Ask me (and others) anything about Anarcho-Capitalism - Page 53 - Politics and Economics

AlexM · 07-02-2012, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomdemaine

So if I call it tomnianism you'll instantly have no problems? Tens or hundreds of thousands of posts in this forum because you don't like my phrasing?

Anarcho-traderism

razrback · 07-02-2012, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

But anarchism is not what you want, because anarchy is ****ing horrifying. Free markets in children? Voluntary slave contracts?

You realize that markets for children and slaves exist right now, right?

The development of capitalism, and the subsequent rising stock of accumulated capital, allows for the eradication of a market for children (by allowing them to do nothing but consume for the first 18-22 years of their lives).

The same rise in the stock of accumulated capital -- which creates the demand for labor and drives the division of labor and its productivity-- eradicates the market for slaves.

Depleting the stock of capital via a mechanism that has already stolen and pledged to steal further the entire annual production of our country sounds horrifying personally.

razrback · 07-02-2012, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

Also razrback Thomas Hobbes is a titan of Western philosophy. You have a Youtube video of some crank who works at the same place EVERY OTHER CRANK WHO BELIEVES THIS HORSE**** WORKS, because for some reason despite their pitch perfect understanding of economics and sociology and stuff Mises is pretty much the only place that will pay them to write down their beliefs.

a) I know who Hobbes is. I asked for a simple explanation to a simple question, not a one-word title-of-a-book non-answer.

b) I have no clue wtf you are talking about wrt me having a youtube video

c) Pretty sure Mises writers are paid by a multitude of different universities where they research and publish. Contributions to Mises are mostly just that, and so to call "Mises", an institute funded the charitable donations of many different organizations and individuals, the "only place that will pay them to write down their beliefs" is , well, in your case, completely intellectually dishonest.

razrback · 07-02-2012, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILOVEPOKER929

Yep. The above is basically a truism to anyone who dares to pay attention to the real word. And "the father of modern economics and capitalism" would agree with you 100%:

ILP,

I've pointed this out to you before. Everything Adam Smith wrote down in Wealth can be classified in two different categories

1) Patently False
2) Correct but plagiarized

Most of the work falls into category 1.

You cannot just drop a wall of text from Adam Smith (which I'm sure no one is reading) and think you've slammed dunked on anyone. I've read Wealth thoroughly twice, I've earmarked and notated the **** out of it, along with every other economic treatise within a hundred years of 1776, and if you wanna go to battle over that statement, fine lets go, but otherwise stop posting Adam Smith quotes.

Adam Smith's entire framework of economic thought is irreparably broken upon the first sentence of Wealth.

razrback · 07-02-2012, 04:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neverfoldthe1outer

You really, really need to research a firm called Executive Outcomes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYE1s7lDBYc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...e_outcomes.htm

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/merc.htm

Hmm, looks like a company that

a) Startup seeded by a government contract, to a principal trained his entire professional life in the government, with founding and all future employees also trained their entire professional lives in government service
b) Failed to take out its main target
c) Folded up when the government contracts were pulled.
d) Generated a lot of bad press in capitalist countries.

Why did you show me that?

razrback · 07-02-2012, 04:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neverfoldthe1outer

This>> lol did you really just imply that the meaning of the words you use doesn't matter, it only matters what you mean when you say them? lol. anyway:

yes it does. THEN THIS >>> anybody who can:

legislate
dictate
mandate
regulate
enforce
control
impose
etc.

is acting as an authority over someone or something else. authority is government. authority is against the principles of anarchy because anarchy is without government. so again I ask, where is the "anarchy" in AC?

is called irony.

Anyways, its clear your attacks on AC are degenerating quickly, because this whole "define my enemies away" nonsense is pretty lazy:

Quote:

Anarchy (from the ancient Greek ἀναρχία, anarchia, meaning "absence of a leader"), has more than one definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is used to refer to a society without a publicly enforced government or violently enforced political authority.

wiki

razrback · 07-02-2012, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoredSocial

How is it possible that people who are supposedly good at poker don't understand that balance applies to more than poker? Everything should be in balance. AC'ism fundamentally violates several basic realities about human nature and is profoundly unbalanced. That's what's wrong with it.

Your comments on balance are about totally meaningless, and you know this, and what basic realities about human nature does AC violate?

The AC theory is built from the ground up based on the logical progression of individual human action. It is rigorous and thorough in its analysis of human nature. If you were even remotely aware of any AC theory or authors, you would actually challenge particular tenets instead of repeatedly making false hand-waving assertions.

Doctor Zeus · 07-02-2012, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by razrback

Y
The AC theory is built from the ground up based on the logical progression of individual human action. It is rigorous and thorough in its analysis of human nature.

This is where it is wrong. it presumes people act in their best interests. and that people are logical

EDIT= and it creates a few unjustified axioms about capitalism

razrback · 07-02-2012, 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctor Zeus

This is where it is wrong. it presumes people act in their best interests. and that people are logical

No it doesn't, and no it doesn't.

Doctor Zeus · 07-02-2012, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by razrback

No it doesn't, and no it doesn't.

