[ComradeTim]

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.

Hows this for an incentive to be efficient, be efficient or you will be voted out of authority by your fellow workers.

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.

Here we see the heartless capitalism inherent in your system! Most of those "homeless bums" as you so charitably call them, would be perfectly well off if they were given a fair and equal opportunity in life instead of left to rot in poverty. Besides, why would any really incompetent person be voted in to be a delegate for the Soviet in the first place? You do realise not everyone in the economy is voting?

Every contract is based on power inequalities, which are inherent in the human condition.

Here is precisely where you are wrong. Under my system, a worker does a certain quantity and quality of work and receives a roughly equivalent amount of capital, decided upon democratically by all the workers in the Soviet, with guidance from the elected Labour Commissars, who supervise every work unit. Everyone else does the same. No-one can get a leg up over others by inheriting capital. Where is the inequality?

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.

Wait, so I have to uproot my life and my work pattern and say goodbye to my co-workers that I have been with for x number of years, maybe sell my house to move to a whole different area because my boss is a dick? Sounds great this ideology of yours... What's wrong with my plan of me taking over my workplace with my mates and running it as partners? It sounds a lot better to me, the worker on the ground, than your plan.

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.

Does being a man mean you have to rape women? No. Does being an investor and employer mean you have to use wage slavery? Yes. These people could have set up a co-op. But they chose slavery, in the same way that slave owners in the south chose slavery. neither deserves pity or mercy.

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.

Why would I want to "unravel all the wrongs done in the past"? The capital is stolen capital and should be allocated to everyone equally to insure total equality of opportunity.

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

Aristotle should have done a few days backbreaking labour in the fields like his slaves did every day. When he would be crawling in the mud, begging for respite, he would have had a few seconds before he would be whipped back into action, to contemplate the utter, utter idiocy of that comment.

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?

They are doing it for their own benefit. If they slack off, they will be voted from office and a more motivated person put in their place. This is democratic collectivisation after all. Any embezzlement will be punished harshly, probably by hard labour and class solidarity re-education.

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.

Why?

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.

see my above comment on why in reality no-one would want to move to get work, with other options available.

[Truth To Power]

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.

Hows this for an incentive to be efficient, be efficient or you will be voted out of authority by your fellow workers.

Pathetic. On what basis is efficiency judged by fellow workers? A popularity contest? A graft contest? Pressure by thugs? Where is there even an incentive to hold authority in the first place? It looks like a lot of headaches for no reward.

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.

Here we see the heartless capitalism inherent in your system!

Here we see the invariable socialist resort: call any attempt at reason and logic, "heartless." I am simply identifying the facts of objective reality and their inescapable logical implications.

Most of those "homeless bums" as you so charitably call them, would be perfectly well off if they were given a fair and equal opportunity in life instead of left to rot in poverty.

Would they? Some might. But having known a few of them, I doubt it, because they are mostly mentally ill (including addicted to mind-altering drugs), or just stone stupid.

Besides, why would any really incompetent person be voted in to be a delegate for the Soviet in the first place?

Because there is no good way to measure competence other than through the competition you insist on doing away with.

You do realise not everyone in the economy is voting?

Do I ever!

Every contract is based on power inequalities, which are inherent in the human condition.

Here is precisely where you are wrong.

Of course I'm not wrong. Don't be ridiculous.

Under my system, a worker does a certain quantity and quality of work

Measured how? No "wasteful" competition, no basis of comparison.

and receives a roughly equivalent amount of capital, decided upon democratically by all the workers in the Soviet, with guidance from the elected Labour Commissars, who supervise every work unit.

Ah. Meaning, maybe..... you...?

Everyone else does the same.

Except the Commissars, who have the power.

No-one can get a leg up over others by inheriting capital.

Just by having pull, dealing in political favors, etc....

Where is the inequality?

Are you serious? The Commissars have power over everyone else. The politically adept have power over the merely competent and productive.

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.

Wait, so I have to uproot my life and my work pattern

Which has been found inadequate to the demands of the production process...

and say goodbye to my co-workers that I have been with for x number of years,

Yep. You need to grow up enough to understand that your employment is for the mutual benefit of you and your employer, not to provide you with a social circle you are too unpleasant to obtain in any other way.

maybe sell my house to move to a whole different area

That would depend on how well suited your skills and attitudes were to the employment opportunities in your current area.

because my boss is a dick?

Assumption without evidence. The point is, if your boss IS a dick, then the geolibertarian system ensures he has no real power over you: you have lots of alternatives, so as soon as you realize he is a dick, you can tell him to go fuck himself, because you have free, secure access to many other opportunities, guaranteed by your free access to the available good locations, including the one you currently live at.

Sounds great this ideology of yours...

True.

What's wrong with my plan of me taking over my workplace with my mates and running it as partners?

You mean, other than the fact that you would run it into the ground in three months?

It sounds a lot better to me, the worker on the ground, than your plan.

Maybe that's a measure of your economic naivety.

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.

Does being a man mean you have to rape women? No. Does being an investor and employer mean you have to use wage slavery? Yes.

No. It's simply a voluntary, consensual arrangement to mutual benefit, because unlike under capitalism, the geolibertarian system does not deprive the worker of his liberty to access the attractive alternatives.

These people could have set up a co-op.

Sure, if they were not interested in benefiting commensurately with their own contribution.

But they chose slavery,

Garbage. Slavery is compulsory labor: labor compelled by force. That accurately describes wage labor under capitalism, because the worker has been forcibly deprived of his liberty to access other opportunities: he must pay a landowner for access to them, just as a literal slave must pay his owner if he wishes to exercise his right to liberty. The nature of this relationship is obscured under capitalism because it is the government that deprives the worker of his liberty for the profit of the landowner and employer (and banker, and IP monopolist), who then deny all wrong-doing: "Me? What did I do? I'm offering employment to men who would otherwise go hungry." That is not the case in the geolibertarian system, so your claims are simply irrelevant.

in the same way that slave owners in the south chose slavery.

Already refuted multiple times. Address the issue, don't just keep claiming my proposal is the same as capitalism.

neither deserves pity or mercy.

What has the employer in the geolibertarian system done to his employee, exactly? How have anyone's rights been abrogated without just compensation? Until you can explain that -- and you can't -- nothing you say will be relevant.

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.

Why would I want to "unravel all the wrongs done in the past"?

That's the implication of your demand that all wealth be confiscated and redistributed.

The capital is stolen capital

No, that's just another silly fabrication from you. You don't know how the owner came by it. You merely claim it is stolen, without any evidence.

If you were talking about capitalism, then you would have a point, because under capitalism, the great majority -- not all -- of large accumulations of capital are indeed stolen. But you claim the capital is stolen in the geolibertarian system, and you haven't even attempted to explain how it was stolen.

and should be allocated to everyone equally to insure total equality of opportunity.

The Procrustean bed of socialism...

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

Aristotle should have done a few days backbreaking labour in the fields like his slaves did every day.

Where is your evidence that Aristotle kept any field slaves? Are you just makin' $#!+ up again?

When he would be crawling in the mud, begging for respite, he would have had a few seconds before he would be whipped back into action, to contemplate the utter, utter idiocy of that comment.

I see. So, your counter-argument to perhaps the greatest mind who ever lived is to urge that he should have been compelled to crawl in mud, labor as a slave, and suffer whipping.

I could not hope to offer a more eloquent refutation of your views.

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?

They are doing it for their own benefit.

No, they are not. They are not permitted to keep the fruits of their labor, which are simply taken from them and distributed to the most needy (i.e., most unproductive).

If they slack off, they will be voted from office and a more motivated person put in their place.

A more politically adept influence-peddler, you mean.

This is democratic collectivisation after all.

It's idiocy.

Any embezzlement will be punished harshly, probably by hard labour and class solidarity re-education.

I.e., literal slavery. Thought so.

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.

Why?

Because that is how injustice always works.

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.

see my above comment on why in reality no-one would want to move to get work, with other options available.

You still don't get it. Whether someone moved or not would be up to them. They would also have free, secure access to economic opportunity (without having to pay off an extortionist for it) right where they were.

[Orestes]

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

Hey TTP, can you by any chance point to the particular book where he says that ? (BTW you added an -s to "unequal" making it about persons)

[Truth To Power]

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

Hey TTP, can you by any chance point to the particular book where he says that ? (BTW you added an -s to "unequal" making it about persons)

Whoa! Punked! Google informs me that the quote was made up by Lawrence J Peter as a kind of summary of Aristotelian political attitudes. The great man himself never said it. My bad.

[ComradeTim]

Pathetic. On what basis is efficiency judged by fellow workers? A popularity contest? A graft contest? Pressure by thugs? Where is there even an incentive to hold authority in the first place? It looks like a lot of headaches for no reward.

By record and competence, naturally. Why would it be in anyone's interest to elect a drooling moron? Yes popularity will come into it but so what? An unpopular leader is less likely to get compliance from his workers than an unpopular one. Its what we call people skills and it's an important part of management. As for why be a leader, some people enjoy being in charge and having responsibility. See any volunteer organisation like the IWW, RSPCA etc. Or even our own unpaid, unappreciated mods. Do you honestly think under your system popularity and sucking up to the boss don't factor largely into any promotion? If so, you are clearly delusional or very naive.
That is, of course, not even taking into account class solidarity, being an impetus to do good by your comrades.

Would they? Some might. But having known a few of them, I doubt it, because they are mostly mentally ill (including addicted to mind-altering drugs), or just stone stupid.

If they are mentally ill, they will be given medical treatment and undemanding work in the collectivised hospitals. If they are on drugs, their circumstances will be evaluated and they will be treated/sent to labour camps/shot, depending on the results, (whether they are just lazy dropouts or depressed hard working people forced out of their homes by greedy landlords and banksters). If they are stupid enough to be retarded, they will be treated and cared for like human beings, rather than made homeless. In none of these situations are they eligible to vote for resources. If they are normal people, but unlucky, they will be allocated a house by the Soviet and put into work. So your point is rendered invalid.

Ah. Meaning, maybe..... you...?

I would prefer to be a worker/delegate but if my comrades decide I am best suited to it, I'll do my best.

