[Potemkin]

Good point. All of those atrocities would never have been legal under a minarchist government.

Why not? And if not, then your ‘minarchist’ government would have been duty-bound to enforce the law by ending those atrocities. This would have required massive government intervention in the workings of civil society, far beyond anything seen in America even at the height of the Civil War or Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’. In other words, as soon as it declared those atrocities to be illegal, it would have ceased to be a minarchist government.

[Unthinking Majority]

It seems to me that this is only possible with the power of the state (which is always corrupt). You say regulated, and yet regulations protect the richest and impede the poorest.
Sorry I don't seem to share your view on regulation and protections the state supposedly provides (and state sponsored/corporate media also tell you to think this)

Employment laws, landlord/tenant laws, food & drug regulations etc protect the little guy. Pick up a history book.

[pugsville]

It seems to me that this is only possible with the power of the state (which is always corrupt). You say regulated, and yet regulations protect the richest and impede the poorest.
Sorry I don't seem to share your view on regulation and protections the state supposedly provides (and state sponsored/corporate media also tell you to think this)

Well look at the history of capitalism,. Without regulation it will burn the planet and society to the ground. How much profit is enough? It;s not wither someone is in society's long term interests or wise, it's just will tit make money for me right now.

It;s objectively worse than government corruption ind imperfections,.

The regulation and government is imperfect does not destroy it's value.

[wat0n]

Governments often also act against society's long term interest, focusing squarely on short term political interests.

Governments can also turn their environment into a wasteland, the example of how the Soviets basically dried the Aral Sea up is fairly well known.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he government still has its role in society, but they need to take a step back and let the people transact as they please.

'Transact' implies the paramount importance of *exchange values*, meaning pre-existing wealth and/or private property, which is inherently *elitist*. The status quo of capitalist economics favors *those with wealth*. You're calling for freedom for *wealth*, which has already existed for *centuries* now.

At a time when governments are being publicly called to account for their oppressive, socially destructive nationalist past practices, politics should be addressing the *people* aspect regarding past nationalist national atrocities.


Namibia - The Price of Genocide

Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... a-genocide


---

Many confuse minarchists with Anarchists who believe that the government has no role and should not have any purpose in maintaining checks and balances. Anarchists believe that you should be responsible for defending your property, enforcing your own laws, and backing up your own contracts with as much or as little force as necessary.

The term 'minarchist' is obviously *contrived* and is meant to co-opt the *anti-capitalist* politics of anarchists, who, by definition, call for workers power and *no government* -- not that I'm an anarchist.

You're misrepresenting anti-capitalist politics, like that of anarchists, so as to lend 'branding' / name-recognition to *your* contrived politics of similarly-sounding 'minarchism', or the freedom of wealth.

Taxation is another big issue addressed by minarchists and libertarians alike. Some support taxation because they believe it’s a necessary evil to prevent “free riders.” Others strongly oppose it and think that it’s wrong for the people to have to pay for government funding in a free society.

Ayn Rand is one of the most notable opponents of taxation, but she also believes that the removal of tax should occur gradually so as not to cripple the economic society. This also brings up the issue of whether or not a minarchy would require the people to pay tax or fees for the services provided.

If you want a nation-state to defend the rights of wealth, then it has to be *paid* for (since politicians / bureaucrats don't produce commodities for society, while society has to supply *them* with produced commodities), and those who pay-in will then argue for proportionate political power in return for their pay-in. Discuss.

The idea of the "minimal State" seems more like a broad principle to follow than a specific form of government.

Whatever is "minimal" isn't all that clear and doesn't need to be stable over time. However, the idea that the government should generally try to let civil society handle itself is not necessarily a bad one.

Either there's hands-on government, or else there *isn't* -- if civil society under capitalism could handle itself without plunging into Medici-family-type warfare (or NATO proxy warfare), then government wouldn't be needed in the first place.

But as soon as just *one* person objects to their own share of the pie, then the larger questions of exchange-values, wealth, private property, and rights enter into play -- it's wealth-factionalism, and it has to be administered-over by a superior civil power, meaning bourgeois government.


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

Employment laws, landlord/tenant laws, food & drug regulations etc protect the little guy. Pick up a history book.

Well look at the history of capitalism,. Without regulation it will burn the planet and society to the ground. How much profit is enough? It;s not wither someone is in society's long term interests or wise, it's just will tit make money for me right now.

It;s objectively worse than government corruption ind imperfections,.

The regulation and government is imperfect does not destroy it's value.

The Progressive Era (1896–1916) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States of America that spanned the 1890s to World War I.[1] The main objectives of the Progressive movement were addressing problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Social reformers were primarily middle-class citizens who targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office, a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies through methods such as trustbusting and corporations through antitrust laws, which were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. They also advocated for new government roles and regulations, and new agencies to carry out those roles, such as the FDA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era

[pugsville]

Governments often also act against society's long term interest, focusing squarely on short term political interests.

