Down with the Police State! No More Police! Things like this get thrown out a lot by social libertarians and anarchists alike, even getting the attention and involvement of a few Republicans and Democrats who see the brutality of the police without noticing the monopoly of force they impose on the regular. There is however an aspect of ridding ourselves of this compulsory reactionary force of police missed by a majority of people; the fact that without the police of today, the ones who are paid for through compulsory and mandatory taxation, without recourse or ability to address grievances, we COULD have more security personnel.
Crazy aspect right? Not really. Many of the advocates of ending the Police State and the obligatory manner in which they are funded and operate are also proponents of private property and the rights of the owners. Under this idea the owners of every property, whether commercial or residential COULD have the possibility to hire their own private security services. Under this model every store you walk into in a mall type setting could have their own security officers, from different service providers. Also, in the residential sense, each home COULD have their own services being provided, not much unlike security systems installed in their homes already, but enlarged or advanced to include property security, investigations in the instance of property violations, and preventative security measures to reduce or preclude any attempt violations of property.
Local story of an prior law enforcement officer starting a private security firm. Click Here.
As the police today are for the most part becoming an aggressive force, one that needs to be checked by the people. Market provided services and funded by voluntary means COULD provided a service of security while ridding the public of compulsory funded, hyper-aggressive and increasingly militarized agents of the government. I stress the word COULD in this because without a doubt, this is only in theory but I feel should be at least recognized and investigated as an alternative. It is also only a COULD because as security is a personal value assessed by individuals, it is up to the owners of each property to make the choice to have security or not.
Wages are what employees gain from their service and labor to their employer. It is an act of voluntary exchange on the part of both parties. If wages were not gained by this service then slavery would exist, in the presence of wages though it is merely employment by mutual terms.
Slavery, historically, is the position of a person who through compulsion is held against their will and forced (by threat of violence)to work for the gain of the "slaveholder or slave master".
Using the word wages in conjunction with the word slavery does two things. One it lowers the definition of wages to the negative connotation of being forced to work for the benefit of another without ANY reimbursement. Secondly it tends to negate the real horrors of real slavery that has happened and is still happening around the world.
The term "wage slavery" defined deals with those wages that are so low that a person who is employed relies on them just for basic survival. Of course wages should be used in the pursuit of survival and any wants left to be pursued, if that is the want of the wage earner. One cannot force a person to use their own property in any other way that they do not wish.
Hereto we must interject on the reverse side of this issue. Mandatory wage and Minimum wage laws handed down from government bureaus and departments. These laws force businesses and businesses owners to provide wages beyond that of market value or personal labor value. These laws almost always lead to higher prices in market goods as the mandatory minimum wages are offset in the businessman's pursuit to maintain certain levels of profit.
Wage Slavery is a false point being made by those that wish to direct the affairs of businesses that do not affect them in the personal way.
Ending the Federal Reserve is less about Government policy and more about you and your personal economy. I was asked the other day how I saw the ending of the Federal Reserve being able to be accomplished. I answered that through government action you may see it in the next 100 years or so (don't hold your breath though), but to handle the idea sooner I think it is less about attacking them or trying to destroy them as much as it is to make them irrelevant.
Getting rid of their power is as easy as making their product and/or service as completely irrelevant as possible.
The rise in cryptography and the cryptocurrencies wave of enthusiasts and entrepreneurs is a great starting place for this idea. Since cryptocurrencies work around the federal dollar and international currency as well it decentralizes their monopoly of currency. Once enough people are convinced or shown the amazing technological benefits to cryptocurrencies over the Fiat dollar bill we can start to widen the gap of mandated currency and free market currency. Crypto is not the only way this can be done but is used as a single example of what can be done to end Centralized Banking cartels.
Money is a tool and it is in no way a government invention. Money or currency has existed for thousands of years and has taken countless shapes and forms. Sea shells, cows and chickens, arrowheads, blankets, property, even other human beings have been used as a means of trade and currency between peoples, though I do not condone the use of humans for this it shows the wide array of means to people's commercial ends.
So the real question that needs to be answered is this. How do YOU plan of destabilizing and decentralizing their mandated paper and coin currency? There are ways and means to obtain this goal, one just needs to commit to them in a rational and educated way.