Except the Commissars, who have the power.

Not really. Their performance will be reviewed on a regular basis (weekly most likely). If they misrepresent the facts, a worker can file a complaint and digital records could be reviewed by the whole Soviet. Besides, pay will be allocated democratically with Commissars reports acting as a guide, not a dictat.

Which has been found inadequate to the demands of the production process...

By an unelected dictator.

Yep. You need to grow up enough to understand that your employment is for the mutual benefit of you and your employer, not to provide you with a social circle you are too unpleasant to obtain in any other way.

Ad homs will get you nowhere, Sonny Jim. How is my employment for my good, if my employer pockets my produced capital and gives me a pittance as "wages"? I'm sorry if you have never had a group of work colleagues who you are very productive with, but I have, so I know how much of a difference it can make efficiency wise as opposed to working with strangers.

Assumption without evidence. The point is, if your boss IS a dick, then the geolibertarian system ensures he has no real power over you: you have lots of alternatives, so as soon as you realize he is a dick, you can tell him to go fuck himself, because you have free, secure access to many other opportunities, guaranteed by your free access to the available good locations, including the one you currently live at.

My house is not a workplace and I have no intention of turning it into one. What if there are no vacancies in my area?

You mean, other than the fact that you would run it into the ground in three months?

Why? Because we care about worker safety and using decent work hours rather than the slave conditions employers force on us?

Sure, if they were not interested in benefiting commensurately with their own contribution.

So what you're saying is: someone who has capital is more equal than someone without capital and owning that capital means he deserves to receive more capital than the person without capital? So Randy McInvestor, who has x amount of investable capital inherited from his slave owner ancestors, because he owns that capital and is using it to set up a business, deserves more of the returns than John Employee, who had none to begin because his ancestors were penniless slaves? Is this what you are saying?

What has the employer in the geolibertarian system done to his employee, exactly? How have anyone's rights been abrogated without just compensation?

The right to total equality of opportunity.

The Procrustean bed of socialism...

Equality of opportunity, not outcome.

Where is your evidence that Aristotle kept any field slaves? Are you just makin' $#!+ up again?

He agreed with slavery, "there are natural slaves and natural masters". Thus, he takes responsibility for all the field slaves in his society.

I see. So, your counter-argument to perhaps the greatest mind who ever lived is to urge that he should have been compelled to crawl in mud, labor as a slave, and suffer whipping.

Yes. It is very difficult to tell whether someone has a "slave mentality" or a "civilised mentality", when they are crawling in the mud. Perhaps, one of his slaves was twice the scientist and philosopher he was, except he was beaten to death as a child for dropping the soup. Ho hum. This pointless waste is the outcome of unequal opportunity.

I could not hope to offer a more eloquent refutation of your views.

Sadly, no you could not.

No, they are not. They are not permitted to keep the fruits of their labor, which are simply taken from them and distributed to the most needy (i.e., most unproductive).

Nothing could be further from the truth. As I have explained, the most productive will be spotted by the Labour Commissar and recommended higher pay, which will be voted on.

I.e., literal slavery. Thought so.

So in your Libertarian paradise, criminals who have stolen will just be let wander the streets ay? All imprisonment is slavery. Unless you advocate death for all crimes...

[Truth To Power]

Pathetic. On what basis is efficiency judged by fellow workers? A popularity contest? A graft contest? Pressure by thugs? Where is there even an incentive to hold authority in the first place? It looks like a lot of headaches for no reward.

By record and competence, naturally.

In your dreams. You don't even have a way to measure competence, because your system can't generate useful prices.

Why would it be in anyone's interest to elect a drooling moron?

There are lots of people who aren't drooling morons who are nevertheless less competent than the most competent, but more likely to be elected by the drooling morons than the most competent.

Yes popularity will come into it but so what?

So you will have wasted resources.

An unpopular leader is less likely to get compliance from his workers than an unpopular one.

But the popular one is getting compliance with his incompetent and inefficient plans.

Its what we call people skills and it's an important part of management.

It is, but only one part, and not the most important part. Steve Jobs had appalling people skills, and could never have been elected to a position of responsibility in any of your industrial Gulags.

As for why be a leader, some people enjoy being in charge and having responsibility.

I see: you prefer to have the power-seekers in charge of production rather than the producers. Thought so.

See any volunteer organisation like the IWW,

Are you serious?

RSPCA etc. Or even our own unpaid, unappreciated mods. Do you honestly think under your system popularity and sucking up to the boss don't factor largely into any promotion?

There are many factors at play in business. In your system there is only one: politics.

If so, you are clearly delusional or very naive.

Unlike you, I have actually worked in productive business, and know how it works.

That is, of course, not even taking into account class solidarity, being an impetus to do good by your comrades.

How long do you think that will last when the politicians have all power?

Would they? Some might. But having known a few of them, I doubt it, because they are mostly mentally ill (including addicted to mind-altering drugs), or just stone stupid.

If they are mentally ill, they will be given medical treatment and undemanding work in the collectivised hospitals.

Where their mental illness can kill people more easily. Brilliant.

If they are on drugs, their circumstances will be evaluated and they will be treated/sent to labour camps/shot, depending on the results,

You mean, just like now....?

(whether they are just lazy dropouts or depressed hard working people forced out of their homes by greedy landlords and banksters).

Of which there will be none...

If they are stupid enough to be retarded, they will be treated and cared for like human beings, rather than made homeless. In none of these situations are they eligible to vote for resources.

So, only the people you think merit votes would get them.

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....

If they are normal people, but unlucky, they will be allocated a house by the Soviet and put into work.

I.e., enslaved.

So your point is rendered invalid.

My point is very much still valid, and conclusively refutes your whole philosophy.

Ah. Meaning, maybe..... you...?

I would prefer to be a worker/delegate but if my comrades decide I am best suited to it, I'll do my best.

No you wouldn't. Every socialist fancies himself in charge.

Except the Commissars, who have the power.

Not really. Their performance will be reviewed on a regular basis (weekly most likely). If they misrepresent the facts, a worker can file a complaint and digital records could be reviewed by the whole Soviet.

Except that the people in charge of the records at the Ministry of Truth might have something to say about it....

Besides, pay will be allocated democratically with Commissars reports acting as a guide, not a dictat.

So again, rewards in proportion not to contribution, but to political pull.

Which has been found inadequate to the demands of the production process...

By an unelected dictator.

By the one who initiated and manages the production process.

Yep. You need to grow up enough to understand that your employment is for the mutual benefit of you and your employer, not to provide you with a social circle you are too unpleasant to obtain in any other way.

Ad homs will get you nowhere, Sonny Jim.

And your claim to be entitled to a social circle at the expense of society will get you nowhere.

How is my employment for my good, if my employer pockets my produced capital and gives me a pittance as "wages"?

If you used his capital, you didn't produce the capital without his contribution. And it's for your good if the pittance is more than you could produce without access to the capital he provided.

I'm sorry if you have never had a group of work colleagues who you are very productive with, but I have, so I know how much of a difference it can make efficiency wise as opposed to working with strangers.

I seriously doubt that you have ever worked at productive employment.

Assumption without evidence. The point is, if your boss IS a dick, then the geolibertarian system ensures he has no real power over you: you have lots of alternatives, so as soon as you realize he is a dick, you can tell him to go fuck himself, because you have free, secure access to many other opportunities, guaranteed by your free access to the available good locations, including the one you currently live at.

My house is not a workplace and I have no intention of turning it into one.

It is the place from which you access potential workplaces in that area, Sherlock. Pay attention.

What if there are no vacancies in my area?

That depends on how specialized your skills are, and how committed you are to following a particular line of work.

How much wealth should society have to sacrifice just to provide you with the type of employment you wish to pursue, in a location and at a wage that satisfies your demands for "equal" opportunity?

You mean, other than the fact that you would run it into the ground in three months?

Why? Because we care about worker safety and using decent work hours rather than the slave conditions employers force on us?

No, because you have no idea what managers actually do for a living, and because you still refuse to know that slavery-like employment conditions are forced on you by the institution of private property in land, not employers. The only difference between private ownership of land and ownership of slaves is that slavery removes people's rights to liberty one person at a time, landowning removes them one right at a time.

Sure, if they were not interested in benefiting commensurately with their own contribution.

So what you're saying is: someone who has capital is more equal than someone without capital

No, I am saying that someone who has capital has more to contribute to production than someone who doesn't, and to the extent that he makes a greater contribution to production, he earns a commensurately bigger share of production. This isn't rocket science.

and owning that capital means he deserves to receive more capital than the person without capital?

If he contributes that capital to production, then he earns, and deserves to receive, a larger share of production than those who do not make such a contribution.

So Randy McInvestor, who has x amount of investable capital inherited from his slave owner ancestors, because he owns that capital and is using it to set up a business, deserves more of the returns than John Employee, who had none to begin because his ancestors were penniless slaves? Is this what you are saying?

No. Not because Randy inherited capital from his slave owner ancestors or because John's ancestors were slaves, but whether or not their ancestors owned or were owned as slaves, because the nature of their ancestors has nothing to do with what Randy and John are currently contributing to production and the rewards they are thus earning, and deserve to get. You are merely ASSUMING, without evidence, that Randy got his capital through his ancestors' crimes, and that John is without capital because his ancestors were the victims of crimes. You have no way of knowing how they got their capital, whether they got it unjustly, and you have not explained how it could have been gotten unjustly through geolibertarian institutions, nor will you ever be explaining it.

What has the employer in the geolibertarian system done to his employee, exactly? How have anyone's rights been abrogated without just compensation?

The right to total equality of opportunity.

There is no such right. People can only have a right to what they would have if others did not take it from them: life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Total equality of opportunity is not only physically impossible, but something that others would have to provide, so it cannot possibly be a right.

The Procrustean bed of socialism...

Equality of opportunity, not outcome.

The bed is still Procrustean. Read Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron" to see a perfectly accurate description of your ideal society.

Where is your evidence that Aristotle kept any field slaves? Are you just makin' $#!+ up again?

He agreed with slavery, "there are natural slaves and natural masters". Thus, he takes responsibility for all the field slaves in his society.

