Anarcho-capitalism VS Objectivism


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@Michael

So am I correct in thinking that you want to amend the constitution in order to implement pure laissez-faire capitalism? (making lobbying and the like irrelevant)

That's an opinion, not a fact. I don't share this opinion, mostly because it's wrong.

Is there any particular reason why you think it's wrong?

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Dayaamm, Wolf.

That looks like where I used to buy crack cocaine during my dark days.

Seriously.

:smile:

Here's something about the Brazilian poor nobody says. With the exception of up in the desert, where are the skinny folks? The undernourished? Hell, look at your photo.

Here's a story from when I arrived there. It was told to me second hand, meaning it was told to a friend of mine years earlier as advice, then he told it to me as advice. I was at the orchestra rehearsal room doing my warm-up routine and this guy came up to me and said, "You look like someone serious, so here is what I think you should do. Go back home if you want to advance in your career. But if you want to fuck and eat, you came to the right country." :smile:

That's what someone had told him years earlier and he opted for No. 2. :smile: After 32 years down there, my opinion is that this quip is not far off base.

Also, the Brazilian population at the time I left was 180 million if I remember correctly.

Michael

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@Selene

Lobbying is bribery only when you influence a politician to do something illegal. Nobody should do that. Lobbying politicians to do something that is actually in the scope of their power is just an extension of free speech.

Giving your particular company or conglomerate an exception from a law is your idea of legal?

I am just getting started so think this answer through.

Have you ever had a major political position in a City the size of New York?

A...

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@Michael

So am I correct in thinking that you want to amend the constitution in order to implement pure laissez-faire capitalism? (making lobbying and the like irrelevant)

That's an opinion, not a fact. I don't share this opinion, mostly because it's wrong.

Is there any particular reason why you think it's wrong?

Gary,

Correct. I want to do away with government involvement in all kinds of areas.

I recently came across a wonderful set of lectures by an historian, Dr. J. Rufus Fears called "The Story of Freedom. It's on YouTube and here is the first of 18 (all 18 are online):

Fears talks about three freedoms: national freedom (meaning the ability of a country to exist as sovereign), political freedom (meaning the ability of citizens to vote, hold office, etc.) and individual freedom (meaning the freedom to do as you please so long as you don't harm others). I'm going to do some thinking on this division because, at first blush, I like it a lot. (btw - I'm at Lecture 6 so far. Fears does something with history I like a lot--he tells it in good storytelling form.)

So in my conception, the proper involvement of government would be everything that ensures the country stays sovereign, and it would protect the individual rights of citizens. Just to be clear, I'm a negative rights person. So the government confiscating money from some people to give it to others is not part of my meaning of rights.

Next item. Why is your opinion that laissez-faire doesn't work wrong? Here's a practical demonstration: the Internet. Granted, the government laid the initial backbone for a different purpose, but unregulated private enterprise has made that sucker explode like nothing else on earth. And note this. You have people who charge a lot for what they do and you have entire communities that provide the same stuff for free (open source).

The Internet doesn't need no stinking government for all that to work side by side. It works just fine. And get this. The Internet is making millionaires out of people who recently lost their jobs due to the recession. One after another--especially the ones who learn entrepreneurship and marketing.

Are there pirates and scam artists and hackers and so on? Yup. But the big companies like Google, Amazon, etc., are dealing with them just fine. The other side of the question is: are there pirates and scam artists and hackers in government? Hell, there are much worse. Nobody on the Internet wages war except terrorists. And who deals with all these nasty folks in government?

Nobody, that's who.

But a reckoning is coming with this Convention of States. Many government folks, lobbyists, etc. will get the worst possible punishment for their kind--they will be forced to work in a free market if they want money, or become criminals, because the tit of the government will give them milk no longer.

Michael

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@Michael

I agree with you on rights. Again, I just don't believe that it is practically possible for pure laissez-faire to actually exist. Individual rights can only exist when they are protected by a strong state as much as possible. I don't support confiscating money from some people to give it to others for its own sake.

