources, like energy, are in fact also infinite, practically speaking. Unless of course the sun goes nova before it's scheduled to.

If this is true do you think most or all forms of scarcity would eventually end? How do you think would capitalism operate under post-scarcity conditions?

Meh. Free Market Economies result in Market Control by private sector monopolies, Semi-Controlled Market Economies result in market stagnation. Pick the lesser of two evils and get on with your life.

Marxian socialism is not communist at all. Actually it was a way to change hegelian capitalism so that coercion was no longer in play. All that socialism claims is that it is impossible for workers to garner what they deserve because they will never have the political power that capitalists do because they don't have the money to buy it. In a socialist state one does not ban freedom, in fact one encourages these things.

Socialism, at a basic level, requires the restriction of economic and property based freedoms. Without communal property and government confiscation of resources (in this case, labor) you cannot have a socialist society. Redistribution of wealth means that you will take from some and give to others, resorces do not come from nowhere. Being someone who comes from the perspective of Locke and Nozick I simply do not believe you can separate individual and economic freedoms. In order to be truely free, one must be in absolute ownership of one's body and conscience. In order for that to happen, the concept of ownership must be respected. Socialism does not create freedoms that do not exist in a capitalist structure, it simply changes who the boss is. A socialist worker still does not own his labor, his output. The state owns his output and distributes it as the state sees fit. The worker cannot shop his labor around, cannot command a higher rate of return, indeed the worker is less free because in a socialist society a labor strike becomes a treasonous insurrection.

In volume three of capital marx talks specifically about how to make art greater in socialism than it is in capitalism. If you're taking the Nietzschiean point of view that one cannot create great art if all people are treated equal then maybe you are correct. But if you are truly arguing for the ability to be free, socialism is exactly that... a political plan built upon equality.

It is a political plan built on equality that is necessarily at the expense of freedom. One must sacrifice all economic freedoms for a socialist society to function. One must walk away from being an individual and become a servant of the greater good. I do take the Nietzschiean view that some people are better than others, that some are superior or inferior, that everyone is not the same. I do believe that great men (and women) exist, individuals who tower above their fellows because they are BETTER. You and I do not have the same likelyhood of being a great painter as Monet. Monet was born with tallent which he then developed. Put his next door neighbor in the greatest art academy in the world and he would likely still be inferior to the Monet. Monet would still be the master of impressionism, his neighbor would be a well trained hack.

This is what I meant when I said that you cannot compare Soviet Russia with socialism. A fascist regime is not the same as communism. Communism was created for the exact opposite purpose actually.

I never said that Soviet Russia was a fascist regime. Both were authoritarian and totalitarian regiemes, both were ultranationalistic, both were highly corrupt, both had a habit of killing critics and unpopular citizens, both had visions of world conquest. The difference is in the details. Communism was goddless and committed it's atrocities in the name of bringing equality to the proles, facism used God to whip up the masses and committed it's atrocities in the name of the State.


When Marx created socialism it was because he believed that people weren't able to think for themselves and that they could never be free to produce to their greatest abilities if they were held down by worrying about other people's opinions. Think about a world without worrying about being poor. Think of a world where working became about living and living wasn't about work. Think of a world where the only thing stopping you from doing the most amazing things you could think of was your own intellect. That is what Communism is about.

It is pretty clear that Marx didn't believe the common man had the ability to choose for himself. Socialism is about trading choice for safety. The world you paint is one in which all men are happy slaves. It reminds me a bit of Huxley's "Brave New World." A world in which no one is burdened by choice or fear or worry. A world in which no one has to think or strive. A world in which everyone can coast.

I disagree with your point that the only thing stopping people would be their intellect. There would be intellect and there would be the State. There are simply not enough resources in the world for eveyone to do everything they would like to do. When you spread it equally, everyone is equally miserable. Capitalism is not a perfect solution, but those who work hard have a higher likelyhood of acheiving success and ahappiness than those who do not. There is a certain level of self determination. What appalls me most about socialism the the removal of self determination.

Don't think that you are free because of your lazyboy recliner. Don't think that you are free because of your computer. Realize that if you were truly free you wouldn't be worrying about this conversation right now.

I'm not free because of my lazyboy or my computer. I'm free because I live in a society that is built around freedom. I am free because I have clawed and fought to defend my freedom. I am free because, unlike most, my most basic freedmoms have been in danger and I have had to defend them. I am free because I am smart enough to survive threats, strong enough to keep moving, and willful enough to keep fighting until I die.

I respect your disagreement, you are more than free to have a differing opinion, but please do not question my freedom. I actually know the value of being able to have a conversation like this. I know the value of being allowed to speak one's mine, of being in ctonrol of one's life, of not being institutionalized or chained. It is very easy to view freedoms that have never been threatened as being of little worth, I hope that someday you gain enough perspective to understand without having to endure the loss of your own freedom.

I think... one of my favourite things about debating with you... is that we agree on almost nothing, my friend. It's refreshing. :)

And yet, we manage to remain fairly civil. Or we try to, at least, I know sometiems my blood can get a bit too hot. ;)

However, I agree that there have been those will-not-work types. I met them at university... the rich kids, who had no reason to work at the course... because, if they failed, they'd just be back again next year.... and the year after that... and the year after that.... etc.

However... if you think about it, it is BECAUSE of the capitalist approach, that those people are ABLE to behave like that. The rich kid who can screw around getting drunk/stoned/laid all through college, and STILL get a job in daddy's business.

Yeah, but it is the same system that allowed me to get there. I went to a private university and took on a considerable personal debt, but I received an education that was quite a bit better than I would have at a public university.

Let us envision a situation where each person 'earned' a professional position, through their hard-work, through their passion, through their ABILITY.

Would you still be doing the same job... very possibly. Especially if you are good at it. Now - what about those wasters who coasted through school, and never applied themselves. Are they going to be brain-surgeons? Maybe... but not likely. More likely... those who acquired less skills, will end up in less-skilled work.... without the safety net of 'family money', for example... to give them a cushy office suite.

It isn't the end result that I dislike about socialism, it is the front end. How do you propose to keep that coaster with family money from taking advantage of it? You have to limit the freedom of their parents. You have to punish, tax, and eventually confiscate the funds of a hard worker in order to enforce a moral scheme. More dangerously, you have to submit to the State the power to decided how much of what is yours you deserve, you have to give the State complete control over your financial freedoms. Once you've done that, you have no recourse, you cannot hire a lawyer to appeal because you have no money and the lawyer might not be paid to work on your behalf. Indeed, the lawyer might fear that the State might do to them what it has done to you. I do not like the prospect of giving that much power to a beaureaucrat.

So - even if all jobs pay the same... who becomes the lawyer? The person who WANTS it... and the person who is GOOD at it.

Who becomes the doctor? The person who CARES, and the person who can do the work.

Who becomes the teacher? The person who is able to communicate to children... the person who MAKES that happen.

And - what about those who will not make that kind of effort? Well... there will always be people needed for the menial tasks. Which will leave them feeling unfulfilled, perhaps? And - if they seek fulfillment, they will pursue it.

What happens when not enough people who care exist? You cannot simply draw doctors from an infinite pool of caring people. What happens when there are more people who have no more ambition than to perform menial tasks than tasks to be perfromed? More than doctors or teachers, what about skilled jobs that no one really wants to do? I imagine that there aren't alot of oil platform workers who like their job, but they do it because it pays well. I have known several people who work as high level hired security/foreign mercenaries (think "contractors" in Iraq) and none of them have enjoyed their work. They do it because it pays better than anything else available. How do you staff the dangerous, dirty, unplesant jobs that today are staffed by cash? That is the question I have always had for advocates of a socialist society.

I think the way it HAS to be made to work... is to stick to the credo "Each according to ability". If you WANT to take the benefits of the society, you HAVE to put in the work. If you have people who just WILL NOT work (I'm not talking about the damaged and the sick), they cannot expect to be fostered by the society.

If that person is so lazy, they WILL NOT apply themselves beyond flipping burgers.... well, factory labour, fast-food labour, etc. will always be needed.

And, those who DO seek to excel, that wish to work at it, will always find themselves employed in some capacity.

Yes, but can you bear to let the excess leeches starve? Can you bear to create an underclass of the lazy who receive less from soceity because the bring less to the table? Even if you can answer yest to both of these questions, do you then trust the State to be a better distributer of resources than the market?