Ah, no, he does not. His observation was probably correct as a matter of fact (as Googling slave and master will confirm), but that in no way implies that all the slaves in his society were natural slaves, or all the masters natural masters.

I see. So, your counter-argument to perhaps the greatest mind who ever lived is to urge that he should have been compelled to crawl in mud, labor as a slave, and suffer whipping.

Yes. It is very difficult to tell whether someone has a "slave mentality" or a "civilised mentality", when they are crawling in the mud. Perhaps, one of his slaves was twice the scientist and philosopher he was, except he was beaten to death as a child for dropping the soup. Ho hum. This pointless waste is the outcome of unequal opportunity.

You have no evidence that any such thing happened, and unequal opportunity would never cause half the pointless waste your system has caused everywhere it has ever been tried.

I could not hope to offer a more eloquent refutation of your views.

Sadly, no you could not.

Sadly indeed.

No, they are not. They are not permitted to keep the fruits of their labor, which are simply taken from them and distributed to the most needy (i.e., most unproductive).

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You have stated it explicitly.

As I have explained, the most productive will be spotted by the Labour Commissar and recommended higher pay, which will be voted on.

I.e., literal slavery. Thought so.

So in your Libertarian paradise, criminals who have stolen will just be let wander the streets ay?

Another strawman fallacy.

All imprisonment is slavery.

Garbage. Slavery is compelled labor.

Unless you advocate death for all crimes...

I advocate treating criminals in a way that minimizes violations of rights. In most cases, that means asset forfeiture, with incarceration reserved as a preventive measure for habitual criminals. Capital punishment turns out to be very costly, and wastes a potential source of both labor and information on other crimes.

[ComradeTim]

In your dreams. You don't even have a way to measure competence, because your system can't generate useful prices.

I don't see why not. Communities tell workplaces how many resources and commodities they need. Workplaces inform communities what resources they have and what they are able to produce. Prices can be worked out between them based on labour time, skill, availability. Communities allocate said goods to the people. What's the problem here?

There are lots of people who aren't drooling morons who are nevertheless less competent than the most competent, but more likely to be elected by the drooling morons than the most competent.

This is inherent to all systems. You seem to be arguing from a dictatorial standpoint. Why should we allow free elections, if an unelected dictator could allocate positions better than those stupid peasants? Is this what you want? If not, why should people put up with dictators in business if they don't politically?

So you will have wasted resources.

Fairness is more important than efficiency.

It is, but only one part, and not the most important part. Steve Jobs had appalling people skills, and could never have been elected to a position of responsibility in any of your industrial Gulags.

Is that a bad thing?

I see: you prefer to have the power-seekers in charge of production rather than the producers. Thought so.

Get a grip man. The producers are never in charge. At the moment and in your world, ass kissers and nepotists are put in charge. In mine, the worker's choice of leader is.

How long do you think that will last when the politicians have all power?

Not long, as can be seen today under capitalism and would be seen once your peudo-capitalsim is implemented.

Where their mental illness can kill people more easily. Brilliant.

What?

You mean, just like now....?

What?

So, only the people you think merit votes would get them.

Are you trolling? Obviously the mentally retarded can't vote.

I.e., enslaved.

That's my question answered.

No you wouldn't. Every socialist fancies himself in charge.

Except that the people in charge of the records at the Ministry of Truth might have something to say about it....

By the one who initiated and manages the production process.

Like Hitler initiated the Holocaust, without the consent of the "produced".

And your claim to be entitled to a social circle at the expense of society will get you nowhere.

How much wealth should society have to sacrifice just to provide you with the type of employment you wish to pursue, in a location and at a wage that satisfies your demands for "equal" opportunity?

This system is for everyone in society. Thats like saying "how much wealth should society have to sacrifice just to provide society etc". As stated before wages are a capitalist construct to rob workers of their rightful due so that capitalists can be enriched.i advocate the end of wage labour.

No, because you have no idea what managers actually do for a living, and because you still refuse to know that slavery-like employment conditions are forced on you by the institution of private property in land, not employers. The only difference between private ownership of land and ownership of slaves is that slavery removes people's rights to liberty one person at a time, landowning removes them one right at a time.

What do managers do to your mind then? Employers had capital, when I did not. This needs to be rectified by distributing capital equally.

No, I am saying that someone who has capital has more to contribute to production than someone who doesn't, and to the extent that he makes a greater contribution to production, he earns a commensurately bigger share of production. This isn't rocket science.

Under capitalism, yes. Under socialism no-one has more capital than anyone else, until they earn more by hard and productive work. Good second sentence though.

No. Not because Randy inherited capital from his slave owner ancestors or because John's ancestors were slaves, but whether or not their ancestors owned or were owned as slaves, because the nature of their ancestors has nothing to do with what Randy and John are currently contributing to production and the rewards they are thus earning, and deserve to get. You are merely ASSUMING, without evidence, that Randy got his capital through his ancestors' crimes, and that John is without capital because his ancestors were the victims of crimes. You have no way of knowing how they got their capital, whether they got it unjustly, and you have not explained how it could have been gotten unjustly through geolibertarian institutions, nor will you ever be explaining it.

Why should anyone begin with more capital than anyone else? Have they earned it, without working? Has the person without capital been a poor worker? Can you explain this to me?

The bed is still Procrustean. Read Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron" to see a perfectly accurate description of your ideal society.

Yes. Of course. Eradicating privilege in capital is the same as the situation decribed.

There is no such right. People can only have a right to what they would have if others did not take it from them: life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Total equality of opportunity is not only physically impossible, but something that others would have to provide, so it cannot possibly be a right.

An individualist perspective. There are no individual rights, only social rights. Capital is the product of society, not any one individual. When one person dies, his capital becomes the property of society to be given out equally.

Ah, no, he does not. His observation was probably correct as a matter of fact (as Googling slave and master will confirm), but that in no way implies that all the slaves in his society were natural slaves, or all the masters natural masters.

To have the idea that anyone is a natural slave, is tantamount to the same.

You have no evidence that any such thing happened, and unequal opportunity would never cause half the pointless waste your system has caused everywhere it has ever been tried.

So only the privileged can be great scientists? The capitalist in you is showing, let him out, revel in him. Think, really think about how many outstanding minds have been wasted on manual labour because of capital privilege. To stay within the ancient Greek theme, the example of Meno's slave from one of Plato's Socratic dialogues highlights this tragic waste of potential.

Garbage. Slavery is compelled labor.

So, someone who was bought by a master and chained up in a room and forgotten about isn't a slave? Weak.

I advocate treating criminals in a way that minimizes violations of rights. In most cases, that means asset forfeiture, with incarceration reserved as a preventive measure for habitual criminals. Capital punishment turns out to be very costly, and wastes a potential source of both labor and information on other crimes.

So, if a manager in your society embezzled from his workers, he would get a slap on the wrist instead of re-education and labour? I can see why white collar crime is so prevalent.

[Truth To Power]

In your dreams. You don't even have a way to measure competence, because your system can't generate useful prices.

I don't see why not.

Because value is how much the person who wants the item most would have to pay to buy it from the person who wants it second most, and you have no market in which to generate such information.

Communities tell workplaces how many resources and commodities they need. Workplaces inform communities what resources they have and what they are able to produce. Prices can be worked out between them based on labour time, skill, availability.

No, they can't.

Communities allocate said goods to the people. What's the problem here?

The problem is that the system you describe generates directives, not prices.

There are lots of people who aren't drooling morons who are nevertheless less competent than the most competent, but more likely to be elected by the drooling morons than the most competent.

This is inherent to all systems.

No, it's only inherent to all voting systems. The market finds the most competent and elects them to manage resources through the price and profit systems.

You seem to be arguing from a dictatorial standpoint. Why should we allow free elections, if an unelected dictator could allocate positions better than those stupid peasants?

It's quite possible that an unelected dictator could do that (Plato's ideal, beloved of socialists ever since), the problem is we don't know if he can or not, and there is no way to find out.

Is this what you want? If not, why should people put up with dictators in business if they don't politically?

Because in a geolibertarian society (not a capitalist one), a business owner is only a dictator over his own property, not other people's rights.

So you will have wasted resources.

Fairness is more important than efficiency.

That's not true, and in any case you will also have unfairness, probably even more of it.

It is, but only one part, and not the most important part. Steve Jobs had appalling people skills, and could never have been elected to a position of responsibility in any of your industrial Gulags.

Is that a bad thing?

Yes. Very.

I see: you prefer to have the power-seekers in charge of production rather than the producers. Thought so.

Get a grip man. The producers are never in charge.

Producers are never in charge in your socialist Gulag, that's for sure. They are sometimes in charge in capitalist societies (I have worked with some), and geolibertarian institutions would put them pretty consistently in charge -- of production.

At the moment and in your world, ass kissers and nepotists are put in charge.

No. You are simply making a claim about my proposed system based on zero (0) fact and logic. We can see how ass kissers and nepotists get to be in charge under capitalism. But you haven't explained how they could get to be in charge in a geolibertarian society. And you won't be doing so.

In mine, the worker's choice of leader is.

We've seen what happens when the workers' choice of leader is in charge: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

How long do you think that will last when the politicians have all power?

Not long, as can be seen today under capitalism and would be seen once your peudo-capitalsim is implemented.

Again, you are making claims about my system with no factual or logical support. You just claim it is the same as capitalism, but I have already proved it is radically different. In fact, because it does not commit the shared capitalist and socialist error of conflating land and capital, my system is more different from capitalism than socialism is.

Where their mental illness can kill people more easily. Brilliant.

What?

Think it through.

You mean, just like now....?

What?

Think it through.

So, only the people you think merit votes would get them.

Are you trolling? Obviously the mentally retarded can't vote.

And the Commissars decide who is mentally retarded....

I.e., enslaved.

That's my question answered.

Too bad you have no answers:

No you wouldn't. Every socialist fancies himself in charge.

Except that the people in charge of the records at the Ministry of Truth might have something to say about it....

Absence of answers noted.

By the one who initiated and manages the production process.

Like Hitler initiated the Holocaust, without the consent of the "produced".

