It seems unlikely that many people would agree to rules like this. Whether I’m willing to pay taxes or not is immaterial since there is no choice. I don’t make any claims on your property yet you make claims on mine and others’. These aren’t equal positions. I think mine is the ethical one.
So are their markets freer of less free than less desirable nations?
This is patently false and totally ahistorical, and an excellent demonstration of libertarianism’s rejection of empirical grounding for political theory in favour of axioms deduced from first principles. It also sneaks in a huge equivocation between markets in general and capitalist markets in particular, because they are qualitatively different things that share some similarities. This is especially important because the capitalist market is so totalizing that previous market forms no longer exist.
The capitalist market is not the result of spontaneous or voluntary organization, but rather the result of determined state action over the past 500 years, accelerating in the past 200. Look at for example the English enclosure acts throughout the 18th century that abrogated peasant tenancy rights and access to commons without compensation, or how the state in Revolutionary France violently broke up the feudal estates to turn land into a commodity. Or how the state violently opened new markets necessary for industrialization through wars of imperial conquest. These state actions are not at odds with the capitalist market, but entirely necessary for its creation and continued existence. This “spontaneous” and “voluntary” market is anything but.
That’s assuming we already agreed what property you own. But if you can claim the bread belongs to you despite not having direct control over it, we can claim taxes belong to society. So far you have not offered anything to differentiate these types of opinions; they are just varying conceptions of property rights.
Should people choose to enforce their conception without initiating force, say by refusing to respect your other claims, that’s their prerogative, right? Since you have given no reason we shouldn’t consider taxes as belonging to society, all that counts is that we don’t hurt you to take them.
It depends which nation you pick to compare. But pretty much all of the nicer countries to live in have progressive taxes, social safety nets like public healthcare, and markets that are left free in some aspects and carefully regulated in others.
Many things. Physical laws, certainly. Our current economic system would be impossible if not for the existence of fossil fuels. Historical contingency as well; FedEx and Walmart are as profitable as they are because of common infrastructure (both rely heavily on the Eisenhower Interstate system). Law of course. This list probably isn’t exhaustive.
So no one’s really been criticizing markets as such in this thread. People have criticized structural aspects of our particular market economy. But besides that, you’re not necessarily correct. The tragedy of the commons seems to me a completely valid criticism of market-based resource allocation in general. (That’s not to say it’s an insuperable criticism but it’s certainly a valid one.)
I disagree on the basis of historical precedent.
If you think it’s self-evident then it’s an axiom. (Though if people disagree with you then it’s obviously not self-evident.) If it’s based on the principle of self-ownership then fine, but that justification is obviously open to criticism as well. If everyone was paid the exact market value of their labor then it wouldn’t be, but then if everyone was paid the exact market value of their labor then we’d be living in some kind of Trotskyist utopia.
Right, I demonstrated that your argument based on moral principles was flawed so you retreated to a pragmatic argument.
Non sequitir. Never said they were and it isn’t relevant to my argument whether they are.
I’ve explained why at great length and you eventually agreed with me.
According to your concept of force, no one forces anyone to work at Walmart. In reality, a lot of people who’d prefer not to work at Walmart actually do work at Walmart. Why? No one’s holding a gun to their heads.
If you can figure out why people who don’t want to work at Walmart nonetheless work at Walmart then you might be able to figure out why your concept of force is inadequate to grapple with the ethical complexity of the real world.
So anyway, how about them BitCoins, eh?
Here are my concerns about them:
Maybe individual BitCoin wallets aren’t controlled by governments, per se. But the Chinese have shown twice in a week that they can knock the hell out of BitCoin values, and apparently they stopped the conversion of Yuan to BitCoins overnight. And since grabbing the SilkRoad wallet(s), the US govt probably has control of enough BitCoins that they could tank BitCoin values quickly by dumping the contents of that wallet onto the exchange. So can we really say that BitCoins are beyond government control? For the purpose of small BitCoin holders, is there a difference between influence and control?
