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[Zaphos]

Can you give an example of that happening ever though? Nobody, for example, has ever had a monopoly on all the food in the world, so it's not like you have to buy from that guy or die.

I was kind of taking it to the extreme example as a logical exercise to show how the types of powers converge ... I think in practice when it gets to that point we call it a dictatorship as the line between economic and political power is basically gone.

I guess the question then is, has anyone bought their way into a dictatorship?  I don't know the answer

But I don't think you need to control all the food in the world; you can just control the resources in a much smaller area and not sell people ways to leave.  Or ... pay people to stop other people from leaving -- you can use the economic power indirectly to force people to do whatever.


edit: perhaps the way organized crime can sometimes effectively replace government (locally -- in a city or even just a bad neighborhood) is a good example?  Organized crime seems very 'free market' in a sense.

[Paul Eres]

You can buy (i.e. voluntarily trade) your way into a dictatorship, sure, many politicians do. But they don't only use that to get there, they also have to use some amount of force. You can't *only* use voluntary actions to become a dictator.

If you pay someone to stop someone from leaving, that's *a use of force*, it isn't voluntary trade. That's like saying paying a hitman to kill someone isn't a use of force.

[Robotacon]

Congratulations!

I hope this means that starting next year there will be huge changes both in the U.S and the rest of the world. I hope there will be an end to the war in Iraq and more help to Afganistan and a more open dialogue with the other countries of the middle east. I also hope for better publicly-funded health care for you guys.  

On a side note it's interesting to see that the prez has become the most powerful of the three powers in the system of checks and balances so it's tilted towards the executive branch. With democrats in majority in the congress the president is even stronger.

[Zaphos]

You can buy (i.e. voluntarily trade) your way into a dictatorship, sure, many politicians do. But they don't only use that to get there, they also have to use some amount of force. You can't *only* use voluntary actions to become a dictator.

If you pay someone to stop someone from leaving, that's *a use of force*, it isn't voluntary trade. That's like saying paying a hitman to kill someone isn't a use of force.

Ah, sorry, I guess I was more focused on the distinction between political or economic power, and where it disappears.

In some sense it seems you need to the use of force (by political elements) to prevent the use force (by market elements).  So when you remove the political elements it's natural to start talking about force coming from the market elements.  That's why I said I like to draw a different distinction than 'force vs non-force.'

But, hmm, I guess you're talking about a completely free market where there is no force used at all?  Has that ever happened?  If not, it seems kind of odd to ask for examples where that happens and economic power is abused.

[Paul Eres]

It's happened on a local scale. And keep in mind force doesn't have to be completely absent -- i.e. a market anarchism would still have the odd gang here or there, or the odd murder -- just relatively absent from most people's lives. A few peaceful Native American tribes that did mainly trade and never participated in tribal warfare, like the Blackfoot tribe or something, might be the closest real-life example to what I mean.

Also, online communities are good examples of this, because force is fairly impossible to use online. eBay is a great example of a nearly perfect market with very little force, although sometimes that can work against people (for instance, if someone sends you a broken item, you can't go over there and force him to refund your money). So a world without force would look and work much like the internet. There are "force-like things" on the internet, sure, there's banning from forums for instance, but people are still free to set up their own forums, so there's no real force on the internet in the sense that there is in real life.

[deadeye]

So I'm guessing no one cares that Obama shows all the same "duplicitous populist cunt" signs as Tony Blair did in England or Kevin Rudd here in Australia

Ralph Nader, is that you?  What are you doing in Australia?

[Chris Whitman]

Stupid family living where theres no work or food gets upset when a business moves in that will pay them cash dollars for work? Sounds like a feasible situation.

Yeah, if only they'd had better parents, they might have been doctors or lawyers or something. What were they thinking?

[Chris Whitman]

I'm a determinist, so I don't believe in choice in that sense anyway. I agree that choice is just as restricted without force as with it, it's just restricted by different things.

So you don't see a qualitative difference between someone having the option to obtain an education and find meaningful work in something they enjoy versus having to work two or three terrible jobs just to put oneself barely above the poverty line? That's a much more realistic example of what I'm talking about.

I mean, have you noticed that your country has a third world country smack in the middle of it? There's no legislation to keep people in ghettos in the U.S., just abject poverty and a complete lack of jobs.

These are real problems we are currently facing. For one, there are still many people unable to meet their basic needs, for another, capitalism can only flourish through economic growth, which requires constantly increasing consumption above and beyond people's real needs or even wants, which requires the control of culture in order to create new needs, which has edged out basically all of the rest of our culture to the point where we are largely defined in our culture by our consumption. We've also started to take a massive toll on our limited natural resources in the process. Free market capitalism doesn't address any of these things, but I think they are important.

I don't think it's enough to follow a point that one would prefer one's choice  restricted by large corporations and the implicit threat of force instead of by large government and the explicit threat of force.

As a bit of a side note, by implicit threat of force, I of course mean that the government still stands by big business 100% of the way. If I'm a poor person squatting in your abandoned warehouse, you can get the cops to throw me out, but if you're a big corporation and you want the apartment block I happen to live in, you can just buy it. If I decide not to leave, then you will use force. While legally we are both entitled to the same property rights, poorer people are forced to live in disadvantageous circumstances, and any possible dissent is simply punished with imprisonment.

