Topic: Libertarian my ass! - page 4. (Read 9502 times)

But you don't, really. Rights, boiled down to it, are an agreement. "Property rights," as commonly understood, are simply the agreement: "I don't steal your stuff, you don't steal mine." The thief, having rejected that agreement, has opened himself to retaliation in kind: "You steal my stuff, I'll steal yours." Now, to avoid the chaos of all against all that is commonly called "anarchy," some structure is needed to make things more civilized. This structure need not be a government, and in fact, it's best if it's not. A government, by it's very nature, distorts the agreement: "You don't steal his stuff, and he won't steal yours, but, I can steal from both of you." Not cool. Instead, what AnCap suggests is a system of agencies which provide that same structure, but do so without distorting the agreement: "You don't steal his stuff, and he won't steal yours, but if something does happen, you've both agreed to let me decide how it should be settled."

That's the issue; once a single collective group of people reaches a large enough number, it becomes highly impractical to make a decision that doesn't step on someone's toe somewhere.  In order for anarchism to work, communities would need to remain small enough to stay manageable among each other; to make sure communities remained small, you would encourage people to take complete responsibility over their own communities.  Because large communities become so unmanageable, they have to elect leaders to help keep the "brain" functioning, this leads to conflict, because the elected leader can never agree with the entire populace, making it a moot point to elect one.  The more people feel connected with each other, the less likely they'll feel the need to merge in great societies, and will stick to smaller ones, which communicate with other small societies if one society is stepping on another's toes, or they need/want something the other has that they themselves do not.

In this regard, cities could only exist in division; a city united would need a ruler, and thus, the anarchistic ideal goes away.  So the point would be: people must remain in their own "cliques", to keep a feeling of togetherness, to prevent the rising of rulers, and the division of people which happens anyway under statism.

OTOH, would ~6 or 7 billion societies of "me" function right if capitalism was the only focus?

yes... Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.

I also think that would approach a model which would largely satisfy most. Our modern "estranged" way of life results from too much separation, as some would argue. It boils down to individual property rights yes or no, I've always said you need a state for property rights. Without a state, you'd have to defend whatever you call your property. A group is surely more efficient to defend (and build) their common property. So the result is communal property "rights" if you will.

Now for the global scope, add internet and open source and free sharing of digital data, 3D printing, local production, industrial hemp, etc...

I wouldn't abolish it by force, as some Neo-Marxists seem to push for, but money would probably become more and more superfluous.

Anarchist theorists tend to think from smaller to bigger, in a federalist way: if you'd work in a factory, you would take strategical and operational decisions in assemblies together with your fellow coworkers; different factories in the same industry could associate and coordinate themselves in a "federal assembly"; and so on, adding more layers in which coordinate decisions would be taken horizontally and not vertically.

As anarchism is anti-hierarchy, the common belief is that everybody should be involved in direct decision-making for day-by-day issues, and if impractical (large community), at least at some point in their lives and in a temporarily way.

Anarcho-capitalo-communism...o

I just got done with Living Utopia.  Amazing!  What I found interesting is that even in a communistic society, they still had to barter at some point in time with different towns; for example, if one town didn't have the means to produce wheat, they'd trade sugar for the wheat to a town which had lots of wheat but not a whole lot of sugar.  I've also noticed that societies tend to fare much worse when in large packs.  Would it be possible to combine both systems, so one caters to the "village" so to speak, and the other caters to large societal interaction?  I don't think every town can support every little thing required to make all types of food, desktop PCs, deodorant, jewelry, smart phone a, smart phone b, etc, meaning communism on a large scale would eventually need to form some type of capitalistic method to exchange these goods in and out.

Your reductio attempt is somewhat diminished by the fact that pretty much every Jew I know is essentially some form or another of a National Socialist. 

The only real problem with communism is that it's against human nature in groups larger than a few hundred.
We're primates, at heart, and as such, don't do well with large "communities"
Once past a certain limit "community" starts to break down, and sharing with those outside of your community is a foreign concept to the primate mind.

Capitalism avoids this, by providing a means by which you can be certain that any interaction - even with a complete stranger - will result in you or your community benefiting. So if communism is better, economically, than capitalism, if it is more efficient, then what I would expect to see is multiple communities, interacting internally via communism, and externally via capitalism, or alternatively, individuals interacting only with friends, and strangers being automatically suspect.

= top-down. Benevolent, but still top down. Paternalism, treating them like children, basically. That's almost certainly not how human nature works.

The Spanish example is something completely different. Bottom-up self-organization. Learning by doing.

Huh. I did not know about that.

Communism was tried multiple times in the US actually. Go read up on groups such as the Icarians. One of their settlements even had an entire town constructed and handed to them for free (see Nauvoo Illinois) and they still ended up with a failed economy.

Even here in the US, communism was tried and eventually abandoned:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard130.html


OK, how about Ireland, then? (though Iceland is an excellent example)

I suppose I should watch this movie before making any more assertions

except that it has historical precedence while ancap has not (and don't come me with Iceland).


