Smidgey

They might have sovereign power - not will. The justice problem would still be there whether they did or not.

We can't really know about big business since there hasn't really been an anarcho-capitalist country (or world for that matter, since if there was only one, that would legitimise all other states and allow their corporations to exploit the one).

Isn't it rather intellectually dishonest to demand that they argue this? It would be like me demanding that you defend the right of individuals to commit homosexual acts when you state that 'people should own their own bodies'. You probably didn't consider homosexuality and it is way off the mark as a response to that point - the same is true here.

Further, what are these not-so-rosy pictures?

Finally, what force and coersion would I have (or do I have - even though I don't defend the current system)?

I've come across very few libertarians that do that. Even Smith doesn't make this claim. Most libertarians I have read (and it has been a lot) have almost never made this claim (some obviously have, but they are clearly wrong).

If you are talking about debates you've had with other individuals, then that is their ignorance of the situation - not an attack on libertarianism as such.

So you accept a kind of Rawlsian concept of justice as fairness?

If so, then referring to our discussion in the other thread, would this not be even more prescriptive (the same accusation you made against me)?

Further, Nozick's rebuttle to Rawls' Theory of Justice that what is important is how the state of affairs came about, not just what the current state of affairs is is an extremely potent criticism. I get the feeling that you are ignoring how the state of affairs came about - which would be a huge flaw. Please correct me if I am wrong in my understanding of you here.

Why is it still a major problem in the West?

I'm willing to accept that it is in Africa, Asia and South America.

That would be if you assume that would happen - I don't think we are able to make the claim that it would or it would not for definite.

Thank you, I'll bookmark these for later.

Although I am concerned with the Geolibertarianism FAQ relying heavily on the Lockean Proviso (I skimmed some of it). The Lockean Proviso is, of course, quite defunct now (which is fair enough considering the first people in any paricularly field will always get things wrong).

Maybe this will be explained in those articles, but this doesn't tell me why it becomes completely unprofitable, why the availability of land increases and so forth.

__________________
How vain is man, who boasts in fight the valour of gigantic might!

-Georg Friedrich Händel

BonnieDundee

I agree. I simply have trouble seeing anarcho-capitalism with large corporations as anarchism.

Not it is not intellectually dishonest at all. It is more intellectually dishonest to only restrict debate to methodological individualist analysis.
That force and coerion have their part to play.

Your options are limited, which is what coercion is all about.



Mosty of them do in my experience. Of course most of them say most of them don't as well.

They don't make it directly, but it is implicit, usually extremely so in their analysis. Particularly in the Rothbardians and Austrians.

Indeed but it is most of them. It seems most American style libertarians are ignorant of their doctrine.


Well liberty and autonomy are more important to me. But I mean justice in this sense as distributive justice. I mean a fair share of common goods and a fair share of what you produce depending on your input.


Because it decreases autonomy. Most people are forced to either work for someone or to struggle extremely hard, largely unsuccesfully working for themselves and largely the bank. There is little opportunity to have alot more autonomy other their creative activity. They cannot easily work for themselves or for a co-op.


Oh if corporations remain it is fair to assume it. If they don't it is far less certain and I agree.

I'm not sure they use it exactly, but I don't think it is definitely defunct. It may be among some, but not others.

Because you are charged an estimation of the ground and site rent so anything you might make in pure land speculation is taken away. That means that demand for land should fall, all things being equal.

__________________
"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."
-Bruce Schneier

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.

Smidgey

This doesn't respond to my homosexuality analogy - if you want to bring it up, you can, but the reason it has not been brought up is because it is largely irrelevant (as with the analogy above).

You talk of it generally, but you have not brought up any examples or reasons for why we should consider it.

But there are no violations of rights. You are using what I would call quite a useless notion of force. Nobody is claiming that they are forced to stay on the road because there are houses on either side. If, however, they were forced to go only one direction and to never return - that would be a different matter.

Correct, but to delimit them you would have to use force...

I might be coerced into certain forms of action, but it is not the same as being forced by threat of violence to do only one form of action.

I don't know who you've been arguing with, but I have found very few of them who do and you can stereotype all you want to make a cheap point, but it gets us nowhere. We are just going to end up repeating ourselves over and over.

You are making the claim - do you have passages and citations of this?

As an ardent follower and reader of Bastiat I can state with 100% certainty Bastiat never does this and is quite clear that he does not claim this.

Most that you have spoken to.

Most that I have spoken to have never claimed what you are claiming they are claiming (Sorry for the alliteration )!

So, justice as fairness - and distributive justice is what Rawls is primarily concerned with.

