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Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.[

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

unlike what most US Libertarians want to believe:


that's why you need a state in capitalism, because you need an entity that tells you what's private and what's public.

true anarchism does not need property rights.  :-*

Is it necessary that an entity that tells you what is private/personal and what is public be a state?  

The dichotomy is a false one and wouldn't exist in the first place.

How does capitalism require a state?

To protect your property.

[...]

Anarcho-”Capitalism” is impossible

Many anarchists of various stripes have made the claim that anarcho-capitalists aren’t really anarchists because anarchism entails anti-capitalism.  I happen to think this is actually backwards.  If they genuinely wish to eliminate the state, they are anarchists, but they aren’t really capitalists, no matter how much they want to claim they are.

People calling themselves “anarcho-capitalists” usually want to define “capitalism” as the same thing as a free market, and “socialism” as state intervention against such.  But what then is a free market?  If you mean simply all voluntary transactions that occur without state interference, then it’s a circular and redundant definition.  In that case, all anarchists are “anarcho-capitalists”, even the most die-hard anarcho-syndicalist.

Defining capitalism as a system of private property is equally problematic, because where would you draw the line between private and public?  Under a state, state property is considered “public” but as an anarchist, you know that’s a sham.  It’s private property owned by a group that calls themselves the State.  Whether something is owned by 10 people or 10 million doesn’t make it more or less “private”.

Going a bit deeper, there may be issues about how property rights are defined, and the nature of ownership between different sorts of anarchists.  Obviously, anarcho-capitalists do not want the government to decide who owns what property.  So even at their hardest of hard-core propertarianism, they are still effectively anarchists; they just have a different idea of how an anarchist society will organize itself.

But the focus on goals, I think, is very much over-emphasized in anarchist communities, at the expense of looking at means.  Goals sometimes lead people toward certain means, but it is the means that determine results, not the goals.  And if the anarcho-capitalists follow anarchist means, the results will be anarchy, not some impossible “anarcho-capitalism”.

Anarchy does not mean social utopia, it means a society where there is no privileged authority.  There will still be social evils to be dealt with under anarchy.  But anarchy is an important step toward fighting those evils without giving birth to all new ones.

My take on the impossibility of anarcho-capitalism is simply as follows:

Under anarchism, mass accumulation and concentration of capital is impossible.
Without concentration of capital, wage slavery is impossible.
Without wage slavery, there’s nothing most people would recognize as “capitalism”.
The first part of this, that mass accumulation and concentration of capital is impossible under anarchism, has several aspects.

One big one is that the cost of protecting property rises dramatically as the amount of property owned increases, without a state.  This is something that rarely gets examined by libertarians, but it’s crucial.

One reason for this is that large scale property ownership is never all geographically massed.  A billionaire doesn’t have all his property in one small geographic area.  In fact, this sort of absentee-ownership is necessary to become a billionaire in the first place.  Most super-wealthy own stock in large corporations that have many factories, retail outlets, offices and the like all over the place.  Leaving aside whether joint-stock companies are even likely in anarchy for now, this geographical dispersion means that the cost of protecting all of this property is enormous.  Not only because of the sheer number of guardians necessary, but because one must pay those guardians enough that they don’t just decide to take over the local outlet.  You could hire guardians to watch the guardians, but that in itself becomes a new problem…

But the property needs to be protected not only from domestic trespassers, but from foreign invasion as well.  Let us imagine that an anarcho-capitalist society does manage to form, Ancapistan, if we will.  Next to Ancapistan is a statist capitalist nation, let us call it Aynrandia.  Well, the Aynrandians decide “hmm, Ancapistan lacks a state to protect its citizens.  We should take over and give them one, for their own good of course.” At this point the billionaires in Ancapistan must either capitulate, welcome the Aynrandians, and Ancapistan is no more, or they must raise a private army to repel the Aynrandians.  Not only will the second option be ridiculously expensive, for the reasons I’ve outlined above, but a lot of property will get destroyed if the Aynrandians decide to engage in modern total warfare.  Ahh but what about all the middle class people in Ancapistan, won’t they form a militia to defend themselves?  Well yes, but they won’t form a militia to defend a bunch of billionaires’ property.

The anarcho-capitalists often have a nonsensical rosy picture of the boss-worker relationship that has no basis in reality.  Almost no one wakes up and goes in to work thinking “thank the heavens for my wonderful boss, who was kind enough to employ a loser like me”.  When external invasion arrives, the middle classes will defend themselves and their own property.  But they’re not going to risk their lives for Wal-mart without getting a piece of the action.

So, due to the rising cost of protecting property, there comes a threshold level, where accumulating more capital becomes economically inefficient, simply in terms of guarding the property.  Police and military protection is the biggest subsidy that the State gives to the rich.  In some sense the Objectivists are correct that capitalism requires a government to protect private property.

Furthermore, without a state-protected banking/financial system, accumulating endless high profits is well nigh impossible.  The police/military state helps keep the rich rich, but it is the financial system that helped them get rich in the first place, at everyone else’s expense.

First off, state-chartered banking creates a limited supply of sources from which one can receive banking services.  This cartelization allows them to get away with a fairly large amount of fractional-reserve banking, in which more is loaned out than actually exists.  By increasing the in-use money supply in a one-sided manner, this creates a situation where the people who take out loans are effectively stealing from everyone else.  Companies that finance expansion force their competitors to do so or fail, by bidding up the price of resources.  By raising the cost of entry, this limits and reduces the amount of competitors in every industry, driving wages down.

And the current fiat money/central banking regime, by constantly inflating the money supply, destroys the ability of people to save, thus forcing them to borrow in order to start or expand a business, to buy a home or a car.  It literally and directly concentrates the supply of capital in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people, destroying savings and feeding effective purchasing power to those with higher credit ratings.  This drives down wages and makes people dependent on those who still have large amounts of capital to hire them.

Under anarchy, anyone could lend money to anyone, there would be no special thing known as a “bank” per se (or to put it a different way, anyone could put up a shingle that said “bank”).  Without legal tender and the ability to create large amounts of money out of thin air (the threat of “bank runs” and/or devaluation of bank notes would effectively limit this to a very small level, enough to minimally pay for itself at most), the money supply would no longer be in the hands of a cartel.  Borrowing would become rare, and saving would become widespread, distributing capital more and more widely, rather than more and more narrowly, thus diluting the price of capital.  Under such a system, any shift in demand would be met by a vast array of competitors, driving profits back down to the average.

Obviously, under anarchism, such a thing as “intellectual property” wouldn’t exist, so any business model that relies on patents and copyrights to make money would not exist either.  This would contribute to the dilution I mentioned above.

As the price of capital is diluted, the share of production that goes to the workers increases.  What we would eventually see is essentially, a permanent global labor shortage.  Companies would compete for workers, rather than the other way around.

What is likely, judging from history, is that something like a private syndicalism would arise, where owners of value-producing property would lease it out to organizations of workers, simply because it would be easier for them than trying to hire people on a semi-permanent basis.

Mining was organized like this for quite a while, for instance, until the advent of bank-financed joint stock mining companies, which bought out most of the prospector/owners in the 1800s.

So we see, even assuming an “anarcho-capitalist” property regime, anything recognizable as “capitalism” to anyone else could not exist.  In fact the society would look a lot like what “anarcho-socialists” think of as “socialism”.  Not exactly like it, but much closer than anything they’d imagine as capitalism.

However, under anarchism, even such a strict property regime is not guaranteed.  There is no way to impose it on a community that wants to operate a different way.  I predict there will lots of different communities and systems that will compete for people to live in them and whatever seems to work the best will tend to spread.  There’s nothing the anarcho-capitalists could do to prevent people from agreeing to treat property in a more fluid or communal manner than they’d prefer.  Nor is there anything the anarcho-socialists could do to prevent a community from organizing property in a more rigid or individualistic manner than they’d prefer.

For, just as anarcho-capitalism is impossible, anarcho-socialism is also impossible, depending on how you define things.  In reality all of us who are opposed to the state, as that great fiction that some people have a special right to do things that anyone else doesn’t, are anarchists, and what will happen under anarchy?  EVERYTHING.

To protect your property.

If I'm happy to let lex mercatoria suffice for that, have you anything else?  Seems pretty thin grounds for capitalism's need of a state.

Maybe it does require one, but I don't see how.  
If it does, that is a place where work is needed to reduce the burden on that requirement, and thereby lower the costs for human interaction.

The governmentisgood site looks more like arguments for how government has interfered with free trade and made it less effective.  
A list of how government has attacked free trade is not much of a requirement for government from free trade.  

Wait, so if lex mercatoria works so well ... what happened to it?  Shouldn't it still be around?  If it's not good enough to protect itself from vanishing, what makes you think it'll be good enough for your property?

Have you not noticed?
It is pretty much exactly the mechanism used in this forum.
It seems to form almost spontaneously where there is trade without state intervention.

I noticed that it used to be much more widespread than ... this forum & this forum ain't even a coon's age yet :D

A Stable Money Supply - Widespread commerce and a stable economy both require a stable and dependable money system – one in which consumers and merchants have faith. This can only be provided and maintained by the federal government.

So, how is it working / not-working for you?  Do you need more government?

Can't say fer shoo, but isn't repeating the thing that didn't work out called "batshit crazy"?

When you say "didn't work" what exactly do you mean?
lex merc is the foundation of all contract law worldwide today.  It existed without states and with them equally well.