I never argued or meant to imply that unregulated markets and free enterprise can't work at all. They certainly can. However, my argument is that an unregulated pure laissez-faire economy cannot compete with a government subsidized and protected foreign economy.

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@Selene

Giving your particular company or conglomerate an exception from a law is your idea of legal?

Nobody gets exempt from the law. One can only be exempt from this or that regulation, but those exemptions have to be signed into law. The way I see it, things that are not against the law are legal.

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@Selene

Giving your particular company or conglomerate an exception from a law is your idea of legal?

Nobody gets exempt from the law. One can only be exempt from this or that regulation, but those exemptions have to be signed into law. The way I see it, things that are not against the law are legal.

So, you are not aware of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act? - the exemptions from the law that were granted by executive fiat and Congress did not authorize a single one babes.

OK, next baby step.

Now let's get to your business or conglomerate getting a subsidy from the Federal government to make them competitive?

Legal?

Out of curiosity, where did you go to college?

A...

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@Selene

Executive exemptions are legal so long as the Supreme Court doesn't rule them unconstitutional. And yes, it is legal for a business or conglomerate to get a subsidy from the federal government.

What's with the personal questions. I don't feel comfortable giving out too much information on the internet. Let's just say it was a top school in the country.

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@Selene Executive exemptions are legal so long as the Supreme Court doesn't rule them unconstitutional. And yes, it is legal for a business or conglomerate to get a subsidy from the federal government.

I see, so, if you bribe the right Congressmen, you get the subsidy for you Solar Panel business (Solidra) while your competitors get destroyed and that you call legal.

Did you actually read Atlas Shrugged?

And I already knew that you came from a "top school in the country" because your effete Platonism is classic...oops I'm so sorry, what did you call yourself with Michael?

A member of the Power Elite? see C.W. Mills, I know they covered him at that top school.

A...

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@Michael

I think I've already argued it in one of my previous posts, but here it is again.

Let's do a little roleplay to really illustrate how geopolitics works. That's how it was initially explained to me, and it would be more interesting than a long and dry argument about this, that, and the other thing. Say that Australia transforms unimpeded and unhindered into a pure laissez-faire form of government and economy. Let's also assume that it has an abundant population and natural resources. I will also be generous and grant that it can produce any product that any other country can but cheaper. You will represent the government of Objectivist Australia. That way you can have full control over the types of policies you would like to see in our hypothetical world. I will represent the US government.

So Mr. Kelly of Objectivist Australia, would you like to accept a free-trade agreement between our two countries?

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my argument is that an unregulated pure laissez-faire economy cannot compete with a government subsidized and protected foreign economy.

Now that's downright comical :laugh: claiming that US lightly-regulated competitive private enterprise lost the Cold War to Soviet Russia's subsidized and protected gulags, that East Germany was more prosperous than West Germany before reunification, and that Great Britain's 1978-79 'Winter of Discontent' was caused by unregulated laissez-faire health care, transport, mining, and trash collection.

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Say that Australia transforms unimpeded and unhindered into a pure laissez-faire form of government and economy. Let's also assume that it has an abundant population and natural resources. I will also be generous and grant that it can produce any product that any other country can but cheaper.

Say that you've never been to Australia and don't know a goddamn thing about its government, population, or natural resources.

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So Mr. Kelly of Objectivist Australia, would you like to accept a free-trade agreement between our two countries?

Gary,

You don't get it yet.

"Objectivist Australia" (God what a thought! :) ) would not make free-trade agreements.

Trading with other countries would be the job of individual business-people and companies.

Not the government.

Michael

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@Michael

You allow free trade by default? I see. That's fine.

Are American investors allowed to freely buy property in Objectivist Australia?

Suppose our two countries were to go to war at some point. Would people in your country still be allowed to trade with us? What would happen to the property of our citizens in your country?

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@Wolf DeVoon

The Soviet Union was actually quite successful, to an extent. They managed to industrialize very quickly and successfully kept Western Powers out of Eastern Europe.

