[mikema63]

I can't, because you keep not answering me.

ho hum how picky, i do have trouble being clear some days.

So if I force your parents to make transactions that either involve me taking more money from them than I would ordinarily be able to take from them, or I force them to invest in ways that cause less returns than they'd have got if they did it their own way, you don't count that as me also coercing you - the future inheritor?

you have certainly coerced my parents but you have not coerced me, the amount of money i would inherit is not mine by right but a beneficence by my parents. i am not entitled to any inheritance at all so unless my parents were contractually obligated to give me a certain amount of inheritance and your coercion makes that impossible then i cannot said to be coerced.

on the other hand if i am currently their dependent then this coercion would effect me directly so by that standard i am coerced.

[Rei Murasame]

Well, just answer it under the assumption that you are really going to inherit it, because they haven't disowned you and they are bound by custom to pass it on to you no matter what. Which is how it is and we both know it.

[grassroots1]

that is an interesting graphic but its not really the entire food industry, these companies are successful (mainly) because they serve their customers well if they did not then all the small food companies that exist would be more than willing to step in and serve these companies former customers.

Smaller companies can't compete with larger firms that can produce more cheaply. These companies are successful because they sell a product people need or want, this is true, but they are now the dominant market players. By virtue of that position they wield power.

under a trust the agreement naturally breaks down through chiseling and other activities to improve services that members of the trust would use to gain more customers at the expense of the other firms, thus over time all trusts fall apart.

Even if it were true that trusts naturally fall apart, this doesn't say anything about the fact that the general trend of the system is toward economies of scale, consolidation, and combination. If your employer also owns your housing and your supermarket, that is a truly coercive relationship where the worker is savagely exploited. This has existed historically in America in coal mining towns or other enclave economies. Plentiful labor combined with this monopolistic control is what led to the conditions that led to the creation of unions and the labor movement.

Rockefeller may have created markets with his monopoly as a result of his position but that doesn't justify his monopoly or make it any less harmful to general well-being. I see government as the only possibility for a mediating force between the contradictory relationship of capital and labor. Government is not something that's necessarily coercive and my study of history has shown me the potential for concentrated wealth to be its own coercive entity. What I believe in, and what I think many libertarians would believe in if you pushed them, is a genuinely democratic republic.

[mikema63]

alright rei, even if its the cultural norm and society pressures them to give me money i am still not entitled to it and i am not coerced if the amount changes due to someones actions.

Smaller companies can't compete with larger firms that can produce more cheaply. These companies are successful because they sell a product people need or want, this is true, but they are now the dominant market players. By virtue of that position they wield power.

they do have economies of scale yes, but im not sure what you mean by power that they would wield so i must ask you to specify. what power do they have?

Even if it were true that trusts naturally fall apart, this doesn't say anything about the fact that the general trend of the system is toward economies of scale, consolidation, and combination. If your employer also owns your housing and your supermarket, that is a truly coercive relationship where the worker is savagely exploited. This has existed historically in America in coal mining towns or other enclave economies. Plentiful labor combined with this monopolistic control is what led to the conditions that led to the creation of unions and the labor movement.

unions play an important role in the economy and in keeping wages at or near marginal productivity yes. i do not think unions should be illegal at all, i do however think that when they get government help then they become a similar problem as when corporation do it.

Rockefeller may have created markets with his monopoly as a result of his position but that doesn't justify his monopoly or make it any less harmful to general well-being.

the interesting point about rockafellers monopoly is that he could not raise prices to exploit people, when he tried he failed. my main point was that he could only maintain his monopoly by being better and cheaper than his competitors.

I see government as the only possibility for a mediating force between the contradictory relationship of capital and labor.

as i said a little above unions play an important role in this, however i think government can be shown historically to make matters worse and help one side at the expense of everybody. usually it works out to government helping both at the expense of consumers in exchange for the money of "capital and labor (unions)". i see the competition of the labor market and unions as a very effective regulatory force.

Government is not something that's necessarily coercive

how so? government seems to be definitionally coercive to me, it always works through force.

my study of history has shown me the potential for concentrated wealth to be its own coercive entity.

this is the most important part of this discussion i think so i must ask you to run through this for me so i can see where your coming from.