That would be like saying health care doesn't work because governments also do it.  Weird eh?

lex mercatoria

When i say "didn't work," i mean just that.  It failed so badly that it necessitated a whole new layer of laws, states,  etc. -- all the stuff you hate (and i'm not a fan of either).
In other words, it couldn't protect itself from being displaced by new, less attractive & more oppressive law, it failed to protect itself from impingement by governments, states, whatever you want to call "what is."
Edit:  And there's nothing to suggest that this time it'll be any different :)
Edit2:  Healthcare?  Not seeing the parallels.  If you were calling us to abandon antibiotics, give up on sterilization & go back to using herbs & spices, then the analogy becomes sound :D

Maybe some good points if you prefer a society similar to today, just without 'em damn gubbernment. Then the author explains why it's not possible from his perspective, as a conservative that he seems to be, praising corporations, intellectual property and strict private property.

The governmentisgood site looks more like arguments for how government has interfered with free trade and made it less effective. 
A list of how government has attacked free trade is not much of a requirement for government from free trade. 

I'm not the one saying it failed when it hasn't. (likewise with healthcare)  But nice try attempting to put those words in my mouth.

It still exists.  It still works.  That it was adopted by other bigger entities doesn't mean that it doesn't work.  It was and is the norm of human interaction in a marketplace.

Since you aren't seeing the parallels, I'll try another.
Math was adopted and used by folks to make catapults and hydrogen bombs.  Maybe I don't like those things, but that doesn't mean that the fault is math.

Lets flip it...
Maybe you like anarchy.  Then someone calling himself an anarchist throws a molotov cocktail and hits an innocent bystander burning her and her unborn child to death.  So anarchy as a philosophy is a failure, right?  It failed to protect them.

I like your iconoclasm, but you are missing the mark on this.

Did you go to the site?  This guy is not a conservative or arguing how government is making trade less effective.  He is praising the state, and how it is necessary for society to function.

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


If free trade means no restrictions on trade then clearly that's not what we have.  (certain types of drugs are deemed illegal as one example).
Wage slavery?  What does that mean exactly?  Workers work voluntarily and are paid a wage.
Clearly not exclusively either statist or anarchist. 

And it isn't growth for the sake of growth.  Goods are created to serve humans wants and needs.  If they didn't they wouldn't be produced. 

Unless of course the government says they should in order to keep people in jobs.  Then you have production for the sake of production and huge waste of resources.

Wage Slavery: The Short Version Brad Spangler | December 8th, 2010 Reconciling free market libertarianism and libertarian socialism should never be a matter of ignoring differences. Instead, such reconciliation ought to be understood as building a synthesis. Intelligent argument is an essential part of that process. What’s not productive is straying outside logical discourse, and that happens on both sides. Let’s take the bitterly-disputed concept of wage slavery as an example of where an opportunity for synthesis can be shown. We can distinguish between wage labor and wage slavery. The state acts to involuntarily transfer wealth from the productive class to a political class elite, thereby monopolizing/cartelizing capital. Additionally, the state forcibly cuts off opportunities for economic self-sufficiency. The result is that people are forcibly denied any alternative but to sell labor artificially cheaply in a buyer’s market, where the buyers are a political class plutocracy gorged on stolen loot and enjoying economic influence they are not rightly due. Unfortunately, in the debates among anarchists, we’ve got two sides exhibiting roughly equal degrees of obstinant closed-mindedness… 1) Those who rightly oppose wage slavery and wrongly blame exchange. 2) Those who rightly defend exchange and wrongly fail to recognize wage slavery. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

[...]
Or, more radically, wage slavery is nothing but the evolution of chattel slavery into something more affluent. It's using humanity where machines should be.

unlike what most US Libertarians want to believe:


that's why you need a state in capitalism, because you need an entity that tells you what's private and what's public.

true anarchism does not need property rights.  :-*

If chattel slavery is buying, wage slavery is rent-to-own.   ;D

Wait, what?  If that was the case, you'd be right & i wouldn't argue.  It's not.  You claim it worked, so i'm having a hard time seing where all the opressive new shitlaw came from?


Yep.  So everything that's happening right now, according to you, is just peachy -- all's according to lex mercatoria, right?  So WTF is there to complain about?  I'm glad things worked out to your liking.  Enjoy.


Sure thing.  Math still works, just like lex mercatoria still works.  But just like your lex mercatoria is no longer the only law, simple math is no longer the sufficient.  It has been expanded and built upon, just like today's oppressive laws were built on your lex mercatoria.  Sorry, the abacus is just not cutting it anymore, and even Crays are obsolete.  Dig what i'm sayin'?


If Anarchy was widespread, and got displaced by other social/economic/power systems, than hell yeah, no matter if children got killed by molotovs or not!  It failed to survive -- it's provably falsifiable, it failed & thus may fail again.  *If nothing else, it is not fail-proof.*


 ???

Edit: typo.

I did.  Had a hard time taking it seriously though.  Seemed more like it should be on Onion for all the sense it made.

The state acts to involuntarily transfer wealth from the productive class to a political class elite, thereby monopolizing/cartelizing capital. Additionally, the state forcibly cuts off opportunities for economic self-sufficiency. The result is that people are forcibly denied any alternative but to sell labor artificially cheaply in a buyer’s market, where the buyers are a political class plutocracy gorged on stolen loot and enjoying economic influence they are not rightly due. Unfortunately, in the debates among anarchists, we’ve got two sides exhibiting roughly equal degrees of obstinant closed-mindedness… 1) Those who rightly oppose wage slavery and wrongly blame exchange. 2) Those who rightly defend exchange and wrongly fail to recognize wage slavery.

Poe's Law in effect.  He actually, truly believes this stuff.

it's possible to do this in a communistic way, e.g., trading my good for your good

Limited Liability Laws - Without limited liability laws, the economy would not have access to the capital it needs to grow and prosper.

Property Rights - Corporate property rights – one of the main legal instruments that insulate business from government power – can be created and maintained only by government.

Law and Order - Without the rule of law, our economy would resemble the “mafia capitalism” that Russia has suffered from in its transition to capitalism.

Bankruptcy Protection - Bankruptcy laws protected otherwise healthy businesses that were temporarily short of funds.

A Stable Money Supply - Widespread commerce and a stable economy both require a stable and dependable money system – one in which consumers and merchants have faith. This can only be provided and maintained by the federal government.

Patents and Copyrights - Bill Gates likes to think of himself as a self-made man, but he would not be one of the richest men in the world if the government did not make it illegal for anyone but Microsoft to copy and sell Windows.

Banking Regulation and Insurance - Banks cannot survive runs because they have loaned out most of the money deposited with them and therefore cannot pay it out to a large number of depositors at once...government was there to guarantee those deposits

Corporate Charters - Capitalism today is corporate capitalism. But the corporation itself is a creation of government. Corporations can come into being only through charters: the legal instruments by which state governments allow businesses to incorporate.

Commercial Transaction Laws - Who would sell goods if they couldn’t be sure they would be paid, and who would buy goods if they couldn’t be sure they would receive them?

My viewpoint is quite from the opposite direction and more akin to this:

http://c4ss.org/content/4043

Interesting read, though it fails right on the first premise, where it claims that "large accumulation of capital would be impossible, because it would cost too much to secure it." To understand why, you must only ask the question, "Who is paying for all that protection now?"

I think the main reason for the anarcho-socialist (or is it anarcho-communist?) and anarcho-capitalist distinctions is to protect the anarcho-socialists from getting killed. Specifically, so that the socialist anarchists will know not to wander onto the capitalist anarchist's properties and start taking stuff, thinking "it belongs to everyone," because they will get shot.

[...]
 if the pile starts to rot, no one cares, because everyone knows someone else will come fix it.

Never ask what a word "is" - this is one of the worst intellectual habits you can possibly cultivate - because words aren't anything. They are merely communication tools that can refer to things. Asking what some controversial word "is" is a recipe for a protracted (sometimes centuries-long), hopelessly confused debate.

The question to ask is what each person is trying to get at when they use the word. This is the ONLY way to ever reach clear thinking about a term or (verbalized) concept.

Minarchists define capitalism as free trade, voluntarists define it as a condition of inviolable property rights or lack of central authority, and leftists define it as what libertarians would call corporatism (if they define it at all). These meanings are obviously incompatible; these people speak different languages, so it is a complete mistake and wild-goose chase to ask what the word "really means." It means different things to different people, as different as the word "Gift" means to an American and a German (Gift means poison in German).

Figure out what each person you talk to means by the term before engaging in a debate with them, or else it will just devolve into semantics. And if you are just thinking in your own mind, be sure to figure out what you are trying to get at when you use a key term, rather than pondering about what it "is" like some muddle-headed Platonist.

Good discussion of "capitalism" from a libertarian/anarchist point of view: http://mises.org/community/forums/t/22196.aspx

my question is "why capitalism"? why continue to use a word that has many different meanings for different people, some quite the opposite of what is intended, and why use an -ism word that implies a system, when what is being advocated is the lack of any system? laissez-faire seems to me to be infinitely preferable to the word capitalism. it means "let it be" which precisely defines the free market, it's a word that hasn't been vilified, and its new to most people, it doesn't have unwanted or unearned connotations. why "Capitalism" indeed!