The main thing that makes me decide on one over the other is that governments have killed hundreds of millions of people, the markets have killed no one (directly). And even indirectly you'd be hard-pressed to show that the markets have killed more people than governments have.

But that has absolutely no logical connection to people's individual economic well-being.

[Chris Whitman]

Oh, I left out America's massive, massive reliance on foreign slave labour, to the point where most of its clothes and consumer goods are manufactured by completely destitute people living half a world away.

I don't think the free market model addresses the collusion of companies in the U.S. with oppressive foreign governments.

[Paul Eres]

So you don't see a qualitative difference between someone having the option to obtain an education and find meaningful work in something they enjoy versus having to work two or three terrible jobs just to put oneself barely above the poverty line? That's a much more realistic example of what I'm talking about.

There's a difference, but it's not a difference of choice, it's a difference of environment, technology, economic wealth, etc. And neither one has anything to do with the free market vs socialism, either scenario can exist under either, and do.

I mean, have you noticed that your country has a third world country smack in the middle of it? There's no legislation to keep people in ghettos in the U.S., just abject poverty and a complete lack of jobs.

Yes, since I live in it and grew up in it, of course I know that. Although complete lack of jobs is an exaggeration: I live in Paterson, NJ, one of the poorest cities in NJ (I think only Camden and Newark are worse), but I still managed to find "jobs" online: independent game development and freelance writing, despite that the best local job is working at the local game store or something (where my sister works). Of course, she makes more than me, so my jobs are only better in self-fulfillment rather than money, but they at least have room for growth, whereas the jobs around here do not.

These are real problems we are currently facing. For one, there are still many people unable to meet their basic needs, for another, capitalism can only flourish through economic growth, which requires constantly increasing consumption above and beyond people's real needs or even wants, which requires the control of culture in order to create new needs, which has edged out basically all of the rest of our culture to the point where we are largely defined in our culture by our consumption. We've also started to take a massive toll on our limited natural resources in the process. Free market capitalism doesn't address any of these things, but I think they are important.

I think the assertion that capitalism can only flourish through economic growth and that it requires the control of culture in order to create new needs is false. That is true of corporatism, that is true of state capitalism, it's not true of capitalism. I'm just as much an enemy of state capitalism as of socialism.

I don't think it's enough to follow a point that one would prefer one's choice  restricted by large corporations and the implicit threat of force instead of by large government and the explicit threat of force.

Large corporations and the implicit threat of force don't have anything to do with capitalism.

As a bit of a side note, by implicit threat of force, I of course mean that the government still stands by big business 100% of the way. If I'm a poor person squatting in your abandoned warehouse, you can get the cops to throw me out, but if you're a big corporation and you want the apartment block I happen to live in, you can just buy it. If I decide not to leave, then you will use force. While legally we are both entitled to the same property rights, poorer people are forced to live in disadvantageous circumstances, and any possible dissent is simply punished with imprisonment.

If there's a government, it's not a capitalism. If there are cops, it's not a capitalism. You're arguing against something I don't believe in, and equating me with defending something I'm against.

The main thing that makes me decide on one over the other is that governments have killed hundreds of millions of people, the markets have killed no one (directly). And even indirectly you'd be hard-pressed to show that the markets have killed more people than governments have.

But that has absolutely no logical connection to people's individual economic well-being.

Yes, but I didn't say it did. I simply said I prefer one thing to the other. I prefer economic poverty to death. I prefer immense unfairness to slavery.

Oh, I left out America's massive, massive reliance on foreign slave labour, to the point where most of its clothes and consumer goods are manufactured by completely destitute people living half a world away.

I think it's a mistake to call *most* of foreign labor slave labor. The African-Americans were slave labor. Chinese sweatshops (usually) are not. There is still slave labor today, including slave labor within the US by US prisoners (1% of the population or something), slave labor within North Korea, within parts of Africa, and other isolated areas. But *most* of labor in the world is not slave labor, not even in the third world, and I think there's an important distinction between a sweatshop and a slave labor camp. To call such people slaves is an insult to real slaves.

I don't think the free market model addresses the collusion of companies in the U.S. with oppressive foreign governments.

That's true, but neither those companies or those countries has anything to do with the free market.

[Chris Whitman]

You're just taking every bad aspect of capitalism today and saying that it has nothing to do with your ideal capitalism.

I got news for you: there's no reason to believe your ideal capitalism is even possible. Like I said, it's an a priori assumption that getting rid of government will just cause the economy to behave in this way. It's equally plausible that people with resources would just stomp on everyone else and install a de facto government through private militias, or that a different, third thing that no one predicted would happen.

I'm not saying that it would be bad if the Libertarian system actually worked. If we had small, well managed corporations, local autonomy and good communities, I'd be pretty happy about that. I just don't think there's any reason to believe that would be the case.

[Paul Eres]

I agree that there's no reason to believe it's possible, that isn't really "news".