What I believe in, and what I think many libertarians would believe in if you pushed them, is a genuinely democratic republic.

most yes with the caveat that its limited by a constitution, not me though.

[Rei Murasame]

alright rei, even if its the cultural norm and society pressures them to give me money i am still not entitled to it and i am not coerced if the amount changes due to someones actions.

What do you think the purpose of a family is? I'm actually starting to think that the reason I am not making headway with you here, is that you don't actually believe that a family has an economic function.

What is the purpose of having children?

[mikema63]

What do you think the purpose of a family is?

the currently most common social structure for the raising of a child and increasing economic value by allowing specialization between home and work.

[Rei Murasame]

What is the purpose of assigning surnames to people? We all covered this in History, I just want it written in black and white so that we are on the same page.

[mikema63]

not in my history class apparently, i just always considered it a social norm. i dont see much about a family beyond what ive already written and of course the cocktail of chemicals that biologically prime us for grouping behaviors.

[Rei Murasame]

No, surnames (and all clan-like behaviour surrounding them) are so that it's possible to see whose economic unit a child comes from, who is obligated to them, who they are obligated to, etc.

It's a chain of descent. Have you ever had someone react to your last name (or the last name of another side of your family) in a positive or perhaps negative and hostile way for historical reasons? Why do you think that happens?

[mikema63]

i get lots of reaction to my name, mostly confusion since im white but my last name is Martinez. (step-father)

people react like that because its outside their expectations, people that judge others by their last names are mostly idiots.

[Rei Murasame]

Okay, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I was in a developing country, gallivanting around, talking to people, you know how it is. Now, there was this one girl I knew that I had an interesting experience with, and I'll tell the story for you.

I was talking to her about something frivolous, it may have been about something to do with cake icing (I was at her house just hanging out), and suddenly she asks me what my mother's last name is. So I tell her, and her reaction was amazing. She froze, stepped back from me, and actually was glaring at me.

Long story short, apparently my family had been there and done something that her family didn't like, which economically damaged them, and her family remembered it by the name (small world!), even though it was a number of generations ago. Quite an interesting and almost uncomfortably dramatic moment to have when just moments ago you were leisurely squeezing icing onto a cake.

Anyway, my question is this. Given how families and wealth work, do you think it's unreasonable that she reacted as she did, and do you think it's unreasonable that I was able to understand exactly why she reacted that way to finding that out?

[Happyhippo]

:eh: this article is a critique of government interventions in the market restricting coinces, not of right-libertarianism itself.

Indirectly it is a powerful critique of right-libertariani rhetoric. I assume every an-cap on the planet agree with Richman that trading with a monopoly is hardly a voluntary action, but rather one that is done at gunpoint. And yet I`ve seen you bringing up how Steve Jobs got rich as an example of someone being rich because of voluntary actions (I assume you can see the error in doing that now) and numerous other examples from every right-lib on this forum, with the honourable exception of Nunt.

[Rei Murasame]

HappyHippo, you're jumping the gun a little but yes, we are going to arrive at that shortly, but not just in the form of "Steve Jobs", but "the Jobs family". And after that, it will only get more interesting.

[Happyhippo]

Ah, I actually didn`t read your argument until now. I just mindlessly imagined that you had a different argument considering we come from two different angles.

Basically I just felt the need to clarify my knee-jerk response a bit.

[Eran]

I believe Richman as well as his supporters are slightly confused.

The act of buying a stamp from the Post Office IS legitimate. It does enhance the subjective well-being of both sides to the transaction. We ought not prohibit it. It doesn't make anybody worse off.

What is illegitimate (as I am sure Richman will agree) is the enforcement by government agents of Post Office monopoly using force (or threat of force). That enforcement is illegitimate and serves to enhance the well-being of some people (nowadays mostly postal employees) at the expense of others (almost everybody else in America).

The act of buying a first-class stamp is causally linked to the monopoly enforcement act, but that link is not enough to shake its legitimacy.

For example, helping the wounded following a terrorist act is an act causally linked to the illegitimate terrorist act itself, but that linkage doesn't make such help illegitimate.

I assume every an-cap on the planet agree with Richman that trading with a monopoly is hardly a voluntary action, but rather one that is done at gunpoint.