Living Utopia (The Anarchists & The Spanish Revolution)


but they were betrayed by state communists and republicans likewise.

Communism was designed from the ground up to ultimately have zero dependence upon government, and in fact believed that the government would eventually just fade away. That doesn't work in reality though.

Communism relies upon people just working unquestionably for "the greater good". The modern US is actually a good example of why communism couldn't ever work. Right now just about every American wants to be a lawyer, doctor, physicist, etc. Trouble is, you still need plumbers, janitors, pig farmers, and garbage men. These aren't glorious jobs, but SOMEBODY has to do them. We have all manner of people with massive amounts of student debt yet no prospects for employment for this exact reason. It's common among them to blame the wealthy because they don't understand that nobody is going to pay you to do something that there is no need for you to do. But anyways, without a job they are stuck with two choices: the dole system, or go work for minimum wage as a waiter or something similar. In the end, they do fill a demand, just not the demand that they had in mind, but they'd probably find that they'd earn more as say a garbage man (I know one who makes $50,000 a year) but they tell themselves that they are above that kind of work, instead opting for $24,000 a year busing tables.

Communism just assumes that somebody will want to fill the void according to their ability, but as I described above, it doesn't work out that way. Each time a group tries to start a commune, they eventually realize this, and it invariably comes down to a central group telling each individual person what job they will have, how many hours they will work, quotas, etc. Invariably it turns into slavery. Keep in mind that large governments aren't the only ones who have tried to establish communism. Even within the US and Europe, it was rather common for a group of people to get this idea that they'll all give up all of their material possessions, money, etc to the group, and then they all form a commune. Even wealthy people did this. However they all eventually met the same fate for this exact reason. Groups like the Icarians for example had such hard times with productivity that they would forbid talking of any kind while working, as well as other strict rules and working conditions. And the workers literally worked for free in spite of these miserable jobs.

Socialism in my opinion isn't much better as it tries to find a middle ground between these. Socialism has a half-capitalist system with strict government controls, meanwhile it encourages the use of dole systems to try to make sure everybody is equal. You inevitably end up with those who can choose to not work at all, and other than being frowned upon, there is no repercussion against it. Somebody somewhere has to pay for it though, resources are scarce and can't be made out of thin air.

Yeah, basically. If every human need is satisfied automatically, all that's left are the wants. These could be taken care of capitalism style, people supplying wants in exchange for money to buy their wants (or direct tit-for-tat), or communism style, people supplying wants because they want to. To me, capitalism seems like a better self-correcting method to ensure the connection of people who want things with people who want to supply those things, but not everyone agrees.

I'd love for this to be the case   I'm just curious how it could work.  Would either forms of economy cease to be?  I'd imagine, in the case of capitalism, someone would attempt to grab a hold of the machines, but upon realizing nobody has any money because nobody is working, he would not be able to profit.

I'm only reminded of the RBE at this point. 

No, they both know what to do.

Capitalism:


Communism:


Both systems work equally well, when everything is automated.

The anarchism commonly referred to here is anarchism of government, not anarchism of economy.  AFAIK (someone point me in the right direction if I'm wrong), there are many forms of economy when paired to anarchism, but the only one which seems to work without government intervention is capitalism, 100% free market.  I know there's anarcho-communism, but I don't see how that could ever possibly work.  Communism requires a strong tie to the nation and an unnatural willingness to work for the good of all mankind, essentially, being a cog in a machine, but this seems to be the seedling which begets a large national government.  In other words, communism = sheeple, and sheeple love big government to make all decisions while they toil away.  The smallest government will always become the largest.  There's no way to store one's wealth; you could work a lot, or you could work a little, but the work you put in isn't always shown.  Plus, having to distribute your work is a pain to part with, knowing the people it will go to may or may not be working.  It works great if everyone's on board, but there's no backlash if you're not.  Capitalism, OTOH, allows you to store your work and save it for later; if you stop working, it's because you did the work required to do so.  If somebody says they don't want to chip in, they shouldn't be rewarded with socialism; instead, they'd rely on family, and it then becomes a private problem, AS IT SHOULD BE A PRIVATE PROBLEM.  Nothing against those who legitimately can't work, but the individual should not be a public matter.  Capitalism in itself has no room for socialism; the moment such a system was introduced, capitalism ceased to exist in its natural form.

However, the big but:  Neither of these systems know what to do when work becomes automated.  Curious; if corporatism wasn't a thing, and big government was gone, where does that leave machinery?  To some extent, it makes our jobs easier.  To the greatest extent, it eliminates the need for us to work.  I think of slave labor back in the 1800's; except now, the slave is hyper-efficient, runs on electricity, can't rebel, and has no emotion.

I would not, see: http://www.picturehost.eu/uploads/f95db2c1eda17ce22a37fd1f695c6121_swas%20hit.jpg

it's quite real.