What's your basis for claiming intellectual superiority in this battle of wits? Maybe you're wilfully misunderstanding what crumbs was saying? Mercatosaurus Lex got a Darwin award, Homo Governmentus took over. The end. Seems easy enough. If you'd seen "Jurassic Park" then you'd know that all sorts of bad stuff happens when people try to resurrect dinosaurs. ;D

I make no claim to superior intellect.  Nor do I claim to be engaging in a battle of wits.  If you are looking for a battle of wits, look elsewhere. I am only looking to better understand.
In a dialog, folks often re-characterize the statements of their interlocutor in order to show that they understand the intent of the statement.
Willful misunderstanding is evident when the re-characterizations are consistently the opposite or orthagonal. I suspect this is rewarding for him in some way, but the only meaningful response is to be pedantic which is tiring and with a wit-battler, and generally fruitless, so I am happy to let others do that.

Lex mercatoria is not dead as evidenced by its use in bitcointalk.org (and most anywhere there is trade). Contract law is not dead, quite the contrary it thrives.  Further to that, increasingly it is engaged without direct government engagement through binding arbitration.  So the trend (at least in the USA) is toward MORE lex mercatoria, rather than less.  This is sensible as it is less expensive for all to have a smaller government footprint in places where it has overstepped.
The claim that the existing large governments use of the lex merc principles means that it is dead/extinct/dinosaur, is as absurd as claiming that math is dead because there are now computers. 
I am not seeking to convince anyone of anything and I deeply appreciate thoughtful refutations and being shown where my thought has failed.  When apparently intelligent folks take these thoughts, ignore them, and attack thoughts which are not mine, it is not my responsibility to corral those folks and attempt to get them to attack mine instead.  As much as I'd prefer that, I am very happy to let them run off on their own and enjoy themselves.


The July 4 Rainbow Gathering in Montana looks delightful.  Montana summers are some of the best I've had with many fond memories of picking some fresh raspberries that the deer missed, and pulling the occasional rainbow trout out of Flathead Lake. 

I make no claim to superior intellect.  Nor do I claim to be engaging in a battle of wits.  If you are looking for a battle of wits, look elsewhere. I am only looking to better understand.
In a dialog, folks often re-characterize the statements of their interlocutor in order to show that they understand the intent of the statement.
Willful misunderstanding is evident when the re-characterizations are consistently the opposite or orthagonal. I suspect this is rewarding for him in some way, but the only meaningful response is to be pedantic which is tiring and with a wit-battler, and generally fruitless, so I am happy to let others do that.

Lex mercatoria is not dead as evidenced by its use in bitcointalk.org (and most anywhere there is trade). Contract law is not dead, quite the contrary it thrives.  Further to that, increasingly it is engaged without direct government engagement through binding arbitration.  So the trend (at least in the USA) is toward MORE lex mercatoria, rather than less.  This is sensible as it is less expensive for all to have a smaller government footprint in places where it has overstepped.
The claim that the existing large governments use of the lex merc principles means that it is dead/extinct/dinosaur, is as absurd as claiming that math is dead because there are now computers.  
I am not seeking to convince anyone of anything and I deeply appreciate thoughtful refutations and being shown where my thought has failed.  When apparently intelligent folks take these thoughts, ignore them, and attack thoughts which are not mine, it is not my responsibility to corral those folks and attempt to get them to attack mine instead.  As much as I'd prefer that, I am very happy to let them run off on their own and enjoy themselves.


The July 4 Rainbow Gathering in Montana looks delightful.  Montana summers are some of the best I've had with many fond memories of picking some fresh raspberries that the deer missed, and pulling the occasional rainbow trout out of Flathead Lake.  

*audible sigh of longing* thankyou...
Can you give me a rundown of this lex mercatoria buisiness?
A history perhaps?

What's your basis for claiming intellectual superiority in this battle of wits? Maybe you're wilfully misunderstanding what crumbs was saying? Mercatosaurus Lex got a Darwin award, Homo Governmentus took over. The end. Seems easy enough. If you'd seen "Jurassic Park" then you'd know that all sorts of bad stuff happens when people try to resurrect dinosaurs. ;D

[...]
Lex mercatoria is not dead as evidenced by its use in bitcointalk.org (and most anywhere there is trade). [...]

Of all the examples to pick ::)  Please understand that this board is a monarchy.  It is fully owned & controlled by Theymos.  He makes the rules.  You follow them, or GTFO.
See how that works?
There's an interesting read here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238474.0 , where you'll find out just how well your example is working (SPOILER ALERT:  Shilling and sockpupetry turns out to be perfectly fine here.  How come?  'Coz Theymos said so.)
On this forum, most businesses fail, turn out to be scams, or both.  On this forum, mining bonds are sold to people who belive in other fairy tales but not in learning to maths. On this forum, Pirateat40, fully doxed, walked away with all of your money in broad daylight, and this hugbox, knowing *exactly who & where he was*, couldn't get its *millions* back.

Nice work, lex mercatoria, color me impressed. :)

[...]
Are you familiar with Salvador Dalí's Monarchichal Anarchism?
The origin of kingship in arbitration?
[...]

Lex Mercatoria, or non-governmental trade law, did receede a bit this past one or two centuries, primarily because countries were very isolationist, with lots of conflict. Instead we had war, tariffs, trade restrictions, currency manipulation, etc. But it is very much alive still, and has been exploding in use this past decade. According to Wikipedia, there are entire organizations that are focusing on developing a body of international trade law, specifically for globalized trade and transnational companies that aren't based in any single country. A lot of it is based on arbitration, and is just a more nuanced version of the old Lex Mercatoria. Because of this, and Bitcoin, and other tech that is making trade easier and regulation harder, whenever someone says something like, "We are getting more socialist," or "You need government for trade/capitalism," I go all
http://stickerish.com/wp-content/themes/mio/sp-framework/timthumb/timthumb.php?src=http://stickerish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/FuckThat-DumbBitchBlackSS.png&h=115&w=115&zc=2&q=100&a=c&s=&f=&cc=&ct=

If there someday occurs these matrilinial autark communities, there may simultaneously exist other communities which are different.  When these communities collide, there will possibly be some sort of dispute.  Resolving that dispute without violence or worse might be a goal.  If the collision happens to be with a community that does engage in trade (even if the autarks dont) understanding the principles of the other may serve them well.

The traders approach and roll out their tinkers wagon to start hawking their wares.
Maybe the autarks say "we have nothing extra, we are autarks".
The traders may say, "well, look at these nifty seeds, and try this tasty drink.
The autarks reply "no, we have what we need and nothing to offer, all is for all"
And the traders say "check out this self maintaining robot that eats garbage, it will save you an hour a day, and by the way I really like that hat over there, can I give you this robot as a gift?"
And the autarks say "the hat is not mine, all is for all"

The trader leaves the robot and takes the hat,
Later some of the autarks find a use for the robot to reduce their toiling and both are pleased with themselves for adhering to their principles and go on their way.

Your example seems very strange. Firstly, to me the "all is for all" attitude seems naive -- something a medieval community might have if they've never been exposed to some of the most basic aspects of human nature at all. They never thought that maybe basic arithmetic and accounting skills are necessary to keep track of (i.e.: to account for) all the effort spent making, doing, and toiling? Even if the communities are somehow restricted in size to about 150 people to keep Dunbar happy, it seems utterly implausible that no-one would ever attempt to take more than their fair share, or that there would be absolutely no laziness and everyone would be equally workaholic.

The only way that that seems possible is if a group of like-minded people find each other on the Internet, get together and artificially create that community. Even if it works for them, how can they fail to realise that a large part of it relies on filtering out all the other people?!

The autarky/self-sufficiency seems easy enough, but what the heck has:

got to do with anything?!

Historically, the selfsufficient matrilineal community is the anthropogenic organisation before patriarchal paternalist collectivism (animal farming and men farming) was established 10'000 years ago. It will also be the organisation of the future, because monogamous, patriarchal, paternalistic, surplus producing collectivism is not sustainable.

Lol! You think bank bailouts and cities have anything to do with international trade  ;D That's so cute!

Lol!  It's cuter that you don't!
Pay attention -- lex mercatoria was brought up in this thread as the ideal, sole body of law, in it's entirety.  Not as a handy subset to be followed by merchants in international trade. Now GTF in the van, baby! 

You are wrong if you are referring to how anyone but you has brought up the notion of lex mercatoria.
The idea that it is ideal, or the sole body of law in its entirety is your idea alone, and you offered it in that vein apparently in order to dismiss it as such.  It appears that no one disagrees with you on that.

If I'm happy to let lex mercatoria suffice for that, have you anything else?  Seems pretty thin grounds for capitalism's need of a state.

Maybe it does require one, but I don't see how.  
If it does, that is a place where work is needed to reduce the burden on that requirement, and thereby lower the costs for human interaction.

The governmentisgood site looks more like arguments for how government has interfered with free trade and made it less effective.  
A list of how government has attacked free trade is not much of a requirement for government from free trade.  

Others have suggested that it was an historical example of a method of non-violent, non-governmental dispute resolution.  
A historical example was used because it can be looked at in static form as it was, rather than something current which is still evolving.

There exist other examples by different names throughout history which use the same principles.

This was in the context of trying to figure out whether trade requires violence.  
There may remain some disagreement as to whether trade requires violence.  
Do you have a position on that, or anything at all useful to comment on?

Crumbs, I don't see anywhere in that post of yours where Lex Mercatoria was suggested for anything other than "To protect your property." Did you forget to quote something?

I reread the thread. New Liberty says he's fine with Lex Mercatoria providing protection of property. I pointed out that he isn't the only one, and that Lex Mercatoria is still alive and well, if under a different term, as the idea is being expanded and used for transnational trade by international businesses that don't have the option of submitting to laws and rules of a specific government. You erroneously claimed that Lex Mercatoria is dead, because it had a few amendments added to it by governments who adopted it and decided to defend it personally. A claim similar to stating that the biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is dead because governments have passed laws making murder illegal. Upon reading that, I've come to a conclusion that you are an idiot. Anything else I missed?