Not quite. Trading with a monopoly is a voluntary action. The logic of Praxeology applies to such action, and we can, for example, confidently claim that both sides to the trade are subjectively better off for having traded. That the person trading with the monopoly is not as well off as he could have been given an opportunity to trade with a competitor is true, but not directly relevant.

I understand that disentangling related actions is sometimes difficult. For example, if your child was kidnapped, the kidnapping was clearly not voluntary. However now the kidnappers offer you a trade - pay a ransom for your child. Is the payment of the ransom voluntary? That depends on one's level of granularity when judging individual acts. One can look at the entire kidnapping/ransom demand/ransom payment is a single transaction in which case it is clearly not voluntary.

Alternatively, one can separate the kidnapping from the ransom negotiation. In that case the ransom negotiation is indeed voluntary.

The relevance of the degree to which an act is voluntary to this discussion is the (vulgar? naive?) right-libertarian claim that voluntary transactions are always (subjectively) beneficial to both sides. That observation continues to hold, as long as benefits and voluntariness are both judged on the same level of aggregation.

To take the ransom example, viewed as aggregate, the kidnapping + ransom negotiations are not voluntary, nor are they beneficial to both sides. Viewed separately, the kidnapping is not voluntary, and thus not mutually beneficial. The kidnapping, in that case, creates a new state of affairs as the baseline for measuring benefit. Relative to that new baseline, the ransom negotiations are indeed beneficial, as would necessarily be the case given their voluntary nature.

Going back to monopolies, the entire monopoly system is neither mutually beneficial nor voluntary. The individual transactions with the monopolist are both voluntary and mutually beneficial.



The history of government (i.e. aggressive) intervention in human lives goes back thousands of years. As a matter of practice, it is impossible to disentangle its effects, and make the world perfectly just. For those people who believe in justice, a perfect world is not possible. The best we can do is strive for the most just world we can practically achieve. In the context of property rights, that means we should assign a property title to the person who is most likely to be its just owner. That process in itself will not get everything right, but would be the best we can do.

Luckily, human economy continues to grow, with new wealth being generated all the time. If we change society by removing all aggression (including in particular government-imposed monopoly), new wealth will tend to belong to those who create it, and thus justly owned, even while old wealth's just ownership is less than 100% certain. Over time, however, the problem of the old wealth will be less and less significant, as old wealth becomes a diminishing fraction of overall wealth in society.

That way we can hope to asymptotically approach a just society, even if a perfectly just one is impossible.

Given how families and wealth work, do you think it's unreasonable that she reacted as she did, and do you think it's unreasonable that I was able to understand exactly why she reacted that way to finding that out?

I think her reaction was unreasonable in the sense that blaming you personally for something one of your ancestors may have done (we can't even be certain of that) is unreasonable. If she was able to demonstrate superior title to some property that you currently hold (e.g. if your grand-parents robbed her grandparents of their home, you live in that home, and she can prove it), things would be different - she could legitimately claim the property, giving you an opportunity to return it. If you refused, she would rightly blame you for your choice.

[Happyhippo]

I believe Richman as well as his supporters are slightly confused.

First off, I`m surely not a supporter of Richman, but I do think he has some good points regarding the nature of present day capitalism from a propertarian viewpoint. That`s the reason I mentioned Kevin Carson as well; he is a mutualist and thus close to my position and still believes in the NAP, Austrian School and all the jazz that usually follows an-caps.

I most surely do not think self-ownership and the NAP are anything but incoherent ramblings, so my philosophical outlook really shouldn`t be confused with those two, even though the practical outcomes aren`t very different in Carson`s case.

The act of buying a stamp from the Post Office IS legitimate. It does enhance the subjective well-being of both sides to the transaction. We ought not prohibit it. It doesn't make anybody worse off.

As far as I can tell, nobody in this thread wanted to make it illegal for someone to buy a stamp from the Post Office, so I don`t see anything but a straw man here.

What is illegitimate (as I am sure Richman will agree) is the enforcement by government agents of Post Office monopoly using force (or threat of force). That enforcement is illegitimate and serves to enhance the well-being of some people (nowadays mostly postal employees) at the expense of others (almost everybody else in America).