Tesla Motor's CEO Elon Musk put out a short statement on the car makers website June 12th 2014. This statement was to address the decision to completely release all of the patents currently held by Tesla Motors. This is a great step forward in the effort to bring the zero emission and alternate fuel based vehicles into a better field of collaboration and competition. In the economics study of the Austrian field competition is seen as a great motivator to reduced prices and better services. I hope with this in mind more companies seek to not try and hold onto patents but allow open sourcing to make great strides in not only the competition area but also in the technological advancements area. Below is the letter written by Mr. Musk explaining his decision in a bit more detail and reasons why this move was made.
"Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard."
Doing this Tesla Motors has opened the doors for innovators and engineers to review and modify the original plans and designs of the motor company's model lines. In the hopes that these "outside eyes" see what can be done to make the cars better, safer, or all around redesign the looks.
Tesla Motors is leading the way in the new era of innovation and collaboration for car makers, and I for one am ecstatic about the future of this concept. Imagine if every patent were released for open source. Imagine the college engineering students getting together with the Medical students to design and build a better prosthetic organ. Imagine the advancements we could see when the ideas and processes are open for peer review and public review. Adding your ideas into a larger concept that can literally change the world and history as we know it.
But many people are against the idea of open sourcing and not patenting works and ideas. While many hold a belief in patents and copyrights being a foundational need in society, there are those that dispel this myth and make the case for open dispersion of ideas.
Stephen Kinsella, a Patent Attorney who has rethought his stance on the use and viability of patents after consideration as to what the actual patent or copyright does has much to say on this topic.His books and articles explain these issues better. Patents said to be a protection of the original creator of any ideas, but they also have the effect as to limit and restrict any others from ever reproducing this thing later on even with their own property. It is a violation of the rights of use of another mans property.
This point can be seen clearly by those who reject the act of restricting rights of men for any reason and therefor is not a universal thought. The act of restricting what any other person can do with their property because a man has had a state give him a numbered file in a bureaucrats office.
Tesla Motors, for me, is moving the game to a whole new level and I am excited to see what the world makes of these cars with their new ability to redesign and innovate using the car as their base.
The raging wildfires in California brought up a unique point to my wife and she asked me to expound on it here.
When the people of this nation are extorted for billions of their hard earned dollars every year, when they are forced to pay the privilege of subservience, there is some level of belief that the funds they are paying in are going to be used for somewhat basic needs and variable necessities. But what if it doesn't? What happens when everything you thought you were funding is actually a farce? What is to be made of the fact that even for that belief in the priorities of the government your money is not being used in the ways it is advertised to you? What happens when a person is further hurt by the inefficiencies of government and their misuse of money?
Taking the recent wildfires raging in California as an example. The people whose homes are on the edge of destruction are probably expecting some sort of government intervention based on the money they have been forced to pay for services currently held in monopoly by the state and local government. But what is happening? The fire departments are deciding which homes to save and which ones to overlook. So who decides on the triage status of these properties? Who gets to decide if a home is to be saved or allowed to be destroyed? How should those people who have paid for a protectionist service such as a fire department be compensated for the inability of the department to provide the service they are intended for? What recourse do those that have now paid for services, and not received appropriate actions from these mandatory services, really have?
The same can be said of police departments and their "services". If a man is injured or killed and has paid for these protectionary government agencies, what now happens to reclaim losses or injuries? The agency has obviously not performed a duty right? The police slogan being to protect and serve, the first mentioned duty as protectors has not been provided. In the instance of a man being robbed, the police are in most cases called after the act has taken place, these crimes go mostly unsolved as clues can not or will not (willfully) not be found. A great deal of what police officers do are what is known as reactionary measures. This means that police by and large do not stop crime from happening but merely respond after a crime has been committed. They try to recreate a scene and to collect information to further an investigation of the matter. This leaves people to still be victims and no recourse for the inability of police to "stop" crime from happening. Now this problem could be solved by the hiring of a private security force, to dispel any threats against the life and property of a contracted client. Mostly wealthy individuals choose this route as their preferred choice, knowing that in the instant a threat is made their personal protection agency and its enforcers are there to act. So what happens if a private security firm fails in their actions. The contract, if written to include clauses, could provide all recourse measures, including recuperation of monetary losses.
It is a failure of government that highlights the free market alternative for fire and police services. In a world where people are free to choose their own protection and not be forced to submit authority or be extorted for money to fund mandatory services, a market of competing and cooperating companies is possible. Think of a service that includes the service of fire suppression and prevention for a fee, by contract and with means to collect losses if they occur. Think of a service that allowed person to hire security forces for themselves and to also collect looses on the occasion of breach of contracts or failure to provide adequate services to the contract holder. This is not so out of the ordinary or far fetched, it is simply a new way to look at the choices, preferences and right of association and contracts of free people and free markets. All the services currently held in monopoly by government can be provided in a market without the use of force or coercion.