So, are you saying that you're hoping that in the future, one type of sexism will be replaced by another, while the rest of us are working on making gender irrelevant in regards to pretty much everything?

I reread the thread. New Liberty says he's fine with Lex Mercatoria providing protection of property. I pointed out that he isn't the only one, and that Lex Mercatoria is still alive and well, if under a different term, as the idea is being expanded and used for transnational trade by international businesses that don't have the option of submitting to laws and rules of a specific government. You erroneously claimed that Lex Mercatoria is dead, because it had a few amendments added to it by governments who adopted it and decided to defend it personally. A claim similar to stating that the biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is dead because governments have passed laws making murder illegal. Upon reading that, I've come to a conclusion that you are an idiot. Anything else I missed?

Information cannot be destroyed. Practices become distorted, however.
It does not parse that any structure is "dead."

So, are you saying that you're hoping that in the future, one type of sexism will be replaced by another, while the rest of us are working on making gender irrelevant in regards to pretty much everything?

"Information can not be destroyed" stops being a catchy phrase once you ask yourself "what do i mean?"  Then it turns into something trivial like "love can not be destroyed":  sure, you can stop loving, though the concept itself persists.  Just like you can forget something, or beat up a HD with a sledgehammer, and you'll no longer have access to that information.  If yours was the only copy, nno one else would have access to it either.  Is it destroyed?  Well, what are we talking about? :)
How can you kill that which does not live? :o BoooOOooOooOo

Anti male sexism is a vastly misrepresented myth.
Misogyny is real.
We are not and have never been dealing with mirror images, but a varied amalgamation of cues, traits and norms.
In order to explain this, a full course in radical feminism would be needed.

You know nothing about anthropology. The absence of monogamous, sexist patriarchy has never been a sexist matriarchy. It was matrilineal anarchy.

Ok, I may have misunderstood, but then, could you please explain what the hell "determining decent through the female line" has to do with absolutely anything at all here? Capito?

Capitalism, which is a form of collectivism

I think you missed my point. Unless I misunderstood "matrilineal community" as still having specifically defined gender roles with the female being the dominant one as opposed to the male one we have now. I'm against the idea of gender roles.

lex mercatoria

Sorry to use that way overused meme, but I do not think that word means what you think it means. Either of those. Just so we don't go around in circles, instead of assuming that the rest of us have any clue as to what you are talking about, can you actually explain what you mean, without using words like "capitalism," "collectivism," and "matrilineal"?

...and I guess I have to make myself clearer.


I'm all against state and bureaucracy and stealing and enforced taxation, but I'm also tired of this typical US Libertarian rhetoric.

Socialism vs Market-radicalism is another of these false dichotomies.

Total world-wide equality and solidarity is an illusion, but non-corroding property rights at the individual level are an illusion as well. You need a state to enforce such property rights. If some rich ass owns an island on the other side of the world, it's just a piece of paper. And if he didn't even work hard for it, but inherited it like the friggin Queen of England, and people around that island have no space and starve, you can be sure they'll see it as their necessity and fair right to set a foot on this island. If they are civilized enough to know there's a paper that says someone owns that island at all in the first place, that is. They'll give a shit about any lex mercatoria.

From that perspective, property underlies the laws of entropy, just like anything in the universe.

Thus the concept of property only makes sense when there is a (military) force, mostly supplied by a state, behind it that can protect it.

So, again: property is just a piece of paper.

Say you own a piece of land with a house far away. What you're gonna do against squatters? Today, you'd call the police, right? Also supplied by the state.

And are these squatters just lazy bums and deserve it? No, maybe they're just from poor families, never could get proper education in Aynrandistan. They weren't lucky enough to be privileged and inherit land just like you. That's how social strains come about in the first place.

"Supplied by the state", but these forces can also be supplied by private organizations, you say? But what difference does it make to a state? That it's more "voluntary"? Also today you can vote with your feet. So the question is only about scale here.

Or, to put things in another way: If you (really) own some land, then you are the state of that land. And you're a dictator even at that. There's no essential difference between your idea of property and a state. Only about scale.

At the end of the day, without a state, you can only call property what you can defend yourself. Just how Max Stirner, an individualist anarchist puts it:

"Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property."

This is much more logical than the US Libertarian view. And once you understand that, you'll see that a more co-operative and syndicalist way of self-organizing is just more rational and more economical.

tracing one's lineage through mothers of any gender is the crucial part, as opposed to relying on state documents.

If some rich ass owns an island on the other side of the world, it's just a piece of paper.
...
Thus the concept of property only makes sense when there is a (military) force, mostly supplied by a state, behind it that can protect it.

Say you own a piece of land with a house far away. What you're gonna do against squatters? Today, you'd call the police, right? Also supplied by the state.

Question

... and please, keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is a royal count, with a very rich family history spanning centuries, from Italy, through Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, from someone who comes from a long history of very prominent and well known scientists, who's great*3-grandfather even has a giant portrait and permanent exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC ...

Why bother tracing one's lineage, whether through mothers or fathers, in the first place? What's so special about the dead people you came from?

...and I guess I have to make myself clearer.


I'm all against state and bureaucracy and stealing and enforced taxation, but I'm also tired of this typical US Libertarian rhetoric.

Socialism vs Market-radicalism is another of these false dichotomies.

Total world-wide equality and solidarity is an illusion, but non-corroding property rights at the individual level are an illusion as well. You need a state to enforce such property rights. If some rich ass owns an island on the other side of the world, it's just a piece of paper. And if he didn't even work hard for it, but inherited it like the friggin Queen of England, and people around that island have no space and starve, you can be sure they'll see it as their necessity and fair right to set a foot on this island. If they are civilized enough to know there's a paper that says someone owns that island at all in the first place, that is. They'll give a shit about any lex mercatoria.

From that perspective, property underlies the laws of entropy, just like anything in the universe.

Thus the concept of property only makes sense when there is a (military) force, mostly supplied by a state, behind it that can protect it.

So, again: property is just a piece of paper.

Say you own a piece of land with a house far away. What you're gonna do against squatters? Today, you'd call the police, right? Also supplied by the state.

And are these squatters just lazy bums and deserve it? No, maybe they're just from poor families, never could get proper education in Aynrandistan. They weren't lucky enough to be privileged and inherit land just like you. That's how social strains come about in the first place.

"Supplied by the state", but these forces can also be supplied by private organizations, you say? But what difference does it make to a state? That it's more "voluntary"? Also today you can vote with your feet. So the question is only about scale here.

Or, to put things in another way: If you (really) own some land, then you are the state of that land. And you're a dictator even at that. There's no essential difference between your idea of property and a state. Only about scale.

At the end of the day, without a state, you can only call property what you can defend yourself. Just how Max Stirner, an individualist anarchist puts it:

"Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property."

This is much more logical than the US Libertarian view. And once you understand that, you'll see that a more co-operative and syndicalist way of self-organizing is just more rational and more economical.

In that case, why not simply track relationships (family, friends, and business) and networks same as we do now? We are already slowly abandoning the idea of gender affecting our relationship and interaction with people, thanks to gender being mostly invisible online.

In that sense, any society is "collectivist", as long as you don't move alone into the mountains and live there sulf-sufficiently.

Correct, any society is by definition collectivist. The opposite of society and collectivism is the self-sufficient community.
But the hominidae can not live 'alone'. An 'individualist' life is possible within a collectivist, materialist society only. To live a non-collectivist life, the homines sapientes need the organisation of the non-patriarchal, anarchal, consanguineal community, which was organised non-monogamous, matrilineal (female choice), wherever it existed in the whole history of mankind, and which have been destroyed, slowly starting about 10'000 years ago, by organised violence of a complicity of priests and militarists, which is terrorising the planet until today.

1) Making sure you don't inter-breed with your relatives and make mutant babies. That's one good reason for all those naming conventions.

2) Nurture, which as a concept blended-in with nepotism, was (and still is) a strong motivator to pass on knowledge and cultural things that might be useful for the next generation. In spite of the usual "history is written by the victor" claims, some history is passed on by nurture -- anything from trade secrets, through to life attitudes. People aren't primitive snakes or lizards that lay eggs and abandon the nest before they hatch.

Why single-out arbitration?

Sorry to use that way overused meme, but I do not think that word means what you think it means. Either of those. Just so we don't go around in circles, instead of assuming that the rest of us have any clue as to what you are talking about, can you actually explain what you mean, without using words like "capitalism," "collectivism," and "matrilineal"?

How do groups of people behave?
All sorts of ways, these are some names for them.
It's rather tricky to describe behaviors linked to capitalism without using words that describe how people behave.



*standing ovation*
Required reading.

...and I guess I have to make myself clearer.


If some rich ass owns an island on the other side of the world, it's just a piece of paper. And if he didn't even work hard for it, but inherited it like the friggin Queen of England, and people around that island have no space and starve, you can be sure they'll see it as their necessity and fair right to set a foot on this island.

[...]None of these examples invalidates the principles of voluntary agreement and non-violence, or even lex mercatoria for that matter.
You can keep saying I need a state to defend my property, but I am happy without that state doing it.  Maybe you aren't, because you keep trying to sell me on the idea of needing it, but I am not buying.

