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On July 15 2011 09:30 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +The whole idea of a corporation is that private assets are protected if a company goes bankrupt. As a share holder you can only claim the assets of the "corporation", but the CEO can get away with million dollar bonuses and those are untouchable, even if the corporation went into debt precisely because of such a corrupt CEO. Corporations have signed a deal with the government, you protect us from the worse consequences of our actions, and we will pay you large corporate taxes. In a free market system, shareholders would be at an outrage and would never agree to give corporate elites such protection. This is only possible with government intervention. In a "free market system" of the kind you describe, economic activity would be horribly stunted as protecting private individuals from liability is the great strength of the concept of the limited liability corporation. Without it harnessing of the resources necessary to provide for a huge consumerist society is impossible. On July 15 2011 09:08 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Man's flaw in this case is that we lack a widely held understanding of force, property rights and individual liberty in general. Anarchy (based on libertarian ethical theory, anything else is just more of the same varying degrees of socialism) will work just fine once people understand the relatively easy concepts it's built upon. The power vacuum you're worried about doesn't have to occur, and if people abolish governments for the right reasons it won't. And once true communism the state will wither away and it will truly be from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. <-- sarky sarc sarc Show nested quote +I'm sorry I don't have answers, maybe in time I will - but it's not about me, and most of what I am saying is true and valid and should be taken into consideration . I think discussion helps with that. At some level I think the solution is quite obvious. The problem is simply violence and taking advantage of other people. That is the fear of anarchy, that is the sum of all the problems with government. So the solution is, get people to stop doing that to each other, at least a critical mass. How to get there is the hard part. In fear of being extremely redundant, it is made much worse when the government is responsible for educating young minds, while having every incentive NOT to work towards that. A critical mass to do what exactly? Form some sort of communal agency to... enforce public safety and order? Why, that sounds suspiciously like a police department.Show nested quote +
It is basically just what Chaulker described, or educating people so that they will learn it is better to not be violent and manipulative with each other. It is basically useless to call this anarchy, because very few will understand what the means. It is more a system of taking the good aspects of government (organization, cooperation) and getting rid of the bad (initiation of force to get everything done) and finding a way to make it work in a way that is superior. This cannot happen without a change in mindset on a wide scale. People have already described this in detail, and it is an ideal. Perhaps unattainable in 100 or 1000 years, but it is still an ideal. An ideal that most will never learn about, pushing it that much further from reality.
Changing the nature of man is a universal goal of utopian philosophies. Show nested quote +Evolution should be brought into this, because it is quite valid. This so called "flaw of humanity" is nothing but a relic leftover from religious dogma. If people learn anything from evolution, it should be that we are not static beings, we can change for better and for worse. This so called flaw doesn't have to be permanent. With the right change on environment almost anything is possible in the long run...but who has the most control over our environment and where are they taking us? How... Spencerian, and socially Darwinist of you. The flaws of humanity exist whether religions are fantasies are not. Most of the worst examples of those flaws in action have taken place by men who professed atheism (Stalin, Mao, etc.) or a burning hatred of existing religion and its thoughts on the nature of man (Hitler). Religion or lack of it does not seem to be an issue. Show nested quote +When you talk about real world comparisons between opposing choices - everything I am talking about has no place there in the real political realm, and we should be honest about that. It is the only first step we can take, however small it is. In the US the politicians and the media grant no place for this discussion, none at all. It is only right vs. left. It is only a question the details of what government will do, rather that the philosophical question of how much we should actually want or have. Until we are ready to have that discussion, we will get no where. Until we are honest about the fact that our overlords avoid that discussion - and it is not some vast conspiracy, it is simply the result of incentives placed on them, it will remain this way. When it suits you you at least attempt to be modest, but you are still infected by the idea that most of the people can be fooled most of the time. Not in a free society. Show nested quote +Derez, there cannot exist an argument to claim government use of resources being preferrable to consumers keeping their purchasing power. If only you could boil down the entirety of human interaction to exchanges based on individual purchasing power. Show nested quote +But it also means that government by the very definitions that western culture holds dear cannot be demonstrated to be better at solving the problem of famines than private enterprise. Well actually it required the shaping undeveloped wilderness in the nineteenth century, by government encouraging and protecting the ambitions of the people that created the great class of farmers that made the West the breadbasket of the world. Both the State and the private individual and enterprise were necessary. But whatever you want to believe is cool I guess. Elem, rejection of propertarian production concepts implies impossibility of capital structure - hence being at odds with the premise of the argument of welfarism. In short, it doesnt prove your point, but rather a paradoxical absurd. Not unlike the argumentation of "property is theft"Blues, liability is a core element of functional society. Surely, the premise of propertarianism goes at hand with it. And as such, the existance of acceptance of capital structure requires the other half of the production engine. It is a duality - production and liability, harmonously directing resource utilization.