No disagreements here

The act of buying a first-class stamp is causally linked to the monopoly enforcement act, but that link is not enough to shake its legitimacy.

For example, helping the wounded following a terrorist act is an act causally linked to the illegitimate terrorist act itself, but that linkage doesn't make such help illegitimate.

Ok, english is not my mother tongue, but does your example imply that it would necessarily be illegitimate to help someone wounded that weren`t hurt by anyone else. (let`s take a lone driver smashing into a mountain wall as an example)

Not quite. Trading with a monopoly is a voluntary action. The logic of Praxeology applies to such action, and we can, for example, confidently claim that both sides to the trade are subjectively better off for having traded. That the person trading with the monopoly is not as well off as he could have been given an opportunity to trade with a competitor is true, but not directly relevant.

Yes, it is mutually beneficial if you want to erase context. As Richman said; that both parties benefit from a trade is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for justice. I would be more than happy to occupy your apartment/house and you would probably be more than happy to exchange whatever funds you have in your account in order to get your house back. Nowhere can it called justice that I end up with your money after this chain of events, though. However, I agree that the post office example is more subtle.

To take the ransom example, viewed as aggregate, the kidnapping + ransom negotiations are not voluntary, nor are they beneficial to both sides. Viewed separately, the kidnapping is not voluntary, and thus not mutually beneficial. The kidnapping, in that case, creates a new state of affairs as the baseline for measuring benefit. Relative to that new baseline, the ransom negotiations are indeed beneficial, as would necessarily be the case given their voluntary nature.

Going back to monopolies, the entire monopoly system is neither mutually beneficial nor voluntary. The individual transactions with the monopolist are both voluntary and mutually beneficial.

So in reality you agree with the rest of us? Nobody is just interested in the snapshot (in this case the act of buying a stamp at a post office), but rather the whole picture.

If you are only interested in the snapshot, I could very well kill someone and any act taken against me after that would be illegitimate as it wouldn`t be a voluntary trade.

The history of government (i.e. aggressive) intervention in human lives goes back thousands of years. As a matter of practice, it is impossible to disentangle its effects, and make the world perfectly just. For those people who believe in justice, a perfect world is not possible. The best we can do is strive for the most just world we can practically achieve. In the context of property rights, that means we should assign a property title to the person who is most likely to be its just owner. That process in itself will not get everything right, but would be the best we can do.

In other words; you will fix the exploitation that has been going on for centuries by letting it go unnoticed and then instill a property system based on usury, which by itself is exploitive. I think we have a lot of ground to cover before we come to anything that resembles agreement.

[Soixante-Retard]

Sheldon Richman is a left-libertarian and thus incredibly more sensible than you corporate fascists.

I'm a left-libertarian (by Richman's standards). However, when one uses the phrase "left-libertarian" others think of Noam Chomsky et al who are "libertarian-socialists", and that is what they are - socialists, who have popularized and claimed the phrase "left-libertarian" for themselves (similar to how liberalism use to mean classical liberalism but is now claimed by people who are not classical liberals).

So to distinguish myself from the likes of Noam Chomsky et al I usually call myself a "right-libertarian". An article, by Sheldon Richman, on what "left-libertarianism" is.

These laissez-faire left-libertarians are not to be confused with other varieties of left-wing libertarians, such as Noam Chomsky or Hillel Steiner, who each in his own way objects to individualistic appropriation of unowned natural resources and the economic inequality that freed markets can produce. The left-libertarians under consideration here have been called “market-oriented left-libertarians” or “market anarchists,” though not everyone in this camp is an anarchist.

...The Rothbardians and Mutualists have some disagreements over land ownership and theories of value, but their intellectual cross-pollination has brought the groups closer philosophically. What unites them, and distinguishes them from other market libertarians, is their embrace of traditional left-wing concerns, including the consequences of plutocratic corporate power for workers and other vulnerable groups. But left-libertarians differ from other leftists in identifying the culprit as the historical partnership between government and business—whether called the corporate state, state capitalism, or just plain capitalism—and in seeing the solution in radical laissez faire, the total separation of economy and state.

