Joel makes some good points, as usual, but he's a minarchist.
I'm not exactly a minarchist. I know we have *way* too much government now and I know we could make things a lot better by getting rid of most of it. But I don't pretend to know just how much we can actually get rid of. It's entirely possible (though I don't think it's likely) that we get all the way to minarchy and decide we don't need the rest of government. But I'd prefer not to get bogged down in those theoretical issues because there's so much we just don't know. And tactically, it's better to build a consensus on the direction we need to go and the fact that we need to go very far in that direction. That could make a broad consensus among Libertarians, Anarchists, Objectivsts, and Minarchists possible. The problem with this attitude is that it rejects the moral argument that is central to libertarianism: Using violence to get what you want is wrong. As soon as you allow for a state, you're saying "violence is wrong except when the state does it". From the Libertarian perspective, after you make this compromise, your fighting the wrong battle. You've gone from a philosophical revolution (war of ideas) to a plain old revolution (fighting the state directly, since you have condoned it's existence and rejected NAP). |
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Taxes i.e. letting a small group of people rob me? No thank you.
Kindly stop driving on our roads... Thanks Sure, give me back my taxes. |
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But what you are describing really sounds like a local government, in fact even if not in name. I can't think of any obvious difference.
The only difference is that the trade is voluntary. It's a big difference. |
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Well, economic growth can also be attributed to the manifestation of new resources, such as discovering a coal deposit or an increase in the population, but all else being equal growth is an increase in efficiency.
What you do with the dirt matters, but this will be determined by prices in the market. A business will produce [resources out] based on whatever configuration yields the most profit, considering those prices. This process maximises the total subjective value of all resources.
People who lose their jobs due to their work being made redundant will get jobs in other fields. The money saved from the new efficiencies will be freed up for other things. These newly unemployed people will have to provide these other things. Having 100 men dig a hole when 1 man + machine can do it is just a waste. There is no point being inefficient just for the sake of jobs. Remember, we want stuff, not work.
The end result is that quality of life goes up for all. And of course the environment is completely destroyed due to edge effects, because the environment has 0 value ;-)
Well I like the idea that quality of life could come into play in an economic indicator, but this is tough to quantify. Some indicators of quality of life such as people "not being depressed" or "not having cancer" correlate inversely with the counterfeit-money-distribution index (GDP). There are also reasons to believe that your quality of life will be better if you get out and dig a ditch once in while rather than letting a machine do it every time. And as for "we want stuff".. I am hopeful we can move past that. Stuff is good for filling landfills, for example making giant piles of crushed automobiles seems to be an indicator to some of "economic growth". But are giant floating island of garbage really what we're after? For many an epiphany in their view of "stuff" comes from having a family member pass away and being in charge of "getting rid of the stuff". Hoarding is an instinct that does not always serve us well. As for the environment, we are the environment. Quality of life is a nice phrase but I think survival is even more basic, (QOL requires L), and makes it more obvious that our extended bodies (the environment) are crucial. Quality of life just means the things you value have a lower price. You don't have to "hoard". You could just work less and achieve the same basic necessities. Materialism is an orthogonal issue. Imagine you can buy all the food and shelter you need and basic utilities, while working 1 day a week. Think of the Jettsons, where George had a nice place, family, robot maid and worked 2 days a week just pressing a button. This is a society with high efficiency. So optimised that pressing a button generates wealth to support a family. The problem we have now is that the vampire squid called the state is sucking the life out of the economy as fast as it can grow. Why are first world nations experiencing stagnant growth, with all our technological advancements? Because the government is constantly piling on new taxes and regulations and stealing through inflation. |
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If you want to select for peacefulness, it is best if peaceful people have the tools to defend against violent behavior. A peaceful person does not become violent when armed, but he does become a more dangerous target for the violent people to attack.
What does living in a violent environment do to people? The state cultivates violence. It is a system entirely based on violence. You want to prevent violence by using the treat of violence to remove peoples ability to defend themselves from said violence. |
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Yeah, because they're abundant and cheap. This is the whole point of economic growth; producing more for less. The economy grows fastest when trade is free.