Drone, CIA funded statist power mongers and UN transitional government brutes prove the point. While welfarism of scandinavia can be interpreted as comfort, direct money injections to violence cant. Though disturbingly the very welfarist argument of statists is nearly a carbon copy of that of slavery support. A parallel i pointed out earlier, and disturbing to think about, yet as the confines of defining terms of debate require, it must be accepted. Rockwell has published articles on the subject. Molyneux too, I believe.
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Elem, rejection of propertarian production concepts implies impossibility of capital structure - hence being at odds with the premise of the argument of welfarism. In short, it doesnt prove your point, but rather a paradoxical absurd. Not unlike the argumentation of "property is theft"Blues, liability is a core element of functional society. Surely, the premise of propertarianism goes at hand with it. And as such, the existance of acceptance of capital structure requires the other half of the production engine. It is a duality - production and liability, harmonously directing resource utilization.
Do you ever read what you write. It seems you just try to drown people in jargon. Incoherent jargon at that.
Unfortunately rejection of your definition of "propertarian production concepts" does not imply "impossibility of capital structure."
I think you are trying to breezily paper over the difficulties lack of limited liability would cause - the main reason it exists, broadly speaking, is to encourage people to try to gather capital for new economic activity without risking their personal property in the bargain.
Talking about how liability is essential to production and all the rest of what you are saying is just odd. I never said liability is bad, I said lack of limited liability is an obstruction to gathering capital. If you think it is not, respond to that, and not with some jumbled together screed of phrases picked off LewRockwell.com.
Drone, CIA funded statist power mongers and UN transitional government brutes prove the point. While welfarism of scandinavia can be interpreted as comfort, direct money injections to violence cant.
One cannot help but feel that relevant parts of the story are not being told in this rendition of events.
While welfarism of scandinavia can be interpreted as comfort, direct money injections to violence cant.
I agree, "what is to be done?" about direct money injections to violence coming from organizations like the Pakistani ISI, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Syrian Ba'ath Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah?
Though disturbingly the very welfarist argument of statists is nearly a carbon copy of that of slavery support.
I would think I would enjoy an explanation of how arguments for the welfare state are arguments for classifying humans as property, but I think it would most likely be incomprehensible and incoherent, judging from what has been posted so far.
A parallel i pointed out earlier, and disturbing to think about, yet as the confines of defining terms of debate require, it must be accepted.
Well no it must not, because it is a weak and strained argument, but whatever.
Rockwell has published articles on the subject. Molyneux too, I believe.
Lew Rockwell ghost-wrote racist, homophobic, and xenophobic articles for Ron Paul's various newsletters through the 70s and 80s in a craven attempt to get cash donations from white supremacists by making them think Ron Paul was on their side. I would guess that from that experience Rockwell is well-informed about arguments for slavery.
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Drone - if the compassionate state is so wonderful, if everyone thinks it is so great, (and I agree, it is a tremendous difference between the welfare state and the warfare state or imperial empire, but I still think both are bad, it's just that one is a million times worse), then why must financing for it be compulsory?
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Still so much to respond to; still so little time...
I wonder though, DeepElemBlues, why it is you think that the free market somehow rejects the concept of the limited liability company.
The concept of an LLC would be perfectly acceptable in a free society; the company can simply state that when you deal with it, you implicitly agree that any legal action must be directed at the company and not the shareholders. There's no need for government involvement, or more specifically, the system of law currently in place.
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I wonder though, DeepElemBlues, why it is you think that the free market somehow rejects the concept of the limited liability company.
Uncertainty is the bane of freely flowing capital.
The concept of an LLC would be perfectly acceptable in a free society; the company can simply state that when you deal with it, you implicitly agree that any legal action must be directed at the company and not the shareholders. There's no need for government involvement, or more specifically, the system of law currently in place.
Ah yes, the good old "a new system of individual, self-imposed law will spring Venus-like from the hearts of man" in your utopia. Tell me, why should I care if a corporation tells me that any legal action must be directed at the company and not the shareholders? Who will stop me? The courts? What courts? We are in a new system of law where there is no third, disinterested party, to provide a forum and a method for handling disputes.