I found this rather interesting post on Reddit which sent me to this Liberty.me users profile. Ethan Glover gives an excellent rebuttal to this video trying to give a false impression of Capitalism.
It is not often that I respond to these things of such low quality as the video below. I vowed a long time ago that I am done with anarcho-communists. I do not debate them, and I do not talk to them. After many attempts of communicating with them, with 100% accuracy I was exposed to the most vile of creatures totally unable to act like adults, or even like human beings. I don’t like to generalize entire groups. I was sent a message by an anarcho-communist with some very helpful and enlightening information that gave me a better understanding of their philosophy once. Will Moyer, a leftist, wrote a brilliantly put together article that I responded to in “The Limits of Will Moyer“. But any efforts I have made to talk to them directly have resulted in the most pathetic and lowest of treatments.
The reason I so thoroughly enjoyed Will Moyer’s article is because, unlike the video below, it was not full of SCE (sarcasm, cynicism, exaggeration). His article made his points directly and he proved that he had an understanding of “right libertarianism,” or synonymously, and more accurately to me, anarcho-capitalism. He did not mince words and was not afraid to go against libertarianism, but at the same time he did not treat his writing as a BuzzFeed Top 10 list. It was meant to be of high quality, and it was meant to be taken seriously.
The video below was made for attention and makes no attempt to understand capitalism, but rather it only illustrates a reconfirmation of biases. I respond to it only at request, and grudgingly so. If the video creator wanted to be taken seriously he would have sucked it up, cut out the childish SCE and utilized a little CHI (curiosity, humor, impudence). Or to put it in other words, there’s no problem with disagreeing and rejecting the arguments of others, but if you don’t want to be torn apart, try to have some fun and create a real discussion. This video, in its despicably low BuzzFeed sarcastic style, does not deserve a bit of respect. I’d be willing to point out the positives in all other cases as I did with Moyer, but this will simply be the crumpling and throwing away of an undeserving piece of junk.
A note on how to read this article: This is not a thorough break down of anything in particular. Rather, it is merely a response to a poorly put together, quick list of arguments against capitalism (which are actually arguments against socialism). For the best way to follow this article, watch the video one item at a time, and then read the appropriate response. For example, watch #10 from the video, then read #10 in the article. #9 from the video, then #9 in the article and so on.
10. Capitalism promotes innovation
Many people do indeed fall into taking easy jobs and not looking for upward mobility. Of course, the socialist answer is usually to force everybody into a single system of being equally poor. Not everyone is capable of being innovative, and not everyone wants to sit around playing the guitar all day. Most people take normal jobs that require simple work and live their life outside of work. Work does not have to be some amazing thing that we love to do, there are always going to be shitty jobs out there to be done. What we can do is allow adults to make their own decisions, and run their own lives. You simply cannot force everyone to be an artist. If everyone were innovative, there would be no such thing as innovative.
Not only that, but the source that the video uses to show that only 13% of people are disengaged at work is a worldwide poll. The four highest countries for most engaged are the United States (mixed-economy, partially capitalist), Canada (mixed-economy, partially capitalist), Australia (market economy, third freest economy in the world), and New Zealand (market economy, fourth freest economy in the world). The most disengaged? East Asia (which with the exception of newly capitalist systems such as China and Hong Kong, most countries in East Asia have socialist command economies), Sub-Saharan Africa (a highly underdeveloped region with a long history of socialism and communism), and South Asia (a highly liberalized area, it’s fastest growing nation, Sri Lanka recently took on some capitalist policies). [Source]
As for the source on people not responding to financial incentive? Massively taken out of context. First, the study found that when it comes to mechanical skills, people respond to financial incentives, and when it comes to cognitive skills people respond to different kinds of incentives, but we’ll get back to that. The economic law that says people respond to incentives is still true. If you don’t pay a programmer enough, he’ll quit for a higher paying job. However, once the pay is good enough, he’ll start to look for other incentives like the ability to be autonomous and creative. What does this mean? High value employees are capable of demanding more, and do so. This is something we have found through capitalism. It is the still generally free market in the software world that has recognized this. This is why you see such incredible innovation in the workplace in places like Google and Amazon. This has been known for a long time, this research is only repeating what has already been discovered in, and put into practice in the free market.