Anonymity–it sounds like the government could unravel the path of individual BitCoins, now that they have control of the Silk Road data. Which means that Bit Coin holders can’t really count on anonymity. I guess I don’t have a total handle on this. BitCoin advocates continue to insist on its privacy and anonymity benefits, but detractors seem to suggest everyone who participated in an illegal transaction on Silk Road could go to jail.
The price of BitCoins fluctuates so wildly, compared with most other currencies, that it seems like it would be difficult to use for everyday transactions. As a small business owner, I’m reluctant to go down that road because every time someone wants to buy something, I’ll have to recalculate the price. On Sunday I might have charged .005 BitCoins for something, but yesterday my price would have to have changed to .01. What if I set my price at .005, then go to bed, and in the morning BitCoins lost 50% of their value and my inventory was wiped out at half price while I slept? Theoretically this could happen with the dollar as well, but the dollar has never lost 50% of its value in a few hours in my lifetime. BitCoins do over and over again.
These are obstacles to me using BitCoins as a currency. They do seem like a fine vehicle for speculators, though.
Also, I’m not here to hate on BitCoins. These are simply my reservations about them. I can be convinced that BitCoins are viable as a currency.
You wrote a lot of words so I’ll just address these. I agree state actions have, IMO, a negative impact on markets. The whole libertarian stance on markets is that they should be free markets meaning free from government interference.
I’ve been debating with folks using the free market definition. Surely you agree that markets don’t require governments to exist.
Jesus, we are talking about libertarianism here, because that’s the fucking subject of the article. If libertarians talking hurts your ears there is a whole internet out there, you know.
One that protects other, shall we say “private,” incorporations? It was a joke, pedant.
I think that’s called “fines” and “imprisonment,” but do keep spinning. Those are not violent means of enforcing laws: they’re increasingly serious penalties that we avoid by voluntary paying taxes, which the government rightfully levy on us owing to our voluntary contract with them as citizens.
The small-bore issue: the problem is, again, that you can’t go from small to large in a convincing manner. Like, a certain tax law is good or bad, but for many libertarians all taxes are de facto bad, all the time, they’re even tyrannical, you see, because liberty.
Um, we kinda always do, it’s one of the benefits of books and history and stuff. Books other than Ayn Rand, of course. We easily know that lack of power tends toward violence, not the libertarian utopia. Cf. books.
Right, I think we’re talking about taxes. Taxes=/=force.
Yay, the private sector! Good luck with private roadways, police forces, and all the rest.
She definitely showed up to recite libertarian-objectivist talking points, and she was incredibly on-message when doing so, a forerunner of today’s paid hacks who never actually discuss things but who repeat, reiterate, and regurgitate the party line . . . as you’re doing here. That’s propaganda. Propaganda=/=debate.
Thought the subject of the post was the problems with BitCoins? No? Did you read the article?
No I would claim I own because I used resources to acquire it. I have control over it because I own it not because I hold it.
Yes you claim that.
You haven’t offered any reason to claim taxes beyond, apologies for any political affiliation, you didn’t build that. I offered that this was a near impossible claim to make due to insufficient information.
Here’s what I said:
You didn’t miss it. You even replied to it:
But that’s not a good model of ownership because it’s circular as I’ve already pointed out.
From this statement:
I’ve been pointing out that the model you offered as an alternative to my own was defined circularly. It took you like 5 or 6 comments to finally offer a non-circular model. Arguing with me the whole time.
And then you say I don’t seem to read my own comments. Jeesh.
Since we can only directly observe a correlation it would make just as much sense to infer that wealth attracts power, or that both are simultaneously true (wealth attracts power and power attracts wealth creating feedback effects). In fact, I’d say it’s pretty much certain that both are simultaneously true. Not sure how you could argue that wealth doesn’t attract power.
You said something to the effect of: “libertarians don’t draw distinctions between different groups with power.” Now you’re saying “libertarians do draw distinctions between different groups with power.” How is the first statement a “generalization” of the second?
No, we’re doing the Stupendousman Show again. The fucking article is about Charlie’s dislike of Bitcoin, an aside to which is that said dislike gets Libertarians in a tizzy. Thing is, see, the last hundred or so comments are the stupendous fellow’s ongoing conversation where he gets to show off what a clever libertarian he is. A-fucking-gain. I’ve already seen that one. It’s dull as fuck. I haven’t seen much on the merits or lack thereof of Bitcoin in the last couple of hours, have you?