Whoa whoa just a sec! Trade is free? Where? What do you mean by "economic growth"? Producing more what for less what? [resources in] X [economic efficiency] = [resources out] economic growth is an increase in [economic efficiency]. eg, I buy an excavator and now I need 100 less people to dig dirt. My out/in ratio has increased. Technological innovation (the invention of the excavator) has created economic growth. We don't have completely free trade and never will as long as the state exists. Thanks for your answer. An interesting idea. So then, a large increase in [resources in] is NOT economic growth. There are some issues in the definition you give such as [efficiency of what task?] Does it matter what you do to the dirt? Or is the important part just that there are more unemployed people? I don't have the answer, but I like your answer better than the standard definition of economic growth which as far as I can make out is "an increase in distribution of counterfeit monies". Well, economic growth can also be attributed to the manifestation of new resources, such as discovering a coal deposit or an increase in the population, but all else being equal growth is an increase in efficiency. What you do with the dirt matters, but this will be determined by prices in the market. A business will produce [resources out] based on whatever configuration yields the most profit, considering those prices. This process maximises the total subjective value of all resources. People who lose their jobs due to their work being made redundant will get jobs in other fields. The money saved from the new efficiencies will be freed up for other things. These newly unemployed people will have to provide these other things. Having 100 men dig a hole when 1 man + machine can do it is just a waste. There is no point being inefficient just for the sake of jobs. Remember, we want stuff, not work. The end result is that quality of life goes up for all. And of course the environment is completely destroyed due to edge effects, because the environment has 0 value ;-) |
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Yeah, because they're abundant and cheap. This is the whole point of economic growth; producing more for less. The economy grows fastest when trade is free.
Whoa whoa just a sec! Trade is free? Where? What do you mean by "economic growth"? Producing more what for less what? [resources in] X [economic efficiency] = [resources out] economic growth is an increase in [economic efficiency]. eg, I buy an excavator and now I need 100 less people to dig dirt. My out/in ratio has increased. Technological innovation (the invention of the excavator) has created economic growth. We don't have completely free trade and never will as long as the state exists. |
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I think you are conflating value with price. People still value the utility of their mobile phones as they did 20 years ago, but the price has come down dramatically.
And I think you are conflating utility with value. People throw away mobile phones every day, along with the rare-earth minerals used to produce them. Yeah, because they're abundant and cheap. This is the whole point of economic growth; producing more for less. The economy grows fastest when trade is free. |
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I didn't read through all of this thread but I will comment anyways.
An ideal society IMO would look similar to one as laid out my Marx:
1. "Free" education to all
2. "Free" healthcare
3. aggressively scaling income tax
4. abolished inheritance
5. everyone who is able, is obligated to work
Greed and "hoarding" of resources is a direct symptom of capitalism. Even the wealthy are constantly worried about their children's future etc. and this gives them motivation to amass much more wealth than they "need". Ideally, a socialist society eliminates this mentality of needing to hoard for the future by
(1) getting rid of inheritance
(2) supplying the "necessities" (healthcare/education)
and thus there is no need to "worry" about the future, and no need to take more than you need. People who are talented would be able to become "wealthier" than others, but their money/property will last only one generation before being returned to the state/society. Again, there is no motivation to hoard resources/money in a society such as this and thus corruption/greed should be largely reduced.
(3) supplying food. Otherwise the poor will starve. |
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Dear community, I'm putting together an article for the Bitcoin Magazine (October 2012, Issue #5) and I'd like your opinions. One of our greatest and most respected leaders in the USA today has told us to vote our problems away instead of take arms against the government. The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
What do you think about this? Should Bitcoin be defended with guns or lawyers and votes? If ballots were so strong, couldn't Lincoln simply have voted John Wilkes Booth's Philadelphia Deringer to not fire? Notice: By responding to this thread, you give Bitcoin Magazine the right to freely publish your quote in the magazine.Both are means of using violent coercion to impose your values on others. Bitcoin needs to be defended from votes and bullets. |
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In a perfect society, capital is both abundant and highly-valued. This contradicts the law of supply and demand. In the free market, a thing can either be abundant or highly-valued, but not both. Thus, a free-market is incompatible with a perfect society.
I think you are conflating value with price. People still value the utility of their mobile phones as they did 20 years ago, but the price has come down dramatically. I disagree with the premise. In a free market capital is abundant and cheap, due to the innovations that result from voluntary trade. |
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FirstAscent is a tyrant. He wants to use the force of the state to implement his ideal of environmental harmony. However noble the intent, such an implementation is misguided, destructive. He might change his mind and see that violent interactions are inferior to peaceful ones. He might not. What is certain though is that we have and are wasting way too much energy in these "debates" where he constantly avoids the core principal. He only want's to preach his doctrine of violent control. He is too attached to his regulatory framework to accept reason. If you want to spread the message of AnCap, you can surely find some lower hanging fruit. I suggest you stop banging you heads against this wall of bigotry and find people more receptive to the principals of a free society. I personally, am done. I know you persist because it bothers you that one cannot see a message so clear and pure, but it's time to accept that some people just don't want to understand. We will have to drag them kicking an screaming into a society free from institutionalised violence - metaphorically, of course  |
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M8, agree, or disagree. That is all. It's fine to cite the broken window fallacy, but WWII pulled us out of the Great Depression. Furthermore, the main argument seems to be "The money spent on the war effort, for example, is money that cannot be spent on food, clothing, health care, consumer electronics or other areas." Funny how we managed to CREATE jobs with WWII then, huh?