Governments can also turn their environment into a wasteland, the example of how the Soviets basically dried the Aral Sea up is fairly well known.

Yes governments are flawed but should we abandon the idea that there should be any institution that is even meant to try and act in society's long term interests?

While there have been massive failures and truy reprehensible governments, many governments have achieved lasting good. ANd egnerally when they have not it;s the effects of capitalism which stops them.

That just removing all restraint from capitalist corporations will actually produce results that are in society;s long term interests? The Historical evidence is not good,

[ckaihatsu]

Roots

In the American experience, increased financialization occurred concomitant with the rise of neoliberalism and the free-market doctrines of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics in the late twentieth century. Various academic economists of that period worked out ideological and theoretical rationalizations and analytical approaches to facilitate the increased deregulation of financial systems and banking.

In a 1998 article, Michael Hudson discussed previous economists who saw the problems that result from financialization.[5] Problems were identified by John A. Hobson (financialization enabled Britain's imperialism), Thorstein Veblen (it acts in opposition to rational engineers), Herbert Somerton Foxwell (Britain was not using finance for industry as well as Europe), and Rudolf Hilferding (Germany was surpassing Britain and the United States in banking that supports industry).

At the same 1998 conference in Oslo, Erik S. Reinert and Arno Mong Daastøl in "Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism" provided an extensive bibliography on past writings, and prophetically asked[6]

In the United States, probably more money has been made through the appreciation of real estate than in any other way. What are the long-term consequences if an increasing percentage of savings and wealth, as it now seems, is used to inflate the prices of already existing assets - real estate and stocks - instead of to create new production and innovation?

Deregulation and Accelerated Growth

In the 1970s, the financial sector comprised slightly more than 3% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP] of the U.S. economy,[11] while total financial assets of all investment banks (that is, securities broker-dealers) made up less than 2% of U.S. GDP.[12] The period from the New Deal through the 1970s has been referred to as the era of "boring banking" because banks that took deposits and made loans to individuals were prohibited from engaging in investments involving creative financial engineering and investment banking.[13]

U.S. federal deregulation in the 1980s of many types of banking practices paved the way for the rapid growth in the size, profitability and political power of the financial sector. Such financial sector practices included creating private mortgage-backed securities,[14] and more speculative approaches to creating and trading derivatives based on new quantitative models of risk and value,.[15] Wall Street ramped up pressure on the United States Congress for more deregulation, including for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, a New Deal law that, among other things, prohibits a bank that accepts deposits from functioning as an investment bank since the latter entails greater risks.[16]

As a result of this rapid financialization, the financial sector scaled up vastly in the span of a few decades. In 1978, the financial sector comprised 3.5% of the American economy (that is, it made up 3.5% of U.S. GDP), but by 2007 it had reached 5.9%. Profits in the American financial sector in 2009 were six times higher on average than in 1980, compared with non-financial sector profits, which on average were just over twice what they were in 1980. Financial sector profits grew by 800%, adjusted for inflation, from 1980 to 2005. In comparison with the rest of the economy, U.S. nonfinancial sector profits grew by 250% during the same period. For context, financial sector profits from the 1930s until 1980 grew at the same rate as the rest of the American economy.[17]

Assets of sectors of the United States

By way of illustration of the increased power of the financial sector over the economy, in 1978 commercial banks held $1.2 trillion (million million) in assets, which is equivalent to 53% of the GDP of the United States. By year's end 2007, commercial banks held $11.8 trillion in assets, which is equivalent to 84% of U.S. GDP.

Effects on the economy

In the wake of the 2007-2010 financial crisis, a number of economists and others began to argue that financial services had become too large a sector of the US economy, with no real benefit to society accruing from the activities of increased financialization.[19]

In February 2009, white-collar criminologist and former senior financial regulator William K. Black listed the ways in which the financial sector harms the real economy. Black wrote, "The financial sector functions as the sharp canines that the predator state uses to rend the nation. In addition to siphoning off capital for its own benefit, the finance sector misallocates the remaining capital in ways that harm the real economy in order to reward already-rich financial elites harming the nation."[20]

Emerging countries have also tried to develop their financial sector, as an engine of economic development. A typical aspect is the growth of microfinance or microcredit, as part of financial inclusion.[21]

Bruce Bartlett summarized several studies in a 2013 article indicating that financialization has adversely affected economic growth and contributes to income inequality and wage stagnation for the middle class.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

[Pants-of-dog]

It seems to me that this is only possible with the power of the state (which is always corrupt).

All of capitalism "is only possible with the power of the state".