I have a property far away, one I don't use much.  I have a friend that has done heroic things but is down on his luck.  I say to my friend, "friend go and stay at my place on the beach".  Take care of it and see what you can make of it.  There were some squatters.  They were not good custodians and were persuaded to leave without any authoritarianism or threat.  If instead they had been good custodians, they easily could have stayed and shared.

I have never called the police for anything, and never asked for anything from them.  I supply my own security and am happy to remain doing so.

The way you sound is that there are all these monsters roaming about looking to destroy and loot and steal so we need to run to our government constantly to protect stuff, but in the real world, if I have a problem with someone, I deal with it directly myself.

Personal security is one of the costs of personal property.  If you can't afford that part of the cost, then you cant afford to own it in the first place and are better off putting the resources to some charitable purpose.  Because property rights do corrode.  Time is our ultimate judge, and you can't take it with you.

Please answer this question, as no one ever does: Who paid for that military force or that police, and why can't they pay for it directly if there was no government?

Arbitration is the anarchical origin of authority.

 Amirite?

Not yet you aren't.  But I imagine you will keep at it.
I have lots of things I don't need.
One of these is a state to protect my property.  
It is a poor trade in terms of cost/benefit for that purpose.  
Maybe one of its other uses is a good deal, but not this one.  At risk of repeating myself, what else have you got?

Having something is not the same as wanting it.  Like that stuff left over after everyone else has had their fill that you scrape into the dog's bowl.  What do they call it again?  Crumbs?

Back to capitalism.
It is an error to dismiss the negative connotations of the word.

Capitalism is intrinsically linked to wage slavery and violently private posession of all public resources.

I mean that the one and only possible anarchist organisation of the homines sapientes is the pre-neolithic organisation, which was matrilineal.
As soon as you want to 'organise' a patrilineal organisation, you need organised violence. But to understand all that, you need to know the patriarchy, its development and why organised violence is needed to construct and maintain it.

By the way, how do you have private possession of public resources? Who decided they are public or private, and why are they conflicting with each other?

So, "The Government" created a "Financial Instrument," said "This financial instrument has value, so you soldiers better take it and use it, or else we'll make yourselves enforce yourselves to use it by making you hold your own guns to your heads," and that's that? Yeah, makes complete sense.

Ohboy.  You're sharper than a blanket.  No.  The government didn't create anything.  The people needed a financial instrument, and its overseers, thus creating The Government.  When things don't make sense to you, just remember that God still loves you even though your head's filled with lint & mouse droppings.  Chin up! :D

Aside from the fact that government isn't a "financial instrument" by ANY definition, at any time in history, anywhere on the planet (banks ate the closest you can come to claiming that; governments are only administrative instruments)
Here's the part you missed:


I am sorry I overestimated the lot of you.

You have this backwards if you were referencing the USA.  Government came before financial instrument, and tried to avoid creating it.  Even went so far as to make anything except gold and silver illegal constitutionally for states to issue.

The Fed was born only 100 years ago.  During some of the highest growth period of the US, folks used physical gold and silver as money, and bank notes and warehouse receipts for gold and silver.
But you are right in that unbacked paper money usually comes into existence in response to threat of war.
The Fed is the not the first central bank in the US, (the third depending on which you count) the others just didn't last so long.
Through its early years, there were gold and silver notes (payable in specie) in circulation alongside fed notes (payable only in other fed notes).  That they looked so similar was not accidental.  It was a multigenerational bait-and-switch.

I'm assuming those are some names from the my little pony cartoon? Since I'm not a fan and don't watch the show, I honestly have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

Considering you answered the question of "Who pays for armies" with "The gubment," I'd say you missed a whole hell of a lot.

It's obvious you are not interested in debating this, and seem to only want others to tell you you are right, while posting what all the rest of us consider to be very incoherent and messed up jumbles of words, so why do you persist?

Tell you what. You are right. You win. Also, I have a bitcoin. Last one to reply to any of crumb's posts wins it.

It's obvious you are not interested in debating this, and seem to only want others to tell you you are right, while posting what all the rest of us consider to be very incoherent and messed up jumbles of words, so why do you persist?

Those bitter little PMs you sent my way are all the reward i need ;D   

I haven't a stance.  Maybe that's why its vague to you?

I don't have the answers to "the way things ought to be" and yet am deeply curious about those who do.  So here I am bemused by your random potshots apropos of nothing, but not at all enlightened by them.  
All you have taught me yet is that "the way things ought to be" would include fewer folks inclined to behave like yourself.  So lets pause to figure that out.

Inexplicably you seem to be enjoying inspiring emotions in other folks that they are not enjoying.  Why is that?

I feel as if you're not fully open with me, NewLiberty, as if something's ... left unsaid.  If not for your otherwise irreprochable manners, i may have read a hint of anger or even malice into your piqued tone.  Tell me i'm a fool to worry? ???

I guess I just never thought of it that way, or realized that was the case. In the world I grew up and lived in, it was always a familial organization, not patri- or matri-lineal one. So there wasn't any violence. At least not in "normal" society. Women did what they want, even if it includes falling in love with a single man and forming a monogamous relationship with him.

Not an answer. 
OK, I will be the good sport and go first. 
I'm trusting that way, though you have provided no reason to be so.

With respect to you: Curiosity replaced ennui.
With respect to the primary discussion for this thread: Eagerness, was lost to patience, over your chasing off my interlocutors. 
Though I suspect some may ultimately return if you manage the introspection requested here.

Your turn.  Why do you delight in creating unwelcome emotions?

Some monogamous relationships work, most of them fail. A system, in which most of the organisations fail, is a system, which is not working.
100 years ago, the monogamous relationships didn't fail, because the organised violence 'prevented' them from failing.

Ever heard of "economies of scale"?

The Libertarian pipe-dream, summarized:
-Toll booths on every bridge and at the end of every road.
-Fences around every park and ticket booths.
-Ad hoc guilt-ridden individuals 'volunteering' to pay hundreds of individual charities that specialize in things like: feeding the homeless, old-folks' homes, smallpox vaccines, educating the poor... (All that "community" crap that stops the unenlightened lower classes from lynch-mobbing the rich for being too financially successful.)
-Individually paying dozens of security contractors to secure the various trade routes for your food, water, and fuel.
-Local mini-Foxconn factories producing a few dozen Apple-like products per year for their local hipster communities.
- (Didn't really get to mention currencies... maybe another time...)

Doesn't that sound fucking inefficient?
-To avoid being paralysed by paperwork, why not have some entity that consolidates a lot of that minor crap?
-And what's the point of having 100% accurate accounting (e.g.: tracking who used what road with how much tonnage?) if the tracking makes the overhead far higher than the 'losses' caused by doing guesstimates instead?
-Mini smart-phone factories in every village is obviously inefficient bullshit. Corporations growing to monstrous sizes is not a result of government meddling, it's just more efficient that way. One exception here seems to be the US' "War On Terror" exploiting the Middle East for cheap oil, thus maintaining cheap supply lines. Without extremely cheap transport, many international corporations would probably collapse. Perhaps in this case, violence (evil as it may be) is more efficient than letting the Arabs restrict oil supplies and build more desert palaces?

So if governments are evil phantoms with sham democratic processes, so what? Why not just call them private monarchies? Just reject the whole concept of 'public' and learn to love your (private, Capitalist) Big Brother. :D

It's an error to dismiss the many negative connotations of transgenderism, sexual ambiguity, and homosexuality, yet...


It's not really wage "slavery," since if you don't like the wage, just go find another job. You won't have a posse tracking you down, hogtying you, and bringing you back to your old position. There's slavery, and there's the personal choice to work or not.
By the way, how do you have private possession of public resources? Who decided they are public or private, and why are they conflicting with each other?

I feel as if you're not fully open with me, NewLiberty, as if something's ... left unsaid.  If not for your otherwise irreprochable manners, i may have read a hint of anger or even malice into your piqued tone.  Tell me i'm a fool to worry? ???

So, are you for completely polygamous relationships, or are just temporary monogamous ones ok? And how do you believe that will affect economics?

[...]
 As for crumbs, he lost all manner of respect from me way before this thread even started. Still, sorry for spamming this discussion and feeding an obvious troll.

MODS.
shitposting sucks

...feeding the homeless, old-folks' homes, smallpox vaccines, educating the poor... (All that "community" crap that stops the unenlightened lower classes from lynch-mobbing the rich for being too financially successful.)
[...]

MODS.
shitposting sucks

I am often prevented from taking personal posession of public property by capitalists and cops.
New boss, old boss. wage slavery, abject poverty or luck and access to resources. These three options are all capitalism offers.

I guess you can also make your own luck (being entrepreneurial and taking risks) so I guess it's not all bad.

Ever heard of "economies of scale"?

The Libertarian pipe-dream, summarized:
-Toll booths on every bridge and at the end of every road.
-Fences around every park and ticket booths.
-Ad hoc guilt-ridden individuals 'volunteering' to pay hundreds of individual charities that specialize in things like: feeding the homeless, old-folks' homes, smallpox vaccines, educating the poor... (All that "community" crap that stops the unenlightened lower classes from lynch-mobbing the rich for being too financially successful.)
-Individually paying dozens of security contractors to secure the various trade routes for your food, water, and fuel.
-Local mini-Foxconn factories producing a few dozen Apple-like products per year for their local hipster communities.
- (Didn't really get to mention currencies... maybe another time...)

Doesn't that sound fucking inefficient?
-To avoid being paralysed by paperwork, why not have some entity that consolidates a lot of that minor crap?

-And what's the point of having 100% accurate accounting (e.g.: tracking who used what road with how much tonnage?) if the tracking makes the overhead far higher than the 'losses' caused by doing guesstimates instead?