What? Are you really claiming that an entrepreneur dealing with people by mutual consent to mutual benefit is analogous to Hitler exterminating millions? REALLY???

And your claim to be entitled to a social circle at the expense of society will get you nowhere.

Non-answer noted.

How much wealth should society have to sacrifice just to provide you with the type of employment you wish to pursue, in a location and at a wage that satisfies your demands for "equal" opportunity?

This system is for everyone in society.

No, it's not. It's for the Commissars. We know how that one turns out.

Thats like saying "how much wealth should society have to sacrifice just to provide society etc".

No, that is the Collective fallacy, like saying, "The national debt doesn't matter, because we owe it to ourselves."

As stated before wages are a capitalist construct to rob workers of their rightful due so that capitalists can be enriched.

As stated before, no, they are not. What capitalism does is remove people's liberty to pursue alternative opportunities (i.e., their liberty to use natural resources), and that is what makes wage labor exploitative under capitalism. Geolibertarianism doesn't remove people's access to other opportunities, so wage labor becomes a voluntary transaction to mutual benefit.

i advocate the end of wage labour.

Then you advocate the poverty that comes with the end of division of labor and specialization.

No, because you have no idea what managers actually do for a living, and because you still refuse to know that slavery-like employment conditions are forced on you by the institution of private property in land, not employers. The only difference between private ownership of land and ownership of slaves is that slavery removes people's rights to liberty one person at a time, landowning removes them one right at a time.

What do managers do to your mind then?

What?

Employers had capital, when I did not.

So go and earn some.

This needs to be rectified by distributing capital equally.

I.e., by taking from others what they have justly earned, and giving it to you, who have not earned it. Thought so.

You have a funny idea of what "rectify" means....

No, I am saying that someone who has capital has more to contribute to production than someone who doesn't, and to the extent that he makes a greater contribution to production, he earns a commensurately bigger share of production. This isn't rocket science.

Under capitalism, yes. Under socialism no-one has more capital than anyone else, until they earn more by hard and productive work.

Nope. Socialism takes their earnings and gives them to those who haven't earned it.

Good second sentence though.

All my sentences are good.

No. Not because Randy inherited capital from his slave owner ancestors or because John's ancestors were slaves, but whether or not their ancestors owned or were owned as slaves, because the nature of their ancestors has nothing to do with what Randy and John are currently contributing to production and the rewards they are thus earning, and deserve to get. You are merely ASSUMING, without evidence, that Randy got his capital through his ancestors' crimes, and that John is without capital because his ancestors were the victims of crimes. You have no way of knowing how they got their capital, whether they got it unjustly, and you have not explained how it could have been gotten unjustly through geolibertarian institutions, nor will you ever be explaining it.

Why should anyone begin with more capital than anyone else?

Because someone else decided to give their own justly owned capital to them.

Have they earned it, without working?

Because in a geolibertarian system, the person who DID earn it, by commensurate contributions to production, has a right to dispose of it as he wishes. It is his rightful property.

Has the person without capital been a poor worker?

Maybe.

Can you explain this to me?

Are you willing to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil?

The bed is still Procrustean. Read Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron" to see a perfectly accurate description of your ideal society.

Yes. Of course. Eradicating privilege in capital is the same as the situation decribed.

There is no privilege in capital. That is very much the point. There is privilege in landowning, and in banksters' issuance of debt money backed by government, and in IP monopolies, and in limited corporate liability, and in restrictions that prevent competition among privileged workers such as lawyers, doctors, and certified union workers, and in a hundred other things, but NOT in capital, because unlike privilege, ownership of capital DOESN'T VIOLATE ANYONE'S RIGHTS.

There is no such right. People can only have a right to what they would have if others did not take it from them: life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Total equality of opportunity is not only physically impossible, but something that others would have to provide, so it cannot possibly be a right.

An individualist perspective.

Because as a matter of objective fact, human beings are individuals.

There are no individual rights, only social rights.

That's just false as a matter of objective fact.

Capital is the product of society, not any one individual.

That's also just false as a matter of objective fact. Capital is produced by the specific individuals who contribute labor and capital to its production. Claiming that "society" produced capital is simply your attempt not to know that fact, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

When one person dies, his capital becomes the property of society to be given out equally.

In point of fact, it does no such thing, nor could it rightly do so.

Ah, no, he does not. His observation was probably correct as a matter of fact (as Googling slave and master will confirm), but that in no way implies that all the slaves in his society were natural slaves, or all the masters natural masters.

To have the idea that anyone is a natural slave, is tantamount to the same.

No, it is not. As a matter of objective fact.

You have no evidence that any such thing happened, and unequal opportunity would never cause half the pointless waste your system has caused everywhere it has ever been tried.

So only the privileged can be great scientists?

That's just you making up another silly strawman unconnected to anything I have said.

The capitalist in you is showing, let him out, revel in him.

<yawn>

Think, really think about how many outstanding minds have been wasted on manual labour because of capital privilege.

None, because there is no such thing. I can surmise that millions of outstanding minds have been wasted because of landowner privilege, and millions more because of socialist Commissar privilege, and probably millions more because of bankster privilege, IP monopoly privilege and union privilege. But no outstanding mind can ever have been wasted because of capital privilege, because the producer's ownership of the fruits of his labor is not a privilege. It is a right.

To stay within the ancient Greek theme, the example of Meno's slave from one of Plato's Socratic dialogues highlights this tragic waste of potential.

Which didn't occur in a geolibertarian society.

Garbage. Slavery is compelled labor.

So, someone who was bought by a master and chained up in a room and forgotten about isn't a slave? Weak.

They are a captive, a victim of crime, and maybe a slave under law; but in fact, unless they are forced to work, they aren't really a slave.

I advocate treating criminals in a way that minimizes violations of rights. In most cases, that means asset forfeiture, with incarceration reserved as a preventive measure for habitual criminals. Capital punishment turns out to be very costly, and wastes a potential source of both labor and information on other crimes.

So, if a manager in your society embezzled from his workers, he would get a slap on the wrist instead of re-education and labour?

I don't call asset forfeiture a slap on the wrist, and neither do real criminals. They typically fear loss of the proceeds of their crimes almost as much as incarceration. Sometimes more. But how to handle white collar crime is a difficult question. In most cases incarceration is not appropriate. It's just expensive. Such people are capable of being productive and contributing to society, but can't be trusted not to take advantage of others.

I can see why white collar crime is so prevalent.

White collar crime is so prevalent precisely BECAUSE asset forfeiture is rarely used, or applied very lightly.

[ComradeTim]

Because value is how much the person who wants the item most would have to pay to buy it from the person who wants it second most, and you have no market in which to generate such information.

The problem is that the system you describe generates directives, not prices.

The difference being? The amount someone who wants an item is willing to pay, is an expression of the strength of his desire. Under libertarian socialism, this same information can be produced by dialogue through the Bourse du Travail. It may be slightly more inefficient than market systems, but more equal.

No, it's only inherent to all voting systems. The market finds the most competent and elects them to manage resources through the price and profit systems.

That assumes a free market. There is no such thing, never has been and never will be. The system is always weighted by the owners of capital, against the most competent, in favour of the weakest willed. A market system is inherently unequal and can never be free.

It's quite possible that an unelected dictator could do that (Plato's ideal, beloved of socialists ever since), the problem is we don't know if he can or not, and there is no way to find out.

What does it matter? The idea of dictatorship should be morally repulsive to preclude it being discussed at all.

Because in a geolibertarian society (not a capitalist one), a business owner is only a dictator over his own property, not other people's rights.

But he has more capital than his employees? What is stopping him from hiring goons and taking over other people's property and re-establishing capitalism? This is a fundamental question of your ideology that has not been answered.

And the Commissars decide who is mentally retarded....

Are you still harping over Labour Commissars? Is it the name? Their only duty is supervising labour, possibly in teams to make especially sure there is no foul play. Judging the mentally competent would be a job for a committee of some sort, democratically elected of course.

No. You are simply making a claim about my proposed system based on zero (0) fact and logic. We can see how ass kissers and nepotists get to be in charge under capitalism. But you haven't explained how they could get to be in charge in a geolibertarian society. And you won't be doing so.

Your system will never exist because an "investor" who still has unearned capital from the time of capitalism (five minutes ago) has just formed a private army and is taking over the land. How will this be prevented with no state?

We've seen what happens when the workers' choice of leader is in charge: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

We are taking about Libertarian Socialism here, not marxist "socialism", which barely deserves the name. The leaders described by your quote were unelected bureaucrats, appointed by a centralised state. Please do your research.

Think it through.

Oh, I see. I didn't know making birdhouses in a mental institution was such a dangerous job, with such responsibility.

Think it through.

Aha!...Nope, still don't know

No you wouldn't. Every socialist fancies himself in charge.

Except that the people in charge of the records at the Ministry of Truth might have something to say about it....

Absence of answers noted.

Ok.

Not true. The records will be kept in an open and public place for everyone to see.

What? Are you really claiming that an entrepreneur dealing with people by mutual consent to mutual benefit is analogous to Hitler exterminating millions? REALLY???

There is no such thing as mutual consent when one person has more capital than the other. It is slavery pure and simple. How can one person without capital stand up to someone without?

No, that is the Collective fallacy, like saying, "The national debt doesn't matter, because we owe it to ourselves."

The National Debt doesn't matter, because unequal distribution of capital is fundamentally wrong.

Then you advocate the poverty that comes with the end of division of labor and specialization.

That can be done without wage labour.

What?

Think it through.

So go and earn some.

Why?

Nope. Socialism takes their earnings and gives them to those who haven't earned it.

<yawn>

Because someone else decided to give their own justly owned capital to them.

That has never happened.

because unlike privilege, ownership of capital DOESN'T VIOLATE ANYONE'S RIGHTS.

Everyone has a right to the same amount of starting capital. What they do with it is up to them but privileging people from the get go is unfair and wrong.

Because as a matter of objective fact, human beings are individuals.

True, but people naturally form into collectives when it comes to working and living. Thus they should be treated as a collective organism then it comes to capital, the foundation of society.

