Are there any self-identified libertarians left? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Classical liberalism. The individual before the state, non-interventionist, free-market based society.
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#14446897
Technology wrote:All rational arguments for philosophies have starting points which aren't rational. The starting point is basically a value judgment, in this case; aggression against muh property is evil (although arguably this itself stems from the lower judgment that people need things to live). You have to have some sort of initial preference to then use logic to create a system which will allow that preference to be extant. Goal and method.

As mikema63 notes, you can't really discredit the axiom of a philosophy. You could disagree with it, but all you are saying is that you use a different axiom. We have to argue about methods and outcomes, because these we can put rationality to. Someone could be mistaken about the actual realities of the ways markets work and so on.


Only if you're a foundationalist.
#14448197
Nunt wrote:I am specifically asking about the libertarians ranging from minarchist-classical liberal beliefs to ancap beliefs?

More often than not I feel like I am the only one who is defending such views here. So who is still left?


I'm a libertarian/an-cap. I don't post often in the first place, I have posted even less lately. I've found it doesn't do much good to defend such views here, you'll just see the same objections (at best) and ludicrous mischaracterizations (at worst, but more frequently) from the same people tomorrow. Eran had indefatigable patience with that stuff, sadly I do not.
#14452567
I probably fall in or somewhere near the libertarian pool, i'm non-interventionist, socially liberal, am fond of the NAP (I try to be pragmatic, though), prefer a smaller state with less scope for abuse of power and corruption et cetera.

Eran was the heart and soul of this libertarian board, hopefully he will still post occasionally.
#14471742
Hi Everybody.

I am still as an-cap as ever. Unfortunately, I am still a few weeks away from having enough time to engage in the forums again. I miss posting, but my wife and I are currently working around the clock (most days start at 5am and end at 11PM), 7 days a week (not a single day off since we started running the kennels in late July).

After the October holidays (the weekend of 18-19 October) the pressure will ease somewhat, and I hope to find a few minutes every day to write.

Taxi - when I return, I'd love to engage with you on the whole Monarchy thing.
Nunt and others - keep the flame going.

I'll be back.
#14471745
Pants-of-dog wrote:I consider myself more libertarian than most self-identified libertarians on this board. The main difference being that I am not economically libertarian. Just libertarian in almost every other way.

In other words, a "modern liberal" as opposed to a "classical liberal".

Joe Liberty wrote: I've found it doesn't do much good to defend such views here, you'll just see the same objections (at best) and ludicrous mischaracterizations (at worst, but more frequently) from the same people tomorrow.

A plight hardly monopolized by libertarians, nor are they innocent of doing the same.
If I had a dime for everytime a libert labelled non-libertarians "fascist" or "socialist", regardless of their actual views, I'd never have to worry about money ever again.
#14471751
Truth to Power wrote:I think Saeko was being ironic. After all, communists and fascists have actually had purges where thousands or even millions died.


I think that what turns a lot of people off from libertarianism is self-riightous smugness. Sure Pinochet, the British conquest of India, the Cromwellian conquests, the American genocides, the genocide in Australia, and a dozen more examples have all been used in order to enforce capitalism-but the hundreds of millions of corpses made to even create a zone for capitalism don't count because capitalism.

The non-aggression principle seems to only work if you both agree on capitalism with a similar form of property ownership. Otherwise, everyone in every culture has to be murdered.

This is completely ignored by libertarians, the defence of Nazis as long as they were including communists in gas chambers, the elevation of Pinochet's hatchet men to giants of non-aggression and freedom in Cato Institute...the libertarian will cover his ears, close his eyes, and stamp on the ground while making up new definitions of words in order to try and explain the contradictions in his argument.

No other ideology is so deliberately blind, and I always think the Orwellian way words must lose meaning in order to prop up the ideology is the most offensive part of it.

I'm a communist. We have killed people. Now, since I'm in line with history, I don't have to fight to create a mythical band of saints on a perfect line of freedom in order to prop up my beliefs. It seems weird to be that the libertarian cannot do the same, like it would violate a religion if actual history were to be involved.

Instead, everyone else must hear about an ignorant view of history and who passed the purity test with which Newspeak words.

One thing is for sure, much as I disagree with him, Eran is a class act. Even if he is as guilty as every other libertarian.
#14471758
The type of "libertarian" discussed here are the capitalist equivalent of "council communists" or other ultra-left socialists who always renounce Lenin, the social-democrats, the CNT-FAI...anyone who's ever gotten their hands dirty because they actually tried to do put their beliefs in practice and face-planted into reality....just like everyone else.

The USA during "the Industrial Revolution" came pretty close to laissez-faire but no. Bad Things were done. Not just Jim Crow and Injun-killin' either. Lincoln had restored central banking goddam it!! On top of that, state governments were never stripped of the power to charter banks to begin with. Thus, genuine ***ism never existed (and never will).
#14472279
ComradeTim wrote:Libertarian Socialist, here. Though I never use the term libertarian on its own, as it has been stolen from us by those upstart An-caps and their miserable ilk.

"Libertarian" can't go with "socialist" any more than it can with "capitalist." People cannot have liberty under capitalism because their liberty to access natural opportunity -- land -- has been privatized: i.e., made into landowners' private property. And they cannot have liberty under socialism, because their liberty to use the fruits of their own labor for further production has been collectivized.
#14472439
Truth To Power wrote: "Libertarian" can't go with "socialist" any more than it can with "capitalist." People cannot have liberty under capitalism because their liberty to access natural opportunity -- land -- has been privatized: i.e., made into landowners' private property. And they cannot have liberty under socialism, because their liberty to use the fruits of their own labor for further production has been collectivized.