-Mini smart-phone factories in every village is obviously inefficient bullshit. Corporations growing to monstrous sizes is not a result of government meddling, it's just more efficient that way. One exception here seems to be the US' "War On Terror" exploiting the Middle East for cheap oil, thus maintaining cheap supply lines. Without extremely cheap transport, many international corporations would probably collapse. Perhaps in this case, violence (evil as it may be) is more efficient than letting the Arabs restrict oil supplies and build more desert palaces?

So if governments are evil phantoms with sham democratic processes, so what? Why not just call them private monarchies? Just reject the whole concept of 'public' and learn to love your (private, Capitalist) Big Brother. :D

So you imagine the future with a radically different sociopolitical structure, but you imagine everything in it will be the same as things are now? Why not:
- Public transportation replaced with suspended rails going through the city and country, with pods, that you can rent, automatically traveling under them to preset destinations (patented idea, replaces road maintenance with something much cheaper).

Subscriptions to road areas in the same way that you can buy a London metro ticket that gives you free ride within limited areas.

Personal VTOL aircraft to avoid roads altogether, flown with GPS and computer avoidance assistance.

- Community supported and sponsored parks, with gardens grown by shared owners or even produce by companies that want to show off their designer fruits and vegetables.

Most of what is "public" is less public than the private open spaces.
Some have suggested that Nixon's "environmental movement" took vast amounts of private land for the government away from the owners for environmental reasons, and essentially so that they minerals and oil and trees could be sold to back the national debt, when we left Bretton Woods.
So ironically, the more that is public, the more funding there is for the war engines.

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

http://www.septa.org/fares/pass/independence.html

Whether or not these privately owned public spaces accept public funds today or not, they aren't dependent on the support, or likley even the existance, of the state.

Lolz.  Another freeloader project sucking misguided government grants :D "Unimodal hired a NASA subcontractor to build simulations of the vehicle and dynamics using funding from a US DOT grant." --your wikip link.


Lolz. Wholly owned by Transport for London (TfL), which "is the local government body..."  Another ugly statist institution. 

On the transports, why not skip to the google autonomous car mods.  The only element that could be arguably considered government are the GPS satellites, which if they were private instead could be something to reduce the cost and improve quality of satellite radio by sharing a Low Orbit platform.  They would be on sale today if not for government regulation.

Lolz.  Another freeloader project sucking misguided government grants :D "Unimodal hired a NASA subcontractor to build simulations of the vehicle and dynamics using funding from a US DOT grant." --your wikip link.


Lolz. Wholly owned by Transport for London (TfL), which "is the local government body..."  Another ugly statist institution.  


Yes, we can, some things, and certainly not often.


An absurd & unfounded assumption.  If non-statist societies are as successful as you believe them to be, they should be commonplace.  Sadly, they're nonexistent.  Remember, you're not trying to simply show these (thus far undefined by their proponents -- tighten up, guys!) stateless societies are metaphysically possible to create, you must show them to thrive, defend themselves against & encroach on existent states.¹

1. Unless you plan to start your stateless society in outer space, unclaimed & of no interest to modern states, it will have to encroach on existent states.

The problem which the Anarchocapitalists is that they want two systems which mutually exclude each other: Anarchy and a progressively increasing economy.

They deny that stateless communities beyond the state (rain forest) don't increase production. They produce the same amount as they did thousands of years ago, because they are not enforced to produce ever increasing surpluses. That's enforced and needed in collectivist societies exclusively.

There are technical advances that reduce the burden of government.  Google's car tech is one.  Fewer police, less worry about drunk drivers, insurance issues, etc.

Bitcoin is another such.  There isn't much need for a government to protect my Bitcoin stash, I think I have that handled.
It is shared with those whom I trust, whether they are consanguineous or not.

I don't want a progressively increasing economy.  I want the right economy.  The best way to have that is to take a 'hands off' approach, because politicos really don't know as much as they think they do.

Hard to decide if uncomfortable facts are intentionally ignored, or if i'm not being direct enough.  Phrases like "reduce the burden [on] government" and "worry about drunk drivers" only add to my confusion, so i'll highlight some points, betting on the off-chance i was misunderstood:

There are no "burdens" for governments.  At least not in the sense of "something which must be done, but they'd rather do without."  Those "burdens" are governments' lifeblood & raison d'etre.  That's what governments *do,* they live & breathe the stuff.  Lightening one set of "burdens" will just drive governments to create new ones.  One war fizzles out?  Start a new one: on drugs, on another country, on terror.  Most grownups know that most wars aren't started to be won.  They are nurtured and lovingly tended to by intelligent men so that they may continue to be integral workings of our modern economy.  

Knowing this is enough neither to stop wars nor makes them unnecessary. Just like knowing governments are motivated by their own, and not your, self-interest is enough to make governments disappear.  

*Take this as a margin note, meant to put my other posts in perspective.  It is not intended to be factual, falsifiable, or an attempt at logical derivation.  Simply to shed some light.  I hope this disclaimer is enough to avoid another pointless tangent.

This makes some sense.  If trade is mutually beneficial, the economy ought to increase.  When it isn't it decreases.  Over time this also includes the non-trading third party that share the environment, which if harmed decreases the economy too, yes?

 It doesn't seem to necessitate an unsustainable growth or even any growth, and the growth is just a measure of the participant's good faith dealing.

Perhaps the political class needs it to increase to win elections and so may sacrifice long term for the term of the next election important to them.

OK, let's have a quick look at what that might entail. Say you want a 'stable' economy, it would probably need:
population headcount change = 0
people's changing 'needs' = 0
land or industry encroachment on other economies = 0
net non-renewable resource depletion = 0
net inflation = 0

Therefore, (unless I've missed some other factors for stability) any profit is probably either inaccurate accounting or a transfer of wealth from the loser to the winner. One example of a profitable activity might be to innovate a new machine that produces widgets more efficiently than the machines all the other widget-makers use. Despite rejecting "intellectual property" (I guess that's off-topic and maybe a good candidate for another thread) you guys seem strongly in favour of doing these innovations for the sake of competition (no arguments there).

However, the reward for innovation seems to be the same as the reward for resource depletion, inflation, banning contraceptives, and all that other stuff. I.e.: because profit. With all those other opportunities, why choose innovation?

Without intelligent oversight, to me it seems you'll eventually get your stable economy, but only after numerous resources have been depleted, and various bubbles (including population bubbles) have burst. It's a doomsday scenario.

Secondly, even if things manage to stabilise, there's still a big question mark over how the current (or a future) level of technology would be sustained without all that extra energy being pumped in. The whole world's basically running on oil, gas, coal, nuclear fission, and cheap labour.

OK, let's have a quick look at what that might entail. Say you want a 'stable' economy,

I want the right economy.

you want a 'stable' economy

[...]
OK, substitute raison d'etre for burden.
Those to whom you go to for help, you also empower. 
The less we need it, the less power it has.

I guess us "statists" all look the same as well? >:(

You're obviously not an engineer.
In general terms stable just means feedback loops don't cause exponential growth, decay, or oscillation. Try again, Moon (obviously-a-liberal-arts-major) Shadow ;)

governments had millennia to perfect the scam, and today it works flawlessly.  

The problem with "stable" is that it is a subjective valuation.  All economies oscillate, it's called the business cycle.  Unfortuantely, there are many people who will make well intended, but ill advised, attempts to suppress that oscillation.  The result of which is that 'forces' become pent up, and create greater havoc when they are finally released 'out of phase'.

(Let's use examples of -2% growth during bust, 4% growth during boom, and 2% long-term goal, figures out of my ass)
I actually still believe that this aspect of the Keynesian economic theory is sound. Specifically, when the cycle goes into bust (e.g. -2% growth), you spend to support it, when it goes into the boom (say 4% growth) you take in more to suppress it, and thus, on the grand scale, even it out to a somewhat of a 'steady' growth of, say, 2% over the long term.Over all, value gets sucked into a "rainy day" fund, and expanded when the rainy day comes.

[...]
To most poeople, 'stable' would mean that an economy grows at or slightly better than the population rate.  By better, most people would say somthing around 2% APR.  The problem is that even 2% annually is an exponential growth rate, and cannot continue forever.  By definition, that which is not sustainable cannot continue indefinately, no matter the best wishes of  anyone.

To myself, and in this context, 'stable' would mean that the natural 'forces' that result in the business cycle be left alone, so that the magnitude of those oscillations don't have the chance to compound.

And that is what I mean by the 'right' economy.  The one that develops naturally from the people and conditions that are present and develop in the future, without influence of well intended politicos and self-interested powers.  It would be possible for some of those oscillations to be particularly harmful, even to the point of severe social strife, but over the truely long term, such oscillations (by definition) balance out.

 No matter how smart Ben may be, which no doubt is smarter than any of us, he doesn't merit that level of authority.

Since exponential population growth necessitates matching or better economic growth, which, you point out, "can not be sustained indefinitely," either all economic approaches are doomed, or your assumption of continued population growth is bad.  Are you prophesying doom or ???

What, exactly, are you basing this on?  Other than the colorful allusion to "compounding" oscillations?  As most of us who've driven a car know, bad shock absorbers (oscillation dampers) make for a lousy ride.  Undamped oscillations are typically disastrous.  Armies, when walking on bridges, are made to break march to prevent bridge collapses.  Unchecked parasitic oscillations in electronics cause ringing, or worse, turn entire circuits into oscillators.  Bad model to pick. :)

See above.