Of course the company could just ignore lawsuits as there is no enforcement mechanism to make them do so... oh wait there's that voluntary association of fellows suspiciously looking like police again, come to save the day!
And I suppose, of course, there would be some voluntary association of men and women that we could voluntarily send our dispute to... or maybe it must go there because the community has decided this group shall settle legal disputes. Sounds suspiciously like a courts system, but what do I know.
Or perhaps the company's bank will refuse to give me any of their money if I don't play by the rules... unless, of course, I have a connection at the bank, maybe I'll just have them take the money out even without a lawsuit, we can split it or something. But surely that wouldn't happen, wouldn't it?
There's no need for government involvement as long as everyone behaves as if there is a force of law existent where there is not; you simply just assume that people will act as if there is still a government when there is no government. I wonder why people like you think that. There are no examples of men acting as if there was a government when there was none, save to create government.
In a world where the only law and law enforcement are voluntary agreements and associations, why couldn't I just make my own law and get the strength to enforce it against others' will? The community will stop me? Communities are weak, fragile things, easily awed by men with guns.
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Yesterdays New York times:
Somalia is once again spewing misery across its borders, and once again man-made dimensions are making this natural disaster more acute.
The Islamist militants controlling southern Somalia forced out Western aid organizations last year, yanking away the only safety net just when the soil was drying up and the drought was coming. Only now, when the scale of the catastrophe is becoming clear, with nearly three million Somalis in urgent need and more than 10 million at risk across the parched Horn of Africa, have the militants relented and invited aid groups back. But few are rushing in because of the complications and dangers of dealing with a brutal group that is aligned with Al Qaeda and has turned Somalia into a focal point of American concerns on terrorism.
Just to keep this somewhat on topic and to show my dissatisfaction with a thread title like this by an OP still to take back a single word of what he said in his OP. Theoretical debates have zero value in cases like this. With such an amazing system of government, who would ever leave somalia :/.
Full article: Misery Follows as Somalis Try to Flee Hunger
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On July 01 2011 12:50 0neder wrote:
Anarchists are foolish idealists. The founders of USA understood the need to balance freedom and order. And, they established a framework for people to freely succeed according to their ambition that also restricted government power. Granted, after a few hundred years it is swamped by general laziness and nearly overcome by a demand for endless 'rights' without compensatory sacrifices by its citizens, but it's so robust that it's still succeeding for the most part.
the founding fathers of america were anarchists AND TERRORISTS to the English Crown and its sovereign rights.
tadaa.
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And we care what Lord North and George III thought?
Tadaa.
The revolutionaries were clearly not anarchists, the idea is preposterous.
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On July 01 2011 13:17 Sanctimonius wrote:
Interesting study and it raises interesting questions. Somalia refused their own government and no other has been able to set itself up across the entire country despite backing from various foreign interests, since they seem to be functioning very well by themselves, than'youver'much. I'm still a bit sceptical about the idea that anarchy is basically a good thing here.
The study talks about the seperation between the north and the south - Somaliland in the north is a proto-state. It tries to operate with a cenralised currency, it has infrastructure and investment while not interfering with the things that work - obviously agriculture and law has worked for centuries in this area without a central authority, they are doing well enough leaving it alone. But in the south, piracy is on the increase. These networks and developed communites are preying on the weak and raiding what they can from other sources, if not themselves. Southern Somalia has realised that without an authority to limit them, they are free to take it upon themselves to do what they wish. With a legal system that relies on the strong social ties they have, attacking each other has penalties they aren't prepared to face. But raiding neighbours, raiding passing shipping lanes with no real legal consequences to themselves? Sure. Prop up an anarchistic society with the proceeds from other nations and it seems to keep going.
I also question this idea of doing well. Somalia isn't doing well, it's doing better. Sure, it has improved since the awful days of civil warfare and corrupt governments. It's doing generally better than neighbouring countries with repressive governments of their own. But these are relative ideas - there is little scope to improve the country of the lot of the people there. Their lives are functioning, their society keeps going, but there is no real chance to develop the country. Are taxes being collected and spent on public works like hospitals, roads, schools? Only in the north, Somaliland. Basically the entire study can boil down to this:
Repressive regimes suck for you.
No government can work better than a terrible government.
