Topic: Capitalism. - page 4. (Read 6902 times)

This makes some sense.  If trade is mutually beneficial, the economy ought to increase.  When it isn't it decreases.  Over time this also includes the non-trading third party that share the environment, which if harmed decreases the economy too, yes?  It doesn't seem to necessitate an unsustainable growth or even any growth, and the growth is just a measure of the participant's good faith dealing.

Perhaps the political class needs it to increase to win elections and so may sacrifice long term for the term of the next election important to them.

Hard to decide if uncomfortable facts are intentionally ignored, or if i'm not being direct enough.  Phrases like "reduce the burden [on] government" and "worry about drunk drivers" only add to my confusion, so i'll highlight some points, betting on the off-chance i was misunderstood:

There are no "burdens" for governments.  At least not in the sense of "something which must be done, but they'd rather do without."  Those "burdens" are governments' lifeblood & raison d'etre.  That's what governments *do,* they live & breathe the stuff.  Lightening one set of "burdens" will just drive governments to create new ones.  One war fizzles out?  Start a new one: on drugs, on another country, on terror.  Most grownups know that most wars aren't started to be won.  They are nurtured and lovingly tended to by intelligent men so that they may continue to be integral workings of our modern economy.  

Knowing this is enough neither to stop wars nor makes them unnecessary. Just like knowing governments are motivated by their own, and not your, self-interest is enough to make governments disappear.  

*Take this as a margin note, meant to put my other posts in perspective.  It is not intended to be factual, falsifiable, or an attempt at logical derivation.  Simply to shed some light.  I hope this disclaimer is enough to avoid another pointless tangent.

I don't want a progressively increasing economy.  I want the right economy.  The best way to have that is to take a 'hands off' approach, because politicos really don't know as much as they think they do.


I don't deny this either.  I don't know anyone who has besides your claims that someone has.  I just don't find such a society to be ideal.  If you do, why are you still here?  There certainly are groups within the US and elsewhere that prefer the kind of "natural" lifestyle you think is appropriate, and some of them will even accept you.  You just have to find them.  Or create your own.

The obvious answer is that you really don't believe that you would be better off without modern industry and/or the Internet, or you would be doing so.  You certainly are still free enough to do so, despite you claims to the contrary.  It costs you almost nothing to go hiking into the wilderness, and 'camp' in public parks.  There have literally been cases of people that have been found camping in national parks that have been there for years.  Camping isn't illegal, yet.  People have done it in city parks, although that is certainly illegal.  I've even seen a tent that is shaped to resemble a car, put up in a city parking spot.  I've seen people camp in freeway medians; which if you have ever driven though Kentucky, you would realize is not very difficult to do undetected.  Learn to set up trappin snares, there are such books in the public library, and you would never even have to 'hunt' for your food.  There are tribes in Africa that get most of their food from simple snares, because they still use an atlatl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) instead of the more effective bow and arrow for hunting.

The problem which the Anarchocapitalists is that they want two systems which mutually exclude each other: Anarchy and a progressively increasing economy. They deny that stateless communities beyond the state (rain forest) don't increase production. They produce the same amount as they did thousands of years ago, because they are not enforced to produce ever increasing surpluses. That's enforced and needed in collectivist societies exclusively.

There are technical advances that reduce the burden of government.  Google's car tech is one.  Fewer police, less worry about drunk drivers, insurance issues, etc.

Bitcoin is another such.  There isn't much need for a government to protect my Bitcoin stash, I think I have that handled.
It is shared with those whom I trust, whether they are consanguineous or not.

Not sure which part of my post you're addressing.

On the transports, why not skip to the google autonomous car mods.  The only element that could be arguably considered government are the GPS satellites, which if they were private instead could be something to reduce the cost and improve quality of satellite radio by sharing a Low Orbit platform.  They would be on sale today if not for government regulation.

Some of the participants of this thread, may wish to investigate a new forum at http://crossingborders.board-directory.net/.

Hope to see you there.

Lolz.  Another freeloader project sucking misguided government grants "Unimodal hired a NASA subcontractor to build simulations of the vehicle and dynamics using funding from a US DOT grant." --your wikip link.


Lolz. Wholly owned by Transport for London (TfL), which "is the local government body..."  Another ugly statist institution. 


Yes, we can, some things, and certainly not often.


An absurd & unfounded assumption.  If non-statist societies are as successful as you believe them to be, they should be commonplace.  Sadly, they're nonexistent.  Remember, you're not trying to simply show these (thus far undefined by their proponents -- tighten up, guys!) stateless societies are metaphysically possible to create, you must show them to thrive, defend themselves against & encroach on existent states.¹

1. Unless you plan to start your stateless society in outer space, unclaimed & of no interest to modern states, it will have to encroach on existent states.

The only economic philosophy that respects the right of people to transact bitcoins without interference is capitalism.

Every currency is vulnerable to Capitalism, it's only the people who use the currency who can prevent it.

All that federally "owned" land, particularly out west, is the perfect example of the American form of communism.  Undeveloped land is the most basic of resources, required for any form of industrial production I can think of.  By definition, communism is public ownership of the means of production.  There has never been any claim that those resources actually need to be in production to qualify for the definition.

Most of what is "public" is less public than the private open spaces.
Some have suggested that Nixon's "environmental movement" took vast amounts of private land for the government away from the owners for environmental reasons, and essentially so that they minerals and oil and trees could be sold to back the national debt, when we left Bretton Woods.
So ironically, the more that is public, the more funding there is for the war engines.