WWII was a net positive for America.
How can diverting economic resources to blowing things up create economic prosperity. It's absurd on it's face, hence the Broken Window Fallacy. What good are jobs if they're just oiling the war machine; destroying wealth? We don't want jobs just for the sake of jobs, what we want is WEALTH which the jobs produce. The depression ended after the war finished and government drastically reduced spending and ended most of the New Deal programs which helped to prolong the depression. |
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I didn't read through all of this thread but I will comment anyways.
An ideal society IMO would look similar to one as laid out my Marx:
1. "Free" education to all
2. "Free" healthcare
3. aggressively scaling income tax
4. abolished inheritance
5. everyone who is able, is obligated to work
Soviet Russia, then. Yeah... That doesn't work. It's been tried, it failed miserably, taking way too many people with it. Communism kills people. Yeah, if you think Communism works, what did Soviet Russia do wrong exactly? Fundamentally, if you take away property rights and the incentive to produce, you get poverty. That's why collectivism always fails. |
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I do not advocate violence. But I do advocate rules and regulations. If in your world, even the idea of a rule or regulation means violence, then go ahead and think that way.
So what if I don't want to obey your rules and regulations? Violence! Don't bullshit yourself; you're pointing guns in peoples faces and telling them to hug trees. You wonder why people here are ignoring your "education", because it's education at the point of a gun. Try finding voluntary solutions to environmental issues. Using violence doesn't work. The government doesn't and never will give a fuck about the environment, except as an excuse to grab more power. "I can't figure out how to solve this problem through persuasion and cooperation so I'll use violent force" -- FirstAscent |
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It's really simple guys. If the value of the forest to society is higher in it's natural state than it is in it's harvested state, the forest will be saved. It depends on the aggregate of the subjective values of all individuals. All the edge effects and biodiversity are factored in by the market.
No, all the factors are not factored in. The value between two parties is equivalent to who can pay what and what can often be earned in one lifetime. In general, a party is not going to pay more than what he believes he can derive near term. Yeah, but prices are set by the market. What one party can "derive near term" depends on how the market values his resources, not just on his personal values. If biodiversity is valued by the market, then he can derive value from his resources as a biodiverse system. So the the values of the market are factored into the price. Similarly, a coal mine only has value to the entrepreneur because the market values coal. So one may buy the land to mine the coal if it's profitable. Profit is the indicator that the markets values are being met. All economic activity in a free society is just a reflection of the aggregate values of the market. With the state, it's a function of a tyrants values. Why would an individual pay an amount equal to a value that factors in the rain forest's value to all of the future of humanity? He can't afford it, and the seller will be more than willing to lower the price until he is satisfied personally.
He wouldn't, he would only pay an amount based on what he may yield in return. What he may yield is a function of the markets values. If he can't find the capital for this investment, then clearly society doesn't value the rainforest enough for the proposed utilization. Just because you personally might value it higher than the average market value per individual, doesn't mean you have the right to initiate force to impose your values on others. If you think people misrepresent the value of the rainforest then you are charged with the task of education; a non-violent solution to the problem. Furthermore, in a fractured model of ownership, it's easy for one to justify his sale, and allow the others to share the burden of valuing their properties to the full environmental value.
It's not a burden to have a valuable asset. You're thinking in a collectivist mindset. If non-fractured forests are more valuable than fractured ones, the market will answer this demand. Again, edge effects are factored in by the market. |
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who sells the rainforest? Who gets to use it?
Easy. The previous owner sells and the owner uses. That is, once we remove the violation of property rights institutionalised by the government. It's really simple guys. If the value of the forest to society is higher in it's natural state than it is in it's harvested state, the forest will be saved. It depends on the aggregate of the subjective values of all individuals. All the edge effects and biodiversity are factored in by the market. Now if there is $1000000 dollars worth of wood in a forest and $1000 worth of endangered species would be destroyed in harvesting that wood, then the species die. But FA values the species at $infinity and is willing to use violence to subjugate others to his value system. This is why he can't accept ancap, because he needs the state to proxy his application of violence. This attitude is everything that is wrong with our society today. |
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A new master is not the way out of slavery. Empty whtiehouse 2016 ftw!
Adam Kokesh is considering running on the platform of dissolving the federal government. |
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