...In contrast to nonleft-libertarians, who seem uninterested in, if not hostile to, labor concerns per se, left-libertarians naturally sympathize with workers’ efforts to improve their conditions. (Bastiat, like Tucker, supported worker associations.) However, there is little affinity for government-certified bureaucratic unions, which represent little more than a corporatist suppression of the pre-New Deal spontaneous and self-directed labor/mutual-aid movement, with its “unauthorized” sympathy strikes and boycotts.

...One way to view the separation of left-libertarians from other market libertarians is this: the others look at the American economy and see an essentially free market coated with a thin layer of Progressive and New Deal intervention that need only to be scraped away to restore liberty. Left-libertarians see an economy that is corporatist to its core, although with limited competitive free enterprise.

...Why do left-libertarians qua libertarians care about nonviolent, nonstate oppression? Because libertarianism is premised on the dignity and self-ownership of the individual...Thus all forms of collectivist hierarchy undermine the libertarian attitude and hence the prospects for a free society.

...In a word, left-libertarians favor equality. Not material equality—that can’t be had without oppression and the stifling of initiative.

...Finally, like most ordinary libertarians, left-libertarians adamantly oppose war and the American empire. They embrace an essentially economic analysis of imperialism: privileged firms seek access to resources, foreign markets for surplus goods, and ways to impose intellectual-property laws on emerging industrial societies to keep foreign manufacturers from driving down prices through competition.

(Besides, I don't know how advocating the elimination of corporate welfare and subsidies etc, make us - who go by "right-libertarian" - corporate fascists )

-------------

Anyway, I digress, what about Richman's recent article in Reason? I wholeheartedly agree with it. My favorite parts:

or example, you enter a post office and buy a first-class stamp for 45 cents. May we conclude that you prefer the services the stamp will buy to whatever else you might have spent the 45 cents on? If you were not ordered into the post office at gunpoint, I should think so.

Is the transaction therefore legitimate? I should think not—not entirely. Why not? Because your alternatives were artificially constricted by a system supported by violence.

The post office of course is a protected government monopoly. No one may compete with the state in the delivery of first-class mail.

Precisely. I suppose a naïve libertarian response would be:

"The individual is under no duress to use the post office; he/she is free to use the post office"

While, prima facie, that is true, what if the individual did not want to use the post office to post their items and intead established a rival to the post office (as Lysander Spooner tried)? Would that be okay? No, not under the current system of corporatism because the post office is a protected business, protected via government privilege, which can only be enforced by wielding the violent and coercive power of the State (as Spooner found out).

So, although the individual at the post office is under no immediate coercion, the individual is under the threat of coercion. He/she not only has no rival to the post office but is also prevented from making a rival, since the post office, by virtue of government privilege, is protected from competition in certain areas - it is a monopoly. All to serve the position of the monopolist at the expense of consumers.

This is why libertarians wish to see all legal 'barriers to entry' removed.

Before we say, “The exchange was voluntary and therefore both mutually beneficial and legitimate,” we should make sure the larger context satisfies libertarian standards of legitimacy by asking this empirical question: Did government privilege play a significant role in creating the circumstances in which the exchange takes place?

Exactly, an exchange must, to be consistent with libertarianism, be free from coercion from any actor, private individual or government bureaucrat (a free exchange is, ipso facto, beneficial - at least ex ante).

[Happyhippo]

I'm a left-libertarian (by Richman's standards). However, when one uses the phrase "left-libertarian" others think of Noam Chomsky et al who are "libertarian-socialists", and that is what they are - socialists, who have popularized and claimed the phrase "left-libertarian" for themselves (similar to how liberalism use to mean classical liberalism but is now claimed by people who are not classical liberals).

Anarchism is a freaking mess nowadays Your analysis is batshit insane, though, libertarian was first used tby Dejacque in a letter to Proudhon to separate his anarcho-communist views from Proudhon`s mutualism, so if anybody has really claimed and popularized the word later, it`s certainly not the far left.

Meh, it`s just semantics anyways. I view anyone who in general want worker owned enterprises and questions authority as a friend, but I`m overly positive and gullible

Edit: I also have no idea why you use the word Corporatism to describe the current system.

