If you're arguing that corporations as we know them would not exist without government, I completely agree with you. Subsidized security is the best thing the state has to offer the mega corporation. The more geographically dispersed resources you have, the more benefit you gain from having the state protect those resources, versus if you had to explicitly pay to have them protected. That said, if there were no state, I don't think the world would turn into an anarcho-socialist commune. I think you would see the large corporations dissolve or break up into smaller businesses, some of which might be run by the workers.

Babylon, gene...

It seemed earlier like you guys were arguing for the state, now it seems like you're arguing against it, and for something like anarcho-socialism. If that is the case, why are we arguing? We both agree that society would be better served without a state. The only difference is that you think the best society is one where there is no private ownership of property (MoP), whereas we do. If you try to enforce your opinion on how society should form lacking a state, how are you acting any differently than the state itself? Lacking states, there will be more than enough room in this world for all sorts of different voluntary organizations of society.

You get out-competed by companies who can operate much more efficiently.

Oh, you don't know that. It's a matter of diseconomy of scale versus economy of scale. Some companies in a free market may be quite large.

The trucks are owned by the trucking company because the owners of the company risked their own savings to purchase capital (trucks) and employ others. The workers benefit from the risk of the owners by being able to trade a potentially higher salary for a more stable paycheck. If they wanted the higher salary and higher risk, they could start their own company. However, in order to do that, they will need savings, in order to invest in capital.

When the state intervenes in the economy, it picks winners and losers. It regulates, subsidizes, taxes, creates barriers to entry, becomes corrupted and is captured by the biggest members of the sector in which it seeks to create order. Those entities then use the government for their own means, and the result is what you see before you today.

The right to keep what you produce is a fundamental human right.  It may be control, but no one else loses any honest freedoms when the owner does what he will with his own property.  There is no such thing as collective property, even in the former USSR the trucks may have been bought by the government, but the drivers held *possession*.  Real capitalism existed in the USSR, it exists everywhere, because it's not an ideology.

When you boil it down, there are only two laws of civilization...

"Do all that you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on another's person or property."  (Mayberry's Laws)

This is the whole of the law.   Notice, also, that these are laws concerning individuals, not all of society.  Ideologies aside, any society that generally honors and supports these two laws, tends to prosper.  Yet, once a society no longer honors these two laws, it tends to decline.  They are not absolutes, and can be violated often before the society begins to show it's rot, but they never will be denied.  Marxism cannot exist, simply because it fails to honor these two laws.  Democracy fails this test also.  Capitalism, even as defined in the context of control of the means of production, does not neccessarily violate these laws.

In coming to reject intellectual property laws, I found it helpful to imagine examples of life without them. Against Intellectual Monopoly, by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, really helped me out with that. However, I have trouble imagining life without coercion, the anarchist ideal.

I've heard folks explain that an anarchist society would depend on contracts, with protecting one's reputation as the incentive to honor one. But what's to stop someone from enforcing a contract with blackmail or violence?

Back in the brewery, what's to stop the new workers from not honoring the original owners' investment on the grounds that they presently use and occupy the brewery?

You are joking right? I live in one of those countries and its not cheaper at all.

In fact, Ive gone 4 times to the hospital near my home. Everytime I see people being treated in the corridors because there are no rooms. My aunt had to go to the private clinic because there was a 6 months waiting list to cure her chataracts. Imagine 6 months my old granma without being able to see (she still lives on her own). Thats government "caring" for you. Every winter authorities ask us not to go to the hospital during some weekends because they become totally saturated. Etc...


Not all the lines. In fact, there were three lines that made the east-west route first. Two with government help, one private. The only line that its still used is the private one. When you build something thinking in the people needs to get profits you make something useful for the people. When you use the policitcal process you make something useful for a few (the ones that got rich with the government help).


Btw, I feel like you are just throwing talking points one after the other, without going nowhere. When your talking points are rebutted, you throw more. What are you trying to say?

Then you do not understand what capitalism actually is.  The word, ironicly, was coined by Karl Marx.  He made it and 'ism' because he wanted to paint it as an ideology.  It's not an ideology, it's a collective description of the free exchanges of individuals within a working free market.  There is no example of true capitalism anywhere in the world that I can point to, because the closest thing to capitalism that still exists is the illicit drug trade.  State capitalism isn't capitalism, it's merely a soft form of national socialism.

First, corporations are a creation of the government. Corporations are a special enterprise with government given privileges.