Top marks for the second sentence, fundamental misunderstanding in the rest. Collectivisation is the only truly freeing method of production. It allows everyone to enjoy the fruits of their labour but no-one else's, as a select few parasites would under a wage labour system. I am talking of course about worker-led and organised collectivization, not Marxist "collectivization", which is nationalisation under a different name.

What exactly would libertarianism be for you, then, if neither capitalist or socialist?
#14472455
Worker led collectivization would surely just be a form of democratic command economy, in which workers in one factory get to elect representatives to argue with representatives from other factories about what every factory needs to do, even though that information is already contained in people's preferences for products, and more efficiently served by a market which takes local conditions and preferences into account from the ground up. Centralized collectivization, where it abolishes the market, is the problem here.

The answer to Truth to Powers conundrum is socialism which retains the market. People can have liberty if the state respects only the private title to what they work at, maintain, and use; their ongoing peaceful projects in other words (factories are covered by maintenance and work, and houses are covered by use). This means that all means of production would be internally socialized to the ownership of those respective workers to elect management as they please, while the relations between the projects of particular groups of workers would be highly marketized and liberalized. Liberty is weakened by the handing over of control over the project of producers to an abstracted absentee body, whether shareholders, vanguard parties, or collectives of other producers using democracy to dictate production they are not involved in.

Only "free market socialism" protects liberty against the objections TTP raises. Marxism gets the workers to throw the bosses off their backs, only to weight them down with the demands of a 19th Century philosopher. Non-Marxist socialists who have similar anti-market designs will also create an irrational system that chains down enterprise.
#14472570
Truth To Power wrote: "Libertarian" can't go with "socialist" any more than it can with "capitalist." People cannot have liberty under capitalism because their liberty to access natural opportunity -- land -- has been privatized: i.e., made into landowners' private property. And they cannot have liberty under socialism, because their liberty to use the fruits of their own labor for further production has been collectivized.

ComradeTim wrote:Top marks for the second sentence, fundamental misunderstanding in the rest.

Nope. Clear understanding of self-evident and indisputable facts.
Collectivisation is the only truly freeing method of production.

Garbage. By definition, collectivization forcibly removes the individual's liberty to produce using the fruits of his own labor and according to his own design.
It allows everyone to enjoy the fruits of their labour but no-one else's,

Blatantly false. It collectivizes -- steals -- the fruits of everyone's labor that can be applied to production.
as a select few parasites would under a wage labour system.

The landowner is a parasite because he does not contribute anything to production in return for the share of production he demands from the producer. The investor in productive capital goods -- buildings, machinery, etc. -- by contrast, DOES contribute to production (the capital goods would not have existed had he or a previous investor not paid someone to produce them), and is therefore NOT a parasite.
I am talking of course about worker-led and organised collectivization, not Marxist "collectivization", which is nationalisation under a different name.

You are talking about abrogating the producer's property right in the fruits of his labor without just compensation, either way.
What exactly would libertarianism be for you, then, if neither capitalist or socialist?

I've already explained the common lie that capitalism and socialism share: that land and capital are moral and economic equivalents. The two systems merely take that lie and apply it to opposite purposes.

True liberty must be based on the fact that land is not produced by labor, and therefore can never rightly become private property, while the fruits of the producer's labor represent the concrete result of the exercise of his liberty, are therefore his property, and therefore can never rightly be taken from him except by his consent.

Google "geolibertarian" and start reading.
#14472681
Technology wrote:The answer to Truth to Powers conundrum is socialism which retains the market. People can have liberty if the state respects only the private title to what they work at, maintain, and use; their ongoing peaceful projects in other words (factories are covered by maintenance and work, and houses are covered by use).

No, because that ignores the very basis of any valid private property titles: the producer's act of production. You can't get a valid property right by using, working at or maintaining something. You can only get it by producing it, because that is the only way to own something without depriving others of what they would otherwise have.
This means that all means of production would be internally socialized to the ownership of those respective workers to elect management as they please, while the relations between the projects of particular groups of workers would be highly marketized and liberalized. Liberty is weakened by the handing over of control over the project of producers to an abstracted absentee body, whether shareholders, vanguard parties, or collectives of other producers using democracy to dictate production they are not involved in.

Liberty is not only weakened but removed when control of the fruits of one's labor is "handed over" to anyone but its producer.
Only "free market socialism" protects liberty against the objections TTP raises.

Socialism can't protect or even coexist with liberty, as previously explained.
Marxism gets the workers to throw the bosses off their backs, only to weight them down with the demands of a 19th Century philosopher. Non-Marxist socialists who have similar anti-market designs will also create an irrational system that chains down enterprise.

Socialists might find a way to combine markets with socialism (I'm skeptical), but they will never find a way to combine socialism with secure individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor.
#14473167
Technology wrote:Worker led collectivization would surely just be a form of democratic command economy, in which workers in one factory get to elect representatives to argue with representatives from other factories about what every factory needs to do, even though that information is already contained in people's preferences for products, and more efficiently served by a market which takes local conditions and preferences into account from the ground up. Centralized collectivization, where it abolishes the market, is the problem here.