You say regulated, and yet regulations protect the richest and impede the poorest.
Sorry I don't seem to share your view on regulation and protections the state supposedly provides (and state sponsored/corporate media also tell you to think this)

I think the word "regulation" has become a meme to many, divorced from reality. To this end, I would like to know how you define "regulation", please.

I would also appreciate it if you could provide a concrete example of how regulations are used to empower the rich and oppress the poor. Thank you.

This seems to be a real bugbear of yours. The fact that on a politics forum, where a people of a particular view are sharing a particular view on how things could be organised, this exact scenario hasn't happened before in the past.
This somehow invalidates the idea, make it worthless.
In context, this is a sub alongside many others. Ideas such as communism and fascism which have occurred in history and resulted in untold death and destruction.
Democracy and social democracy, in their various forms have also happened, and yet there is so much improvement still to be had with ongoing corruption and resource waste.
It seems to me that libertarianism including minarchist and anarchist variants, are certainly worthy of discussion, among others.

I do think it is worth asking if minarchism is inherently unrealistic, and this may be why minarchism has never existed.

[Saeko]

How would a minarchist state guarantee that it always has enough food, weapons, fuel, etc. in case of (possibly total) war without serious intervention in the economy both nationally and internationally?

[Saeko]

[DELETE]

[wat0n]

Yes governments are flawed but should we abandon the idea that there should be any institution that is even meant to try and act in society's long term interests?

While there have been massive failures and truy reprehensible governments, many governments have achieved lasting good. ANd egnerally when they have not it;s the effects of capitalism which stops them.

That just removing all restraint from capitalist corporations will actually produce results that are in society;s long term interests? The Historical evidence is not good,

Of course the above fact isn't an argument for shutting down governments. But by that measure the myriad of problems of private businesses are not by themselves a reason to do away with capitalism.

As I said, minarchism is more like a broad principle to manage a government than a concrete form of government precisely because it's not all that clear what a minimal government is. I do believe it is part of a minimal government to regulate economic activity to deal with market failures, but I'm guessing people like @mum or @libertasbella may disagree.

More generally, a minimal government nowadays would definitely be fairly large, relative to historical precedent, in practice.

[ckaihatsu]

it is part of a minimal government to regulate economic activity to deal with market failures,

And this is the starting point for the left-wing critique of government's current role(s) -- that it is generally too much guns-instead-of-butter.

I'll remind that all government / administration is all *overhead* -- it has to be paid-for, whether that's for corporate banking bailouts, or for the U.S. empire's military, or whatever. If the government activity is concerned with matters-of-state, then that's all internal 'palace intrigues' so-to-speak (like Trump's attempted coup), and doesn't necessarily add to the economy *or* to people's well-being.

Also, more about financialization:

Effects on political system

Some, such as former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson, have argued that the increased power and influence of the financial services sector had fundamentally transformed American politics, endangering representative democracy itself through undue influence on the political system and regulatory capture by the financial oligarchy.[24]

In the 1990s vast monetary resources flowing to a few "megabanks," enabled the financial oligarchy to achieve greater political power in the United States. Wall Street firms largely succeeded in getting the American political system and regulators to accept the ideology of financial deregulation and the legalization of more novel financial instruments.[25] Political power was achieved by contributions to political campaigns, by financial industry lobbying, and through a revolving door that positioned financial industry leaders in key politically appointed policy making and regulatory roles and that rewarded sympathetic senior government officials with super high-paying Wall Street jobs after their government service.[26] The financial sector was the leading contributor to political campaigns since at least the 1990s, contributing more than $150 million in 2006. (This far exceeded the second largest political contributing industry, the healthcare industry, which contributed $100 million in 2006.) From 1990 to 2006, the securities and investment industry increased its political contributions six-fold, from an annual $12 to $72 million. The financial sector contributed $1.7 billion to political campaigns from 1998 to 2006, and spent an additional $3.4 billion on political lobbying, according to one estimate.[27]

Policy makers such as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan called for self-regulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial ... cal_system

[pugsville]

Of course the above fact isn't an argument for shutting down governments. But by that measure the myriad of problems of private businesses are not by themselves a reason to do away with capitalism.

As I said, minarchism is more like a broad principle to manage a government than a concrete form of government precisely because it's not all that clear what a minimal government is. I do believe it is part of a minimal government to regulate economic activity to deal with market failures, but I'm guessing people like @mum or @libertasbella may disagree.

More generally, a minimal government nowadays would definitely be fairly large, relative to historical precedent, in practice.

It's;s reckless ideology based on unsound foundations whose main function is smoke screen for billionaires to fleece the rest of society.

Useful idiots.

[wat0n]

That sounds more like a tantrum than an argument.

And one that isn't even all that well-founded, there are plenty of historical examples where businesses would actually like a big government... As long as it's captured by them. Especially in Latin America.