Edit:  "Well-intentioned politicos"?  Really?  I always assumed that politicians were, at least, given ulterior motives, but you feel that they're just ... simpleminded?  Not quite up to the mile-high bar set by the esteemed politicos of this forum? :)

I'm happy to assume they are smarter than I am, but that doesn't necessarily make them smart enough to outwit the aggregate folks outside their influence.
For a more resilient economy, distributed power seems superior.  More choices in currencies, more flexibility to create and innovate.  The problems seem to arise when we get too much in one place.
At its core, money is just that stuff folks use to convince others to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do, (for free).

You give him and his like too much credit.  While there is a certain kind of 'smarts' required to obtain and maintain these positions of power, there are many different kinds of 'smarts'.  The kind of 'smart' required to succeed in a social position of power (i.e. politics) is decidedly distinct to the kind of smarts required to analyse a complex economy.  The latter kind of smarts is both rare and humbling, as the end result is usually that, no matter how well you did in school nor how many times your mother told you were so smart, you're not smart enough and you can't be.  And that is the fundamental lesson not taught in economics courses.  Those classes teach the students methods of simplyfying the overal picture, in such a manner as to be able to approximate the massive issue.  But just like chaos theory implies that the choice of direction a butteryfly may take can impact the course of a typhoon halfway around the world and 6 months later, the long tail of data in the economy cannot be rounded off and accurately approximate such a huge and dynamic system for any real timescale.  Oftentimes, the long tail of data isn't even available for analysis.  How do you know what deals that the recycler in Africa makes, if he is not willing to tell you the truth?  What if you never ask?

There's scant evidence that two heads are better than one, and absolutely none that a billion heads are better still.  A mob's intelligence does not grow with its numbers, quality is not a function of quantity, though a shrewd Georgian once pointed out that "quantity is a quality all of its own."  Everyone gets to be a wit.

Again, you fail.  I said nothing about exponetial population growth.

To most poeople, 'stable' would mean that an economy grows at or slightly better than the population rate.  By better, most people would say somthing around 2% APR.  The problem is that even 2% annually is an exponential growth rate, and cannot continue forever. By definition, that which is not sustainable cannot continue indefinately, no matter the best wishes of  anyone. ...

While that might happen if we manage to get off this rock, it certainly doesn't have to happen.  The natural world all has limits, and humanity isn't really an exception.  If that is "doom" in your eyes, then doom it may be.  But I'm not going to cry over what cannot be avoided, and if we can avoid it (by getting of this rock) nor will I be disappointed to be wrong.

And ham radio operators could never do what they do without a 'stable' oscillation, and a car engine would never go anywhere without it's 'stable' cycles.  An economy is much better compared to a machine in operation than a static construction such as a bridge.

And shock absorbers are not oscillation dampers.  Bumps in the road aren;t oscillations, they don't have a predictable pattern.  Talk about your bad model.

I was giving them the enefit of the doubt, because most certainly some of them are basicly 'simple minded' after a fashion, and are often taken advantage of by others.  It's actually an established rule of politics, often called the rule of the Baptists & Bootleggers.  Feel free to look that one up.

Auctions

An economy is much better compared to a machine in operation than a static construction such as a bridge.

::) Pointless tangent is pointless. You picked on the word 'stable' and used it as an excuse to ignore the rest of my post:

???  explain.

Then WTF was MoonShadow talking about with the 'right' economy, describing it as not growing exponentially and basically being stable, but then doing a big song and dance about not calling it stable?

My premise was correct in the first place

Or compare it to the marchers who have to adjust to the changing terrain in that scenario.
Economies are affected by all sorts of obstacles: droughts, fertility cycles, disease, weather and more.  
It must adjust, or face a worse fate than if it had.  
The best decision makers for these adjustments are the myriad folks with their boots on the ground.  
When central command is from afar, marchers may not adjust as adroitly.
This marching community may sing the same song and walk in cadence when times are easy,
and move to a different tune when it is not.

I don't want a progressively increasing economy.  I want the right economy.  The best way to have that is to take a 'hands off' approach, because politicos really don't know as much as they think they do.


I don't deny this either.  I don't know anyone who has besides your claims that someone has.  I just don't find such a society to be ideal.  If you do, why are you still here?  There certainly are groups within the US and elsewhere that prefer the kind of "natural" lifestyle you think is appropriate, and some of them will even accept you.  You just have to find them.  Or create your own.

To discover the right price of something, an auction with only two people attending will not do as well as one with a great many.  The mob does a better job of price discovery.
When prices are set by a central authority and there are limited choices you get an arbitrarily price rather then letting folks decide what they want to exchange for what and how much at what quality.
Generally, a market is going to do a better job of price discovery than a central planner.  
Perversely, we have central authorities deciding on the price of money itself.

OK, let's have a quick look at what that might entail. Say you want a 'stable' economy, it would probably need:
population headcount change = 0
people's changing 'needs' = 0
land or industry encroachment on other economies = 0
net non-renewable resource depletion = 0
net inflation = 0

Therefore, (unless I've missed some other factors for stability) any profit is probably either inaccurate accounting or a transfer of wealth from the loser to the winner. One example of a profitable activity might be to innovate a new machine that produces widgets more efficiently than the machines all the other widget-makers use. Despite rejecting "intellectual property" (I guess that's off-topic and maybe a good candidate for another thread) you guys seem strongly in favour of doing these innovations for the sake of competition (no arguments there).

However, the reward for innovation seems to be the same as the reward for resource depletion, inflation, banning contraceptives, and all that other stuff. I.e.: because profit. With all those other opportunities, why choose innovation?

Without intelligent oversight, to me it seems you'll eventually get your stable economy, but only after numerous resources have been depleted, and various bubbles (including population bubbles) have burst. It's a doomsday scenario.

Secondly, even if things manage to stabilise, there's still a big question mark over how the current (or a future) level of technology would be sustained without all that extra energy being pumped in. The whole world's basically running on oil, gas, coal, nuclear fission, and cheap labour.

[...]
I know it's possible to disagree with something and still not interfere. However, to me it seems like he's preaching:
"hands-off policy" -- the car is designed to drive itself so you should never touch the steering wheel.
while really practising:
"hands-off approach" -- if you want a stretched spring to recoil back, stop stretching it and let go for now.

What my earlier post was getting at was looking at profit as an incentive that could promote instability. E.g.: -population booms -- higher church membership, need for extra housing and other infrastructure... who wouldn't want a piece of the action?
-depletion of non-renewable resources. Population, consumerism, fads/fashion -- increase demand for oil and oil-based products for profit.
-why innovate when you've got all those other options?

To myself, and in this context, 'stable' would mean that the natural 'forces' that result in the business cycle be left alone, so that the magnitude of those oscillations don't have the chance to compound.

And that is what I mean by the 'right' economy.  

^^^Too subtle.  You're arguing against a guy who doesn't understand springs.
http://memepics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/philosoraptor-fucking-magnets.jpg

Just because you say it, or read it somewhere on the Internet, or listen to some guy who said it in some cute way, doesn't make it so.

I'm finished arguing with idiots about this.  I'm just wasting my time.

Perhaps, though in my army breaking ranks over a bridge analogy, neither the bridge nor the army represent the economy.  Economy is the interaction between the two.  The army does not act on economy, it is a part of it.

If we choose your analogy, tossing out the bridge & picking up obstacles & terrain, we can no longe address MoonShadow's "oscillations," but since they flopped as a Libertarian illustration, i guess it's time to march off to greener pastures, over hill, over dale & other nasty terrain.

In your model, were the "central command" represents [Booo!  Statist!] oversight, think it through.  The generals don't tell enlisted men how to march -- they lay out the grand plans for troop movement, so that the army doesn't march off in five different directions to fight 5 enemies of their choosing.  At some lower level of decision making, another bureaucrat looks at terrain maps & aerial photos, making sure soldiers don't need to march through oceans, or lava pits with no health packs in sight if we're playing *that*.  When it comes to picking up your feet to step over dead bodies, have no fear -- you'll still get to do that on your own :)

Looo!  There is no universal "right price" which needs to be "discovered."  

There is a price that the seller wants to get (everything, all your monyz!)...
and the price that the buyer wishes to pay (nothing).  
The price is arrived at through the dialectic more commonly known as "haggling."  

This dialectic takes a different form in auctions.  Consider an auction with a Luger Parabellum on the block.  

The buyers are as follows:  
A Texan homemaker, who came to the auction to bid on the awesome trimetal cookware set,
a gun collector who loves them Lugers to pieces
& a professional mugger, who plans to turn the luger on the folks in the crowd, thereby robbing them of their monyz.  
Question:  What's the "right price"?  

The only economic philosophy that respects the right of people to transact bitcoins without interference is capitalism.

Capitalism is an invenion of the state. Without bureaucracy and state sanctioning, capitalism is not possble.
The very idea of a free capitalism is oxymoronic, because it relies on protection of claims on private property.

Maybe... if you assume that all protection must be only from state, and that more people are wicked than not.
But these assumptions seem extreme, and depressingly pessimistic.

Add the word "universal" to make the statement false, then call it so.
Then provide an example of how it is true as stated originally.

And then show how the price discovery is (slightly) improved by the addition of more (weirdly fictional) bargainers.

Nothing to disagree with here, but not much to see either.

We agree, the best government is the most local.  The anarchists go to the extreme in this respect and only the government within each person is sovereign.

Sorry, but you've missed the point.  In this example the generals, who are nowhere near the marching cannon fodder, are "the government."  