Does anybody else agree with this? Is it the government's job to keep the market free and open in a laissez-faire economy?

Well, yes. Government exists to protect the freedoms of citizens and, at local levels, to administer the very basic needs of a functioning society (primary and secondary schools, roads, garbage collection, water, etc). A monopoly is no different from an invader.

Well, yes. Government exists to protect the freedoms of citizens and, at local levels, to administer the very basic needs of a functioning society (primary and secondary schools, roads, garbage collection, water, etc). A monopoly is no different from an invader.

I'm in a bit of pickle here. All of the mentioned basic needs could be provided for by the market. In fact, just about everything could be supplied by the market.

I suppose I'm just not sure where I should stop privatising. Why can't energy, sewage, roads, etc. be left to the market when food, shelter, and clothing are?

The government is here to protect our rights but could private police, even military, do a better job at enforcing the laws and protecting freedoms than the government institutions? However, enforcement of law is a job for the executive branch.

Courts could be privatized -- arbitration. The Supreme Court would still have supremacy over everything else.

How would monopolies be taken care of in a laissez-faire society? What kind of laws, acts, etc. would be in place to prevent and/or dissuade their forming or break them apart?

I'm in a bit of pickle here. All of the mentioned basic needs could be provided for by the market. In fact, just about everything could be supplied by the market.

I suppose I'm just not sure where I should stop privatising. Why can't energy, sewage, roads, etc. be left to the market when food, shelter, and clothing are?

The government is here to protect our rights but could private police, even military, do a better job at enforcing the laws and protecting freedoms than the government institutions? However, enforcement of law is a job for the executive branch.

Courts could be privatized -- arbitration. The Supreme Court would still have supremacy over everything else.

How would monopolies be taken care of in a laissez-faire society? What kind of laws, acts, etc. would be in place to prevent and/or dissuade their forming or break them apart?

See, you're taking the idea of privatization too far. Small government is the drum beaten by libertarians, no government is the drum beaten by anarchists. You need a government in order to protect citizens from eachother, in order to set the rules, and in order to do some basic tasks.

You can't really privatize the roads because they are necessary to the basic freedoms the government protects. Freedom of movement, freedom of association, etc. Some things are public resources that should be governed by a government. Roads are a good example for the reasons I mentioned, water is another good example because it is generally not anyone's specific "property." Groundwater runs beneath everyone's property and major freshwater sources (like the great lakes) don't fall within one state, let alone one property line. Sewage can or cannot be a public sector, depending on where you live. In a rural area, private septic markets work fine, in a densely populated urban area you need municipal sewers because the infrastructure itself runs through public land (usually beneath roadways) and a private system simply isn't feasible (imagine how much land would be needed for a septic tank that serves the Sears Tower). Further, urban sewage systems end in reclaimation plants that filter out the pure water so it can be returned to the source and sell the waste for profit. Private police, military, and courts are bad ideas for the obvious reason, those are the three things that ALL governments have ALWAYS been responsible for, they are the basis of the social contract.

No, that IS how capitalism works, because no generalized economic rule is 100% accurate. There are always exceptions, but they don't invalidate the whole thing.


Then your model doesn't work.

If you are willing to allow that a model works, despite the fact that it 'doesn't always work'... then your assertion that it works is meaningless.

If capitalism DID work, then the evidence of it working, would be the fact that it demonstrably was effective. 4 years on a call-centre, answering phones and processing bills alongside a group of people, about one-fourth of which were graduates, was enough to show me that capitalism is demonstrably failing.

Capitalism is a boy with his finger in ONE hole in a dike. The rest of the dike is fractured and leaking, but this ONE part seems to be okay....


Why not? The universe may be infinite. There are more resources than we could ever harvest. The most basic resources, like energy, are in fact also infinite, practically speaking. Unless of course the sun goes nova before it's scheduled to.


The universe may have infinite borders, but the resources within those borders are finite. More to the point, resources that we can effectively obtain, are even more finite. Energy is also far from infinite... for a variety of reasons... ranging from fossil resource distributions, all the way to light pollution and albedo.


Hogwash. You're saying that a capitalist system has the structure of a tall business organization AND that if two people don't make the same amount of money, one of them must be in poverty. Neither is true. To have degrees of 'have,' there only MUST be those who 'have MORE.' The rest don't necessarily need to have 'not.'


I didn't say that at all. However, capitalism does rely on some people being able to 'afford' access to more resources, for less time spent on the process. This means, of course, that there must be others who do not have the same degree of access, or who have to spend much more time on the process.

America's capitalist economy is only sustainable now, because of 'slave-labour' in South America and China.

It is an equilibrium... it must balance. Resources are finite... ESPECIALLY resources IN circulation. Therefore, for ONE person to have access to a number of resources, a NUMBER of people must NOT have the same access.


I disagree with your assumptions and therefore the conclusion.

You are welcome to disagree all you like. However, one only has to look at the real world, to see the truth. And, the truth is, while the US has 60% morbid obesity, Ethiopia (for example) is starving.

Then your model doesn't work.

If you are willing to allow that a model works, despite the fact that it 'doesn't always work'... then your assertion that it works is meaningless.


Er, no. Because if it takes 100.00% accuracy for a generalized theory to 'work,' then NOTHING works. Is that what you're saying? nothing works?


If capitalism DID work, then the evidence of it working, would be the fact that it demonstrably was effective. 4 years on a call-centre, answering phones and processing bills alongside a group of people, about one-fourth of which were graduates, was enough to show me that capitalism is demonstrably failing.

?? Explain how your job experience demonstrates the failings of capitalism.


Capitalism is a boy with his finger in ONE hole in a dike. The rest of the dike is fractured and leaking, but this ONE part seems to be okay....

Poetic. Meaningless, but poetic.


The universe may have infinite borders, but the resources within those borders are finite. More to the point, resources that we can effectively obtain, are even more finite. Energy is also far from infinite... for a variety of reasons... ranging from fossil resource distributions, all the way to light pollution and albedo.

Let's say you're right. Now come up with a system which should last forever but doesn't involve a practically infinite amount of resources.


However, capitalism does rely on some people being able to 'afford' access to more resources, for less time spent on the process. This means, of course, that there must be others who do not have the same degree of access, or who have to spend much more time on the process.

Yeah. And? This is a far cry from meaning something like, "in order for someone to be rich, someone else must be poor." The fact is, there are people who will be able to 'afford' access to those resources for less time on it, no matter what the system is. Conservation of energy and all that.


America's capitalist economy is only sustainable now, because of 'slave-labour' in South America and China.

I think you need to make that point before I'm going to bother contradicting it, because at this point that sounds more like a slogan than anything more substantial.


It is an equilibrium... it must balance. Resources are finite... ESPECIALLY resources IN circulation. Therefore, for ONE person to have access to a number of resources, a NUMBER of people must NOT have the same access.

Only if there are many more people than there are resources. I know, how about the communist solution? Execute a few million people!


You are welcome to disagree all you like. However, one only has to look at the real world, to see the truth. And, the truth is, while the US has 60% morbid obesity, Ethiopia (for example) is starving.

...and of course, you attribute all that to 'capitalism,' much like you equate "america's capitalist economy" with capitalism as an economic system. Sadly America is really a mixed economy at best and according to some points of view, socialist. To say nothing of Ethiopa and all their not-so-simple history. You can't just look at countries and say "aha! That one's capitalist, and that one has slave labor, therefore the first one is exploiting the second and without the latter the former would not be sustainable!"

I mean, you're welcome to do that, but it doesn't really make your point.

It isn't the end result that I dislike about socialism, it is the front end. How do you propose to keep that coaster with family money from taking advantage of it? You have to limit the freedom of their parents. You have to punish, tax, and eventually confiscate the funds of a hard worker in order to enforce a moral scheme. More dangerously, you have to submit to the State the power to decided how much of what is yours you deserve, you have to give the State complete control over your financial freedoms. Once you've done that, you have no recourse, you cannot hire a lawyer to appeal because you have no money and the lawyer might not be paid to work on your behalf. Indeed, the lawyer might fear that the State might do to them what it has done to you. I do not like the prospect of giving that much power to a beaureaucrat.


What you decribe are possible forms OF socialism.... which isn't necessarily the same thing as what I am discussing.