That's also just false as a matter of objective fact. Capital is produced by the specific individuals who contribute labor and capital to its production. Claiming that "society" produced capital is simply your attempt not to know that fact, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

No one individual can produce capital in any meaningful amount, it's a collective effort. Thusly, the produce of this labour should be shared out, instead of taken by one person and part of it divvied out as wages.

That's just you making up another silly strawman unconnected to anything I have said.

What have you say then? Because you are just backtracking here to avoid proposing slavery.

I can surmise that millions of outstanding minds have been wasted because of landowner privilege.

True.

millions more because of authoritarian socialist Commissar privilege.

True.

millions more because of bankster privilege, IP monopoly privilege.

True.

union privilege.

Possibly true, occasionally.

But no outstanding mind can ever have been wasted because of capital privilege, because the producer's ownership of the fruits of his labor is not a privilege. It is a right.

True, surprisingly enough. Of course, the only producers are workers, because all an investor has to contribute, apart from his labour, is capital, which he could never have accumulated enough of fairly, to invest.

White collar crime is so prevalent precisely BECAUSE asset forfeiture is rarely used, or applied very lightly.

Forced labour or execution tends to encourage excellence and integrity even more.

[Truth To Power]

Because value is how much the person who wants the item most would have to pay to buy it from the person who wants it second most, and you have no market in which to generate such information.

The problem is that the system you describe generates directives, not prices.

The difference being?

The quality of information conveyed.

The amount someone who wants an item is willing to pay, is an expression of the strength of his desire.

And his purchasing power.

Under libertarian socialism, this same information can be produced by dialogue through the Bourse du Travail. It may be slightly more inefficient than market systems, but more equal.

It's not just "slightly more inefficient." It's clearly unworkable. The amount of information is too great for the human mind or any computer system to process.

No, it's only inherent to all voting systems. The market finds the most competent and elects them to manage resources through the price and profit systems.

That assumes a free market. There is no such thing, never has been and never will be.

There never will be as long as ignorant, stupid and/or dishonest socialists oppose the liberty, justice and prosperity of the geolibertarian system.

The system is always weighted by the owners of capital, against the most competent, in favour of the weakest willed.

No, that's just stupid garbage with no basis in fact, logic or economics.

A market system is inherently unequal and can never be free.

A market system is inherently uequal because people are inherently unequal: on what other basis could trade occur? But freedom REQUIRES the freedom to be more or less than one's fellows. You need to read, "Harrison Bergeron." And try to understand it.

It's quite possible that an unelected dictator could do that (Plato's ideal, beloved of socialists ever since), the problem is we don't know if he can or not, and there is no way to find out.

What does it matter?

If he can't or won't, then we all pay the price.

The idea of dictatorship should be morally repulsive to preclude it being discussed at all.

It may be needed in emergencies.

Because in a geolibertarian society (not a capitalist one), a business owner is only a dictator over his own property, not other people's rights.

But he has more capital than his employees? What is stopping him from hiring goons and taking over other people's property and re-establishing capitalism?

Democratic government, whose rightful function and duty is to secure and reconcile everyone's equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

This is a fundamental question of your ideology that has not been answered.

Sorry, I thought I had made clear that in order to fulfill its legitimate functions, identified above, government must administer possession and use of land so as to secure every citizen's exclusive free tenure on enough of the available good land to provide access to economic opportunity, and require just compensation to the community from those who exclude others from more than that.

And the Commissars decide who is mentally retarded....

Are you still harping over Labour Commissars? Is it the name?

The power:

Their only duty is supervising labour, possibly in teams to make especially sure there is no foul play.

LOL! "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Judging the mentally competent would be a job for a committee of some sort, democratically elected of course.

Your workers are going to spend all their time voting for committees, no time actually producing anything.

No. You are simply making a claim about my proposed system based on zero (0) fact and logic. We can see how ass kissers and nepotists get to be in charge under capitalism. But you haven't explained how they could get to be in charge in a geolibertarian society. And you won't be doing so.

Your system will never exist because an "investor" who still has unearned capital from the time of capitalism (five minutes ago) has just formed a private army and is taking over the land. How will this be prevented with no state?

I have never advocated no state. The state -- government -- is the only possible way people's equal individual rights to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor can be secured and reconciled.

We've seen what happens when the workers' choice of leader is in charge: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

We are taking about Libertarian Socialism here, not marxist "socialism", which barely deserves the name. The leaders described by your quote were unelected bureaucrats, appointed by a centralised state. Please do your research.

The small democratic socialist experiments have had similar problems.

Except that the people in charge of the records at the Ministry of Truth might have something to say about it....

Not true. The records will be kept in an open and public place for everyone to see.

Like Wikipedia?

What? Are you really claiming that an entrepreneur dealing with people by mutual consent to mutual benefit is analogous to Hitler exterminating millions? REALLY???

There is no such thing as mutual consent when one person has more capital than the other.

Of course there is: the difference in their positions is what makes the exchange possible, and both desired by and beneficial to both of them, and to society. You just refuse to know the fact that the only reason wage labor looks like slavery under capitalism is that the alternatives have been narrowed to one -- starvation -- by the institution of private property in land. If people are free to access the economic advantages that government, the community and nature provide without having to pay the extortion demands of rich, greedy, parasitic landowners for permission to do so, they have no reason to consent to disadvantageous terms of employment. They can deal with capital owners as equals, and get the full value of their contributions to production.

It is slavery pure and simple.

That is nonsense pure and simple. Unlike under capitalism, there is no compulsion involved in the geolibertarian system, no abrogation of rights without just compensation.

How can one person without capital stand up to someone without?

By exercising their right to liberty to produce capital of their own, as our remote ancestors did before their liberty rights were removed by the institution of private landowning.

No, that is the Collective fallacy, like saying, "The national debt doesn't matter, because we owe it to ourselves."

The National Debt doesn't matter, because unequal distribution of capital is fundamentally wrong.

No, it is fundamentally right, because people's contributions to the production of capital are unequal.

Then you advocate the poverty that comes with the end of division of labor and specialization.

That can be done without wage labour.

But only inefficiently, as any atttempt to manage resources without prices must be inefficient.

So go and earn some.

Why?

Because that is the only way you can obtain a valid right to own it.

Nope. Socialism takes their earnings and gives them to those who haven't earned it.

<yawn>

See your response, above.

Because someone else decided to give their own justly owned capital to them.

That has never happened.

Of course it has. Almost every parent has given capital to their children, and mostly it was justly owned.

because unlike privilege, ownership of capital DOESN'T VIOLATE ANYONE'S RIGHTS.

Everyone has a right to the same amount of starting capital.

No, they do not, because capital must be provided by labor, and people only have rights to the things they would otherwise have if others did not deprive them of them: life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

What they do with it is up to them but privileging people from the get go is unfair and wrong.

Privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit by the uncompensated abrogation of others' rights. So landowning is privilege, IP is privilege, banksters' debt money issuance is privilege, union monopolies are privilege. But the producer's ownership of the fruits of his labor is not privilege. It is his right.

Because as a matter of objective fact, human beings are individuals.

True, but people naturally form into collectives when it comes to working and living. Thus they should be treated as a collective organism then it comes to capital, the foundation of society.

No. The labor that produces capital is performed by individuals, who consequently have a right to own the capital they produce, and therefore to own the fruits of its effective allocation to additional production. People form collectives in order to secure their rights, not to sacrifice them to the collective.

That's also just false as a matter of objective fact. Capital is produced by the specific individuals who contribute labor and capital to its production. Claiming that "society" produced capital is simply your attempt not to know that fact, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

No one individual can produce capital in any meaningful amount, it's a collective effort.

No, that's just clearly false. All capital has originated in the productive efforts of individuals, not least the solitary inventors who produced the first prototypes of the capital. Once someone has produced capital by their labor, skillful management can quickly magnify it into a substantial amount of capital, all through purely consensual transactions to mutual benefit. The capital's owner has a right to the additional production his contributions make possible.

Thusly, the produce of this labour should be shared out, instead of taken by one person and part of it divvied out as wages.

Garbage. The labor market tells us quite clearly who is contributing more to production, and exactly how much more, and thus who should get what share of the products.

That's just you making up another silly strawman unconnected to anything I have said.

What have you say then? Because you are just backtracking here to avoid proposing slavery.

How can anyone be enslaved, or even exploited, under the geolibertarian system? Unlike under capitalism, everyone has free, secure access to economic opportunity, so no one can be coerced into a disadvantageous arrangement with an employer.

But no outstanding mind can ever have been wasted because of capital privilege, because the producer's ownership of the fruits of his labor is not a privilege. It is a right.

True, surprisingly enough. Of course, the only producers are workers, because all an investor has to contribute, apart from his labour, is capital, which he could never have accumulated enough of fairly, to invest.

Again, your basic premise is just self-evidently and indisputably false as a matter of objective physical fact. Plenty of large fortunes have begun with small accumulations of a worker's capital. Granted, in most cases privilege has contributed to the fortunes' gigantism, but the initial capital was simply saved up out of earnings. I have friends and relatives who have built considerable accumulations of assets in just that way. How much capital could a typical worker accumulate in a decade by just not wasting his money on booze, hookers, new cars, cigarettes, etc.? When people choose to contribute capital to production rather than consuming all they earn, they earn the additional production their contribution makes possible, however large or small it might be.

White collar crime is so prevalent precisely BECAUSE asset forfeiture is rarely used, or applied very lightly.

Forced labour or execution tends to encourage excellence and integrity even more.

'Pour encourager les autres'....?



No. All it does is discourage competent people from offering their services and taking entrepreneurial risks.[/quote]

[ComradeTim]

The quality of information conveyed.

It's not just "slightly more inefficient." It's clearly unworkable. The amount of information is too great for the human mind or any computer system to process.

There never will be as long as ignorant, stupid and/or dishonest socialists oppose the liberty, justice and prosperity of the geolibertarian system.

No, that's just stupid garbage with no basis in fact, logic or economics.

A market system is inherently uequal because people are inherently unequal: on what other basis could trade occur? But freedom REQUIRES the freedom to be more or less than one's fellows. You need to read, "Harrison Bergeron." And try to understand it.