Maybe... if you assume that all protection must be only from state, and that more people are wicked than not.
But these assumptions seem extreme, and depressingly pessimistic.

I'll take this analogy and drag it to reality -- as in why it displays the opposite of Capitalism and does not work.

In reality, the bureaucrat in between can optimize any given order for his own goals, while the original goal need only be fulfilled as far as his superior understands it and cares to react. This happens on all layers of the top-down structure including supreme command unless the population restrains it. And remember: any organizer changing goals affects all layers below it in addition to their own problems.

What is worse, a bureaucrat in any real-world system has diminishing incentive to optimize for risk-reward in large systems. Why innovate when the risk is on you but the reward is not? It is worth it only where a superior actively plans for it. Generally: whenever the optimization target of an individual diverges from the globally desired one -- which it pretty much always does -- the overall result is horribly inefficient.

Trivial analogies are useless exactly because they are trivial. In reality, the problematic decision is not to avoid a lava pit. It is the analysis of some gradient in some material in some device for use on an unknown time-frame over multiple usage scenarios -- and millions more of such decisions. We have no human who is able to organize such complexity from above, nor can we expect a subordinate to do it locally without proper compensation.

The market is a great tool to both determine and execute said compensation. Any attempt to mimic it will roughly simulate a market; why not use it in the first place?

Capitalism is an invenion of the state. Without bureaucracy and state sanctioning, capitalism is not possble.
The very idea of a free capitalism is oxymoronic, because it relies on protection of claims on private property.

Let's say there's 10 teams of surgeons supplying a total of 50 transplants per year.
~100 wannabe patients provide the demand at any given time, and the remaining 50 people either wait again next year (with an inflow of another 50), or they eventually die.
There's competition as well as luck in the auctions. Not all patients are compatible with all the donor lungs. However, if you bid more, you're more likely to outbid someone else if you're both good for the same pair.
Let's say there's a price curve something like this, (just making up some numbers here) :
$100k: 1 to 3 months
$50k: 3 to 6 months
$25k: 6 months to 4 years
<$15k: lower limit, and donor lungs get thrown out unless compatible patients cough up more dough :D

Just like Bitcoin fees, there's no fixed 'price' just increasing delays if you offer less.
But unlike Bitcoin, the example takes on a moral dimension because people's lives are left up to market 'chance' and surgeon profitability. Being a free market, it turns out that "10 teams" is the sweet spot. When there were only 8 teams, prices and profits were higher, but this enticed 4 teams of dentists to retool to do lung transplants instead. But when there were 12 teams, prices got a bit low and 4 teams had to restructure, returning to a total of 10.

But how many surgeries were done? Who cares! 10 teams is the sweet spot, and they'll do whatever is profitable, even if it means throwing out most of the lungs to maintain scarcity in the market. It doesn't even have to be deliberate -- maybe $15k is the charitable limit?

So we've got a rough model of a 'free' market. What if a government intervenes? Why is that so wrong? If we've got a model for what happens 'naturally' (as above), and we find that by intervening we can reduce the annual death rate from say 25 down to 10, then why not? One problem I have with having faith in a free market is the faith part. Why should a Libertarian leap-of-faith trump actual information gained from oversight? Perhaps there's some "information theory" insights we could gain here?

By the way, just want to inject this into this whole conversation:
It's the 'right price,' at the 'right time,' for the 'right people,' in the 'right place.' That's what constitutes the 'right price.'

 
A centrally dictated price will ALWAYS miss the time and/or the people and/or the location, simply because different people value things differently depending on those variables, and the only way to pick the 'right price' is to let the people involved give it to you.

Because government intervention is not like private enterprise. Subsidies are ultimately caused by brutal, coercive taxation, whereas private investment is caused by kind, philanthropic billionaires. Therefore a price with governmental interference is less morally right. :)

The only "faith" that a free market requires is that, if things are uncomfortable, someone will try to figure out how to make them more comfortable in hopes of reaping rewards for it. That's pretty much the gist of free market progress.

 the same freedomz that birthed the good stuff also mothered slavery, dictatorships, fascism, etc., etc.  

There's an old joke:
-Dad, what's the white stuff in bird shit?
-Son, that's bird shit too.
I doubt many here get the joke.

c) I just don't see how, in the absence of government 'coercion', private enterprises would ever get the same kind of information. E.g.: surgery costs and patient numbers would be private and confidential. That information obviously has value to potential investors, but if it's all hidden in silos then the claimed "higher efficiency" of non-interventionism would just be an illusion. Efficiencies would only reach local maxima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima).

In the third option, you'll have 20 teams working, doing 100 procedures a year. All patients will be happy, and all doctors will be happy. Hopefully, the economy will continue to have enough profits for government to siphon them off to keep this setup going. But the two problems are, first, there's a real risk that the economy could get to a point where there isn't enough spare profit to support this, and second, everyone will be happy, and nothing will change. You'll have the same lung procedure done by the same people for decades, since there will be no incentive to either make the procedure cheaper, or to replace it with something different.

E.g.: the government refunds up to $20k whenever a patient gets the transplant done.
The effect is that from the pool of 100 people, suddenly a lot more can afford transplants, and the increased demand pushes up the price curve. The higher prices encourage more teams of surgeons to invest and offer their services.
The opportunity cost however, is that they have to take the funding from somewhere else, whether by increased taxation or (more likely) reorganising some existing budget.

To me it seems that
a) Entrepreneurs and researchers are more likely to notice a large, inefficient market (>12 teams of surgeons) than a smaller one (only 10 teams), and they're more likely to be enticed by the extra money being thrown at the problem by the government.

c) I just don't see how, in the absence of government 'coercion', private enterprises would ever get the same kind of information. E.g.: surgery costs and patient numbers would be private and confidential.

"Progress," as in the opposite of "stagnation." As in "change," things becoming different, uncomfortable stuff being replaced by more comfortable stuff, people getting more access to stuff, new products and services being offered. You know, "progress."

You would tell a slave that he still has his freedom, even while you whip him while he's chained to a post, because his slavery is just the result of him running around, free, on African plains, before getting snagged in a net. After all, it was his freedom that allowed for him to be snared, shipped, and sold to you as property.

Or would tell a girl that she is still unviolated and a virgin as you rape her, because it was her virginity that led to her rape.

Or tell a prisoner that they are free to go wherever they want to, while locking them in a cage, because it is freedom that leads people to be locked in in cages.

Do you really not see that one state does not continue to be the same state when something fundamentally changes? Freedom is freedom. An act of enslavement, dictatorship, or all others mentioned is not the result of extension of that freedom, it's a direct violation of it.

At the same time, some surgeon's price could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, since they don't care how many procedures they have to do a year, while others by charging so much will not get any customers, and will have to charge lower prices to convince people to buy their service.

Even better example is something as simple as water. Water is worth little to a mechanic[...doesn't get how water works, rambles about charging moar for water because profit...]

On a related note, I know some people are big fans of that "my pony" show, and hey, to each his own, but you seem to be a bit too fanatical about it, and you interjecting it into your arguments so often is a bit offputting.

Also, I don't know about others, but I only saw the first(?) episode of it many years ago, and don't remember the names, the characters, or what the show is even about. You using your favorite show as examples in your arguments means I often have no idea what you are talking about, and probably makes me miss some nuances

of the characters or situations I am unaware of. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets confused.

I can only infer so much from "pony" and "glue factory." So if you wish to discuss this topic, could you please stick to things we may actually know about?

It's not extreme. It's empiric history instead of science fiction, plain and simple.

Are you absolutely sure about that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act#History_of_airline_regulation_and_the_CAB
http://www.businessinsider.com/old-1960s-photos-of-seoul-korea-2013-4?op=1
Remember the topic was capiaism, and allowing the free market to do it's thing, versus whatever is the opposite of capitalism and free market. Please stay on topic.

Waitwaitwait. Are you saying that, once he is forced into slavery, he is no longer free?

Then I am saying that once you force regulation and capital controls on a free market, it's no longer a free market/capitalism.

If you disagree, then you say that a slave is also still free, since apparently changes in someone's state of being have no effect on whether they are still what they used to be.

Because that is exactly what you keep saying over a over and over: that capitalism leads to dictatorships, slavery, etc, I.E. State A leads to the opposite of State A, which is absolutely no different from saying that freedom leads to slavery, virginity leads to lack of virginity, freedom of movement leads to being stuck in a cage, etc. There are only two possible reasons you could be saying this: 1 - you're a idiot, 2 - you're deliberately changing and misleading the topic is. I think you're the one who needs to go and re-read what the rest of us are talking about before joining the actual conversation.

How about we agree that I am a sociopath, because I don't deny reality, and don't deny that there will be MANY children who die around the world because there is a lack of food, medical care, etc, and that you are a sociopath because you would "save the children" by holding a gun to people's heads and force them to save them, until no one has any money or will to work left, and the whole world dies? Remember when everyone was forced to work in Ukraine, in order to make sure that all the children are able to get basic bread and foods? And then 6,000,000 died? Yeah, you're that sociopath.

Incidentally, how much of yuor own money are you giving up to make sure that children are not dying because they can't afford medical care? Whatever it is, you're still not giving enough, because children are still dying. So, unless you have no money left for anything but food and water, you are still killing little children, you sociopath.

I'm not a brony, I'm really not much of a fur, either, and I'm not the one outing you as a brony (?) whateverthefuck that is. I think you just did all of that yourself. And btw, I have no clue what you are talking about regarding the van crap either. Let me know when you are ready to have adult conversations. Or better yet, don't.