[mikema63]

How would you impose redistribution? How would you decide how much and to whom?

If you try to start from a completely level playing field where everyone is equal, you ultimately must have no one own anything or have everyone own everything collectively. Or perhaps create a distinction between personal and private property and give the workers equal share of the busk rages andcapital they work under.

In any of these cases you have killed capitalism, and you would have needed coercion to do it.

[AFAIK]

How would you impose redistribution? How would you decide how much and to whom?

I'm not a dictator. Societies would have to work that out for themselves. People would have to be pragmatic and willing to compromise for it to work.

[mikema63]

But society is controlled by the people who've already stolen the wealth! Their the people who won't want to redistribute a damned penny or an iota of power!

[AFAIK]

But society is controlled by the people who've already stolen the wealth! Their the people who won't want to redistribute a damned penny or an iota of power!

Are you generalising or do you believe that all wealthy people form a homogenous group?

[mikema63]

Do I believe that classes have general class interests due to their class, Interests that the share by virtue of being in that relative position which defines their class?

Yes, yes I do.

It's similar to saying that scientists, as a group, have a shared interest in seeing an increase of science funding. There might be one scientist somewhere who disagrees, but as a collective group they will push for more science funding.

[AFAIK]

I'd like to increase social mobility. My great-grandfather used his surplus wages to start a business. The business was successful so he became an employer in order to expand. We should make it easier for people to pursue their goals. I think this can be achieved through reform rather than revolution.

--It's similar to saying that scientists, as a group, have a shared interest in seeing an increase of science funding. There might be one scientist somewhere who disagrees, but as a collective group they will push for more science funding.--

Resources are scarce and require rationing. Some scientists may feel that the International Space Station is a luxury and should be given lower priority than R&D for a malaria vaccine. Surely they are broad minded enough to acknowledge that a road or train may be more deserving of funding than the malaria research.

[SecretSquirrel]

If you're an anarchist and truly believe in nonaggression and noncoercion, then you cannot support redistribution or collectivism. You would need two heads to hold such mutually contradictory beliefs.

Since most "anarcho" communists are not two-headed, I am forced to conclude that they don't actually believe in non-coercion. Coercion is OK for them so long as the right people are in charge!

Of course I may be missing something

Maybe two headed commie anarchists exist. And maybe many are one headed but simply confused.

[AFAIK]

The redistribution would be similar to restitution. Bill Gates made a huge fortune thanks in part to state enforcement of IP and regulations that produced biases in his favour. The wealthy have greater access to and influence over government so they should compensate those who were held back by legislation they penned.

[Heisenberg]

Are you generalising or do you believe that all wealthy people form a homogenous group?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to believe that libertarians and non-libertarians can never be reconciled, because libertarians look at people in isolation and extrapolate (i.e. make inductive arguments), while pretty much everyone else uses deductive arguments. To give an example: a wealthy person, taken in isolation, is not a "bad" person. He may, as you say, give a lot of his wealth to charitable causes, etc. However, an economic system in which very, very few people can become "wealthy" is bad, because it leaves the great mass of people behind. This isn't a personal attack on the individual wealthy person. It is simply an acknowledgement that human interaction is considerably more complicated than libertarians claim. In other words, society exists, and any serious political discussion needs to take this into account.

[AFAIK]

I've been reflecting on the differences in opinion and have come to similar conclusions, Heisenberg. Some of the posts on the libertarian board read like they were written by robots.

There are situations in which labour relations are highly exploitative, even to the point of being materially no better from slavery. But from a libertarian perspective a person who starves due to being unable or unwilling to satisfy the desires of a capitalist died of natural causes whilst the slave who declines an order is murdered. Here is the same argument in regard to taxation;
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/20 ... t-slavery/

I don't want to follow the NAP in all situations. It shouldn't be totalitarian.

[Coyote]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to believe that libertarians and non-libertarians can never be reconciled, because libertarians look at people in isolation and extrapolate (i.e. make inductive arguments), while pretty much everyone else uses deductive arguments. To give an example: a wealthy person, taken in isolation, is not a "bad" person. He may, as you say, give a lot of his wealth to charitable causes, etc. However, an economic system in which very, very few people can become "wealthy" is bad, because it leaves the great mass of people behind. This isn't a personal attack on the individual wealthy person. It is simply an acknowledgement that human interaction is considerably more complicated than libertarians claim. In other words, society exists, and any serious political discussion needs to take this into account.

Yes, but libertarians do not advocate for an economic system where very few people can become wealthy. We seek to advance a system where most everyone becomes wealthier, and where there are few limiting factors in the pursuit of wealth.

Take a look at the Gilded Age. The world has never seen such an explosion of wealth. And I'm not talking about the Robber Barons. I'm talking about the working class citizens of the USA. That was an almost unbelievable skyrocketing in the quality of human life.

And we'd like a better system than was in place at that time, even!

[mikema63]

That you've advanced the guilded age as one of prosperity for the working class is amusing.

How are you defining wealth?

[Heisenberg]

Yes, but libertarians do not advocate for an economic system where very few people can become wealthy. We seek to advance a system where most everyone becomes wealthier, and where there are few limiting factors in the pursuit of wealth.