Within the highly capitalist software industry, this is also where you see things like Apache, Linux, and Wikipedia. Large open source projects that are dependent upon free labor and donations. The “open-source way” does call for people to lead projects, but it also welcomes free labor. Open source has become one of the best ways for young people to gain experience and work with big projects. This is why they’re so popular. It provides an opening, and the people who are at the top, leading the project and running the show? They’re being paid. Of course, they’re being paid. It’d be silly to think that wasn’t the case. Open-source is a huge industry. All of this is a part of the free market. Being free of charge has nothing to do with socialism. This entire video is an idiotic misunderstanding of a simple word that can be looked up in the dictionary in about two seconds. Socialism means collective ownership. Guess what? The Wikimedia Foundation, The Apache Software Foundation, and Linux distributions such as Fedora? All owned and operated by full time employees.
Queue the canned rants about “global inequality” and how it’s not fair that everyone doesn’t have the same piece of the imaginary pie. First of all, wealth is not distributed, it is created. It is the socialist nations who end up poor. It is not the fault of capitalist nations that that is the case. It is the fault of the governments for holding people back and not allowing them to adapt to the world and build better lives for themselves. Second, you don’t need to be rich to innovate, the greatest innovators throughout the world come from humble and poor means. It is their striving to build something that pushes them into innovating in the first place. Does this mean it is capitalism itself that promoted that innovation? Sort of, on a general scale. But take it down to the individual scale as the video has, and it’s more because those innovators wanted to get rich and share their ideas.
Then there’s the idea, that’s repeated many times throughout the video that “capitalist education” destroys creative thinking and critical thought. Of course, the video is ignorantly referring to public schools, the exact thing it had just called for by saying that we are more than capable of providing education for everyone.
9. Free markets increase economic development
Immediately after saying the word “free market”, the video starts talking about the IMF, World Bank, and Free Trade Organization. These are not free market organizations, and it must be said that it is impossible to force free market on anyone. At that point, it is by definition, not free, nor capitalism. People must be able to trade among themselves freely in order for there to be a free market. You’d think that’d be obvious, right? It then suggests that protectionist policies such as anti-trust laws and banking bailouts are good for economies, and all the evidence that shows that protectionist policies are only to protect special interests (shocker!) don’t matter.
On the internet being a major innovation, let’s consider first where innovation on the internet has come from. To the government, the internet was nothing but a tool for the military, they had no idea of its power. It was only until the private sector started building on it that it became what we know of today. The internet that the video refers to is pure private sector. Not only that, but just because entrepreneurs use roads to drive to work, that does not mean the government is responsible for their innovations. In the absence of government, roads will still exist, just cheaper and more efficient. If the government never created the “internet”, it still would’ve been created, probably by the same private sector contractors. The internet and GPS, today, are old technologies that are only useful to the average person because of innovative entrepreneurs in the free market.
8. Markets are a rational means of organizing economic life.
The fact that the U.S. wastes so much food is a sign of prosperity (obviously). That prosperity comes from better technology and a (relatively) free market. The starving nations around the world (which are mostly under socialism and dictatorships) lack the agricultural technology that countries like the U.S. do. Even still, countries like the U.S. continue to send them food and care, causing their populations to rise disproportionally to their technology. This only makes things worse than they are. Socialist programs of just giving things away with no consideration as to the consequences and potential alternatives (such as abandoning intellectual property and business regulations that may allow companies to help these countries) are what cause the mass poverty in poor nations.
The New Deal (mentioned in one of the videos sources), by the way, destroyed the economy and it was only after Roosevelt’s death and the removal of his policies that the economy recovered from it and World War II.
As for planned obstination, this is primarily caused by inflation, which is caused by central banking. As the dollar loses value, people have less to spend, so they demand cheaper products. Companies respond to this demand by making… cheaper products. In order to do this, they must use lower quality material. This is as opposed to the post world war two era in which socialist public works programs were being dismantled and the pent up economy went through a major boom. This was an era in which cars, clothes and appliances were made to be very sturdy and long lasting. Today, people simply cannot afford such things and must choose lower quality products.
These cheaper products do not generate more profits, because they are lower priced products for lower priced material. Without planned obstination, there would be higher priced products with higher priced materials that would be more durable, and would not be replaced nearly as much.