The term "command economy" is highly inaccurate. "Centralised collectivisation" even more so. Clearly you do not understand the economy of a Libertarian Socialist society, so I shall briefly outline it. The unit of organization would be the local Worker's council, a free association of self-governing “producers.” It would be in touch with other regional councils through the regional syndicate, which would function as a combination of employment and economic planning agency. When all the producers were thus linked together by the syndicate, its administration—consisting of elected representatives of the members or delegates—would be able to estimate the capacities and necessities of the region, could coordinate production, and, being in touch through other syndicates with the industrial system as a whole, could arrange for the necessary transfer of materials and commodities, inward and outward. This would be done through the medium of a nationwide Federation of Syndicates. As you can see this, would be nothing like the top down administration of a centralised command economy.

Now on to the point about the so called "efficiency" of the market. Workers under a system above outlined, motivated by work satisfaction and the desire to contribute to an efficient and dynamic economy, would drive a better price system than one based on the profit motive. They would bid for resources on the basis of least cost alternatives and an honest expectation of demand for the resulting output. They would offer output at prices that reflect cost and ensure that products go to the highest bidders in the case of excess demand. All demand for intermediate production would be derived from the expected demand for final individual and collective consumption. Such pricing would guide both the more day to day decisions and longer term investment. Many of the decisions being made would be quite entrepreneurial in nature involving new products and services, new methods, and new entrants, be they existing enterprises or start-ups. Access to funding for investment could be through numerous assessment agencies that have been allocated funds for that purpose.

These transactions would not be market exchanges. They would be the transfer of custody of social property, not of ownership. An enterprise would not be the owner of inputs and outputs, it would be their custodian. And no individual involved with an enterprise would receive any net revenue nor incur any loss from transactions between enterprises.The cooperative environment would lead to a better price system because of the greater honesty, the better flow of information due to the removal of property barriers between enterprises and the fact that income equality would remove the equity concerns currently associated with reliance on pricing.

Technology wrote:Liberty is weakened by the handing over of control over the project of producers to an abstracted absentee body, whether shareholders, vanguard parties, or collectives of other producers using democracy to dictate production they are not involved in.

Non-Marxist socialists who have similar anti-market designs will also create an irrational system that chains down enterprise.


This is so much nonsense. Trying to get rid of any from of control of the economy is asking for chaos. An economy is an organic being which everyone is involved in, regardless of industry. What is this "enterprise" you speak of? Wasteful competition. Economic systems can be improved from within using a democratic management model.

Truth To Power wrote: Garbage. By definition, collectivization forcibly removes the individual's liberty to produce using the fruits of his own labor and according to his own design.


You are at perfect liberty to set up as an independent artisan, if you wish. It is when you will inevitably want to start using wage labour, or rather wage slavery so you can confiscate others wealth generated from production, is where we have a problem. Should you wish to make others partners in your company, that would be fine.

Truth To Power wrote:The investor in productive capital goods -- buildings, machinery, etc. -- by contrast, DOES contribute to production (the capital goods would not have existed had he or a previous investor not paid someone to produce them), and is therefore NOT a parasite.


And where pray, did that capital come from? Was it made by that "investors" production? Hardly likely. It was confiscated from the workers at some point in the past and now this "investor" is claiming it as his to make more capital from. This is inherently parasitic behavior and it is only in the course of justice that it be removed from said "investor" and returned to the workers.

Truth To Power wrote:You are talking about abrogating the producer's property right in the fruits of his labor without just compensation, either way.


As previously stated, that hypothetical "producer" is nothing more than a thief or an heir to thieves. He deserves no compensation at all. He will however, be welcome to become a worker and produce something of his own. We libertarian socialists are forgiving people.

Truth To Power wrote: Google "geolibertarian" and start reading.


I will. Please read this article on Libertarian socialism
#14473304
ComradeTim wrote:What is this "enterprise" you speak of? Wasteful competition.

Competition is the only reliable stimulus to efficiency and excellence. Did you learn nothing from the Soviet Union's failure?
Economic systems can be improved from within using a democratic management model.

No, because a vote is not a price.
Truth To Power wrote: Garbage. By definition, collectivization forcibly removes the individual's liberty to produce using the fruits of his own labor and according to his own design.

You are at perfect liberty to set up as an independent artisan, if you wish. It is when you will inevitably want to start using wage labour, or rather wage slavery

No. Wage slavery is an emergent property of capitalist production that arises from forcible removal of the workers' liberty to use natural resources (land) when they have been appropriated as private property. Restore that liberty and remove the privilege of landed property, as I advocate, and the worker has free access to economic opportunity; employment then becomes a voluntary, consensual contract between moral equals.
so you can confiscate others wealth generated from production, is where we have a problem.

The confiscation of workers' free market wages under capitalism is enabled by property in land (and latterly, by bank debt money creation and IP monopolies). It can't happen in the geolibertarian system I advocate because unlike under capitalism, the employer has no way to deprive the worker of access to alternatives.
Should you wish to make others partners in your company, that would be fine.

The natural relationship of employer and employee is a partnership. It is the capitalist relationship that puts the worker at the mercy of the owner that poisons that relationship and makes it one between adversaries, if not master and slave.
Truth To Power wrote:The investor in productive capital goods -- buildings, machinery, etc. -- by contrast, DOES contribute to production (the capital goods would not have existed had he or a previous investor not paid someone to produce them), and is therefore NOT a parasite.