Your 'family money' example... is irrelevent if currency has no value. Your assertion of 'control' is only relevent if your socialism is statist. Your discussion of lawyers and WHY they represent, relies on capitalist socialism. Your 'fear of the State' assertion relies on a dictatorial state.

Unfortunately, this means you are tilting at windmills. These are Strawman arguments.

What I am discussing (although I haven't been THAT specific... because it is the flaws of capitalism that have been more my subject), is closer to a pure democracy... the specific model I like is what I call 'Wapentak' (weapon-hand) democracy. Based on the historical model of votes for war, being counted on hands holding weapons... if you vote in favour, you MUST fight.

Under the 'Wapentak' model, communities make direct democratic decisions... but the community is the possession OF the members of that community, effectively.

Thus - there is no need for a Statist control mechanism... what you MIGHT end up with, instead, is a 'cell-structure'... where individual 'cells' (communities) deal with each other as individuals in a super-community, and so on up.

The 'family money' becomes redundant, if the family money is the resource of the 'tribe'. (See - this model doesn't HAVE to exclude capitalism... it just doesn't have to INCLUDE it, internally, either).


What happens when not enough people who care exist? You cannot simply draw doctors from an infinite pool of caring people. What happens when there are more people who have no more ambition than to perform menial tasks than tasks to be perfromed? More than doctors or teachers, what about skilled jobs that no one really wants to do? I imagine that there aren't alot of oil platform workers who like their job, but they do it because it pays well. I have known several people who work as high level hired security/foreign mercenaries (think "contractors" in Iraq) and none of them have enjoyed their work. They do it because it pays better than anything else available. How do you staff the dangerous, dirty, unplesant jobs that today are staffed by cash? That is the question I have always had for advocates of a socialist society.


So, your arguement against 'socialism' being able to work, is that people don't care? The same mechanism applies in capitalism... and yet you don't seem to be applying it there. The difference is capitalism, is that PRETENDING to care, can make you better able to gain access to resources.... which seems corrupt and immoral.

Regarding your dirty, unpleasant jobs... the argument could be made that NOT killing civilians in other countries MIGHT be a job it isn't a shame to lose.

On the other hand, of course, if what you refer to as 'mercenary' work, were a feature of the Armed Forces remit, then the work would be done, capitalism or no. Lots of people join the Army for reasons OTHER than the pay.

And, oil platforms? Again - that is perhaps no great loss... and, just because ONE group of people chooses not to channel that resource, doesn't mean other's won't. But, then... the job I do is 'risky'... but I don't do it for the money... I do it pro bono publico.


Yes, but can you bear to let the excess leeches starve? Can you bear to create an underclass of the lazy who receive less from soceity because the bring less to the table? Even if you can answer yest to both of these questions, do you then trust the State to be a better distributer of resources than the market?

The leeches would be exempting themselves from our model community, would they not? They would, then, be no different from our starving neighbours in other communities... subject to the good graces and charity of the society.

And, why SHOULDN'T there be an underclass of the lazy? At the moment, it is the unfortunate truth that the 'underclass' of our society, is also largely the class doing most of the work.

Regarding the last question - is the state a better steward than the market? Irrelevent to my communal model, but I'll answer anyway... it depends on the state. The market doesn't care. The market is driven by an engine of 'profit', and that determines how it will apply it's resources. At least a state CAN care.

And it could be more complicated than "bigger = more efficient," as I said. You're right, it COULD be because of efficiency, but based on my knowledge of business I totally disagree that bigger is more efficient.

Don't you think that big business has shown itself capable, in some areas, of delivering lower prices than small business?

The difference is, those are aspects of reality. Money just represents time, energy and information. If you aren't willing to put forth any of those, you starve to death. That happens to be true throughout nature. If you don't invest anything into clothing, shelter or food, you will experience bad things. Fact of life.

Taxation is not. It is not willing. It is forced by an actor, the government. If you resist it, guys with guns come to you and forcibly if need be put you in prison where you have no freedom. If you resist hard enough they just shoot you. It's the equivalent of a mafia protection racket.

The fact that it is "natural" coercion rather than "human" coercion does not change the fact that it is coercion.

Government is far more corrupt than any employer. Power corrupts, and no employer, not even your dreaded Microsoft, has that much power.

I do not dread Microsoft all that much. I dread the United Fruit model a lot more.

When was the last time you voted on who was to hold shares in the big businesses that dominate American capitalism?

Anarchist communism and 'truth' are mutually exclusive. Unless of course human nature changes, in which case we'd hardly need anarchist communism to live our happy, non-incentive-based life of effortless wealth and happiness...

It was you who expressed a problem with an incentives-based concept of human nature, not I. I am not an anarchist, though "state socialist" with the typical baggage does not accurately describe me. A more decentralized, more direct democratic model - perhaps through worker's councils or something along those lines - is preferential to me. Not one that would discard the incentives-based concept of human nature, though one that might perhaps de-emphasize it somewhat.

I agree, but based on my earlier statements I view the corporation's money as more legitimate, since it originally comes from consentual deals instead of taxation-theft.

Taxation is perfectly consensual, by capitalist fundamentalist logic. I agree to pay my taxes, and the government does not put me in prison. Similarly, I agree to sell my labor, and the capitalists do not starve me to death.

Simple consent is no guarantor of justice, even assuming equality of information and rationality.

However, as you freely admit before, the concentration of economic and political power is a threat to a free society. Therefore, wouldn't socialism (government-economic planning) be even more a threat than a separation of economic and political power?

Socialism is, pure and simple, giving the working class power over the economy.

Democratically granting economic and political power to the people who make up a society is not "concentration of economic and political power." Exactly how to do so is the ultimate question. I prefer government monopolies, accountable to the people and incapable of making monetary profit, to private monopolies, which fulfill neither requirement.

How would you prevent politicians from "centralizing" politically favorable industries rather than out of a genuine concern for the populace. You run into this interesting problem of creating a system out of cynicism towards humanity that relies on the innate goodness of a select number of powerful political individuals to act in accordance to the benefit of society. This, I'm afraid, is even more impossible to hold than my view that economic and political power can be separated. It defies human nature in the most profound sense.

Since I never advocated a "system... that relies on the innate goodness of a select number of powerful political individuals," I do not see your point.

So the obvious solution is to have the government completely control the economy through centralized planning. That way, with all the economic power in the hands of a few subjective politicans nothing could go wrong! :rolleyes:

In the hands of the people, rather, through their elected representatives, preferably as accountable as possible. I never advocated, and would never advocate, "centralized planning" as in complete nationalization by a central government, at least not unless the central government is the central government of an area and population equivalent to that of Vatican City.

If a leftist were to ask me this I would laugh. If the collusion of government and firms cause massive corruption, then wouldn't the logical solution be the separation of these powers? Besides, I think it is ridiculous to claim that a free market economy would hurt the poor and oppressed but thats a different topic all together.

You missed the point. The leftist would not understand your opposition to government intervention for the benefit of the poor as complementary to your stance against government intervention for the benefit of the rich, but rather as contradictory to it. Similarly, my opposition to government intervention for the benefit of rich is being viewed as contradictory to my support for government intervention for the benefit of the poor, while it is instead complementary to it. You are viewing these matters through the question of government intervention, while I am viewing them through the question of class.

Oh come on! Do you seriously think that the government is an institution that doesn't benefit those of the top at the expense of the bottom?

Of course it does, in its present form.

What you decribe are possible forms OF socialism.... which isn't necessarily the same thing as what I am discussing.

Your 'family money' example... is irrelevent if currency has no value. Your assertion of 'control' is only relevent if your socialism is statist. Your discussion of lawyers and WHY they represent, relies on capitalist socialism. Your 'fear of the State' assertion relies on a dictatorial state.

Unfortunately, this means you are tilting at windmills. These are Strawman arguments.

What I am discussing (although I haven't been THAT specific... because it is the flaws of capitalism that have been more my subject), is closer to a pure democracy... the specific model I like is what I call 'Wapentak' (weapon-hand) democracy. Based on the historical model of votes for war, being counted on hands holding weapons... if you vote in favour, you MUST fight.

Under the 'Wapentak' model, communities make direct democratic decisions... but the community is the possession OF the members of that community, effectively.