[grassroots1]

they do have economies of scale yes, but im not sure what you mean by power that they would wield so i must ask you to specify. what power do they have?

Well it depends on their place in the market. If they are in an oligopoly or monopoly status then they wield control in the sense that we already discussed: through political lobbying or predatory pricing or other methods of ensuring that start up competitors can't get a foothold in the industry. In general a company has power over its employees, and the negotiation is weigted in favor of the employer, provided that they are not trying to obtain a scarce skilled laborer. The majority of labor is unskilled and plentiful, and this provides companies in general with the ability to dictate terms to the employee rather than the other way around.

Unions were previously the solution to this, now we have a set workday, a minimum wage, a weekend, safety regulations, etc.

the interesting point about rockafellers monopoly is that he could not raise prices to exploit people, when he tried he failed. my main point was that he could only maintain his monopoly by being better and cheaper than his competitors.

He had to stay just good enough to price start up competitors out of the market, that doesn't mean that in general the consumer or laborer was benefiting from the existence of that monopoly. In fact they were suffering.

Despite improving the quality and availability of kerosene products while greatly reducing their cost to the public (the price of kerosene dropped by nearly 80% over the life of the company), Standard Oil's business practices created intense controversy. Standard’s most potent weapons against competitors were underselling, differential pricing, and secret transportation rebates.[40] The firm was attacked by journalists and politicians throughout its existence, in part for these monopolistic methods, giving momentum to the anti-trust movement. By 1880, according to the New York World, Standard Oil was "the most cruel, impudent, pitiless, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country."[41] To the critics Rockefeller replied, "In a business so large as ours … some things are likely to be done which we cannot approve. We correct them as soon as they come to our knowledge.”[41]

...

The "trust" was a corporation of corporations, and the entity's size and wealth drew much attention. Nine trustees, including Rockefeller, ran the 41 companies in the trust.[42] The public and the press were immediately suspicious of this new legal entity, but other businesses seized upon the idea and emulated it, further inflaming public sentiment. Standard Oil had gained an aura of invincibility, always prevailing against competitors, critics, and political enemies. It had become the richest, biggest, most feared business in the world, seemingly immune to the boom and bust of the business cycle, consistently racking up profits year after year.[43]

...

Rockefeller and his son continued to consolidate their oil interests as best as they could until New Jersey, in 1909, changed its incorporation laws to effectively allow a re-creation of the trust in the form of a single holding company. Rockefeller retained his nominal title as president until 1911 and he kept his stock. At last in 1911, the Supreme Court of the United States found Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. By then the trust still had a 70% market share of the refined oil market but only 14% of the U.S. crude oil supply.[58] The court ruled that the trust originated in illegal monopoly practices and ordered it to be broken up into 34 new companies. These included, among many others, Continental Oil, which became Conoco, now part of ConocoPhillips; Standard of Indiana, which became Amoco, now part of BP; Standard of California, which became Chevron; Standard of New Jersey, which became Esso (and later, Exxon), now part of ExxonMobil; Standard of New York, which became Mobil, now part of ExxonMobil; and Standard of Ohio, which became Sohio, now part of BP. Pennzoil and Chevron have remained separate companies.[59]

Rockefeller himself:

“capital and labor are both wild forces which require intelligent legislation to hold them in restriction.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller#Standard_Oil

as i said a little above unions play an important role in this, however i think government can be shown historically to make matters worse and help one side at the expense of everybody. usually it works out to government helping both at the expense of consumers in exchange for the money of "capital and labor (unions)". i see the competition of the labor market and unions as a very effective regulatory force.

It was a "regulatory force" that only came about as a result of extreme suffering as a result of the conflict between capital and labor. The 8-hour-day, safety regulations, the weekend, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, all came about as a result of the actions of labor in publicizing the sheer exploitation that resulted from these particular "mutually beneficial exchanges." I think government is the only effective regulatory force but in America the government is bought and paid for by wealthy business interests, primarily. The problem here is not a lack of "freedom" as libertarians define it, but a lack of real democracy.

how so? government seems to be definitionally coercive to me, it always works through force.