And where pray, did that capital come from?

It was produced and saved by its owner.
Was it made by that "investors" production? Hardly likely.

In the geolibertarian system, there is nowhere else it can come from. You are assuming a capitalist system, which enables landowners and employers to rob workers by removing their rights to liberty without just compensation.
It was confiscated from the workers at some point in the past

NO. You are assuming a capitalist economy.

If we assume that a peaceful transition has occurred from a capitalist to a geolibertarian economy, then it is true that that will not have hit the Reset button on the distribution of wealth. But the wealth confiscated by landowners and employers under capitalism was not confiscated from "the workers." It was confiscated from specific workers who are now free (or, more likely, dead). Reparations for the wrongs done to workers in the remote past cannot be claimed by current workers merely on the grounds that they are also workers; and it is a recognized principle in law, for very good reason, that retrospective remedies to or from anyone but the original parties to a violation of rights cannot in general be supported. Henry George explained this very clearly in "The Land Question," in a chapter entitled, "The Great-Great-Grandson of Captain Kidd":

I APOLOGIZE to the Irish landlords and to all other landlords for likening them to thieves and robbers.

I trust they will understand that I do not consider them as personally worse than other men, but that I am obliged to use such illustrations because no others will fit the case. I am concerned not with individuals, but with the system. What I want to do is, to point out a distinction that in the plea for the vested rights of landowners is ignored – a distinction which arises from the essential difference between land and things that are the produce of human labor, and which is obscured by our habit of classing them all together as property.

The galleys that carried Caesar to Britain, the accoutrements of his legionaries, the baggage that they carried, the arms that they bore, the buildings that they erected; the scythed chariots of the ancient Britons, the horses that drew them, their wicker boats and wattled houses – where are they now? But the land for which Roman and Briton fought, there it is still. That British soil is yet as fresh and as new as it was in the days of the Romans. Generation after generation has lived on it since, and generation after generation will live on it yet. Now, here is a very great difference. The right to possess and to pass on the ownership of things that in their nature decay and soon cease to be is a very different thing from the right to possess and to pass on the ownership of that which does not decay, but from which each successive generation must live.

To show how this difference between land and such other species of property as are properly styled wealth bears upon the argument for the vested rights of landholders, let me illustrate again.

Captain Kidd was a pirate. He made a business of sailing the seas, capturing merchantmen, making their crews walk the plank, and appropriating their cargoes. In this way he accumulated much wealth, which he is thought to have buried. But let us suppose, for the sake of the illustration, that he did not bury his wealth, but left it to his legal heirs, and they to their heirs and so on, until at the present day this wealth or a part of it has come to a great-great-grandson of Captain Kidd. Now, let us suppose that some one – say a great-great-grandson of one of the shipmasters whom Captain Kidd plundered, makes complaint, and says: "This man's great-great-grandfather plundered my great-great-grandfather of certain things or certain sums, which have been transmitted to him, whereas but for this wrongful act they would have been transmitted to me; therefore, I demand that he be made to restore them." What would society answer?

Society, speaking by its proper tribunals, and in accordance with principles recognized among all civilized nations, would say: "We cannot entertain such a demand. It may be true that Mr. Kidd's great-great-grandfather robbed your great-great-grandfather, and that as the result of this wrong he has got things that otherwise might have come to you. But we cannot inquire into occurrences that happened so long ago. Each generation has enough to do to attend to its own affairs. If we go to righting the wrongs and reopening the controversies of our great-great-grandfathers, there will be endless disputes and pretexts for dispute. What you say may be true, but somewhere we must draw the line, and have an end to strife. Though this man's great-great-grandfather may have robbed your great-great-grandfather, he has not robbed you. He came into possession of these things peacefully, and has held them peacefully, and we must take this peaceful possession, when it has been continued for a certain time, as absolute evidence of just title; for, were we not to do that, there would be no end to dispute and no secure possession of anything."

Now, it is this common-sense principle that is expressed in the statute of limitations – in the doctrine of vested rights. This is the reason why it is held – and as to most things held justly – that peaceable possession for a certain time cures all defects of title.

But let us pursue the illustration a little further:

Let us suppose that Captain Kidd, having established a large and profitable piratical business, left it to his son, and he to his son, and so on, until the great-great-grandson, who now pursues it, has come to consider it the most natural thing in the world that his ships should roam the sea, capturing peaceful merchantmen, making their crews walk the plank, and bringing home to him much plunder, whereby he is enabled, though he does no work at all, to live in very great luxury, and look down with contempt upon people who have to work. But at last, let us suppose, the merchants get tired of having their ships sunk and their goods taken, and sailors get tired of trembling for their lives every time a sail lifts above the horizon, and they demand of society that piracy be stopped.

Now, what should society say if Mr. Kidd got indignant, appealed to the doctrine of vested rights, and asserted that society was bound to prevent any interference with the business that he had inherited, and that, if it wanted him to stop, it must buy him out, paying him all that his business was worth – that is to say, at least as much as he could make in twenty years' successful pirating, so that if he stopped pirating he could still continue to live in luxury off of the profits of the merchants and the earnings of the sailors?

What ought society to say to such a claim as this? There will be but one answer. We will all say that society should tell Mr. Kidd that his was a business to which the statute of limitations and the doctrine of vested rights did not apply; that because his father, and his grandfather, and his great- and great-great-grandfather pursued the business of capturing ships and making their crews walk the plank, was no reason why lie should be permitted to pursue it. Society, we will all agree, ought to say he would have to stop piracy and stop it at once, and that without getting a cent for stopping.