Thus - there is no need for a Statist control mechanism... what you MIGHT end up with, instead, is a 'cell-structure'... where individual 'cells' (communities) deal with each other as individuals in a super-community, and so on up.

The 'family money' becomes redundant, if the family money is the resource of the 'tribe'. (See - this model doesn't HAVE to exclude capitalism... it just doesn't have to INCLUDE it, internally, either).

There are two problems with your model. The first is strictly a scaling problem. Complete democracy only works in smaller communities. As it gets larger you need to start talking about representatives and then you have consolidation of power issues which is what you're trying to avoid. I agree that a voluntary system of complete democracy could be very effective in small communities, but the scaling issues impose significant barriers to growth and higher level innovation. You just cannot have large powerhouse societies, you cannot have massive growth. Granted, that might not be a downside for some people, but it is to me.

The second problem I see is the problem of tyranny. If there is communal property, any community that is larger than perhaps a few hundred (maybe even a few thousand) will need administrators. The larger the community gets, the more powerful the administrators will need to become. Further, they will need the power to enforce their rulings. This poses a significant threat to personal liberty, and it invites corruption. What is to stop an administrator from taking care of his friends at the expense of others, especially if that administrator manages to count the enforcers as among their friends?

A private property system offers something of a refuge, a communal system does not. It is kind of like a poker game. Capitalism is a cash game, you can buy in at any time and take your winnings (or loses) home whenever you want. Yes, someone who comes to the table with more chips will have more power, they'll be able to dictate terms of the game, force bets, intimidate other players, but you're only in as long as you want to be and you leave with what you have. A communal system is like a tournament game. Everyone comes in with the same, but at the end of the day, one guy has all the chips. You cannot leave, you have to play it through to the end or you forfeit everything you have.

Even in communal systems where everything is "owned" by the community, there is wealth. Wealth is more than currency. Power is, in itself, a form of wealth, as are favors, force, and brute strength. All of those little chips keep moving back and forth, regardless of the way you want to set your community up. In a communal property system, your share of the ownership is really no more than your share of the power. It is the same in capitalism, but if you don't like the game you're in you can always pick up your chips and go to a different table, or go home.

So, your arguement against 'socialism' being able to work, is that people don't care? The same mechanism applies in capitalism... and yet you don't seem to be applying it there. The difference is capitalism, is that PRETENDING to care, can make you better able to gain access to resources.... which seems corrupt and immoral.

Its all those sweet little lies that keep society going. Understandings, winks and nods. A capitalist gives people the incentive to play the game, it gives people a reason to follow the rules and do their best. The guy filling in a hole in the street doesn't really care if someone half a city away from his home has a pleasant ride home, but he does them a favor in exchange for cash. He is paid to care. Sure, maybe there are some people out there who are passionate about level roads and the driving experiance, but not nearly enough to keep all the roads in good repair. In the end, the work gets done, do we really care how or why?

I always dislike talking about morality when talking about politics and economics. Not everyone has good intentions, not everyone is filled with wholesome Christian virtue. Socialism is a very hopeful ideology. It believes that people will be good and moral, it has to for it to work. Capitalism is jaded. It doesnt really care why people do the right thing as long as it gets done, and if someone needs to grease the skids, so be it. Personally, I like a high-growth economy. I like that I can look back at three generations of unskilled laborers in my family and each has lead a significantly better life than their parents. You don't get that in a socialist society, growth is slow or non-existant, wealth does not accrue, jobs do not become more valuable simply because there is more flowing through the system. Yes, capitalism has it's cons, but it also has some very attractive pros.

Regarding your dirty, unpleasant jobs... the argument could be made that NOT killing civilians in other countries MIGHT be a job it isn't a shame to lose.

On the other hand, of course, if what you refer to as 'mercenary' work, were a feature of the Armed Forces remit, then the work would be done, capitalism or no. Lots of people join the Army for reasons OTHER than the pay.

And, oil platforms? Again - that is perhaps no great loss... and, just because ONE group of people chooses not to channel that resource, doesn't mean other's won't. But, then... the job I do is 'risky'... but I don't do it for the money... I do it pro bono publico.

You're kind of sidestepping my question. Why would someone was windows on a skyscraper when there was ANY other option? There will always be jobs that no one wants to do, jobs that are only filled because there is more money in them than other jobs of the same skill level.



Socialism really feels like it is looking backwards. It is an ideology that glorifies the good ol' days before the industrialization, before urbanization, before modernism. It looks smilingly back on a simpler life for simpler times, when everyone knew their place and no one had to worry as an individual. Everyone a cog, everyone doing the job they are assigned, no one having to think to hard. At the end of the argument, it comes to preference. I would rather have a hard life of worry and uncertainty with a good deal of self-determination than a safe and simple life.

There are two problems with your model. The first is strictly a scaling problem. Complete democracy only works in smaller communities. As it gets larger you need to start talking about representatives and then you have consolidation of power issues which is what you're trying to avoid. I agree that a voluntary system of complete democracy could be very effective in small communities, but the scaling issues impose significant barriers to growth and higher level innovation. You just cannot have large powerhouse societies, you cannot have massive growth. Granted, that might not be a downside for some people, but it is to me.


Scaling isn't a problem. As I said, your 'direct democracy' units are, essentially, tribal. There is your scale preset. Then - you look at interactions of 'tribes', and each 'tribe' becomes the same as one member of the bigger tribe. But, that level is (and should be) a much rarer interaction than the intratribal interactions.

It also depends on what you mean by a 'large powerhouse society'. If your ONLY measure of the society, is how much raw material it converts into more complex components... the simplistic Wapentak model cannot hope to compete - because it gives a degree of freedom to the individual... and freedom is unproductive.

But, there is NO reason why these structures shouldn't be innovative. Indeed, your own life experiences have, one assumes, shown examples of people coming together for innovation... I know my life experiences have. I have been an element in 'hothouse' groups of 'artists'... and of scientists (specifically, computer related). Neither type has been especially lucrative for me (your powerhouse model?), but both forms have been tools of innovation.


The second problem I see is the problem of tyranny. If there is communal property, any community that is larger than perhaps a few hundred (maybe even a few thousand) will need administrators. The larger the community gets, the more powerful the administrators will need to become. Further, they will need the power to enforce their rulings. This poses a significant threat to personal liberty, and it invites corruption. What is to stop an administrator from taking care of his friends at the expense of others, especially if that administrator manages to count the enforcers as among their friends?


Administrators are a red herring. First - you keep your groups at managable scales... but, secondly, you don't NEED administators when your group acts as an administrative collective. It would be like a pond full of frogs appointing someone to hop...

Since your society works on voluntary membership, and voluntary contribution, 'threats' and 'power'... even 'administrator' are words that have little meaning.

And, now you are adding 'enforcers' to the mix? And, 'taking care of his friends at the expense of others'? DO you not see that you are trying to apply capitalistic heirarchy where it is not needed?

Why would our cell-representative (the nearest thing we have to an appointed 'official') 'take care of his friends'? They ARE taken care of. Their needs, like all the needs of all the cell-members, are taken care of.


A private property system offers something of a refuge, a communal system does not. It is kind of like a poker game. Capitalism is a cash game, you can buy in at any time and take your winnings (or loses) home whenever you want. Yes, someone who comes to the table with more chips will have more power, they'll be able to dictate terms of the game, force bets, intimidate other players, but you're only in as long as you want to be and you leave with what you have. A communal system is like a tournament game. Everyone comes in with the same, but at the end of the day, one guy has all the chips. You cannot leave, you have to play it through to the end or you forfeit everything you have.


Well, the system doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can have varying degrees of personal and private property. You can even have parallel cells that work on different production models... you could have a 'capitalist' cell, and a 'communist' cell operating alongside one another.

To look at your poker game... the capitalist turns up with a supply of chips... and his success in the game, is LARGELY going to be influenced by how many chips he can muster... and, maybe more importantly, who he mustered them from.

The model I'm suggesting is NOT like tournament play... it is more like a group of friends turning up at the poker table, with a tray of chips to share. Individuals in the group are 'opting in and out' all the time, folding poor hands, hedging on strong ones.


Even in communal systems where everything is "owned" by the community, there is wealth. Wealth is more than currency. Power is, in itself, a form of wealth, as are favors, force, and brute strength. All of those little chips keep moving back and forth, regardless of the way you want to set your community up. In a communal property system, your share of the ownership is really no more than your share of the power. It is the same in capitalism, but if you don't like the game you're in you can always pick up your chips and go to a different table, or go home.