There is nothing to say that this system is better than good government. I would also dispute the presence of foreign investment being a sign of progress. It merely means foreign investors see a sign of profit. To sue the example of Coca Cola, never a company to baulk at shirking local laws, maybe they realised that without a central authority trying to impose such silly ideals as 'basic wage' or 'safe practices' they could make and sell Cola to other countries using impoverished labourers in an unsafe environment. This is, of course, not necessarily what is happening here. Maybe Cola is going in with the intention of creating a safe work environment and good wages for the workers there. I'm merely trying to say it's not necessarily a sign of something good.
if thats true than as a completely individualist state with no government, perhaps they should be treated like incorporated companies, which are also legally considered individuals, and threaten to take resources or blockade them and otherwise clamp down. I mean, whats interpol doing with them? They're after all just a bunch of individuals, so what happens if countries start treating them as individuals who have committed crimes, since they have no law in their own country?
On July 17 2011 07:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:
And we care what Lord North and George III thought?
Tadaa.
The revolutionaries were clearly not anarchists, the idea is preposterous.
my point you numpty, is that what you're called and considered changes based on 1: who you talk to and 2: If its beneficial to call you one or the other. Beneficial to short term gains or long term gains or whitewashing history, or painting some group or person as the villain, etc.
Terrorist is thus used to ensure citizens cling to your rule. I still remember playing as a "terrorist" in certain video games where they were destroying parts of the reactors sucking the planets energy dry, because the corporation that owned the city was being greedy, and etc etc, and yep, I agreed with terrorists in that position. amazing how they can look good or bad depending on your side of the coin.
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... when do we get a delete button mods? thanks.
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An individual born in a priviledged state dreams about living in some kind of utopian anarchist society and has the audacity to claim that Somalia is an example of "success" when millions and millions of Somalians are starving and in need of dire aid with slews of people dying every day right now. You are so divorced from reality that it boggles my mind.
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actually most somalians are well fed and living more comfortably than the current american atm. woot american depression.
User was temp banned for this post.
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That's seriously the most fucking stupid thing I've ever read for a very long time. Somalia is currently going through what is called, by the UN, the worst humanitarian distaster in the world. I don't recall there being millions of Americans trekking to Canada and Mexico because they are starving to death.
You can talk about all the shit you want to, but when what you're saying is completely divorced from reality then your words are worth just about as much as shit on the ground.
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On July 18 2011 03:46 BlizzrdSlave wrote:
actually most somalians are well fed and living more comfortably than the current american atm. woot american depression.
![[image loading]](http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/us-fao.gif)
Yeah, the average American definitely suffers from lack of food LOL.
On July 18 2011 01:38 koreasilver wrote:
An individual born in a priviledged state dreams about living in some kind of utopian anarchist society and has the audacity to claim that Somalia is an example of "success" when millions and millions of Somalians are starving and in need of dire aid with slews of people dying every day right now. You are so divorced from reality that it boggles my mind.
It's always like that.
Xarthaz lives a comparatively comfortable life in a wealthy society built on the opposite of the principles he claims to endorse. Exexee or whoever that Danish guy is who posts about the evils of capitalism and corporations and pretty much everything also lives a very comfortable life granted to him by successive governments favoring the opposite of what he espouses and decries.
Hell, I'd say one of the saddest things about post industrial western world is the fact that well off comfortable people who have likely never faced hunger nor probably worked a real hard day's labor in their life for a weak wage have the audacity to sit around and post on thousand dollar computers in air conditioned rooms decrying the system around them that apparently causes them so much grief because their "liberty is violated' or some equally retarded thing to say.
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It is useless to compare absolute living standards between countries when trying to assess the efficacy of a particular socio-economic system. No one but an idiot would claim that Somalia is a nice place to live - but is it nicer currently than it was 10 years ago?
Botswana is also in Africa. It's a very poor nation. Because of the limited government approach taken by the Botswani people they had the fastest growing economy in the world for 50 years. Sure, Botswana isn't as nice to live in as Florida; but the lessons learned from their experiences are very meaningful.
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Norway28614 Posts
I think currently, somalia is worse than it was 10 years ago. and botswana is certainly a success story - but it's a success story through having had free democratic elections with good governance, not through any sort of anarchist approach, nor anything resembling lassez-faire economical policies.. Botswana is more than anything, an example of good governance producing good results.
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i feel like the xel naga every time i read about somalia (even though i do nothing to help!)
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Yeah, I bet anarchy dried up all the water.
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On July 21 2011 02:57 BestZergOnEast wrote:
Yeah, I bet anarchy dried up all the water.
Anarchy didn't dry up any water. It did however lead to a lawless state incapable of producing enough grain to feed its nation, and enough commerce to buy the food from other nations.
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EPT