I don't think even small, well-managed corporations would work in a capitalism; ideally it'd all be small farmers, freelancing, and individual enterprises. I consider the salary model (where one person pays another for their work) to be incompatible with capitalism, and the sine qua non of a corporation is having employees (except for worker-owned corporations, which aren't even worker-owned so much as the stocks being owned largely by the workers, which isn't the same thing).

[Chris Whitman]

I agree that there's no reason to believe it's possible, that isn't really "news".

Well, that was my entire point: the fact that trying to implement a system like that might very well result in disaster autocracy.

I'm not disagreeing that it'd be awesome if everyone got along and no one got pushed around, if that's what you're saying.

[Smithy]

So you don't see a qualitative difference between someone having the option to obtain an education and find meaningful work in something they enjoy versus having to work two or three terrible jobs just to put oneself barely above the poverty line? That's a much more realistic example of what I'm talking about.

There's a difference, but it's not a difference of choice, it's a difference of environment, technology, economic wealth, etc. And neither one has anything to do with the free market vs socialism, either scenario can exist under either, and do.

I mean, have you noticed that your country has a third world country smack in the middle of it? There's no legislation to keep people in ghettos in the U.S., just abject poverty and a complete lack of jobs.

Yes, since I live in it and grew up in it, of course I know that. Although complete lack of jobs is an exaggeration: I live in Paterson, NJ, one of the poorest cities in NJ (I think only Camden and Newark are worse), but I still managed to find "jobs" online: independent game development and freelance writing, despite that the best local job is working at the local game store or something (where my sister works). Of course, she makes more than me, so my jobs are only better in self-fulfillment rather than money, but they at least have room for growth, whereas the jobs around here do not.

These are real problems we are currently facing. For one, there are still many people unable to meet their basic needs, for another, capitalism can only flourish through economic growth, which requires constantly increasing consumption above and beyond people's real needs or even wants, which requires the control of culture in order to create new needs, which has edged out basically all of the rest of our culture to the point where we are largely defined in our culture by our consumption. We've also started to take a massive toll on our limited natural resources in the process. Free market capitalism doesn't address any of these things, but I think they are important.

I think the assertion that capitalism can only flourish through economic growth and that it requires the control of culture in order to create new needs is false. That is true of corporatism, that is true of state capitalism, it's not true of capitalism. I'm just as much an enemy of state capitalism as of socialism.

I don't think it's enough to follow a point that one would prefer one's choice  restricted by large corporations and the implicit threat of force instead of by large government and the explicit threat of force.

Large corporations and the implicit threat of force don't have anything to do with capitalism.

As a bit of a side note, by implicit threat of force, I of course mean that the government still stands by big business 100% of the way. If I'm a poor person squatting in your abandoned warehouse, you can get the cops to throw me out, but if you're a big corporation and you want the apartment block I happen to live in, you can just buy it. If I decide not to leave, then you will use force. While legally we are both entitled to the same property rights, poorer people are forced to live in disadvantageous circumstances, and any possible dissent is simply punished with imprisonment.

If there's a government, it's not a capitalism. If there are cops, it's not a capitalism. You're arguing against something I don't believe in, and equating me with defending something I'm against.

The main thing that makes me decide on one over the other is that governments have killed hundreds of millions of people, the markets have killed no one (directly). And even indirectly you'd be hard-pressed to show that the markets have killed more people than governments have.

But that has absolutely no logical connection to people's individual economic well-being.

Yes, but I didn't say it did. I simply said I prefer one thing to the other. I prefer economic poverty to death. I prefer immense unfairness to slavery.

Oh, I left out America's massive, massive reliance on foreign slave labour, to the point where most of its clothes and consumer goods are manufactured by completely destitute people living half a world away.

I think it's a mistake to call *most* of foreign labor slave labor. The African-Americans were slave labor. Chinese sweatshops (usually) are not. There is still slave labor today, including slave labor within the US by US prisoners (1% of the population or something), slave labor within North Korea, within parts of Africa, and other isolated areas. But *most* of labor in the world is not slave labor, not even in the third world, and I think there's an important distinction between a sweatshop and a slave labor camp. To call such people slaves is an insult to real slaves.

I don't think the free market model addresses the collusion of companies in the U.S. with oppressive foreign governments.

That's true, but neither those companies or those countries has anything to do with the free market.

Indentured servitude is slavery, a police force tends to be the product of unregulated capitalism whether it involves the government or not, american companies going overseas is the result of a free market system---
overloading, I shouldn't be following this so closely. You're just taking all the bad things about capitalism, all the counter examples given to you, and saying "Nuh uh! No! That doesn't have anything to do with it!"
I think you might be blinding yourself with naive idealism.

edit: dangit, someone beat me to it and said the same exact thing.

Ah well.

[Chris Whitman]

But oh, regarding the slave labour thing: yes, a lot of the U.S. foreign labour is, in fact, real slavery. If you're poor in Kenya and you want to start a family, expect to sell at least one child into coffee farming (average market price: five American dollars). In many large factories in China, people are moved away from their homes and families to work, and supervised constantly by armed guards. Attempts to 'leave work' are severely punished, and if you don't show up they send someone to beat you.