And, the same is true in the model I suggest.... if you wish to opt out of your 'tribe', you can migrate into any other tribe (pro-'capitalist', pro-'communist', whatever) that is willing to accept you, and share their resources with you.


Its all those sweet little lies that keep society going. Understandings, winks and nods. A capitalist gives people the incentive to play the game, it gives people a reason to follow the rules and do their best. The guy filling in a hole in the street doesn't really care if someone half a city away from his home has a pleasant ride home, but he does them a favor in exchange for cash. He is paid to care. Sure, maybe there are some people out there who are passionate about level roads and the driving experiance, but not nearly enough to keep all the roads in good repair. In the end, the work gets done, do we really care how or why?


One assumes that you were a member of a family... at some point. As a child, I mean. One of the classic 'family' things, is getting someone to wash the dishes. It's a crappy job, but someone has to do it, so that future meals can arrive safely. In most families I have known, this has been somewhere between a 'delegated' responsibility, and a 'rota' responsibility. I HAVE known a few families where it was financially incentivised.

The point is, jobs that aren't popular CAN still get done... through delegation, or through 'rota'.... or, of course, through financial incentive... but that is far from the ONLY approach that works.


I always dislike talking about morality when talking about politics and economics. Not everyone has good intentions, not everyone is filled with wholesome Christian virtue. Socialism is a very hopeful ideology. It believes that people will be good and moral, it has to for it to work. Capitalism is jaded. It doesnt really care why people do the right thing as long as it gets done, and if someone needs to grease the skids, so be it. Personally, I like a high-growth economy. I like that I can look back at three generations of unskilled laborers in my family and each has lead a significantly better life than their parents. You don't get that in a socialist society, growth is slow or non-existant, wealth does not accrue, jobs do not become more valuable simply because there is more flowing through the system. Yes, capitalism has it's cons, but it also has some very attractive pros.


First - Socialism doesn't rely on good intentions, at all... that is a misconception... and would pretty much doom any socialistic enterprise that RELIED on it. Socialism can work, because it can rely on SELF-INTEREST. Think of it as a 'real' form of karma. What I do today, is my future. If I am supposed to be on the road-crew this week, and I choose not to bother, I have to expect repurcussions... but I also have to acknowledge that the roads are going to be shoddy when I want to use them.

Second - you say each generation of your family has led a 'better life' than their parents... I wonder what you mean by that? More gadgets? More currency? Better access to food?

All those things may be true... but, when my father was working, one working parent could support a family...


You're kind of sidestepping my question. Why would someone was windows on a skyscraper when there was ANY other option? There will always be jobs that no one wants to do, jobs that are only filled because there is more money in them than other jobs of the same skill level.


But money is not the ONLY reason people do things. And, to be honest... cleaning skyscraper windows is not a risk of society that keeps me awake at night.

I DO know what you mean though... what incentive is there for sewage treatment, when there is no financial reward? But - then I look at the municipality where I work, and there are Wastewater workers on the same wage as me.... which is not a HIGH wage, as we've discussed before... so they are OBVIOUSLY not doing it just for the 'big bucks'.

So - why does someone do that job? Because they need to be working, in our capitalist society.

So - why does someone do that job in a socialist society? Well, there are probably a number of reasons why one MIGHT... but it probably comes down to the fact that the ideal socialist society gives to everyone according to need, but asks, in return, that everyone provide, according to ability.

Every office gets filled, because of necessity.


Socialism really feels like it is looking backwards. It is an ideology that glorifies the good ol' days before the industrialization, before urbanization, before modernism. It looks smilingly back on a simpler life for simpler times, when everyone knew their place and no one had to worry as an individual. Everyone a cog, everyone doing the job they are assigned, no one having to think to hard. At the end of the argument, it comes to preference. I would rather have a hard life of worry and uncertainty with a good deal of self-determination than a safe and simple life.

Not at all.. this is another strawman. You can, no doubt, sit down an construct (as amental exercise) a futuristic socialist society, that addresses EACH of the points you are making. It is a pro-capitalist prejudice that colours all views of socialism as being somehow 'backwards', or that turns every socialist into a 'cog'. And the comments about 'no one having to think too hard' are just as baseless. How hard is the 'capitalist' working in the McDonalds drive-through thinking? What about the socialist bridge-engineer?

Scaling isn't a problem. As I said, your 'direct democracy' units are, essentially, tribal. There is your scale preset. Then - you look at interactions of 'tribes', and each 'tribe' becomes the same as one member of the bigger tribe. But, that level is (and should be) a much rarer interaction than the intratribal interactions.

It also depends on what you mean by a 'large powerhouse society'. If your ONLY measure of the society, is how much raw material it converts into more complex components... the simplistic Wapentak model cannot hope to compete - because it gives a degree of freedom to the individual... and freedom is unproductive.

I think perhaps there is something of a miscommunication here. When I say that there is a scaling issue, what I mean is that as your cells become larger you begin to run into corruption problems. At the end of the day, someone HAS to be the watchman, someone HAS to be the accountant. These positions come with a significant amount of power, and in a non-cash economy the token goods they distribute act in the same way as cash. You cannot escape capitalism, the trading of one thing for another is inherant to all human interactions. Money is not valuable because it is money, it is valuable because of what it represents. Granted, cash is a bit more flexible than a chicken or a pound of wheat, but it serves the same purpose.

As your tribes grow, larger economic interactions will become difficult. The tribe that owns all the iron and tin might want to make it into steel, but getting the equipment (not to mention the food, water, and everything else necessary to survive building a mill) could be very difficult for them. In a capitalist system a wealthy individual will either buy the raw materials, or come in and build a mill. I suppose another tribe could do the same thing,. but then I start to wonder why you bother with the whole tribal system in the first place.

I disagree with your freedom argument, as well. I think that the tribal system would reduce freedom by increasing the amount of work and decreasing efficency. The tribal system would likely damage industrialization. You would need huge tribal groups to individually sustain an industrial complex, and I think you can admit that tribes have a pretty specific maximum size. Groups of tribes would have trouble sustaining a complex together because tribalism isn't exactly a system that fosters trust of the "other" (take a glance over at the struggles in Africa post-imperialism). Going back from industrialism means that each widget produced takes more labor, goods become more scarce and labor naturally devalues (trust me, I'll make more money per man hour making sweaters with a loom than you will by hand, even if individual sweaters you make cost 10 times as much). That leads to people having to do more, people having less free time, and in a society where labor is a basic unit of currency (and, by extension, power) devaluated labor means less power (less freedom) for individuals.

Administrators are a red herring. First - you keep your groups at managable scales... but, secondly, you don't NEED administators when your group acts as an administrative collective. It would be like a pond full of frogs appointing someone to hop...

Since your society works on voluntary membership, and voluntary contribution, 'threats' and 'power'... even 'administrator' are words that have little meaning.

And, now you are adding 'enforcers' to the mix? And, 'taking care of his friends at the expense of others'? DO you not see that you are trying to apply capitalistic heirarchy where it is not needed?

Why would our cell-representative (the nearest thing we have to an appointed 'official') 'take care of his friends'? They ARE taken care of. Their needs, like all the needs of all the cell-members, are taken care of.

See, this is the basic trust in humanity that I'm talking about. Communal societies are only so voluntary. If someone decideds they don't like their cell can they take their home, their land, their farm? No, because those things ultimately belong to the cell. Walking away means walking away from everything you are perceived to own.

In a communal society there will always be administrators. There will always be someone who hands out goods, there will always be accountants. Otherwise, the minutea of governance would weigh the society down. Even in a small tribe you cannot escape the need for order, unless you're talking about going back to subsistance farming.

Once you have rules to be followed, you need individuals to enforce those rules. Otherwise, you have chaos, you have mob rule, you have lynch squads and survival of the meanest. These aren't capitalist ideas, they are the basic building blocks of civilization and the social contract. All government comes down to coercion, all civilization is built around trading power for security. The ONLY alternative is group hermitage.

You ask why someone would take care of his friends when they are already taken care of? Lets say you're distributing grain after a bad yield. The farmer who grew it, do you think he is going to be honest about how much he grew or will he keep a little extra to make sure his immediate family survives the winter? Now the grain goes into the public pool, do you think the one who distributes it won't do the same? More to the point, do you think this will only happen when it is a necessity? Greed is hardwired in mankind.