I probably haven't been explaining my system and it's relationship with the market very well, so I'll quote one of my comrades.

At the level of the individual production unit or industry, the only calculations that would be necessary in socialism would be calculations in kind. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other the amount of good produced, together with any by-products. . . . Socialist production is simply the production of use values from use values, and nothing more."

The generation and communication of such information implies a decentralised, horizontal network between producers and consumers. This is because what counts as a use-value can only be determined by those directly using it. Thus the production of use-values from use-values cannot be achieved via central planning, as the central planners have no notion of the use-value of the goods being used or produced. Such knowledge lies in many hands, dispersed throughout society, and so socialist production implies decentralisation. Capitalist ideologues claim that the market allows the utilisation of such dispersed knowledge, but as John O'Neil notes, "the market may be one way in which dispersed knowledge can be put to good effect. It is not . . . the only way."

So, in order to determine if a specific good is useful to a person, that person needs to know its "cost." Under capitalism, the notion of cost has been so associated with price that we have to put the word "cost" in quotation marks. However, the real cost of, say, writing a book, is not a sum of money but so much paper, so much energy, so much ink, so much human labour. In order to make a rational decision on whether a given good is better for meeting a given need than another, the would-be consumer requires this information. However, under capitalism this information is hidden by the price.

Moreover, a purely market-based system leaves out information on which to base rational resource allocations (or, at the very least, hides it). The reason for this is that a market system measures, at best, preferences of individual buyers among the available options. This assumes that all the pertinent use-values that are to be outcomes of production are things that are to be consumed by the individual, rather than use-values that are collectively enjoyed (like clean air). Prices in the market do not measure social costs or externalities, meaning that such costs are not reflected in the price and so you cannot have a rational price system. Similarly, if the market measures only preferences amongst things that can be monopolised and sold to individuals, as distinguished from values that are enjoyed collectively, then it follows that information necessary for rational decision-making in production is not provided by the market.

In other words, prices hide the actual costs that production involved for the individual, society, and the environment, and instead boils everything down into one factor, namely price. There is a lack of dialogue and information between producer and consumer. As John O'Neil argues, "the market distributes a little information and . . . blocks the distribution of a great deal [more]. . . The educative dialogue exists not through the market, but alongside of it."

"In what industry, in what line of business, are the true social costs of the activity registered in its accounts? Where is the pricing system that offers the consumer a fair choice between air to breath and motor cars to drive about in?"
Indeed, prices often mis-value goods as companies can gain a competitive advantage by passing costs onto society (in the form of pollution, for example, or de-skilling workers, increasing job insecurity, and so on). This externalisation of costs is actually rewarded in the market as consumers seek the lowest prices, unaware of the reasons why it is lower (such information cannot be gathered from looking at the price). Even if we assume that such activity is penalised by fines later, the damage is still done and cannot be undone. Indeed, the company may be able to weather the fines due to the profits it originally made by externalising costs.

And do prices actually reflect costs, even assuming that they accurately reflect social costs and externalities? The question of profit, the reward for owning capital and allowing others to use it, is hardly a cost in the same way as labour, resources and so on (attempts to explain profits as an equivalent sacrifice as labour have always been ridiculous and quickly dropped). When looking at prices to evaluate efficient use for goods, you cannot actually tell by the price if this is so. Two goods may have the same price, but profit levels (perhaps under the influence of market power) may be such that one has a higher cost price than another. The price mechanism fails to indicate which uses least resources as it is influenced by market power. Indeed, as Takis Fotopoulos notes, "f . . . both central planning and the market economy inevitably lead to concentrations of power, then neither the former nor the latter can produce the sort of information flows and incentives which are necessary for the best functioning of any economic system." Moreover, a good produced under a authoritarian state which represses its workforce would have a lower price than one produced in a country which allowed unions to organise and had basic human rights. The repression would force down the cost of labour, so making the good in question appear as a more "efficient" use of resources. In other words, the market can mask inhumanity as "efficiency" and actually reward that behaviour by market share.

Simply put, prices cannot be taken to reflect real costs any more that they can reflect the social expression of the valuation of goods. They are the result of a conflict waged over these goods and those that acted as their inputs (including, of course, labour). Market and social power, much more than need or resource usage, decides the issue. The inequality in the means of purchasers, in the market power of firms and in the bargaining position of labour and capital all play their part, so distorting any relationship a price may have to its costs in terms of resource use. Prices are misshapen. Little wonder Kropotkin asked whether "are we not yet bound to analyse that compound result we call price rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?"

Von Mises argued that anyone "who wished to make calculations in regard to a complicated process of production will immediately notice whether he has worked more economically than others or not; if he finds, from reference to the exchange values obtaining in the market, that he will not be able to produce profitably, this shows that others understand how to make better use of the higher-order goods in question." [Op. Cit., pp. 97-8] However, this only shows whether someone has worked more profitably that others, not whether it is more economical. Market power automatically muddles this issue, as does the possibility of reducing the monetary cost of production by recklessly exploiting natural resources and labour, polluting, or otherwise passing costs onto others. Similarly, the issue of wealth inequality is important, for if the production of luxury goods proves more profitable than basic essentials for the poor does this show that producing the former is a better use of resources? And, of course, the key issue of the relative strength of market power between workers and capitalists plays a key role in determining "profitably."

Therefore, the claim that prices reflect real costs and so efficiency can be faulted on two levels. Moreover, without using another means of cost accounting instead of prices how can supporters of capitalism know there is a correlation between actual and price costs? One can determine whether such a correlation exists by measuring one against the other. If this cannot be done, then the claim that prices measure costs is a tautology (in that a price represents a cost and we know that it is a cost because it has a price). If it can be done, then we can calculate costs in some other sense than in market prices and so that argument that only market prices represent costs falls.

Under communist-anarchism, the decision-making system used to determine the best use of resources is not more or less "efficient" than market allocation, because it goes beyond the market-based concept of "efficiency." It does not seek to mimic the market but to do what the market fails to do. This is important, because the market is not the rational system its defenders often claim. While reducing all decisions to one common factor is, without a doubt, an easy method of decision making, it also has serious side-effects because of its reductionistic basis (as discussed further in the next section). As Einstein once pointed out, things should be made as simple as possible but not simplistic. The market makes decision making simplistic and generates a host of irrationalities and dehumanising effects.

It is likely that computers will be extensively used to take input data and process it into a suitable format. Indeed, many capitalist companies have software which records raw material inputs and finished product into databases and spreadsheets. Such software could be the basis of a libertarian communist decision making algorithm. Of course, currently such data is submerged beneath money and does not take into account externalities and the nature of the work involved (as would be the case in an anarchist society). However, this does not limit their potential or deny that communist use of such software can be used to inform decisions.

This, we must note, indicates that communist society would use various "aids to the mind" to help individuals and groups to make economic decisions. This would reduce the complexity of economic decision making, by allowing different options and resources to be compared to each other. Hence the complexity of economic decision making in an economy with a multitude of goods can be reduced by the use of rational algorithmic procedures and methods to aid the process. Such tools would aid decision making, not dominate it as these decisions affect humans and the planet and should never be made automatically.

It is useful to remember that von Mises argued that it is the complexity of a modern economy that ensures money is required. As he put it, "[w]ithin the narrow confines of household economy, for instance, where the father can supervise the entire economic management, it is possible to determine the significance of changes in the processes of production, without such aids to the mind [as monetary calculation], and yet with more or less of accuracy." However, "the mind of one man alone -- be it ever so cunning, is too weak to grasp the importance of any single one among the countlessly many goods of higher order. No single man can ever master all the possibilities of production, innumerable as they are, as to be in a position to make straightway evident judgements of value without the aid of some system of computation."

That being the case, a libertarian communist society would quickly develop the means of comparing the real impact of specific "higher order" goods in terms of their real costs (i.e. the amount of labour, energy and raw materials used plus any social and ecological costs). As we noted above, this essential decision making information would have to be recorded and communicated in a communist society and used to evaluate different options using an agreed methods of comparison. This methods of comparison differs drastically from the price mechanism as it recognises that mindless, automatic calculation is impossible in social choices. Such choices have an unavoidable ethical and political dimension simply because they involve other human beings and the environment. As von Mises himself acknowledges, monetary calculation does not capture such dimensions. We, therefore, need to employ practical judgement in making choices aided by a full understanding of the real social and ecological costs involved using, of course, the appropriate "aids to the mind."

In addition, a decentralised system will by necessity have to compare less alternatives as local knowledge will eliminate many of the options available. As von Mises acknowledged, a "household economy" can make economic decisions without money. Being more decentralised than capitalism, a libertarian communist economy will, therefore, be able to do so as well, particularly when it uses the appropriate "aids to the mind" to evaluate external resources versus locally produced ones. Given that an anarchist society would be complex and integrated, such aids would be essential but, due to its decentralised nature, it need not embrace the price mechanism. It can evaluate the efficiency of its decisions by looking at the real costs involved to society rather than embrace the distorted system of costing explicit in the price mechanism (as Kropotkin once put it, "if we analyse price" we must "make a distinction between its different elements" in order to make rational allocation and investment decisions).

It may be needed in emergencies.

The road to totalitarianism...

But he has more capital than his employees? What is stopping him from hiring goons and taking over other people's property and re-establishing capitalism?

Democratic government, whose rightful function and duty is to secure and reconcile everyone's equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

Which, of course, by it's very nature cannot be overthrown or corrupted by capitalists. So to your mind, there was no overthrow of democracy by the capitalist funded Hitler and the current "democracy" in America isn't a corporate facade?

Sorry, I thought I had made clear that in order to fulfill its legitimate functions, identified above, government must administer possession and use of land so as to secure every citizen's exclusive free tenure on enough of the available good land to provide access to economic opportunity, and require just compensation to the community from those who exclude others from more than that.

In what way are you a Libertarian then?

LOL! "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Each other and to a lesser extent the public. I could ask the same question back at you.

Your workers are going to spend all their time voting for committees, no time actually producing anything.

Tripe. This is not direct democracy, where everyone votes on every issue. Thats what the delegates and committees are for. It really doesn't take that long to cast a few votes and attend a few review sessions. The amount of pointless meetings that a major part of business culture take up far more time than this would take.