I think he’s arguing that the enforced market economy of the past few hundred years has had a negative impact on human beings.
The fucking article is about Stross’s dislike of Bitcoin, in which he attacks libertarian principles in order to bolster his argument. Again, if you don’t like the arguments, go and explore the rest of the internets.
So what form does this “agreement on the rules” take? Where are the rules written, and what does enforcement look like? Your comments, the vocabulary you’ve introduced (reputation economy, voluntary action, etc…) and the examples and ideas you’ve presented sound more like a video game manual than a philosophy of how humans can peacefully coexist and prosper in the real world. Yes, in a video game, which has a definite start where all players start at zero and a set of simplified code where the rules always work, once written. The reputation economy sounds like StackOverflow, where reputation can be tightly managed, and enforced simply and easily, where the stakes aren’t life an death, and participation is indeed voluntary. Are you sure you’re not using the BoingBoing BBS just to hash out your ideas for a Sims-Like MMO?
What about all the other folks here who, judging from their rebuttals to said arguments, don’t like 'em either? I’ve tried arguing with libertarians. It’s dull as fuck. So, I’d prefer to just point out how dull you all are, thanks. If you don’t like it, feel free to peruse those quarters of the internet where you all tell each other how wonderful you are, aye?
I don’t agree because there are no historical examples of markets existing a stateless environment, and the state has always been the arbiter to make markets function. My point is that libertarianism has a one-sided definition of what state interference is, ignoring how state interference in society creates the conditions for the market in the first place, yet calling out attempts to use the state to distribute wealth in a more equitable way as interference. Markets don’t exist as a natural physical system like gravity, they’re political institutions used to distribute wealth, so the whole concept of interference doesn’t even really make sense since they are completely artificial anyway.
You also entirely misread my point, the state actions I listed didn’t have a negative impact on markets, they were absolutely necessary to it. It’s a false dichotomy to suggest there is some sort of conflict between state and market. They are two sides of the same coin.
Fair enough. I was using the concept of free markets not necessarily a specific current market/economy.
Sure, I don’t think my ideas are beyond criticism. Additionally I said “seems” for a reason, as it seems to me not necessarily everyone. But question the idea that an owner who doesn’t control their property could be called an owner. Seems a meaningless term by that definition.
I think there is an ethical argument and a pragmatic one. I don’t think they’re at odds.
No it isn’t. You used the example of businesses keeping out competitors as a reason I was wrong about market actors wanting more participants. Consumers, individuals and other businesses, are participants. Your example only addresses specific example of market competition which is understood to be part of a working market. Removing competitors via regulator capture is not part of a healthy market.
If Walmart was the only possible means of employment that might have merit. They aren’t and people aren’t stuck at one skill level. Additionally, people are free to start their own competing store, borrowing the methods Walmart uses to be successful. Just need to keep those pesky government bureaucrats away 
I don’t know if this is the first time you’ve invoked the almighty “should” but it’s a far more important word in your philosophy than you give it credit for. Rather than designing a system that works in interplay and compromises with physcological, historical, and observable facts, you’re describing the way the world SHOULD work, the way you want people to act with regard to one another. In point of fact, though your posts rail against central planning, your system, where everyone agrees on the rules, and everyone somehow “naturally” claims ownership to exactly the right amount that leaves all others to have their portion would require absolute omniscience and control to achieve.
You haven’t offered any reason I need a better reason than that, or really any reason at all. You’ve only defined property as what a person can control, and insisted its status should be negotiated without force. Everything else you’ve left up to choice.
If that’s all there is to it, and society in general feels it benefits by people paying taxes - something well supported by all history - why would it choose to recognize tax money as yours to keep instead of public property? For all your writing, you haven’t once offered a reason it should.
I’ve never heard anyone offer one. I’ve heard libertarians argue that taxes shouldn’t be collected at gunpoint, but never explain why we must have a conception of private property that excludes having upkeep for public services. It’s all by assumption, usually assumptions that aren’t even recognized, at total odds with what actually works.