Well, the system doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can have varying degrees of personal and private property. You can even have parallel cells that work on different production models... you could have a 'capitalist' cell, and a 'communist' cell operating alongside one another.

Didn't work well in the 50s...Honestly, if you have a cell of Spartan Fascists working next to a cell of SoCal organic farmers and theres a bad winter, who is going to be planting crops come spring? A tribal society lacks the power to really do anything about those realities. Sure, other tribes might step in, or they might just quitely divvy up the land, or they might turn their heads and say the fight isn't worth the lives of their tribesmen.

To look at your poker game... the capitalist turns up with a supply of chips... and his success in the game, is LARGELY going to be influenced by how many chips he can muster... and, maybe more importantly, who he mustered them from.

The model I'm suggesting is NOT like tournament play... it is more like a group of friends turning up at the poker table, with a tray of chips to share. Individuals in the group are 'opting in and out' all the time, folding poor hands, hedging on strong ones.

Ever played a poker game without money on the table? Even if its only a little, it makes all the difference in the world.

And, the same is true in the model I suggest.... if you wish to opt out of your 'tribe', you can migrate into any other tribe (pro-'capitalist', pro-'communist', whatever) that is willing to accept you, and share their resources with you.

And if you know no one else will? You must see the coercion inherant in that choice.

First - Socialism doesn't rely on good intentions, at all... that is a misconception... and would pretty much doom any socialistic enterprise that RELIED on it. Socialism can work, because it can rely on SELF-INTEREST. Think of it as a 'real' form of karma. What I do today, is my future. If I am supposed to be on the road-crew this week, and I choose not to bother, I have to expect repurcussions... but I also have to acknowledge that the roads are going to be shoddy when I want to use them.

Or, you could do what happens in damn near every larger socialist experiment and cut the cement with sand so you can repave your own driveway. As long as you don't get caught, you're good to go. Hell, even if you do get caught, just cut it a bit more and bring the witness in on the con. After awhile, those lies become a currency of themselves, a tool for blackmail, a way to leverage a little bit more for yourself. Alot of people are, to paraphrase Orwell, trying to "be more equal than others."

Second - you say each generation of your family has led a 'better life' than their parents... I wonder what you mean by that? More gadgets? More currency? Better access to food?

All those things may be true... but, when my father was working, one working parent could support a family...

Hell, one working parent had to because your mother was a second class citizen. Even if she wanted to be more than a housewife her options were limited and social coercion could be crushing. There was alot more endurance of hardship back then, they weren't glowing days of a golden age.

On quality of life, I have to wonder about socialists who talk about consumerism like it is somehow a false measure. My life is better because I have had the money to buy and read a wide range of books. They lead me to a career choice I would have never otherwise even considered. A global economy, with goods moving anywhere in days has exposed me to music I would have never even had access to, much less a chance to discover. A good bit of that music might not even exist in recorded for if it wasn't for such a huge amount of money moving through the economy that cheap recording equipment was available and niche markets could flourish. Is my life not better because I'm able to eat chicken picatta instead of Ramen? Hell, is it not better because me and my wife can have sex without worrying about extra mouths to feed? It takes a big industrial system to make hormonal contraceptives even possable (not just for production, but for R&D as well). Yes, I would say that my life is objectively better.


Not at all.. this is another strawman. You can, no doubt, sit down an construct (as amental exercise) a futuristic socialist society, that addresses EACH of the points you are making. It is a pro-capitalist prejudice that colours all views of socialism as being somehow 'backwards', or that turns every socialist into a 'cog'. And the comments about 'no one having to think too hard' are just as baseless. How hard is the 'capitalist' working in the McDonalds drive-through thinking? What about the socialist bridge-engineer?

Capitalism colors everything because it is the natural state of things. Forget philosophy or morals for a second, if you take EVERYTHING away from a society, the first thing you see is a market. In every system, no matter how communal, markets continue to exist. You can attempt to control them, to subjugate them, but they are still there, waiting. Even a voluntary socialist cell like the one you describe is a basic capitalist market, you just use labor exchange instead of fiat currency or symbolic exchange and the whole process is tightly controled. Once entropy starts to set in, the controls decay and the market reasserts itself. Look at the black markets that exist in EVERY socialist system, be it ration coupons in the US during WWII to the highly sophisticated handshake markets of Communist China (which, to be honest, existed long before Mao).

The market isn't an economic philosphy that can be tweaked or thrown out. The market is a force of nature, a universal variable that one can attempt to offset or control for, but that will ALWAYS be a part of the equation. Socialism sounds like a great idea, and it feels like it could do wonders for social justice, problem is, it will always be more effective to swim with the current than against it.

I think perhaps there is something of a miscommunication here. When I say that there is a scaling issue, what I mean is that as your cells become larger you begin to run into corruption problems. At the end of the day, someone HAS to be the watchman, someone HAS to be the accountant. These positions come with a significant amount of power, and in a non-cash economy the token goods they distribute act in the same way as cash. You cannot escape capitalism, the trading of one thing for another is inherant to all human interactions. Money is not valuable because it is money, it is valuable because of what it represents. Granted, cash is a bit more flexible than a chicken or a pound of wheat, but it serves the same purpose.


But, the cells DON'T become larger. They reach a beneficial and practical size, and they connect with other cells through 'representation', and through other forms of intermingling, but they don't need to exceed a certain size.

Thus - scale really IS a red herring...

As is 'corruption'. You are constructing a NEED for an 'accountant', where such an entity is not needed. WHY must there be an accountant? The whole tribe is responsible for the harvest, so to speak... it is in the interests of the whole tribe to ensure the safety of the harvest.

You are displacing the tool of the capitalist society, onto the socialist society... one assumes, because you can't imagine how a world could live without it.

The whole tribe is 'the watchman'. The whole tribe is 'the accountant'. Corruption in such a situation is foolish and self-injuring.

And - again, you displace something you see in the capitalist model, onto the socialist... you talk about how your positions bring a certain amount of 'power'...

The other thing I notice... you talk about corruption as a trait of socialism. You talk about the accountant, and the watchman.

And yet, these things are ALL present in Capitalism... but you don't seem to be counting them as flaws, so long as money changes hands.

Last point here... you confuse 'markets' with capitalism... where the two need not be even remotely connected. You also fail to realise that 'markets' are just an example of a TYPE of interaction.

It is entirely possible to have a society with no markets, so long as OTHER forms of the same 'type' of interaction are present... whether they be coercion, conditioning, submission, or any other of a number of possibilities.


As your tribes grow, larger economic interactions will become difficult. The tribe that owns all the iron and tin might want to make it into steel, but getting the equipment (not to mention the food, water, and everything else necessary to survive building a mill) could be very difficult for them. In a capitalist system a wealthy individual will either buy the raw materials, or come in and build a mill. I suppose another tribe could do the same thing,. but then I start to wonder why you bother with the whole tribal system in the first place.


Again - you think in capitalistic terms. Why would ONE tribe 'own' all the iron and tin? Why would they find it difficult to obtain the means of production? If there is NEED for steel, the resources will coalesce. It is a natural process. If they do NOT coalesce, the need will go unsatisfied, and all will suffer... so logic follows nature.

Regarding the tribes... if two individuals NEED something, and between them they have the capacity to acquire it, they will logically interact, for that time, on that thing. Similarly, if two tribes NEED steel, and between them can obtain it, they will interact for the good of the project, while it is necessary.

But - just as individuals are, the two tribes are sovereign. They are just working together for mutual advantage.


I disagree with your freedom argument, as well. I think that the tribal system would reduce freedom by increasing the amount of work and decreasing efficency. The tribal system would likely damage industrialization. You would need huge tribal groups to individually sustain an industrial complex, and I think you can admit that tribes have a pretty specific maximum size. Groups of tribes would have trouble sustaining a complex together because tribalism isn't exactly a system that fosters trust of the "other" (take a glance over at the struggles in Africa post-imperialism). Going back from industrialism means that each widget produced takes more labor, goods become more scarce and labor naturally devalues (trust me, I'll make more money per man hour making sweaters with a loom than you will by hand, even if individual sweaters you make cost 10 times as much). That leads to people having to do more, people having less free time, and in a society where labor is a basic unit of currency (and, by extension, power) devaluated labor means less power (less freedom) for individuals.