What ultimately did them in was the lack of the critical component of free enterprise. Without that, business (in the form of a high ranking position in the bureaucracy) was just a privilege that the state bestowed upon a party member in exchange for his loyalty to the current regime. It wouldn't make sense for them to invest any value generated from the activity of the economy, since it all belonged to the state anyway, and how much of the value you made you got back depended on how much the party leadership liked you rather than how well your little sector of the economy actually performed.

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@Wolf DeVoon The Soviet Union was actually quite successful, to an extent. They managed to industrialize very quickly and successfully kept Western Powers out of Eastern Europe. What ultimately did them in was the lack of the critical component of free enterprise. Without that, business (in the form of a high ranking position in the bureaucracy) was just a privilege that the state bestowed upon a party member in exchange for his loyalty to the current regime. It wouldn't make sense for them to invest any value generated from the activity of the economy, since it all belonged to the state anyway, and how much of the value you made you got back depended on how much the party leadership liked you rather than how well your little sector of the economy actually performed.

"Successful" from whose point of view? Reaching higher production levels of iron and coal may have pleased Stalin and his yes-men, but it provided no benefit to the average Soviet citizen. "In real terms, the workers' standards of living tended to drop" during the drive for industrialization.

This is the calculation problem that Mises and Hayek showed would make it impossible for a socialist economy to function without shortages or surpluses. Lacking the information provided by market prices, socialism has no feedback system to rationally allocate resources. The result is mountains of I-beams and near empty plates on the typical Soviet table.

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@Wolf DeVoon The Soviet Union was actually quite successful, to an extent. They managed to industrialize very quickly and successfully kept Western Powers out of Eastern Europe.

You just had to get over 60,000,00 citizens who were exterminated in and out of the Gulags.

Excellent point!

sarcasm.gif

A...

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Arguing if x, y or z "could exist" is utopian. Rand did it. If laissez-faire capitalism "could exist" completely begs the question of how do we get there. First you have to understand where we are. There's no flipping the switch and--wow!--we've got an ideal economy up and running right out of the box.

If you aren't a dolt and understand the superiority of relatively free economies to outright socialist ones then you might rationally suggest more freedom as an operative political principle. On such a premise things can get better fast, especially the psychological mindset of the want-to-be-more productive population. Consider lying. The less freedom the more people lie. In the old USSR that's about all they did--or just zipped their lips. The more freedom the less need for it. The issue is sheer survival.

This practical metric also applies to foreign policy. All I really know right now about the type and amount of US government involvement with the world is it's way too much and should be cut back. When cutting back reaches sundry way-points re-evaluate the general situation. I'm pretty sure "fighting for democracy" can be tossed out the window. Etc.

The "City On A Hill" is an ideal to which one rationally moves. It is not rational to actually get there. For one thing once you climb up the damn thing you'll find yourself, courtesy of your friends and neighbors, headed down the other side. The mind set that identified and sought out the goal will have evaporated. People won't know freedom once freedom is free of tyranny, even if there is nothing but freedom wherever they look and whatever they do. You have to know tyranny to fight it but God forbid if people come to think of freedom as tyranny. Freedom is the tyranny of self responsibility--of adulthood.

--Brant

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@Wolf DeVoon The Soviet Union was actually quite successful, to an extent. They managed to industrialize very quickly and successfully kept Western Powers out of Eastern Europe.

You just had to get over 60,000,00 citizens who were exterminated in and out of the Gulags.

Excellent point!

sarcasm.gif

A...

Russia continues to evaporate because of the success of the Soviet Union. It's destructive inertia.

--Brant

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War with Australia? :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: go ahead, pull the other one. How about war with Canada? -- or Israel?

Don't laugh so hard. Pay a visit to Fort Niagara in Ontario Province. The Canadians did have war with the United States during the War of 1812. The Americans burned down York (now Toronto) and the Brits repaid the favor in Washington D.C. by burning the White House.

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