I have never advocated no state. The state -- government -- is the only possible way people's equal individual rights to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor can be secured and reconciled.

Geo-"libertarianism", did you say? I must have read it wrong.

The small democratic socialist experiments have had similar problems.

Bilge. Wait,...no. Sub-bilge.

Your lack of knowledge on the subject does you no credit. Do some reading on it please.

Like Wikipedia?

Possibly, in addition to in the Bourse du Travail etc.

Of course there is: the difference in their positions is what makes the exchange possible, and both desired by and beneficial to both of them, and to society. You just refuse to know the fact that the only reason wage labor looks like slavery under capitalism is that the alternatives have been narrowed to one -- starvation -- by the institution of private property in land. If people are free to access the economic advantages that government, the community and nature provide without having to pay the extortion demands of rich, greedy, parasitic landowners for permission to do so, they have no reason to consent to disadvantageous terms of employment. They can deal with capital owners as equals, and get the full value of their contributions to production.

That sounds lovely. Pity that, in reality, the capitalists would seize the land back from the state immediately and capitalism would be returned.

So go and earn some.

Why?

Because that is the only way you can obtain a valid right to own it.

Of course it has. Almost every parent has given capital to their children, and mostly it was justly owned.

Oh-ho! And has the child earned the capital? No? Then what right does it have to it? None what so ever! Thus it should be confiscated and distributed to everyone (including the child) equally.

After this comes various economic arguments already dealt with.

No. All it does is [i]discourage competent people from offering their services and taking entrepreneurial risks.

If they are so worried about the punishment for crime, they're not competent, are they?

[Truth To Power]

I probably haven't been explaining my system and it's relationship with the market very well, so I'll quote one of my comrades.

At the level of the individual production unit or industry, the only calculations that would be necessary in socialism would be calculations in kind.

That makes no sense for things of different kinds. That's why money prices are so useful: they allow comparison between things of different kinds.

On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other the amount of good produced, together with any by-products. . . .

Incommensurable quantities. There is no way to measure cars in units of apples, or to compare cars directly with apples.

Socialist production is simply the production of use values from use values, and nothing more."

But with no objective, accurate or feasible way to measure use values.

So, in order to determine if a specific good is useful to a person, that person needs to know its "cost."

No. He does not need to know its cost of production, only its cost to him.

Under capitalism, the notion of cost has been so associated with price that we have to put the word "cost" in quotation marks.

Cost is not price under capitalism or any other system.

However, the real cost of, say, writing a book, is not a sum of money but so much paper, so much energy, so much ink, so much human labour. In order to make a rational decision on whether a given good is better for meeting a given need than another, the would-be consumer requires this information. However, under capitalism this information is hidden by the price.

Nonsense. Price includes that information, which, to the extent that it is revealed at all, is only revealed in price. But the consumer does not need it. All he needs is a price.

Moreover, a purely market-based system leaves out information on which to base rational resource allocations (or, at the very least, hides it). The reason for this is that a market system measures, at best, preferences of individual buyers among the available options. This assumes that all the pertinent use-values that are to be outcomes of production are things that are to be consumed by the individual, rather than use-values that are collectively enjoyed (like clean air).

Nope. Wrong. Clean air is something that is individually enjoyed by many people, not collectively enjoyed. We can sum individual people's preferences for clean air by various schemes (admittedly capitalism is not good at this, but I am defending prices, not capitalism) to get a total value of air quality. So the market's measure of how much individuals want things is the best measure there is.

Prices in the market do not measure social costs or externalities, meaning that such costs are not reflected in the price and so you cannot have a rational price system.

It is true that for prices to reflect costs accurately, externalities must be internalized. Capitalism does not do that very well, but the geolibertarian system is much better at it.

Similarly, if the market measures only preferences amongst things that can be monopolised and sold to individuals, as distinguished from values that are enjoyed collectively, then it follows that information necessary for rational decision-making in production is not provided by the market.

Again, the author is just not smart enough to understand that many people enjoying something individually is not the same as collective enjoyment. Individual people have different levels of preference for things like clean air, so their enjoyment of it is not collective.

In other words, prices hide the actual costs that production involved for the individual, society, and the environment, and instead boils everything down into one factor, namely price.

Irrelevant. Price is not supposed merely to total up costs, but to aid in allocation. So even things with zero production costs (such as land) have prices based on scarcity.

There is a lack of dialogue and information between producer and consumer. As John O'Neil argues, "the market distributes a little information and . . . blocks the distribution of a great deal [more]. . . The educative dialogue exists not through the market, but alongside of it."

Again, this misunderstands the allocative role of prices.

"In what industry, in what line of business, are the true social costs of the activity registered in its accounts? Where is the pricing system that offers the consumer a fair choice between air to breath and motor cars to drive about in?"

The fact that capitalism does not typically try to internalize externalities does not mean they can't be internalized.

Indeed, prices often mis-value goods as companies can gain a competitive advantage by passing costs onto society (in the form of pollution, for example, or de-skilling workers, increasing job insecurity, and so on). This externalisation of costs is actually rewarded in the market as consumers seek the lowest prices, unaware of the reasons why it is lower (such information cannot be gathered from looking at the price). Even if we assume that such activity is penalised by fines later, the damage is still done and cannot be undone. Indeed, the company may be able to weather the fines due to the profits it originally made by externalising costs.

The author is conflating genuine externalities like pollution with pseudo-externalities like job insecurity.

And do prices actually reflect costs, even assuming that they accurately reflect social costs and externalities?

Again, the author erroneously assumes that price is supposed to reflect cost. It isn't. It reflects scarcity -- i.e., demand relative to supply.

The question of profit, the reward for owning capital and allowing others to use it, is hardly a cost in the same way as labour, resources and so on (attempts to explain profits as an equivalent sacrifice as labour have always been ridiculous and quickly dropped).

Because the return to capital is not compensation for a sacrifice, but for a contribution. The author of this silly screed, like most socialists, doesn't understand the difference.

When looking at prices to evaluate efficient use for goods, you cannot actually tell by the price if this is so. Two goods may have the same price, but profit levels (perhaps under the influence of market power) may be such that one has a higher cost price than another. The price mechanism fails to indicate which uses least resources as it is influenced by market power.

Again, the function of price is to allocate by measuring scarcity, not production cost.

Indeed, as Takis Fotopoulos notes, "[i]f . . . both central planning and the market economy inevitably lead to concentrations of power, then neither the former nor the latter can produce the sort of information flows and incentives which are necessary for the best functioning of any economic system."

Market economy |= capitalism

Moreover, a good produced under a authoritarian state which represses its workforce would have a lower price than one produced in a country which allowed unions to organise and had basic human rights. The repression would force down the cost of labour, so making the good in question appear as a more "efficient" use of resources. In other words, the market can mask inhumanity as "efficiency" and actually reward that behaviour by market share.

Price is not supposed to measure inhumanity. It measures scarcity. The author is trying to pretend a car should do what an apple does. If you want something to eat, don't bite a car. Simple.

Simply put, prices cannot be taken to reflect real costs any more that they can reflect the social expression of the valuation of goods.

Prices don't reflect costs, they reflect scarcity. Now, in most cases, production costs will contribute to scarcity, but not in all cases.

They are the result of a conflict waged over these goods and those that acted as their inputs (including, of course, labour). Market and social power, much more than need or resource usage, decides the issue. The inequality in the means of purchasers, in the market power of firms and in the bargaining position of labour and capital all play their part, so distorting any relationship a price may have to its costs in terms of resource use. Prices are misshapen. Little wonder Kropotkin asked whether "are we not yet bound to analyse that compound result we call price rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?"

Again, the author does not understand price. And Kropotkin is no better.

More on this tomorrow.

[Nunt]

This "quote 1 sentence, respond one sentence" way of making posts is really not legible.

[Phred]

This "quote 1 sentence, respond one sentence" way of making posts is really not legible.

More to the point, the thread has been drawn off-topic. I suggest everyone re-read the opening post.


Phred

[ComradeTim]

I suggest a new thread be made for the continuation of the now predominate debate.

And lo it is made.

[Truth To Power]

This "quote 1 sentence, respond one sentence" way of making posts is really not legible.

You mean it too clearly identifies the specific statements being refuted by each argument?

[Truth To Power]

More to the point, the thread has been drawn off-topic. I suggest everyone re-read the opening post.

My point is partly that restricting the appellation "libertarian" to the right-wing feudal libertarian model -- where government exists, but only to enforce landowners' ownership of others' rights to liberty -- is tendentious. Tim thinks (incorrectly, as it happens) that only socialism is true liberty. I'm explaining why the geolibertarian model is the only way to get close to true liberty.

[Truth To Power]

Von Mises argued that anyone "who wished to make calculations in regard to a complicated process of production will immediately notice whether he has worked more economically than others or not; if he finds, from reference to the exchange values obtaining in the market, that he will not be able to produce profitably, this shows that others understand how to make better use of the higher-order goods in question." [Op. Cit., pp. 97-8] However, this only shows whether someone has worked more profitably that others, not whether it is more economical. Market power automatically muddles this issue, as does the possibility of reducing the monetary cost of production by recklessly exploiting natural resources and labour, polluting, or otherwise passing costs onto others.

Externalities have been addressed.

Similarly, the issue of wealth inequality is important, for if the production of luxury goods proves more profitable than basic essentials for the poor does this show that producing the former is a better use of resources?

Yes, in that market. Of course, under capitalism, the poor have been deprived of their rights to liberty, so they can't make their preferences known in the market.

Unfortunately, because they have decided not to distinguish between land and capital, socialists must rush to blame the market, and private property rights in capital, for the evils that are primarily caused by the privilege of private property in land, secondarily by privilege in banking, IP, etc., and not at all by the market or private property in capital.

And, of course, the key issue of the relative strength of market power between workers and capitalists plays a key role in determining "profitably."