What you meant to say is that private enterprises are not subject to the people. Which is completely false. Private enterprises are way more subjected to the people than any governments. Private firms can not force you to do or buy something against your will. Government can. All a private enterprise can do is offer you a better product in the hope that you will want to buy it. Democratic governments just need to put a gun in your head and you must obey.

As far as I know, private companies are trying to make space flight cheaper, which mean we can launch more space experiments. Which mean...charities can actually do space exploration.

Space agencies? What do they do to make space exploration cheaper? They fund some private space contracts....that's all they do. Someday, they will be an insignificant blackhole of waste.

Who are you to say what is and what isn't worth doing? To challenge your specific examples:

• The space program generated an awful lot of R&D, but it cost even more money (so high cost to development ratio). Privately funded research would have been more efficient
• Health care needs to be cheap, government bureaucracy makes it really expensive (all that testing) and patent law prevent the goverment from reducing the cost
• Relying infrastructure spending has decent chance of being successful (and thus profitable), gets funded by massive pension funds (who like promise of good returns in a decade). Doing something unprofitable is by definition a waste of time.
• If peak oil starts to become a problem prices will go up (supply and demand). This means that it will become cheap to use alternative stuff and hey presto, problem solved.

Building railway lines and stuff privately is by no means unprecedented.

I'm sorry, but what does radical nationalism mean in this context?  Because from an American perspective, it doesn't sound like something I would support.

Counterfeiting is not a real crime. Putting ink on paper hurts no one.

The real crime is issuing notes promising to redeem for gold, breaking the promise, and maintaining the value of your pictures by force.

Hi guys,

Read a somewhat disappointing Richard Duncan article this morning in which he rightly criticizes the government propping up zombie industries but then goes on to suggest that the money could be better spent in other industries that encourage growth. I see this as a classic case of how most people view politics and economics "I think the government should <insert policy preference here>". They want to use the government's ability to coerce and the wealth it gains through taxation, to build their vision of the world regardless of whether that world is what people want or whether it is practical in any real way.

This is also what makes the libertarian view so hard to sell, how do you pitch a plan based on doing nothing? Of course the suggestion is not that nothing happens but rather that the world can self organize far more efficiently than a politician could ever plan. This in my view is what makes a politician, someone who forgets their just a human being, without perfect knowledge, and begins to imagine they can effectively manage the lives of other from a distance.

So maybe there is an economic intervention other that close all state departments except the police, drop all regulations and stop taxing that can help the economy. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what a positive economic intervention might be?

Absolutely. There is nothing that is good for my family that is bad for my family members. There is no such thing as hurting the trees to help a forest. If you want to help then help individuals; they actually exist.

This is the most important error out of all his silliness. If we're to presuppose as "good" things like protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, punishing crimes like rape, murder and theft (and I agree), then we can say that government is able to perform some of these "good" functions; however, none of these "good" things ever take place without the people taking part in government doing "bad" things. Mostly we're talking about extortion and robbery (AKA taxes), but it includes things like military conquest as well here.

This is the first thing any statist is going to struggle with, simply acknowledging the reality of the essential nature of states. If they can even start to do that, then it becomes a matter of thinking that these aggressive actions are justified on some sort of utilitarian grounds. At this stage comes a lot of wishful thinking along with whatever pseudo-economics, "If we just elect the right people, they'll be handing out new counterfeited notes to the poor next time."

After that, we're to the classical "But who will build the roads?" stage. Much more so in law than in economics is there work to be done in showing how problems are solved. Libertarian theory is in some ways quite new and still developing, though in some others time-tested, age-old wisdom. So, I agree that not only is not "directing" my actions toward (at least paying for) the protection of private property irresponsible, but knowingly directing my actions toward an inferior means (i.e. a state) of accomplishing the goals in mind is irresponsible. States only do "good" things by doing "bad" things first, so if we can figure out how to do more good with less bad, I'm for it, and bitcoin is an example of a way.

This is not to disparage solely you Babylon, the anti-capitalistic mentality is a common affliction, but I am really not interested in the type of faulty arguments you are putting forth. I'm not here to debate someone who isn't going to learn about what they wish to argue against. Please try to read some of the books people have suggested because there is a wealth of information out there. Bitcoin is a real life experiment regarding Gresham's law, viz. bad money driving away the good. See here for instance, What Has Government Done to Our Money? -- Fiat Money and Gresham's Law.

Even this is really an advanced concept. I suggest again Murphy's book or the first couple hundred pages of Mises' Human Action in order to understand the fundamentals.