Gee, thanks MoonShadow. I was hoping he wouldn't bother googling and wouldn't find out that all those "crazy future ideas" I had were things that have already been thought up and done. Guess I don't have much imagination either 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran




http://www.septa.org/fares/pass/independence.html

BTW, roads were never public land or publicly maintained before the foundation of the USPS, which provided funds and legal status for the public development of "postal roads".  Today, all roads are postal roads.  Makes one wonder how we ever had roads before the USPS.

http://matternet.us/

http://www.incrediblehlq.com/


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/10great/2009-09-03-apple-farms_N.htm

http://www.huberwinery.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Consumer_%26_Industrial#Appliance_Park

GE's appliance park was the original 'industrial park'.  How did it get it's name, might you ask?  From the 50 acres of company maintained parkspace on the East side of the employee parking lot provided to the public free of charge.  Eventually the city parks department took over maintaince of the privately owned park, and since then portions have been sold off to other companies; so little of the original park remains, but my point is that we used to do things this way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Estate

The Biltmore estate is ran as a private park, but there is some fees depending upon what exactly you want to do.  Walking the gardens is still free.  And yes, it's still privately owned.

http://bernheim.org/

Berhiem Forest is a private park of huge proportions in Kentucky that is as large as many state parks.  It was priavely oned once, and now it's owned and maintained by a fountation that the original owner stipulated in his will shall forever be a public park, and shall forever be free to access.  The Bernhiem foundation does receive some state tax funds indirectly via state agriculture education subsidies, as it's the primary location for aborists to study in Kentucky.  True to their word, all of the forest is hike accessible during daylight summer hours; but there are portions that are so difficult to access, no one besides the arborists are known to have ventured there in years.

My point is this, we can and often do these very public things privately today.  Whether or not these privately owned public spaces accept public funds today or not, they aren't dependent on the support, or likley even the existance, of the state.

So you imagine the future with a radically different sociopolitical structure, but you imagine everything in it will be the same as things are now? Why not:
- Public transportation replaced with suspended rails going through the city and country, with pods, that you can rent, automatically traveling under them to preset destinations (patented idea, replaces road maintenance with something much cheaper). Subscriptions to road areas in the same way that you can buy a London metro ticket that gives you free ride within limited areas. Much more focus on teleworking from home. Personal VTOL aircraft to avoid roads altogether, flown with GPS and computer avoidance assistance.
- Community supported and sponsored parks, with gardens grown by shared owners or even produce by companies that want to show off their designer fruits and vegetables.
- Private security firms that get paid to keep communities safe, figuring out it's easier to pay that homeless bum some money to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, than to keep having to haul him away. People's income almost doubling in size due to lack of 45% tax means they can afford to support themselves, and have spare cash to donate as well. Saving money actually pays off due to deflation, so the culture saves instead of borrows, and even poor people can have what little wealth they own grow for them.
- Specialized delivery services that use high speed MAGLEV rails to send packages and containers wherever you want at hundreds of miles an hour, without need for drivers. Rails protected by fences, surveillance, and specialized drones that can take off, target people, and after sufficient warning incapacitate them with electric shock or gas.
- Hardware developers working around the world to invent new gadgets or improve on the old ones, and small specialized manufacturing buildings print out the components and assemble them for you, regardless of what design you downloaded, right there, within a few minutes/hours. No need to deliver almost anything except for raw materials and some specialized components. No one is limited to a version of an iPhone and has to wait for new versions any more. If someone comes up with a new feature, you just order the new component, or have it printed, and swap it on your phone.


Paralyzed by paperwork??? Governments get paralyzed by paperwork. Regulatory stuff gets paralyzed by paperwork. Companies don't care about paperwork. And for whatever paperwork is needed, why have a company that does paperwork for energy, manufacturing, shipping, finance, and everything else, try to do it all at the same time? Talk about inefficient. Efficiency is specialization. Have a company that does payroll, as most businesses use now. Have a company that specializes in accounting. One that specializes in market research. Etc etc etc. Companies already us these well established nongovernment services.



Damn good question. Governments are required to do 100% accurate accounting and tracking, because they have to make everything they do public (well, most government agencies, anyway), and have to answer to their constituents, who want to make sure nothing is wasted (and, ironically, waste a lot in the process). Companies can easily figure out what should be tracked closely, and what you can guesstimate as being close enough, since all they care about is the bottom line.


So why wouldn't corporations grow to an enormous size without government? If it's more efficient to mass-produce, they will grow big and mass-produce. If it's more efficient to print and assemble locally, they'll do that. There won't be a government stopping them either way. As for cheap transport, those mega size container ships crossing between US, China, and Europe are not government owned. Besides, US doesn't get that much oil from the middle east, anyway. Much of it is domestic, and much of the rest is from Canada.


Or we can ignore them. Thanks to new tech, it's getting easier and easier  

I like the meritocratic parts of both systems.
Reportedly even the Zuccotti free food folks at the Occupy Wall Street stopped serving when they were overrun by the homeless beggars in the community?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/zuccotti_hell_kitchen_i5biNyYYhpa8MSYIL9xSDL
So hunger and sunburns maybe could happen anywhere.

"The hideous thing about meritocracy is it tells you that if you've given life your all, and haven’t got to the top, you’re thick or stupid. Previously, at least, you could always just blame the class system."
- Laurie Taylor

That's not capitalism.  That's communism.

And around and around we go, where we stop, nobody knows.

REally?  So what you're saying is this; even if crumbs had not long ago earned his treatment, we should prevent that which comes around from going around because you somehow are innocent, and must deserve to be protected from offense?  Did I get that part right?

I'm just saying, the reputation of she who is offeneded is at least as important as the offenseive material itself; particularly when she isn't the intended target.

  +100 internets!