When Keynes said that technology would lead to 15 hour workweeks he ignores the entire purpose of technology. Technology allows us to advance society. As technology rises, we create different kinds of technological jobs. The purpose of technology is not to create an imaginary, impossible Peter Joseph world. It is to raise the standard of living and to solve problems. Robots have replaced menial factory line jobs and have allowed more people to take on more challenging jobs in robotics and electronics. This is a positive that the video was complaining doesn’t exist from the very beginning. You don’t create more challenging jobs by playing the guitar for no pay, you do it by innovating in the free market to meet customer demand.
The videos source, which complains about people working longer hours, makes no mention of things like inflation and high tax rates. The countries mentioned such as the United States, Canada and Japan all have some of the highest individual tax rates in the world. As always, the socialist answer is just to pass regulation to shorten the workweek, which inevitably leads to mass poverty because no one can afford to live and afford all the socialist publics works programs at once. As for the article on “bullshit jobs,” it’s just a lot of complaints about necessary jobs and how the author wishes he could spend his life doing nothing productive.
You can work as long as you want, the free market (again) is by definition free. The market isn’t some magical being that doesn’t let you do less work. It is, however, inefficient and bad for the people to hire 100 people to work for half an hour each. To quote the video, “How stupid is that?”
The claim that everyone is working “bullshit jobs” to buy “bullshit products” is.. well.. bullshit. It’s entirely subjective opinion. My smartphone is not a bullshit product, nor is my laptop. I don’t own any bullshit products, because I don’t choose to buy products that I think are bullshit. I think socialist books are bullshit products and a waste of money. But some people don’t, so be it. Nobody “makes me want” anything, that again, is a bullshit argument. If you buy one thing over another, that does not make you superior, that makes you human.
7. We can prevent bad business practices through ethical consumerism.
The very first argument is that the media (state controlled) is advertising products to people and are, therefore, catering to the evil corporations. Advertising, overtime, has become much more subtle, internet marketing is about advertising products to people who already want that product. This has happened because people have begun to ignore advertisements, this is why adless mediums such as Netflix have become so popular over things like cable.
Yes, vegging out on the couch and watching TV is bad for you, but will it program you to go out and buy stuff? No. In the end, it is the individuals choice and responsibility to do so. Everyone, including the commentator of this video, has found a great product that they like (and is, therefore, subjectively not bullshit) through advertising. Advertising is not only a great way to drive down costs of certain things like YouTube (ads are the reason it’s free) but it’s a great way for us to discover new products that we might enjoy. A personal lack of self-control is no reason to vilify the entire thing. That’s like saying Mountain Dew should be illegal because I enjoy it too damned much.
But, the point of saying advertising is bad is because companies won’t advertise their own bad practices. Yes… that’s an actual claim. At no point have I ever heard a capitalist claim that companies should self-police. What I have heard is that the market is capable of self-policing. This means that there is no need for government intervention. Especially when there are things like Consumer Reports and the thousands of systems for product review out there such as with Amazon and eBay.
Just because single products bring multiple products together, it doesn’t mean a thing. Individual products and companies speak for themselves. What the video is referencing (but coyly doesn’t mention) is the “business practices” of companies in foreign socialist nations in which workers are treated like cattle, thanks to bad economies and regulations created by their governments.
At the end of this rant, the video says you can only vote with your money if you actually have any money. This shows a total misunderstanding of what voting with your wallet means. First of all, politics currently control and dictate most business products, especially things like food. Businesses can not cater to their customer because they are either held back by protectionist regulation or must use protectionist regulation to get ahead. Voting with your wallet has nothing to do with moving companies actions by yourself, it’s about making your own decisions. Yes, this gets increasingly harder as countries become more socialist, that does not negate the purpose.
6. Government regulations address the question of bad practices.
No. They don’t. They create them. This is not capitalism, it’s got nothing to do with it. What the video complains about is actually socialism.
Capitalism: The possession of capital or wealth; an economic system in which private capital or wealth is used in the production or distribution of goods and prices are determined mainly in a free market; the dominance of private owners of capital and of production for profit.
Socialism: A theory or system of social organization based on state or collective ownership and regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange for the common benefit of all members of society; advocacy or practice of such a system, esp. as a political movement.
The enforcement of collective ownership and social organization is government. The government, through socialism, chooses certain companies over others by creating protectionist regulations.
“Worker control” already exists due to government regulation, they’re called unions, and they only make things worse by deluding supply and demand.