Democratic government in its ideal form is a general reflection of the interests and beliefs of the people it is intended to represent. Who considers this coercive? People at the top of the economic ladder who do not want to pay into collective improvement, for one. It is only sensible that they would try to hold onto their wealth best they can, hence why the Koch brothers try to hard to promote the libertarian perspective. Without government another coercive entity will take its place, and that coercive entity is the corporation.

this is the most important part of this discussion i think so i must ask you to run through this for me so i can see where your coming from.

If you want to see a good example of the conflict between capital and labor in the absence of proper regulation than the Gilded Age era of American history is just as good as today's China. If you look at the Great Southwest Strike, the Homestead Strike, the impetus for the creation of the Western Federation of Miners, the AFL-CIO's national movement for the 8-hour-day, etc., you can see examples of the imbalance in negotiating power between the employer and the employed. There are especially blatant examples like coal mining company towns where the housing of the worker was owned by their employer, the shop where they bought goods was owned by the employer, the equipment they used was owned by the employer, etc., so essentially the worker would have the cost of housing taken out of their paycheck, and they would be made to pay inflated costs at the company-owned general store, etc. This was essentially debt peonage, a clearly coercive relationship that under libertarian definitions would be termed a "mutually beneficial exchange."

It is also an interesting fact that there were coal mining entrepeneurs from the South who used their slaves in the coal mines, but found that they were losing valuable investments to injury and death. So they switched to easily replaceable free labor. This is what caused situations like children working in coal mines, losing limbs, and being essentially left to fend for themselves by a company who provided no disability benefits (they'd have laughed at the very concept) or anything like that. Of course in this context unions rose up, and as a result of their collective movement over a period of many decades we now have basic controls to ensure a decent way of life for workers in this country. The arguments about minimum wage resulting in increased barriers to entry is valid, but it is necessary because of the sheer imbalance in negotiationg power between the two parties. Ideally there would be a more direct way of solving this problem, where there could be universal health care and education, funded through taxation, provided free of charge to every citizen. I think this would greatly improve our collective quality of life and ultimately stimulate our economic health.

most yes with the caveat that its limited by a constitution, not me though.

What do you prefer other than a democratic republic?

[Rei Murasame]

I think her reaction was unreasonable in the sense that blaming you personally for something one of your ancestors may have done (we can't even be certain of that) is unreasonable.

But we are certain of it, there wasn't actually any controversy over that, since it's one of those "if you hadn't been here then none of it would've happened" type things, and she was correct to think so.

If she was able to demonstrate superior title to some property that you currently hold (e.g. if your grand-parents robbed her grandparents of their home, you live in that home, and she can prove it), things would be different - she could legitimately claim the property, giving you an opportunity to return it.

Well, sucks to be her then, doesn't it - because that's exactly what she can't do.

This becomes difficult for libertarians because not only do you all agree that there is nothing she can really do directly about it now (which is simply a fact of life, we all acknowledge that, including her), you libertarians take it a step further and declare that it shouldn't even be seen as a legitimate historical narrative, and that I shouldn't even take her reaction seriously.

I think that my ideology is more appealing than libertarianism is on this issue (obviously) because we have a multi-generational outlook, and we at least give our competitors the dignity of acknowledging that our past is relevant, even if we acknowledge it only to say that "it is unfortunate that it had to be like that".

Basically your ideology cannot actually operate without denying the concept of 'previous accumulation', and that it has a real effect on a generational level. Children aren't just born into a vacuum as solitary individuals.

My main point is this. Given all that has happened, and looking at the statements that began this topic, there is actually never any such thing as a transaction that is "100% legitimate" by libertarian standards, because at some point everyone's family have acted in a situation where a coercive monopoly was constraining their choices or leeching money off of them. This has altered their economic behaviour away from what it might have otherwise been - they are even now making choices in circumstances that are not entirely of their choosing.

I guess I'm saying that the OP completely collapses libertarianism onto itself, and what it collapses into is the view of life which does take into account the fact that government is force and that 'previous accumulation' matters.

The only time that 'previous accumulation' seems to matter a little less is if you can just ride westward like an American and set up shop again out of the reach of rent-extractors, but 99% of the people in the world didn't have a 'wild west' to run away to, so it's simply not applicable. (I'm not even sure that your 'wild west' was even wild anyway, but I'll be generous and assume that it was.)