Or supposing it had happened that Mr. Kidd had sold out his piratical business to Smith, Jones, or Robinson, we will all agree that society ought to say that their purchase of the business gave them no greater right than Mr. Kidd had.

We will all agree that that is what society ought to say. Observe, I do not ask what society would say.

For, ridiculous and preposterous as it may appear, I am satisfied that, under the circumstances I have supposed, society would not for a long time say what we have agreed it ought to say. Not only would all the Kidds loudly claim that to make them give up their business without full recompense would be a wicked interference with vested rights, but the justice of this claim would at first be assumed as a matter of course by all or nearly all the influential classes – the great lawyers, the able journalists, the writers for the magazines, the eloquent clergymen, and the principal professors in the principal universities. Nay, even the merchants and sailors, when they first began to complain, would be so tyrannized and browbeaten by this public opinion that they would hardly think of more than of buying out the Kidds, and, wherever here and there any one dared to raise his voice in favor of stopping piracy at once and without compensation, he would only do so under penalty of being stigmatized as a reckless disturber and wicked foe of social order.

If any one denies this, if any one says mankind are not such fools, then I appeal to universal history to bear me witness. I appeal to the facts of to-day.

Show me a wrong, no matter how monstrous, that ever yet, among any people, became ingrafted in the social system, and I will prove to you the truth of what I say.

The majority of men do not think; the majority of men have to expend so much energy in the struggle to make a living that they do not have time to think. The majority of men accept, as a matter of course, whatever is. This is what makes the task of the social reformer so difficult, his path so hard. This is what brings upon those who first raise their voices in behalf of a great truth the sneers of the powerful and the curses of the rabble, ostracism and martyrdom, the robe of derision and the crown of thorns.

Am I not right? Have there not been states of society in which piracy has been considered the most respectable and honorable of pursuits? Did the Roman populace see anything more reprehensible in a gladiatorial show than we do in a horse-race? Does public opinion in Dahomey see anything reprehensible in the custom of sacrificing a thousand or two human beings by way of signalizing grand occasions? Are there not states of society in which, in spite of the natural proportions of the sexes, polygamy is considered a matter of course? Are there not states of society in which it would be considered the most ridiculous thing in the world to say that a man's son was more closely related to him than his nephew? Are there not states of society in which it would be considered disreputable for a man to carry a burden while a woman who could stagger under it was around? – states of society in which the husband who did not occasionally beat his wife would be deemed by both sexes a weak-minded, low-spirited fellow? What would Chinese fashionable society consider more outrageous than to be told that mothers should not be permitted to squeeze their daughters' feet, or Flathead women than being restrained from tying a board on their infants' skulls? How long has it been since the monstrous doctrine of the divine right of kings was taught through all Christendom?

What is the slave-trade but piracy of the worst kind? Yet it is not long since the slave-trade was looked upon as a perfectly respectable business, affording as legitimate an opening for the investment of capital and the display of enterprise as any other. The proposition to prohibit it was first looked upon as ridiculous, then as fanatical, then as wicked. It was only slowly and by hard fighting that the truth in regard to it gained ground. Does not our very Constitution bear witness to what I say? Does not the fundamental law of the nation, adopted twelve years after the enunciation of the Declaration of Independence, declare that for twenty years the slave-trade shall not be prohibited nor restricted? Such dominion had the idea of vested interests over the minds of those who had already proclaimed the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

Is it not but yesterday that in the freest and greatest republic on earth, among the people who boast that they lead the very van of civilization, this doctrine of vested rights was deemed a sufficient justification for all the cruel wrongs of human slavery? Is it not but yesterday when whoever dared to say that the rights of property did not justly attach to human beings; when whoever dared to deny that human beings could be rightfully bought and sold like cattle – the husband torn from the wife and the child from the mother; when whoever denied the right of whoever had paid his money for him to work or whip his own N***** was looked upon as a wicked assailant of the rights of property? Is it not but yesterday when in the South whoever whispered such a thought took his life in his hands; when in the North the abolitionist was held by the churches as worse than an infidel, was denounced by the politicians and rotten-egged by the mob? I was born in a Northern State, I have never lived in the South, I am not yet gray; but I well remember, as every American of middle age must remember, how over and over again I have heard all questionings of slavery silenced by the declaration that the negroes were the property of their masters, and that to take away a man's slave without payment was as much a crime as to take away his horse without payment. And whoever does not remember that far back, let him look over American literature previous to the war, and say whether, if the business of piracy had been a flourishing business, it would have lacked defenders? Let him say whether any proposal to stop the business of piracy without compensating the pirates would not have been denounced at first as a proposal to set aside vested rights?

But I am appealing to other states of society and to times that are past merely to get my readers, if I can, out of their accustomed ruts of thought. The proof of what I assert about the Kidds and their business is in the thought and speech of to-day.

Here is a system which robs the producers of wealth as remorselessly and far more regularly and systematically than the pirate robs the merchantman. Here is a system that steadily condemns thousands to far more lingering and horrible deaths than that of walking the plank – to death of the mind and death of the soul, as well as death of the body. These things are undisputed. No one denies that Irish pauperism and famine are the direct results of this land system, and no one who will examine the subject will deny that the chronic pauperism and chronic famine which everywhere mark our civilization are the results of this system. Yet we are told – nay, it seems to be taken for granted – that this system cannot be abolished without buying off those who profit by it. Was there ever more degrading abasement of the human mind before a fetish? Can we wonder, as we see it, at any perversion of ideas?