More red herrings. Being tribal doesn't MEAN reverting to savagery. You have constructed this vision in your head, that socialism MUST mean barbarism... and you seem incapable of extending past that vision. A tribe need not have to work harder for a resource. A tribe need not be inefficient. You are allowing the model to be coloured by something you bring to the table with you.

Just like you mean to prove my point, your assumption is that tribes MUST foster distrust (like African primitives), and must be pre-industrial.

These assumptions, my friend... are baseless.


See, this is the basic trust in humanity that I'm talking about. Communal societies are only so voluntary. If someone decideds they don't like their cell can they take their home, their land, their farm? No, because those things ultimately belong to the cell. Walking away means walking away from everything you are perceived to own.


Which is the same in capitalist society. Sure, I can quit my job, and put my house on the market, but I am relying on someone else to BUY my house... or I have no equity to relocate. I am relying on another house being vacant and 'for sale', otherwise I have nowhere to relocate.

The 'cell' structure does away with the equity problem, and has no GREATER difficulty with relocation, than does the capitalist model.


In a communal society there will always be administrators. There will always be someone who hands out goods, there will always be accountants. Otherwise, the minutea of governance would weigh the society down. Even in a small tribe you cannot escape the need for order, unless you're talking about going back to subsistance farming.


Why will there always be administrators in a communal society?

I lived in a shared apartment building, sharing resources such as bathrooms, kitchens, etc. We each allocated parts of our funds to 'the project', in the form, largely, of purchasing resources, or paying for services. The 'administration', if it was such, was the community deciding what needed to be done.

Your 'accountants' and 'administrators' seem to be a major stubling block for you... and yet, they are NOT needed for communal living... but they are MORE than lightly represented in the capitalist model.

Curious that you see them as a problem ONLY in the communal model.

Actually - when EVERYONE carries part of the organisational burden, the workload is actually surprisingly light, per capita. It certainly is not sufficient a burden to 'weigh the society down'... any more than one person determining their OWN life 'weighs them down'.

And, again - why the resort to barbarism? What is the necessity for self-governenace to automatically eqaute to 'subsistence farming'?


Once you have rules to be followed, you need individuals to enforce those rules. Otherwise, you have chaos, you have mob rule, you have lynch squads and survival of the meanest. These aren't capitalist ideas, they are the basic building blocks of civilization and the social contract. All government comes down to coercion, all civilization is built around trading power for security. The ONLY alternative is group hermitage.


The rules of our society are decided BY the society. They are 'enforced' by the society. You say 'mob rule' like it is a bad thing... but 'mob rule' is just another phrase for 'democracy'.

And then - more of the same.... you somehow construct lynch-squads out of socialism. You derive a need for 'survival of the meanest'. You assume that a government MUST need to coerce... whereas, of course, coercion is only ONE means of control.

I don't understand where you calculate these 'necessities of communal living' from.


You ask why someone would take care of his friends when they are already taken care of? Lets say you're distributing grain after a bad yield. The farmer who grew it, do you think he is going to be honest about how much he grew or will he keep a little extra to make sure his immediate family survives the winter? Now the grain goes into the public pool, do you think the one who distributes it won't do the same? More to the point, do you think this will only happen when it is a necessity? Greed is hardwired in mankind.


I disagree. I do not operate on greed. Therefore, it cannot be hardwired.

I would argue that we ALLOW greed, in our societies, because it is beneficial to us, as individuals.

And that, I would argue, is one of the biggest flaws of capitalism... it is fundamentally grounded in the principle of greed.


Didn't work well in the 50s...Honestly, if you have a cell of Spartan Fascists working next to a cell of SoCal organic farmers and theres a bad winter, who is going to be planting crops come spring? A tribal society lacks the power to really do anything about those realities. Sure, other tribes might step in, or they might just quitely divvy up the land, or they might turn their heads and say the fight isn't worth the lives of their tribesmen.


Because you have created images of inter-tribal hatred... which need not exist. The tribes could just work together, pool their resources.

Or, one tribe could GIVE all their resources to the other tribe, to ensure the survival of one group.


And if you know no one else will? You must see the coercion inherant in that choice.


No different to the capitalist model. Except, in this tribal format, you don't need 'equity'.


Or, you could do what happens in damn near every larger socialist experiment and cut the cement with sand so you can repave your own driveway. As long as you don't get caught, you're good to go. Hell, even if you do get caught, just cut it a bit more and bring the witness in on the con. After awhile, those lies become a currency of themselves, a tool for blackmail, a way to leverage a little bit more for yourself. Alot of people are, to paraphrase Orwell, trying to "be more equal than others."


Again - you introduce corruption.... which is not autamatically inherent in the system. You cite historicity... and YES, you are picking CORRUPT models, so, of course, there is corruption. If, on the other hand, you picked Jesus and his Apostles, your communal society is not immediately assumed to be 'fixing' it.


Hell, one working parent had to because your mother was a second class citizen. Even if she wanted to be more than a housewife her options were limited and social coercion could be crushing. There was alot more endurance of hardship back then, they weren't glowing days of a golden age.


I know I'm not talking about a golden age... but the fact remains... it is near impossible for the Average worker to support a family on one wage, now... where it was NOT impossible previously.


On quality of life, I have to wonder about socialists who talk about consumerism like it is somehow a false measure. My life is better because I have had the money to buy and read a wide range of books. They lead me to a career choice I would have never otherwise even considered. A global economy, with goods moving anywhere in days has exposed me to music I would have never even had access to, much less a chance to discover. A good bit of that music might not even exist in recorded for if it wasn't for such a huge amount of money moving through the economy that cheap recording equipment was available and niche markets could flourish. Is my life not better because I'm able to eat chicken picatta instead of Ramen? Hell, is it not better because me and my wife can have sex without worrying about extra mouths to feed? It takes a big industrial system to make hormonal contraceptives even possable (not just for production, but for R&D as well). Yes, I would say that my life is objectively better.


And yet... you somehow assume that books and music are ONLY present in capitalist societies? On the contrary, it is only the OWNERSHIP of the material that changes.

And again with the barbarism. "If we were socialists, there'd be no birth control, thered be no pasta"... whatever. Flawed and illogical.


Capitalism colors everything because it is the natural state of things. Forget philosophy or morals for a second, if you take EVERYTHING away from a society, the first thing you see is a market. In every system, no matter how communal, markets continue to exist. You can attempt to control them, to subjugate them, but they are still there, waiting. Even a voluntary socialist cell like the one you describe is a basic capitalist market, you just use labor exchange instead of fiat currency or symbolic exchange and the whole process is tightly controled. Once entropy starts to set in, the controls decay and the market reasserts itself. Look at the black markets that exist in EVERY socialist system, be it ration coupons in the US during WWII to the highly sophisticated handshake markets of Communist China (which, to be honest, existed long before Mao).


Youa re wrong, I'm afraid. The market is nothing more than a MANIFESTATION of something. The mechanisms we seek to influence each other. Coercion, conditioning, submission, the market... are all mechanisms of influence. Imagine for a second, that you and I are housemates, of the very very best kind. My house is your house, kind of thing. We are helpful, the one to the other. Each of us is motivated by our faith/morality/good-nature to help the other in all reasonable fashions.

What do I need to pay you for?


The market isn't an economic philosphy that can be tweaked or thrown out. The market is a force of nature, a universal variable that one can attempt to offset or control for, but that will ALWAYS be a part of the equation. Socialism sounds like a great idea, and it feels like it could do wonders for social justice, problem is, it will always be more effective to swim with the current than against it.

Not buying it. The market is one avenue. If one looks at a system of perfect 'submission', the market is irrelevent.

I find it strange that you are arguing against swimming into the current, here... and yet, your argument against socialism earlier was "Everyone a cog, everyone doing the job they are assigned, no one having to think to hard. At the end of the argument, it comes to preference. I would rather have a hard life of worry and uncertainty with a good deal of self-determination than a safe and simple life".

Your position seems inconsistent.

Don't you think that big business has shown itself capable, in some areas, of delivering lower prices than small business?


Of course, but that doesn't mean size and overall efficiency are one and the same. And well, I've seen big business capable of delivering higher prices than small businesses. It's just more complex than "bigger=better."