I accept that this is the libertarian ideal. However, the economic system that has resulted from libertarian policies (i.e. neoliberalism, as advocated by Milton Friedman and the "Chicago Boys") does not produce these results in practice. Ultimately, the entire history of capitalism shows that it isn't a system compatible with the non-aggression principle and voluntary exchange.

Take a look at the Gilded Age. The world has never seen such an explosion of wealth. And I'm not talking about the Robber Barons. I'm talking about the working class citizens of the USA. That was an almost unbelievable skyrocketing in the quality of human life.

This was a consequence of industrialisation, rather than free-market capitalism. Quality of life also improved during Stalinist Russia's industrialisation period, but that doesn't mean that communism is necessarily the "best" system. You can't really apply the economic policies of an industrialising society to an industrialised society, and expect it to be relevant.

[Coyote]

That you've advanced the guilded age as one of prosperity for the working class is amusing.

How are you defining wealth?

By any reasonable definition. How are you defining it?

[Coyote]

I accept that this is the libertarian ideal. However, the economic system that has resulted from libertarian policies (i.e. neoliberalism, as advocated by Milton Friedman and the "Chicago Boys") does not produce these results in practice. Ultimately, the entire history of capitalism shows that it isn't a system compatible with the non-aggression principle and voluntary exchange.

Well, Milton and the "Chicago Boys" may have had it right.

But I don't subscribe to their theories, I don't consider the Chicago School to be "Libertarian", and I adamantly deny that a libertarian economy has ever been put into place on this earth, at any level greater than the local...

[Heisenberg]

But I don't subscribe to their theories, I don't consider the Chicago School to be "Libertarian", and I adamantly deny that a libertarian economy has ever been put into place on this earth, at any level greater than the local...

The problem I have with this is that, if a libertarian economy has never existed beyond the local level, that suggests it is not workable on a greater scale. Or, it is a useless prism through which to analyse the current world order. Basically, I believe that ideologies are defined by their practical results. Free-market capitalism, where it has developed, is nothing like libertarians say it should be. The only argument that libertarians can then make to defend their ideal is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. It becomes utterly useless to debate then, because libertarians start making ludicrous claims like "America is not capitalist". That says to me that the libertarian view of what capitalism is, and how it actually works, is deeply flawed.

[lucky]

I agree with Heisenberg that the whole "libertarianism has never been implemented" argument presented by Coyote and Eran and others is ridiculous. It's a bit like saying "there has never been a truly rich person" or "there has never been a truly tall person" in order to avoid backing some claims about rich people or tall people with evidence.

Libertarianism is an ideology with many interrelated threads and ideas, just like socialism, feminism, nationalism, etc. It's not a binary, "yes or no", state of the world, it's a set of political ideas.

Now, I disagree with Heisenberg about the results of "libertarian" (would have been simply called "liberal" historically, with the exception of the modern US) changes in the world thus far. I think they have had an enormously positive impact on the economies of the world historically and especially today, we observe an unprecedented speed of economic development in the developing world (especially Asia and Eastern Europe) thanks to their embracing parts of the liberal / capitalist / libertarian ideology.

[Nunt]

It becomes utterly useless to debate then, because libertarians start making ludicrous claims like "America is not capitalist". That says to me that the libertarian view of what capitalism is, and how it actually works, is deeply flawed.

The only systems that have existed are hybrids. The USA is not pure capitalist, nor is it pure socialist. In a mixed economy it is important to find out exactly which effects different policies have. For example, many people aren't satisfied with healthcare in the US. Why is this? You will find free-market elements in pre-obamacare health care but at the same time you will also find a lot of government intervention in that sector.

The fault that many people make is to assume that because the USA has a relatively free economy, its problems in health care must be caused by this free economy. But there is no guarantee this is true. The problems may as well be caused by the significant government intervention.

[Heisenberg]

Government intervention does not equal socialism. The United States of America absolutely is capitalist. The definition of socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, while the definition of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. It has nothing to do with an arbitrary level of government intervention in the economy: it is possible to have "state capitalism" or "market socialism", for example. As has been said before on this forum, the development of capitalism as it exists would not have been possible without the assistance of the state. That doesn't make it any less "capitalist".

[Technology]

Yup. Mixed economy in particular relates to public sector vs private sector, but since socialism in the sense of collective ownership of the means of production is a totalistic goal, the public sector would need to pretty much be the formal economy for it to exist. The mixing in a mixed economy (in reality, every economy, but we're talking about theoretical concepts) is supposed to be between central planning and market planning, not between socialism and capitalism.

Of course, it depends on which definition of socialism you use. Marxists don't have a monopoly on the word (unlike communism pretty much). Really it's so malleable as to be useless. Hitler, Gordon Brown, Stalin, Obama, and Gadaffi are all socialists by different definitions of the by now extremely wishy washy word. The Marxist sense of socialism is much more precise because it is absolutist, and the socialist mode must be followed by the communist one, so collectivization in the economy must take place in Marxist socialism.