Consider: is not the parallel I have drawn a true one? Is it not just as much a perversion of ideas to apply the doctrine of vested rights to property in land, when these are its admitted fruits, as it was to apply it to property in human flesh and blood; as it would be to apply it to the business of piracy? In what does the claim of the Irish landholders differ from that of the hereditary pirate or the man who has bought out a piratical business? "Because I have inherited or purchased the business of robbing merchantmen," says the pirate, "therefore respect for the rights of property must compel you to let me go on robbing ships and making sailors walk the plank until you buy me out." "Because we have inherited or purchased the privilege of appropriating to ourselves the lion's share of the produce of labor," says the landlord, "therefore you must continue to let us do it, even though poor wretches shiver with cold and faint with hunger, even though, in their poverty and misery, they are reduced to wallow with the pigs." What is the difference?

This is the point I want to make clearly and distinctly, for it shows a distinction that in current thought is overlooked. Property in land, like property in slaves, is essentially different from property in things that are the result of labor. Rob a man or a people of money, or goods, or cattle, and the robbery is finished there and then. The lapse of time does not, indeed, change wrong into right, but it obliterates the effects of the deed. That is done; it is over; and, unless it be very soon righted, it glides away into the past, with the men who were parties to it, so swiftly that nothing save omniscience can trace its effects; and in attempting to right it we would be in danger of doing fresh wrong. The past is forever beyond us. We can neither punish nor recompense the dead. But rob a people of the land on which they must live, and the robbery is continuous. It is a fresh robbery of every succeeding generation – a new robbery every year and every day; it is like the robbery which condemns to slavery the children of the slave. To apply to it the statute of limitations, to acknowledge for it the title of prescription, is not to condone the past; it is to legalize robbery in the present, to justify it in the future. The indictment which really lies against the Irish landlords is not that their ancestors, or the ancestors of their grantors, robbed the ancestors of the Irish people. That makes no difference. "Let the dead bury their dead." The indictment that truly lies is that here, now, in the year 1881, they rob the Irish people. And shall we be told that there can be a vested right to continue such robbery?


What has been done to workers under capitalism, courtesy of the privilege of private landed property and other privileges, which deprive workers of their liberty of access to opportunity, is in the past. We may want to make it right, but in fact there is no practical way to do that, and doing it is NOT part of the new system, whatever that might be. If you want to try to make some sort of retroactive reparations for all the wrongs done under capitalism, then good luck distinguishing the rightfulness of ownership in billions of individual cases dating back thousands of years. Do you think slavery could ever have been ended, anywhere, if reparations had had to be made for all the wrongs ever done to slaves, or their owners had to give back to the slaves all the wealth they'd obtained through that institution?
and now this "investor" is claiming it as his to make more capital from.

See above. I don't know how he got the money, and YOU DON'T EITHER. More importantly, how he got it is not relevant to the economic relationship of investor to worker, as Henry George showed.
This is inherently parasitic behavior and it is only in the course of justice that it be removed from said "investor" and returned to the workers.

Garbage. You are invalidly trying to pretend that the wrongs done to past workers by past employers under a past system can be righted by robbing current employers and giving the loot to current workers under the current system. That is self-evidently absurd and dishonest.
Truth To Power wrote:You are talking about abrogating the producer's property right in the fruits of his labor without just compensation, either way.

As previously stated, that hypothetical "producer" is nothing more than a thief or an heir to thieves.

That is nothing but an assumption on your part, for which you have provided -- and will be providing -- no evidence. Depredations by investors and employers under capitalism is not an argument against the rights of investors and employers in a geolibertarian economy. You could with equal "logic" claim that because white cotton growers in the antebellum South kept their black field workers as slaves, current black cotton growers should be forced to make reparations to their Latino field workers. It's just absurd and dishonest.
He deserves no compensation at all. He will however, be welcome to become a worker and produce something of his own.

Compensation for what? Are you proposing the retroactive remedy for capitalist injustice that Henry George so comprehensively and conclusively demolished?
We libertarian socialists are forgiving people.

You are prepared to forgive those who now farm cotton for the crimes committed by other cotton growers hundreds of years ago? How magnanimous of you....
Truth To Power wrote: Google "geolibertarian" and start reading.

I will. Please read this article on Libertarian socialism

I've seen that kind of stuff before. Especially the continuous resort to the false dichotomy fallacy of capitalism vs socialism, which is just a step above claiming that Republican vs Democrat exhausts the alternatives.
#14473699
Truth To Power wrote: Competition is the only reliable stimulus to efficiency and excellence. Did you learn nothing from the Soviet Union's failure?


Was the Soviet Union a decentralised planned economy? Did workers control the workplace and the means of production? Was the delegate system in place? No? Then where is the relevance?

Truth To Power wrote: No, because a vote is not a price.


In this case it is because it is a representation of need. The most needy elements of the economy will get first crack at the goods and so on.

Truth To Power wrote: No. Wage slavery is an emergent property of capitalist production that arises from forcible removal of the workers' liberty to use natural resources (land) when they have been appropriated as private property. Restore that liberty and remove the privilege of landed property, as I advocate, and the worker has free access to economic opportunity; employment then becomes a voluntary, consensual contract between moral equals.