The fact that it is "natural" coercion rather than "human" coercion does not change the fact that it is coercion.


I agree. When next time God designs a universe, we can both petition that he makes it so you don't have to eat food to prevent starving to death.


When was the last time you voted on who was to hold shares in the big businesses that dominate American capitalism?

Well, I didn't even vote as to who gets to rule the nation. I'm not really the voter type of guy, business or politics.


Taxation is perfectly consensual, by capitalist fundamentalist logic. I agree to pay my taxes, and the government does not put me in prison. Similarly, I agree to sell my labor, and the capitalists do not starve me to death.

There is nothing logical about that. In one case, the actor who gives me the choice is the same one who will punish me for choosing wrong - government, throwing me in prison. In the other case, the actor who gives the choice has absolutely nothing to say about whether I starve to death. I can always just work somewhere else.

It is in the latter case, my responsibility, not "capitalists starving me to death." Employers don't put you in prison or keep food off your table - they just give you a reward for your own effort.

Government doesn't even give me anything if I DO pay taxes. Except the dubious knowledge that at least my dollars are funding a war on the other side of the world.


Simple consent is no guarantor of justice, even assuming equality of information and rationality.

Simple consent would be nice to have, though.

But, the cells DON'T become larger. They reach a beneficial and practical size, and they connect with other cells through 'representation', and through other forms of intermingling, but they don't need to exceed a certain size.

Thus - scale really IS a red herring...
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Again - you think in capitalistic terms. Why would ONE tribe 'own' all the iron and tin? Why would they find it difficult to obtain the means of production? If there is NEED for steel, the resources will coalesce. It is a natural process. If they do NOT coalesce, the need will go unsatisfied, and all will suffer... so logic follows nature.

More red herrings. Being tribal doesn't MEAN reverting to savagery. You have constructed this vision in your head, that socialism MUST mean barbarism... and you seem incapable of extending past that vision. A tribe need not have to work harder for a resource. A tribe need not be inefficient. You are allowing the model to be coloured by something you bring to the table with you.

Just like you mean to prove my point, your assumption is that tribes MUST foster distrust (like African primitives), and must be pre-industrial.

These assumptions, my friend... are baseless.
I lived in a shared apartment building, sharing resources such as bathrooms, kitchens, etc. We each allocated parts of our funds to 'the project', in the form, largely, of purchasing resources, or paying for services. The 'administration', if it was such, was the community deciding what needed to be done.

Your 'accountants' and 'administrators' seem to be a major stubling block for you... and yet, they are NOT needed for communal living... but they are MORE than lightly represented in the capitalist model.
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Actually - when EVERYONE carries part of the organisational burden, the workload is actually surprisingly light, per capita. It certainly is not sufficient a burden to 'weigh the society down'... any more than one person determining their OWN life 'weighs them down'.

We seem to be chasing our own tails a bit so, for the sake of brevity, I've condensed like ideas so that I can address them. We're starting to spam a bit with our quotes, ;)

Ok, here is my basic problem with tribal societies and scale: the more individuals (or tribes) you bring into the equation the higher the likelyhood of crippling corruption, infighting, or both. Tribal societies work fine when you have a few dozen individuals. These individuals likely care about eachother, they have strong bonds, and the existance of the tribe acts as not only a ruling body but also a social group. It is much like combining family, friends, and daily buisness. As a fraternity man I am quite familiar with this kind of extended buisness/familial relationship.

As the tribe grows, however, several problems begin to develop. The first is infighting. Human beings naturally pack, they form in-groups, sub groups, heirarchies of relationships. It is a heuristic that goes back to before we were human, when we were forming the very first rudimentary communities and first becoming aware of the existance of others as individuals. Members of in-groups naturally discriminate against members of out-groups, and the more different the out-group the less you relate to them. Even if you do not intend to discriminate, even if you have worked hard to train out your natural inclinations, there are still problems of implicit attitudes and responses. The more people you have, the more individual differences will develop (even in very similar populations) and the more the group will splinter.

The second problem of growth for a tribal community is individuals. Sure, in a perfectly enlightened world everyone would work together, share resources, be honest, and blow sunshine and happy kitties out of their asses. That ain't the real world. There is a reason that corrupt governments outnumber honest ones, that genocide happens again and again, that slavery is known to every culture on earth, and that we have prisons. Some people are assholes, and no matter how nice of a system you have all it takes is one dick to derail the whole plan. Just look at Stalin. Who knows where Russia would have ended up or how it would have turned out if Trotsky had succeeded Lenin? No one, because one man who was cunning enough to game the system and ruthless enough to break it managed to take power and the experiment never recovered.

The third problem with tribal societies is the limitations of small economies. Pooling resources isn't enough to research all the technology requires to research and develop new technology or medicine. How long would it take a small tribe to do research that costs a major drug company tens of billions of dollars? Even if you had many small tribes pooling great minds, where will you get the facilities, the equipment, the test subjects? Where will you get the starting capital? How long will tribes be willing to tollerate supporting researchers who are not producing anything of substance? How do you maintain trust between the tribes (is it so far outside the realm of possability that someone might actually steal the final research, sell it to a capitalist tribe, who then charges an arm and a leg?). Things that cannot be produced by a single tribe will face serious efficency problems.

To address the specific example of steel. A tribe could easily own the resources, perhaps their tribal land sits on a hill where the richest veins of ore are buried. Do you really think that the tribe with the resources isn't going to try to get a better return? Can you breed that out of humanity? Can you really believe that mankind can be so utterly changed from it's nature?


It is entirely possible to have a society with no markets, so long as OTHER forms of the same 'type' of interaction are present... whether they be coercion, conditioning, submission, or any other of a number of possibilities.
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Youa re wrong, I'm afraid. The market is nothing more than a MANIFESTATION of something. The mechanisms we seek to influence each other. Coercion, conditioning, submission, the market... are all mechanisms of influence. Imagine for a second, that you and I are housemates, of the very very best kind. My house is your house, kind of thing. We are helpful, the one to the other. Each of us is motivated by our faith/morality/good-nature to help the other in all reasonable fashions.

Yes, but you are a very small group of individuals who decided to volunteer for your communal lifestyle. Not all people are so caring or good. Lets say we were perfect housemates. We might love eachother and be willing to help eachother, but there is a good chance we're more enlightened than your average people. Still, I'll be honest, housemate or not I wouldn't hesitate a second to trade your life for the life of my wife. She is closer to me, we share a deeper bond, she comes first. That is a basic human reaction. My good nature or morality doesn't play into it, I'm not going to sacrifice something perceived as less for something perceived as more.

I find it strange that you are arguing against swimming into the current, here... and yet, your argument against socialism earlier was "Everyone a cog, everyone doing the job they are assigned, no one having to think to hard. At the end of the argument, it comes to preference. I would rather have a hard life of worry and uncertainty with a good deal of self-determination than a safe and simple life".

Your position seems inconsistent.

Perhaps on the surface, allow me to elaborate. You need to get out of a burning building. The front door is blocked. Assuming you'll fall the same distance, do you grab an axe and cut through the wall or do you jump through the window? I would trade safety for freedom every time, that doesn't mean I always have to do things the hardest way possable, just that I'm willing to if I have to.

My problem with socialism is the emphasis it puts on the group. Socialism relies on individuals putting themselves before the group, it relies on a certain amount of social trust and cohesion. Depending on the circumstances, I might have been able to stomach that subordination of the individual. Unfortunately, I do not have the trust required. I don't believe that people are basically good. I have not lived an easy life, and it is my experiance that a few people who are truely good, a few people who are irredeemably evil, and inbetween are alot of people who are capeable of either but end up being neither. I don't trust very many people farther than I can throw them, I've tried, and I've been burned very badly. In a capitalist society I know that I have a good chance of taking care of myself, it might be hard, it might be ugly, I might not make it out whole, but I'm confident I'll survive because I'm confident in myself. In a socialist society, I would only be as strong as the biggest failure would allow, I would be at the mercy of others.

I know, it isn't a pretty way to view the world. It is likely that your experiance doesn't match mine. I respect your opinion, and I wish you the best of luck, but I hope you can understand why it is simply not an option for me. In the end, thats the attitude that will foster the most freedom for everyone, tollerance. I think that, at least, is something we can both agree on.