5. Don’t you buy things from corporations? Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite?
No.
4. Capitalists put risk into their businesses.
It was challenging for Nazi’s to take power, and because it’s challenging to start a business, then it’s wrong? Wait, what if it’s challenging to build a socialist system that doesn’t collapse in five years? Does that make it wrong? This has nothing to do with challenge, it’s about the fact that when someone puts blood and sweat into building something, you can’t come along and claim that it somehow equally belongs to everyone on earth.
People voluntarily build businesses, other people voluntarily work for those businesses. In the same way that this video creator thinks you’re stupid for buying a smartphone instead of socialist literature, he thinks you’re stupid for working for a private company rather than working for the government or a cooperative. It is actively saying that you are too dumb to manage your own life and instead, your life should be run by a British teenager on the internet.
Socialists want to exercise their power over others by destroying systems that everyone explicitly agrees to and is perfectly happy with. Thankfully, they’re unwilling to take the risks of gaining actual support and tend to enact what they want through groups like the democratic party in the hopes that one day, the government will put a gun to your head and tell you that you own nothing, no matter what your personal beliefs are.
3. Living standards improve overall, even for the poor.
Living standards improved under Nazism and Fascism, therefore, it’s not a good thing that living standards improve under capitalism. Again, the video is going immediately towards the Nazi’s and saying, “Look, they did it!” If the video claimed that socialism improves living standards for the poor (as it does temporarily) I could claim the same thing. What’s more important is that capitalism and free trade permanently raise living standards and does not lead to mass famine and poverty as socialism and Keynesianism does.
Argentina has always had economic troubles and experienced the usual boom bust cycles that any Keynesian economy does. There’s nothing wrong with worker cooperatives and are perfectly welcome under capitalism. If they work, if they can meet customer demand, then they are totally OK. I would love to see more attempts at cooperatives, but only if they compete on the free market where people can decide which is best. It is important to mention that there are both pros and cons of co-ops. It is also important to remember that the customer is more important than the employee. This does not mean it’s OK to commit criminal actions against employees, but to say that working is a personal decision that is about serving others for the sake of future personal benefit.
2. Capitalism is the result of human nature.
First of all, capitalism has existed for at least 150,000 years. Second, of course it came after humans, humans created trade. Capitalism being a result of human nature has nothing to do with genetics as the video author very well knows. It’s about the fact that trade is a part of communication. It’s what allows us to build societies. The division of labor is the entire reason modern society exists.
Communicating with others and having friends has nothing to do with communism.
Communism: A theory that advocates the abolition of private ownership, all property being vested in the community, and the organization of labor for the common benefit of all members; a system of social organization in which this theory is put into practice.
The video is trying to suggest that capitalism means you can’t live with friends, have relationships or communicate. However, it is in communism that it becomes impossible to solve disputes because there is no recognition of ownership. Such a society quickly devolves into a primitive state.
Capitalism does not force you to charge your friends to help you to move. This, as the video creator and everyone on earth knows, is a ridiculous thing to say to begin with. Capitalism thrives on, and asks for cooperation, it is built on cooperation. Competition is not the opposite of cooperation, nor is it the only foundation of capitalism. And yes, competition is natural, if it weren’t, sports wouldn’t have been around for well over 4,000 years.
And then we get back to how public schools are capitalist schools. Over and over, this video talks about socialism and calls it capitalism. The public education system (which this video creator should adore) teaches an over exaggerated idea of “sharing is caring”. They do not teach fundamental reasoning, negotiation and critical thinking skills. If we had a capitalist education system, there surely would be plenty of schools that did just that, but alas, we have a socialist one.
1. Capitalism is the only system that’s possible.
No one is saying this. In fact, it is very rare to see capitalism today. It certainly does not exist in the US or UK. But the video doesn’t talk about that and the historical effects of socialism. Instead, it queues the pictures that are purely a result of the tragedy of the commons and the lack of private property. When all land is unowned, people have no incentive to take care of it.
It’s been proven time and again that the environment is not headed for collapse, and when the economy collapses it is often due to Keynesian practices and central banking which creates ridiculous and unnecessary boom/bust cycles.
The only need for social change is the need to get rid of government to allow people to act like adults and make their own decisions instead of bending to these ridiculous “common good” arguments that have never had a lick of actual reasoning behind them. (Mostly because there is no such thing as a common good, it’s an impossible concept.)