Again, this author doesn't understand how private property in land is the key to understanding the imbalance of power between workers and capitalists. When their liberty to use land has been removed, the landless must work on the landowner's or capitalist's terms, or starve. It's not a question of market power at all, any more than the imbalance of power between slaves and their owners is a question of market power. In both cases, their liberty rights have simply been removed by force. Of course they have no power. But it's not capitalists or ownership of capital that have done that, it's landowners. Socialists refuse to know that fact just as stubbornly as capitalists do.

Therefore, the claim that prices reflect real costs and so efficiency can be faulted on two levels.

Prices reflect scarcity, which is partly based on real costs and efficiency.

Moreover, without using another means of cost accounting instead of prices how can supporters of capitalism know there is a correlation between actual and price costs?

What is an "actual" cost? How could it be measured if not by price?

One can determine whether such a correlation exists by measuring one against the other.

No, because you need an "other" against which to measure the one, and there is no other.

If this cannot be done, then the claim that prices measure costs is a tautology (in that a price represents a cost and we know that it is a cost because it has a price).

Again, cost is only one contributing factor in price. It merely indicates a constraint on supply elasticity.

If it can be done, then we can calculate costs in some other sense than in market prices and so that argument that only market prices represent costs falls.

But we can't, so it doesn't.

Under communist-anarchism, the decision-making system used to determine the best use of resources is not more or less "efficient" than market allocation,

It is definitely less efficient, because it is missing most of the information.

because it goes beyond the market-based concept of "efficiency."

And substitutes a political one. Brilliant.

It does not seek to mimic the market but to do what the market fails to do.

I.e., reward inefficiency, incompetence and laziness.

This is important, because the market is not the rational system its defenders often claim.

It is rational in the sense that is reflects conditions accurately.

While reducing all decisions to one common factor is, without a doubt, an easy method of decision making, it also has serious side-effects because of its reductionistic basis (as discussed further in the next section).

"Reductionistic" is code for "scientific," rational," "objective" and "logical."

As Einstein once pointed out, things should be made as simple as possible but not simplistic.

The price system works better than the alternatives and is therefore unlikely to be too simple.

The market makes decision making simplistic and generates a host of irrationalities and dehumanising effects.

Again, socialists blame the market for problems caused by privilege.

It is likely that computers will be extensively used to take input data and process it into a suitable format. Indeed, many capitalist companies have software which records raw material inputs and finished product into databases and spreadsheets. Such software could be the basis of a libertarian communist decision making algorithm. Of course, currently such data is submerged beneath money and does not take into account externalities and the nature of the work involved (as would be the case in an anarchist society). However, this does not limit their potential or deny that communist use of such software can be used to inform decisions.

The data are price and cost data. Duh.

This, we must note, indicates that communist society would use various "aids to the mind" to help individuals and groups to make economic decisions.

See, "Animal Farm."

This would reduce the complexity of economic decision making, by allowing different options and resources to be compared to each other.

That's what prices do, more efficiently.

Hence the complexity of economic decision making in an economy with a multitude of goods can be reduced by the use of rational algorithmic procedures and methods to aid the process. Such tools would aid decision making, not dominate it as these decisions affect humans and the planet and should never be made automatically.

Never worked yet.

That being the case, a libertarian communist society would quickly develop the means of comparing the real impact of specific "higher order" goods in terms of their real costs (i.e. the amount of labour, energy and raw materials used plus any social and ecological costs).

No it wouldn't, because that is impossible.

As we noted above, this essential decision making information would have to be recorded and communicated in a communist society and used to evaluate different options using an agreed methods of comparison. This methods of comparison differs drastically from the price mechanism as it recognises that mindless, automatic calculation is impossible in social choices. Such choices have an unavoidable ethical and political dimension simply because they involve other human beings and the environment. As von Mises himself acknowledges, monetary calculation does not capture such dimensions. We, therefore, need to employ practical judgement in making choices aided by a full understanding of the real social and ecological costs involved using, of course, the appropriate "aids to the mind."

IOW, the Commissars will decide for everyone else.

In addition, a decentralised system will by necessity have to compare less alternatives as local knowledge will eliminate many of the options available. As von Mises acknowledged, a "household economy" can make economic decisions without money. Being more decentralised than capitalism, a libertarian communist economy will, therefore, be able to do so as well, particularly when it uses the appropriate "aids to the mind" to evaluate external resources versus locally produced ones. Given that an anarchist society would be complex and integrated, such aids would be essential but, due to its decentralised nature, it need not embrace the price mechanism. It can evaluate the efficiency of its decisions by looking at the real costs involved to society rather than embrace the distorted system of costing explicit in the price mechanism (as Kropotkin once put it, "if we analyse price" we must "make a distinction between its different elements" in order to make rational allocation and investment decisions).

I.e., the Commissars will wave their magic wands (i.e., their whips and guns), and the rest will obey their orders.

It may be needed in emergencies.

The road to totalitarianism...

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

But he has more capital than his employees? What is stopping him from hiring goons and taking over other people's property and re-establishing capitalism?

Democratic government, whose rightful function and duty is to secure and reconcile everyone's equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

Which, of course, by it's very nature cannot be overthrown or corrupted by capitalists.

No, it can't, because capitalists per se would have no power to do so.

There's always someone who wants political power -- socialists maybe even more than capitalists. Keeping them at bay is not automatic in any system.

So to your mind, there was no overthrow of democracy by the capitalist funded Hitler and the current "democracy" in America isn't a corporate facade?

Unlike you, I have some understanding of HOW Hitler overthrew democracy (hint: privilege, especially landowner and bankster privilege, created the massive injustice and resentment that made it possible), and how the corporate elite have made democracy a sham in the USA (again: follow the money, and you soon find privilege).

Sorry, I thought I had made clear that in order to fulfill its legitimate functions, identified above, government must administer possession and use of land so as to secure every citizen's exclusive free tenure on enough of the available good land to provide access to economic opportunity, and require just compensation to the community from those who exclude others from more than that.

In what way are you a Libertarian then?

In advocating and defending liberty.

LOL! "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Each other and to a lesser extent the public. I could ask the same question back at you.

I don't propose to give them power. You do.

Your workers are going to spend all their time voting for committees, no time actually producing anything.

Tripe. This is not direct democracy, where everyone votes on every issue. Thats what the delegates and committees are for. It really doesn't take that long to cast a few votes and attend a few review sessions.

I've seen how that works in unions. The parliamentary pirates take power, and that's the end of democracy.

The amount of pointless meetings that a major part of business culture take up far more time than this would take.

Says the man with no experience whatever in business.

I have never advocated no state. The state -- government -- is the only possible way people's equal individual rights to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor can be secured and reconciled.

Geo-"libertarianism", did you say? I must have read it wrong.

At least that would be consistent....

The small democratic socialist experiments have had similar problems.

Your lack of knowledge on the subject does you no credit. Do some reading on it please.

Oh, I have, don't worry.

Of course there is: the difference in their positions is what makes the exchange possible, and both desired by and beneficial to both of them, and to society. You just refuse to know the fact that the only reason wage labor looks like slavery under capitalism is that the alternatives have been narrowed to one -- starvation -- by the institution of private property in land. If people are free to access the economic advantages that government, the community and nature provide without having to pay the extortion demands of rich, greedy, parasitic landowners for permission to do so, they have no reason to consent to disadvantageous terms of employment. They can deal with capital owners as equals, and get the full value of their contributions to production.

That sounds lovely. Pity that, in reality, the capitalists would seize the land back from the state immediately and capitalism would be returned.

How? Without privilege, they would have no power.

So go and earn some.

Why?

Because that is the only way you can obtain a valid right to own it.

Of course it has. Almost every parent has given capital to their children, and mostly it was justly owned.

Oh-ho! And has the child earned the capital? No? Then what right does it have to it? None what so ever!

Wrong. They have a right their parent voluntarily transferred to them, just as a man might have a right to enjoy his girlfriend's company, as she has chosen to bestow it on him. The relevant right is hers, not his, but her exercise of it results in a right for him, too. Certainly no one else has any right to enjoy her company. It is her right to give it as and to whom she wishes. Similarly in the case of gifts, the right is the giver's, not the recipient's, as the giver could also decide on some other disposition of their rightful property.

Thus it should be confiscated and distributed to everyone (including the child) equally.

Oh, really? Do you really believe that the recipients of all voluntary gifts have no right to them, so they should be confiscated and distributed to everyone equally? Do you also think a man has no right to enjoy his girlfriend's companionship, and she should have to grant it to everyone equally, not just the one she chooses to receive it? REALLY??

After this comes various economic arguments already dealt with.

But ineffectually....

No. All it does is discourage competent people from offering their services and taking entrepreneurial risks.

If they are so worried about the punishment for crime, they're not competent, are they?

"Crime"? You clearly haven't the slightest idea what is involved in managing a productive enterprise or capital to obtain a positive return. None.

[jango1985]

Libertarianism is not an economic system! By forcing an economic model your breaking both rules of Libertarianism one of them twice. You stopped being individualistic you did economics with other people, you stopped being individualistic when you made other people share your economics values, and you forced other people. Once you start trying to put your money values onto other people and stop minding your own business you cease being a Libertarian and start being aggressive economist.

This is a Survey for your own use only.

a. Pick your preferred solution(s) for violence: Fascism, Anarchy, Libertarianism, Pacifist.

b. Pick your Economics: Capitalism, Mixed Economy, Socialism, Communism.

c. Pick your Governance: Common law, Civil law, Anarchy, Democracy.

I think each is worthy of its place in political science and is worthy of a place in humanity.

[quetzalcoatl]

I have a particular two-pronged way of looking at political ideology.

First, I look at any available historical instance. Issues to consider are resilience, robustness, and adaptability. If a system has failed once, it is likely to fail again. If an ideology with failed historical examples is to be advanced, a thorough and honest forensic analysis is a prerequisite.

Second, I look at an ideology's foundation. The main issue is how well it fits in with our knowledge of evolved human behavior, both at the individual and social levels.

Libertarianism fails the second filter. It does recognize human tendencies towards autonomy, but it fails to effectively deal with human social organization. Human social behavior does not arise from free interaction of individuals. Period. Hierarchical social organization and collective action are hardwired.

The Manichean individualist/statist worldview is philosophically idealist, and untenable.