Well, I would charge that Nozick's criticism here is perfectly right - it ignores how the supposed 'injustice' came about and is therefore quite and immoral system. By looking at the system as it appears now the Rawlsian who believes in justice as fairness has an extremely narrow field of vision when it comes to distributive justice.

Firstly, you have not shown why that is a bad thing - to claim that a lack of autonomy and that people are being 'forced' to work for a company (again, that ambiguous use of 'force') does not make it so.

Secondly, small businesses are actually the largest employer in the UK, the myth that the corporate giants control everything is obviously perpetuated by the media in our country (although that is not to say they do not have a great deal of power - especially over government, which just goes to show that government should be limited). Furthermore, one of the main concerns of small businesses in the UK is actually excessive government red tape, which (and I'm sure you will agree with this) just goes to show that reducing government may actually help small businesses, the self-employed and co-operatives (which do indeed exist, there are many in Edinburgh in fact).

There is no doubt in my mind that many large companies would remaind (and this is in fact a good thing, large amounts of capital in small locations - whilst often seen as bad - can power development and innovation). However, there needs to be a good balance with small businesses as discussed above.

Locke is most certainly one of my heros (especially when it comes to the famous tripartite rights so eloquently adapted by Thomas Jefferson in the declaration of independence), but I just don't think his proviso cuts it. It has two major flaws - one that someone could technically own the whole ocean with a bottle of tomato juice (Robert Nozick's famous criticism) and that nobody would be allowed to acquire property in the first place.

It was an excellent attempt at describing the original acquisition of property, but it falls just short, which is why many later thinkers just adapted it rather than start again (I personally believe Nozick's adaptation is the best one, but there are many others).

Okay, I might be called obtuse here, but why would that estimated charge cause demand (and therefore prices) to fall?

__________________
How vain is man, who boasts in fight the valour of gigantic might!

-Georg Friedrich Händel

youcanhandlethetruth

Totally unneccesary (from the point of view that it never should have started to begin with)

All wars(including WWI and WWII) are/were instigated and created by the international bankers out of greed who funded both sides.

If that sounds hard to believe, watch the video I posted under "The most important history lesson you will ever need (posted under Talk about Anything).

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP,agni,Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist

BonnieDundee

I really don't know what you are talking about. I'm talking about the fact there are social forces, power, institutions, relationships etc which have a great effect on economics and the individual.



The better analogy you should have used would have been Hayek's of the fallen cliff climber who can't really claim that the rocks have "forced" him to do anything. However in these analogies lies the basic fallacy in your argument. You pretend that rights to property and economic circumstances and institutions, specifically most modern capitalist ones, are something natural but you do not show why. It is humans forcing these economic "rights" on the population, they are enforced by the state and force is involved.



Again you are treating the forms of coercion and force I talk of as natural. They are not. They may be social and impersonal, it is not the individual boss who does most of the coercion, it is the whole of society with its rules of property, economic and social institutions and relationships etc but the force it there none the less and their is little natural about it.



I have debated with many all over the internet and so have others, they are well known for it. And in fact you have done it to a degree here, you have focused only on individual transactions and imply something natural about the modern kind of property rights.



Read Human Action or Man, economy and state. Both of these try and use Crusoe economics, which is just about the trademark version of what I'm talking about.

AsI have not read Bastiat but he has been accused of this. I know of his window fallacy and it has the hallmarks of it.

I have spoken to many in many different places.

Really, those here have made the implications. I'm aware on the internet that reading between the lines or taking notice of implied meanings is frown-upon, if someone does not spell it out a hundred times then it isn't true, but sue me.


I really don't see why the fact some of this started in the past should accuse a system which today creates a lack of autonomy and liberty for the individual and which does not usually give him the just deserves for his labour or of the common goods existing now due to economic institutions and laws and vast disparities of economic power. It has little to do with the past.



Well you have no shown that liberty is a good thing. We could all go down that route, I'd have thought as libertarians that autonomy and liberty were not something we'd have to debate.

Actually corporations are a very large employer in the country and are becoming increasingly so. They are the modern bit of the economy so to speak. It is still very hard to work for oneselves or to put up a decent small business, most, and I mean 90%+, fail in the first five years and it is just as hard work as wage labour.

I don't doubt however that less red tape would help it.


It is unlikely to be anarchism then if you are correct.

Personally I'm not into lockean theories of property, property to me is clearly a social institution. It is created and defended by society, as it is constituted, and has some definite functions such as industry and liberty, and rights to it should be derivative of these.

Well the true effect depends on how it is applied. But it should lessen demand because people cannot own land to speculate on it, ie to simply gain income from unimproved land.

__________________
"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."
-Bruce Schneier

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.