The only way you’re ever going to convince everyone that all companies should be cooperatives is to force it on them by regulation. The fact is that structured companies, which are responsive to the customer, not some bratty socialist employees, will always out compete them and the customers will always choose them as superior businesses.
As for anarcho-syndicalism in the Spanish Civil War, this system was indeed forced on those peaceful non-criminals who did not want it. The punishment for using money was death. There is no possible way to force a particular kind of anarchy without the use of coercion, in which case, it is inevitably a state. Of course, this is only in the few areas that anarchy was established. In the grander sense, the Spanish Civil War was fought between Nazi and Italian Fascist supporter Dictator Francisco Franco against the Soviet Union.
I get that anarchy makes places better than they are, I’m sure those parts of Spain under anarchy were in a better position than being under a long series of dictators who were constantly at war for the entirety of Spain’s history. Is this really the best case for “left libertarianism?” If so, it’s got nothing to stand on.
Conclusions
In reality, this video gives no real arguments against capitalism and why it is criminal. There are a lot of arguments against socialism and the usual whining of, “Why isn’t everyone as economically ignorant as me? I’ll make them that way!”, but nothing with any real content.
When the video says not to use, “rehashed, terrible phrases that mean nothing [that] are often completely inconsistent with reality” it ignores the fact that the video uses a stereotypically wrong view of capitalism pushed by socialist government and it ignores the realities of economics, something socialists like this have never been able to get straight in their entire history.
Originally published in The Libertarian Forum, Vol. 10, No. 7, July 1977.
I have been ruminating recently on what are the crucial questions that divide libertarians. Some that have received a lot of attention in the last few years are: anarcho-capitalism vs. limited government, abolitionism vs. gradualism, natural rights vs. utilitarianism, and war vs. peace. But I have concluded that as important as these questions are, they don’t really cut to the nub of the issue, of the crucial dividing line between us.
Let us take, for example, two of the leading anarcho-capitalist works of the last few years: my own For a New Liberty and David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom. Superficially, the major differences between them are my own stand for natural rights and for a rational libertarian law code, in contrast to Friedman’s amoralist utilitarianism and call for logrolling and trade-offs between non-libertarian private police agencies. But the difference really cuts far deeper. There runs through For a New Liberty (and most of the rest of my work as well) a deep and pervasive hatred of the State and all of its works, based on the conviction that the State is the enemy of mankind. In contrast, it is evident that David does not hate the State at all; that he has merely arrived at the conviction that anarchism and competing private police forces are a better social and economic system than any other alternative. Or, more fully, that anarchism would be better than laissez-faire which in turn is better than the current system. Amidst the entire spectrum of political alternatives, David Friedman has decided that anarcho-capitalism is superior. But superior to an existing political structure which is pretty good too. In short, there is no sign that David Friedman in any sense hates the existing American State or the State per se, hates it deep in his belly as a predatory gang of robbers, enslavers, and murderers.
No, there is simply the cool conviction that anarchism would be the best of all possible worlds, but that our current set-up is pretty far up with it in desirability. For there is no sense in Friedman that the State – any State – is a predatory gang of criminals.
The same impression shines through the writing, say, of political philosopher Eric Mack. Mack is an anarcho-capitalist who believes in individual rights; but there is no sense in his writings of any passionate hatred of the State, or, a fortiori, of any sense that the State is a plundering and bestial enemy.
Perhaps the word that best defines our distinction is “radical.” Radical in the sense of being in total, root-and-branch opposition to the existing political system and to the State itself. Radical in the sense of having integrated intellectual opposition to the State with a gut hatred of its pervasive and organized system of crime and injustice. Radical in the sense of a deep commitment to the spirit of liberty and anti-statism that integrates reason and emotion, heart and soul.
Furthermore, in contrast to what seems to be true nowadays, you don’t have to be an anarchist to be radical in our sense, just as you can be an anarchist while missing the radical spark. I can think of hardly a single limited governmentalist of the present day who is radical – a truly amazing phenomenon, when we think of our classical liberal forbears who were genuinely radical, who hated statism and the States of their day with a beautifully integrated passion: the Levellers, Patrick Henry, Tom Paine, Joseph Priestley, the Jacksonians, Richard Cobden, and on and on, a veritable roll call of the greats of the past. Tom Paine’s radical hatred of the State and statism was and is far more important to the cause of liberty than the fact that he never crossed the divide between laissez-faire and anarchism.