Where does the means of production come into all this? If it is still in private hands, how can there be any "voluntary, consensual contracts", due to the inherent power inequalities that entails?

Truth To Power wrote:It can't happen in the geolibertarian system I advocate because unlike under capitalism, the employer has no way to deprive the worker of access to alternatives.


What? What century are you living in? Most people's jobs, even in the third world have little to do with the land and that number increases daily. How will me having access to the land help me if my boss fires me from a sales job?

Truth To Power wrote: It was produced and saved by its owner.


Only a minute number of investors could possibly obtain capital that way. Most obtain it in ways before described.

Truth To Power wrote: But the wealth confiscated by landowners and employers under capitalism was not confiscated from "the workers." It was confiscated from specific workers who are now free (or, more likely, dead). Reparations for the wrongs done to workers in the remote past cannot be claimed by current workers merely on the grounds that they are also workers; and it is a recognized principle in law, for very good reason, that retrospective remedies to or from anyone but the original parties to a violation of rights cannot in general be supported.


Under capitalist law perhaps. Under socialist law, wealth confiscated at any point from workers should be returned to the workers via the Workers' Soviets. Why should the heirs of thieves profit from the wealth of the dead, rather than everyone (including those said heirs as they would have been made workers by asset confiscation).

Truth To Power wrote: I don't know how he got the money, and YOU DON'T EITHER. More importantly, how he got it is not relevant to the economic relationship of investor to worker, as Henry George showed.


Precisely! it should be assumed that all investors got their money from slavery and so it should therefore be confiscated! However, even if they did achieve investor status by honest means, the system itself should be abolished, as it is unequal system.

Truth To Power wrote: Garbage. You are invalidly trying to pretend that the wrongs done to past workers by past employers under a past system can be righted by robbing current employers and giving the loot to current workers under the current system. That is self-evidently absurd and dishonest.


I see. You want to allow the heirs of thieves to keep their stolen gains, while the workers suffer. The Libertarian mentality everyone!

Truth To Power wrote: You could with equal "logic" claim that because white cotton growers in the antebellum South kept their black field workers as slaves, current black cotton growers should be forced to make reparations to their Latino field workers. It's just absurd and dishonest.


No, they should have their assets seized and distributed to all workers, including themselves as they will have by said action been made workers, instead of "growers".

Truth To Power wrote:You are prepared to forgive those who now farm cotton for the crimes committed by other cotton growers hundreds of years ago? How magnanimous of you....


No, for the crime of using wage labour, which is a form of slavery.

Truth To Power wrote: I've seen that kind of stuff before. Especially the continuous resort to the false dichotomy fallacy of capitalism vs socialism, which is just a step above claiming that Republican vs Democrat exhausts the alternatives.


What you are talking about is a strange and probably never to be used form of capitalism, as it aims to keep the means of production in private hands, as far as I can tell.
#14473790
Truth To Power wrote: Competition is the only reliable stimulus to efficiency and excellence. Did you learn nothing from the Soviet Union's failure?

ComradeTim wrote:Was the Soviet Union a decentralised planned economy? Did workers control the workplace and the means of production? Was the delegate system in place? No? Then where is the relevance?

It was an example of what always happens when "wasteful" competition is removed from an economy: even more waste in the absence of accurate and effective incentives for efficiency.
Truth To Power wrote: No, because a vote is not a price.

In this case it is because it is a representation of need. The most needy elements of the economy will get first crack at the goods and so on.

That is a guarantee of general economic failure and poverty, because the most needy elements of the economy are precisely those that don't know how to make effective use of the goods you demand they get first crack at. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE NEEDY. If you want to select someone to entrust with managing resources efficiently, do you choose a skilled and experienced manager, or a homeless bum on Skid Row? Because the latter is the needier one, and always will be.
Truth To Power wrote: No. Wage slavery is an emergent property of capitalist production that arises from forcible removal of the workers' liberty to use natural resources (land) when they have been appropriated as private property. Restore that liberty and remove the privilege of landed property, as I advocate, and the worker has free access to economic opportunity; employment then becomes a voluntary, consensual contract between moral equals.

Where does the means of production come into all this?

The "means of production" consists of two entirely different things: land and capital. Socialism and capitalism both refuse to distinguish between them (you have just refused again), which is why neither will ever be able to achieve liberty, justice and prosperity. I already explained that to you.
If it is still in private hands, how can there be any "voluntary, consensual contracts", due to the inherent power inequalities that entails?

Every contract is based on power inequalities, which are inherent in the human condition. It is not power inequalities that make voluntary, consensual contracts impossible under capitalism or socialism, but the fact that the worker has been FORCIBLY DEPRIVED OF ALTERNATIVES: by privilege, especially private landowning, under capitalism, or by removal of his right to property in the fruits of his labor under socialism.
Truth To Power wrote:It can't happen in the geolibertarian system I advocate because unlike under capitalism, the employer has no way to deprive the worker of access to alternatives.

What? What century are you living in?

I am living -- and more importantly thinking -- in the 21st century. You are living in the 21st century, but thinking in the 19th.
Most people's jobs, even in the third world have little to do with the land

That is very, very false, as the astronomical value of land proves. Land value simply measures the economic advantage obtainable by using the site. The fact that land costs so much just flat-out PROVES its central importance in the economy, and in workers' access to economic opportunity.
and that number increases daily. How will me having access to the land help me if my boss fires me from a sales job?