That is where ACists and everyone else disagrees, as made clear in this thread

TomCollins · 07-02-2012, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctor Zeus

That is where ACists and everyone else disagrees, as made clear in this thread

We've gone over this before. It only assumes people *try* to act in their best interests.

Paul McSwizzle · 07-02-2012, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoredSocial

I don't think any of the people who think that AC is completely insane ITT think that capitalism is bad... It's just that capitalism is like everything else on earth. Too much capitalism=bad. Too much government=bad. Neither is inherently evil and neither is purely good. There are no purely good things in this world. None.

Religion when it helps a person turn their life around and be something useful= good. Religion when it convinces some ******* that he knows the mind of god and he goes out and flies an airplane into a building= bad. Government when it stops banks from being anything but boring= good. Government when it starts killing its own citizens simply for disagreeing with ideology= bad. Capitalism when it drives innovation and allocates resources more efficiently than the alternatives is good. Capitalism when allowed to operate freely, monopolize markets, and massively externalize costs= bad.

I get that the idea that we live in a world of grey bothers some people. Those people are entitled to their opinion. Their worthless retarded opinion.

EDIT: Obviously I mean that when capitalism is totally unfettered it naturally forms up monopolies and externalizes every possible cost. Both of these are totally in line with the basic economic reality that firms maximize profits.

good post

LirvA · 07-02-2012, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoredSocial

Capitalism when allowed to operate freely, monopolize markets, and massively externalize costs= bad.

Cite examples of laissez-faire, free market capitalism leading to monopolized markets and massively externalized costs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoredSocial

I don't think any of the people who think that AC is completely insane ITT think that capitalism is bad... It's just that capitalism is like everything else on earth. Too much capitalism=bad. Too much government=bad. Neither is inherently evil and neither is purely good. There are no purely good things in this world. None.

Religion when it helps a person turn their life around and be something useful= good. Religion when it convinces some ******* that he knows the mind of god and he goes out and flies an airplane into a building= bad. Government when it stops banks from being anything but boring= good. Government when it starts killing its own citizens simply for disagreeing with ideology= bad. Capitalism when it drives innovation and allocates resources more efficiently than the alternatives is good. Capitalism when allowed to operate freely, monopolize markets, and massively externalize costs= bad.

I get that the idea that we live in a world of grey bothers some people. Those people are entitled to their opinion. Their worthless retarded opinion.

EDIT: Obviously I mean that when capitalism is totally unfettered it naturally forms up monopolies and externalizes every possible cost. Both of these are totally in line with the basic economic reality that firms maximize profits.

Quote:

The idea of complete centralization of the direction of economic activity still appalls most people, not only because of the stupendous difficulty of the task, but even more because of the horror inspired by the idea of everything being directed from a single center. If we are, nevertheless, rapidly moving toward such a state, this is largely because most people still believe that it must be possible to find some middle way between "atomistic" competition and central direction. Nothing, indeed, seems at first more plausible, or is more likely to appeal to reasonable people, than the idea that our goal must be neither the extreme decentralization of free competition nor the complete centralization of a single plan but some judicious mixture of the two methods. Yet mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in this field. Although competition can bear some admixture of regulation, it cannot be combined with planning to any extent we like without ceasing to operate as an effective guide to production. Nor is "planning" a medicine which, taken in small doses, can produce the effects for which one might hope from its thoroughgoing application. Both competition and central direction become poor and inefficient tools if they are incomplete; they are alternative principles used to solve the same problems, and a mixture of the two means that neither will really work and that the result will be worse than if either system had been consistently relied upon. Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.

The Road to Serfdom - F.A. Hayek

LirvA · 07-02-2012, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILOVEPOKER929

In actuality she took virtually no risk. To start the business, she borrowed $5,000 from her mom, $8,000 from her brother, and ponied up $3000 herself. If the business had failed. Her life wouldn't have changed one bit except for the financial loss of $3,000 (which was really at least half my dad's money). She would go back to working at some job making $20,000-$30,000 and my dad would remain the main breadwinner of our family just as before.

But really that's besides the point, the idea that someone takes a risk and therefore has the right to dictate others and live off the labor of others is a total non sequitur. It's just naked capitalist apologetics that only the severely indoctrinated take seriously.

If your mother took a risk in starting a business, it is her undertaking. It is her business, and she controls the decisions. If her "oppressed" workers don't like working for her, they can either quit, or try to buy some ownership in the company. Why on earth should your mother take a risk that she's staking her livelihood on and then let unskilled people make her decisions for her? She has succeeded because she's made wise decisions and has put in the work she needed to be successful. Her workers can start their own businesses and undertake their own risks if they don't like working for her.

LirvA · 07-02-2012, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILOVEPOKER929

Quote from some random guy on the internet that sums up life under capitalism for the restless many:

Source.

But, yeah, I know, it's his fault for being poor so **** him. He should just stop complaining, and grow up and be the cog in the system he's supposed to be. Perhaps he's too dumb to realize that this is what freedom is all about. Maybe he needs to watch some youtube videos about pencils to get that through his thick precariat skull.

Oh boo ****ing hoo. Waaaa **** I want isn't free. Waaaa I don't get to magically be intelligent. Waaa I have to produce my own way through life. Waaa won't somebody give me everything I want for free?

gimme a ****ing break dude