And closer to our own day, such early influences on me as Albert Jay Nock, H. L. Mencken, and Frank Chodorov were magnificently and superbly radical. Hatred of “Our Enemy, the State” (Nock’s title) and all of its works shone through all of their writings like a beacon star. So what if they never quite made it all the way to explicit anarchism? Far better one Albert Nock than a hundred anarcho-capitalists who are all too comfortable with the existing status quo.
Where are the Paines and Cobdens and Nocks of today? Why are almost all of our laissez-faire limited governmentalists plonky conservatives and patriots? If the opposite of “radical” is “conservative,” where are our radical laissez-fairists? If our limited statists were truly radical, there would be virtually no splits between us. What divides the movement now, the true division, is not anarchist vs. minarchist, but radical vs. conservative. Lord, give us radicals, be they anarchists or no.
To carry our analysis further, radical anti-statists are extremely valuable even if they could scarcely be considered libertarians in any comprehensive sense. Thus, many people admire the work of columnists Mike Royko and Nick von Hoffman because they consider these men libertarian sympathizers and fellow-travelers. That they are, but this does not begin to comprehend their true importance. For throughout the writings of Royko and von Hoffman, as inconsistent as they undoubtedly are, there runs an all-pervasive hatred of the State, of all politicians, bureaucrats, and their clients which, in its genuine radicalism, is far truer to the underlying spirit of liberty than someone who will coolly go along with the letter of every syllogism and every lemma down to the “model” of competing courts.
Taking the concept of radical vs. conservative in our new sense, let us analyze the now famous “abolitionism” vs. “gradualism” debate. The latter jab comes in the August issue of Reason (a magazine every fiber of whose being exudes “conservatism”), in which editor Bob Poole asks Milton Friedman where he stands on this debate. Freidman takes the opportunity of denouncing the “intellectual cowardice” of failing to set forth “feasible” methods of getting “from here to there.” Poole and Friedman have between them managed to obfuscate the true issues. There is not a single abolitionist who would not grab a feasible method, or a gradual gain, if it came his way. The difference is that the abolitionist always holds high the banner of his ultimate goal, never hides his basic principles, and wishes to get to his goal as fast as humanly possible. Hence, while the abolitionist will accept a gradual step in the right direction if that is all that he can achieve, he always accepts it grudgingly, as merely a first step toward a goal which he always keeps blazingly clear. The abolitionist is a “button pusher” who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed. But the abolitionist also knows that alas, such a button does not exist, and that he will take a bit of the loaf if necessary – while always preferring the whole loaf if he can achieve it.
It should be noted here that many of Milton’s most famous “gradual” programs such as the voucher plan, the negative income tax, the withholding tax, fiat paper money – are gradual (or even not so gradual) steps in the wrong direction, away from liberty, and hence the militance of much libertarian opposition to these schemes.
His button-pushing position stems from the abolitionist’s deep and abiding hatred of the State and its vast engine of crime and oppression. With such an integrated world-view, the radical libertarian could never dream of confronting either a magic button or any real-life problem with some arid cost-benefit calculation. He knows that the State must be diminished as fast and as completely as possible. Period.
And that is why the radical libertarian is not only an abolitionist, but also refuses to think in such terms as a Four Year Plan for some sort of stately and measured procedure for reducing the State. The radical – whether he be anarchist or laissez-faire – cannot think in such terms as, e.g.: Well, the first year, we’ll cut the income tax by 2%, abolish the ICC, and cut the minimum wage; the second year we’ll abolish the minimum wage, cut the income tax by another 2%, and reduce welfare payments by 3%, etc. The radical cannot think in such terms, because the radical regards the State as our mortal enemy, which must be hacked away at wherever and whenever we can. To the radical libertarian, we must take any and every opportunity to chop away at the State, whether it’s to reduce or abolish a tax, a budget appropriation, or a regulatory power. And the radical libertarian is insatiable in this appetite until the State has been abolished, or – for minarchists – dwindled down to a tiny, laissez-faire role.
Many people have wondered: Why should there be any important political disputes between anarcho-capitalists and minarchists now? In this world of statism, where there is so much common ground, why can’t the two groups work in complete harmony until we shall have reached a Cobdenite world, after which we can air our disagreements? Why quarrel over courts, etc. now? The answer to this excellent question is that we could and would march hand-in-hand in this way if the minarchists were radicals, as they were from the birth of classical liberalism down to the 1940s. Give us back the antistatist radicals, and harmony would indeed reign triumphant within the movement.
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