By putting you in an advantageous location for getting another job, WITHOUT having to meet a parasitic landowner's extortion demands just to continue having access to such opportunities.
Truth To Power wrote: It was produced and saved by its owner.

Only a minute number of investors could possibly obtain capital that way.

That's just flat false as a matter of objective physical fact. A huge amount of investment capital has been accumulated by hundreds of millions of investors in exactly that way in pension funds, mutual funds, insurance policies, 401(k) and other tax-advantaged investment vehicles, etc., EVEN UNDER CAPITALISM. In a geolibertarian economy where each worker got to keep the fruits of his labor, almost any willing and able worker would be able to accumulate a significant fund of capital.
Most obtain it in ways before described.

Under the capitalist system, not the geolibertarian system I propose. You are again refusing to engage with the actual proposal under discussion.
Truth To Power wrote: But the wealth confiscated by landowners and employers under capitalism was not confiscated from "the workers." It was confiscated from specific workers who are now free (or, more likely, dead). Reparations for the wrongs done to workers in the remote past cannot be claimed by current workers merely on the grounds that they are also workers; and it is a recognized principle in law, for very good reason, that retrospective remedies to or from anyone but the original parties to a violation of rights cannot in general be supported.

Under capitalist law perhaps.

Under any form of justice.
Under socialist law, wealth confiscated at any point from workers should be returned to the workers via the Workers' Soviets.

And that sort of collective punishment is what makes "socialist law" stupid, evil garbage. Confiscating wealth that A took from B and giving it to C is not justice, sorry -- let alone your plan of confiscating wealth that A earned as a productive entrepreneur and giving it to C because he is a "worker." You could with equal "logic" and "justice" claim that as some men have raped some women, "men" owe restitution to "women." It's just absurd, irrational and evil collectivist claptrap.
Why should the heirs of thieves profit from the wealth of the dead, rather than everyone (including those said heirs as they would have been made workers by asset confiscation).

For the exact reason Henry George explained: the thief's heir is not the thief, his victim's heir is not his victim, and it is impossible to unravel all the wrongs done in the past, or even to be confident that in attempting to do so you are righting wrongs and not compounding them. Did you even read what he wrote? You haven't attempted to address it, let alone refute it.
Truth To Power wrote: I don't know how he got the money, and YOU DON'T EITHER. More importantly, how he got it is not relevant to the economic relationship of investor to worker, as Henry George showed.

Precisely! it should be assumed that all investors got their money from slavery and so it should therefore be confiscated!

No, it should not, because that is self-evidently a false and stupid assumption. All of socialism is based on such self-evidently false and stupid assumptions.
However, even if they did achieve investor status by honest means, the system itself should be abolished, as it is unequal system.

What system? Capitalism? I'm with you. Consensual employment for mutual benefit? Not so much.

You need to take a couple of months off work to ponder the deep wisdom of someone much, much smarter than you: "The worst form of inequality is trying to make unequals equal." -- Aristotle
Truth To Power wrote: Garbage. You are invalidly trying to pretend that the wrongs done to past workers by past employers under a past system can be righted by robbing current employers and giving the loot to current workers under the current system. That is self-evidently absurd and dishonest.

I see. You want to allow the heirs of thieves to keep their stolen gains, while the workers suffer.

Yes, because unlike you, I am willing to know the fact that the workers will suffer much, much more if we adopt a policy of redressing injustice collectively, without regard for who is actually a perpetrator of injustice and who a victim of it.
The Libertarian mentality everyone!

This, from the guy who said, "it should be assumed that all investors got their money from slavery"??

The socialist mentality, everyone!
Truth To Power wrote: You could with equal "logic" claim that because white cotton growers in the antebellum South kept their black field workers as slaves, current black cotton growers should be forced to make reparations to their Latino field workers. It's just absurd and dishonest.

No, they should have their assets seized and distributed to all workers, including themselves as they will have by said action been made workers, instead of "growers".

Are you one of those fools who thinks managing a business or farm isn't work? Or are you one of those fools who thinks managers will be just as expert, motivated and productive when managing the collective's capital for the collective benefit as they would be managing their own capital for their own benefit?
Truth To Power wrote:You are prepared to forgive those who now farm cotton for the crimes committed by other cotton growers hundreds of years ago? How magnanimous of you....

No, for the crime of using wage labour, which is a form of slavery.

Garbage. It is only being deprived of other alternatives under capitalism or socialism that makes wage labor slavery. Geolibertarian institutions restore the equal individual right to liberty, enabling all to have access to economic opportunity without having to pay landowners' extortion demands, or spend one's life in servitude to the Collective.
Truth To Power wrote: I've seen that kind of stuff before. Especially the continuous resort to the false dichotomy fallacy of capitalism vs socialism, which is just a step above claiming that Republican vs Democrat exhausts the alternatives.

What you are talking about is a strange and probably never to be used form of capitalism, as it aims to keep the means of production in private hands, as far as I can tell.

It's not capitalism, as it does not admit private ownership of land. What I propose is private ownership and control of capital for its rightful owners' rightful benefit, and rightful public administration of possession and use of land for rightful public benefit -- which will almost always mean control by private users for their own benefit, obtained by paying the land's use value (market rent) to the community to devote to public benefit.

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