From: Alexander Sheppard (alexandersheppard@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Nov 13 2002 - 16:19:33 MST
Ron h wrote,
We are also aware when you use nonstandard definitions.
(reply) What exactly constitutes a "standard" definition? The one in popular
use, the one in the dictionary, or the one that is self consistent?
"Capitalism only acknowledges the point of the gun." Wow, what a
flight of fancy. Are you equating Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford with
Hitler, Stalin and Mao? You have been led by the bloodiest bunch of
murderers history has ever known. Compared to your people Caligula and Nero
were a bunch of pikers.
(Reply) I did not mean that capitalism only acknolwedges the point of a gun
as a legitimate means of doing things. That's the opposite of what I meant,
actually--I meant that (anarcho) capitalism acknolwedges the sheer point of
a gun as a threat, and therefore something to be avoided in a free society.
Then you do a verbal spin and make a statement like that. But why do
you do this? Because a bunch of us that have worked for what we have, who
have no desire to deliver the results of our labor to you, and who do not
see
you as a blessing to anyone will not bow down to your illogical desire to
rule.
(Reply) Capitalism, as in the modern system of concentrated industrial
control under capitalists (this is different from pre-capitalist trade or
"free markets" as advocated under Smith) has nothing to do with keeping the
fruits of a person's labor. Do you think the fruits of Bill Gates labor is
really all that $50 billion? Nor does socialism, except possibly for market
socialism, which is something an oddity, favor such a thing. Rather it says
(at least if is using self consistent concepts, that is, libertarian
socialism) that because the distribution of resources necessarily affect the
conditions of the individuals who use them, then if a person has decided to
produce excess resources, then those who are affected by the existance of
lack of such resources ought to able to decide for themselves if they need
them or not (in a way which is reasonably consistent with the needs of the
group).
Now, you and others may regard this as an ad hominem attack.
(reply) I find that your posts are typically rather flippant and that you
are not very considerate of what is the truth, or that you may in fact be
wrong. I don't mean this as an insult, only an observation. It seems to me,
and this is by no means a certainty, that many times you do not listen to
what people have said before, and have a rather unfortunate habit of
advancing your own agenda. For example, I seem to remember (and I may have
this wrong) that you were the person who said that all leftists were stupid.
This is absurd as Einstien and many other prominent physicists and
mathematicians have been leftists and dissidents (Einstien himself was a
socialist), to a rather disproportionate degree actually. Note I am not
trying to make some ridiculous blanket condemnation of you as a person, only
to point out that the general approach you take might well be better off if
you would question your own assumptions more.
But I totally agree with you on one thing, "Socialism acknolwedges
the
threat of enforced poverty and starvation to be real threats" And, you have
used those threats to great effect. You have starved tens of millions to
teach the survivors that you are the king. But, you have not neglected the
gun either.
(reply) I don't suppose you really thought that's what I meant by that.
_________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 11:58:13 -0500
From: "John K Clark" <jonkc@att.net>
Subject: Re: extropians-digest V7 #310 what a beautiful title
Becoming a socialist affects other people too but I don't have the slightest
objection if you want to head in that direction, just allow me to go my way
too.
(Reply) Well, I agree that people ought to be allowed to do what they
wish--but resources are things which affect other people, and if you decide
to take over some property and monopolize it by force, that affects me too,
should I need to use it. If I am to become a socialist, then as far as I can
see I must necessarily need not respect the imposure of private property.
Oh, you can form socialism inside a small group of people, that's true--but
in our modern society, a small group of people is not even nearly self
sufficient, as a nation state is. Besides, most of the "socialist" communes
formed in the past have effectively been owned by one person or a few, who
is allowing other people to stay there at his whim, for example the Owenites
or the Shakers. That isn't socialism, that's just (benevolent?)
dictatorship.
>this is like saying that a society which doesn't allow chattel
>slavery is intolerant because it doesn't allow people
>who aren't slaves to become slaves if they want to
Yes, it is like saying that. I doubt you would find many wanting to go into
that line of work but if I'm wrong about that and you have a burning desire
to become a slave who am I to stand in your way. And let me be the first to
wish you good luck in your new career move.
(Reply) Well, first of all, you left out 'slavemasters', and that's
important. I mean, I have no problem, if you want to do what a slave does,
if that is really your free choice for whatever reason, go ahead, I agree,
although of course personally I find that absurd. But by 'slave' I mean
someone who is doing something under pressure from a slavemaster.
> Private protection agencies? ...
Disputes among PPA's would be settled by an independent arbitrator
agreed to by both parties BEFORE the disagreement happened.
(reply) You could use this with nation states too, but it doesn't really
work in practice. Why would it work here? I mean, I don't see why it
matters, stuff about the arbitrator, whatever--it seems like it would be in
the interest of the more powerful PPA (if we define "interest" to mean
simply an increase in amount of resources the PPA controls) to just create a
complete tyranny, with either with the owner of the PPA or its clients at
the top.
Please note that I'm not talking about justice only for the rich. If a rich
man's PPA makes unreasonable demands (beatings, sidewalk justice,
I insist on my mother being the judge if I get into trouble) it's going to
need one hell of a lot of firepower to back it up.
(reply) If your goal is make money, you favor the rich. If you can deliver
resources to the rich better than another PPA can, they'll favor you, and
you'll beat the competition even if the other PPA is fair. The end result is
that you get organizations which are dedicated to simply taking stuff and
enforcing the whims of the rich--dictatorship. I don't see how this can be
wrong, really.
A yacht cost a lot more than a car, yet the Ford motor Company is far richer
than all the yacht builders on the planet combined.
(Reply) Well, this is true, but I think this is a different situation,
ultimately with very different characteristics.
In general, the desire not to be killed is much stronger than the desire to
kill a stranger, even a Jewish stranger. Jews would be willing to pay as
much as necessary, up to and including their entire net worth not to be
killed.
(reply) Basically what you're saying is, the defending army would be willing
to put in a lot more power than the offensive army. As far as I can tell,
anyway, those situations are basically equivilant, for reasons which are
partly outlined above. Unfortunately, history has shown that this simply
isn't true in many cases, and that offending armies do, in fact, often win.
(reply) These are rough replies, are there are a lot of assumptions which
are ultimately rather difficult for me to address directly which are built
into the entire idea that anarcho-capitalism is a voluntary or viable
system. For example, we talk about PPA's favoring the rich. But why would
they do that? I mean, it seems to me that if your goal is personal profit,
which would be assumably very ingrained into the minds of everyone in an
"anarcho-capitalist system", then if you are a PPA, the logical thing to do
is to not respect who is "rich" and who is "poor" at all--rather, it is just
to bring everything and everyone that you can under your control by force.
Of course, it is possible to reply that if that was done, a bigger PPA would
try to come and stop you. But this is rather like the WWI rationale for
large alliances, which didn't work, and in that case it lead to total
disaster.
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