Good ole myth of the free market, in any true free market, one firm will quickly gain an advantage and due to lack of regulation, use that advantage to exploit the market thus destroying the free market.
The, not-so-wild, in fact, Wild West was largely a free market. The Industrial Revolution which began in England could not have been made possible without the enclosure movement forcing peasants from the land.
A warlord controlled economy isn't a free market. Regardless of whether the warlord calls himself a government or not.
Note that you agree as long as it doesn't descend into it's nadir.
The only fundamental difference between the "not-so-wild" West and the warlord economies are that there was a bit of unwritten social contract involved - sheriffs worked often for just the pride of keeping things safe for their friends, doctors often treated patients for pretty much cost, etc - there was tons of VOLUNTARY socialism that kept it going to the nadir that the warlord variation has become.
And government and free market are tangential to each other under your own philosophy that you espouse so what is even the point of the "warlord calling himself a government" bit exactly?
And honestly are you claiming in a "free market anarchy" (or whatever terminology you prefer) that there wouldn't be a total wealth distribution similar to the African warlord situation?
All of the best examples of "free market anarchy" have had plentiful levels of voluntary social contract, plentiful enough resources, and small enough communities that voluntary social contract was effective. There's a world of difference between trying to operate those philosophies in an era of 10k population cities versus one where cities regularly reach the millions.
Even places founded on the principals of such in recent memory, like the Rouse project in Columbia, MD have gone from having a heavy amount of voluntary social contract to almost none in a generation. That's how fleeting the concept is these days. (And note, that Columbia's prosperity as the level of social contract has slipped has slouched quite a bit)
Are you really saying there are free markets? Your "Wild West" example is pretty bad, they were called Railroads and they set prices due to their monopoly.
Are you really saying there are free markets? Your "Wild West" example is pretty bad, they were called Railroads and they set prices due to their monopoly.
More recent scholarship shows that the railroad prices weren't being jacked up, the one economic historian I'm thinking of actually won a Nobel Prize in part because of his work on that topic, slavery and another one.
But overall, yea the public-private partnerships were used to excess in the Early Republic and through a lot of the 20th century even. That's not really "anarcho-capitalism" which is why Rothbard sucks as a historian, because he ignores some of the damage caused by slapshot work in infrastructure projects during the "golden age of capitalism."
The larger problems were the civil rights abuses on workers, which helped to stew socialism and communism in the States and in Europe. It's undue exploitation that undermines pure capitalism without an interventionist state, which while imperfect does a better job than before.
Hitchens in an interview even stated that libertarianism without the existence of economic prosperity couldn't exist, and I frankly agree with him. Many anarch-libertarians are typically well off and insulated to some degree. Anarchism is just like a sort of sexy American form of reverse Marxism. And in the same event Hitchens said, "I guess Americans just don't like being taken care of." In response to whether we'd ever have socialized healthcare, and I think he's right. Individualism as we understand versus more classically about the reliance on improving oneself in various arenas has degenerated into consumerism and "keeping up with the Joneses." And anarchism is responsible for that.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Well the Railroads did exploit their position, they also owned the banks which loaned the money to the farmers and they expected repayment of the money at the end of harvest essentially forcing the farmers to sell all their produce. The problem with this was that everyone harvests at the same time and since they were all selling at the same time, the price was incredibly low. The farmers wanted to but weren't able to, put the food in silos and store it to the time between harvests so they could sell it for more.
I'm really curious, most of the blame I hear was from Goldman Sachs, Bernie Madoff, AIG, and Wall Street. Is there any proof that former President George W. Bush sold America out?
(Didn't read the whole thread).
You cannot blame a recession on a single one person.
But looking from hindsight, the war in Iraq was a very bad decision, and it costed the US about a trillion. That money (the resources used to make war in Iraq) could have been used more wisely.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
These are the decks that I have constructed, and are ready to play:
01. Ankh Sligh to be exact.
I agree, Bush did a lot of bad things, and most of them probably hurt the economy, country, and the world, but he is maybe only 20% responsible for the recession.
On a related topic, how can a president start 2 wars and not stimulate his country's economy? How can we invade an oil rich country and still be paying $4 a gallon for gas? These questions are the ones that bother me, because history shows us that wars are generally good for the economy, and the winner of the war usually gets perks, like running Germany for a decade or 2. What good came out of these wars besides Haliburton making a buttload of cash?
I agree, Bush did a lot of bad things, and most of them probably hurt the economy, country, and the world, but he is maybe only 20% responsible for the recession.
On a related topic, how can a president start 2 wars and not stimulate his country's economy? How can we invade an oil rich country and still be paying $4 a gallon for gas? These questions are the ones that bother me, because history shows us that wars are generally good for the economy, and the winner of the war usually gets perks, like running Germany for a decade or 2. What good came out of these wars besides Haliburton making a buttload of cash?
Oh the "wars trigger an economic" boom doesn't exist in a sustained sense, it creates an immediate expansion sustained through debt, currency manipulation, and tax hikes before, during or after the war. After the war there's a recession with returning soldiers to an economy, and a contraction from both a combination of inflation and requirement to pay off that deficit. Some people have argued that the Great Depression didn't truly end until the 1950's, it's not a popular theory but it's something to be wary of when thinking of these historical arguments.
On the whole oil, gas, and minerals I'll give you two words: Chinese contracts. Yes American blood and treasure made China richer.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
The only fundamental difference between the "not-so-wild" West and the warlord economies are that there was a bit of unwritten social contract involved - sheriffs worked often for just the pride of keeping things safe for their friends, doctors often treated patients for pretty much cost, etc - there was tons of VOLUNTARY socialism that kept it going to the nadir that the warlord variation has become.
There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what prevents warlordism.
There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what prevents warlordism.
Wasn't stating otherwise - point was that it's the minor bits of social contract that prevented it from being quite the terrible nadir that it is on "that side of economic stuff"
Wasn't stating otherwise - point was that it's the minor bits of social contract that prevented it from being quite the terrible nadir that it is on "that side of economic stuff"
Why do you keep trying to make implications that I'm not saying? The problem is that social cooperation on a voluntary level is almost impossible to accomplish due to our mammoth population these days.
If you wanted to slash to population of the world to 1850's numbers I'm sure the ideas would be grand and work well. Unfortunately the world has moved on long ago into a different era where voluntary support structures that prevent things like warlordism are ineffective.
Why do you keep trying to make implications that I'm not saying? The problem is that social cooperation on a voluntary level is almost impossible to accomplish due to our mammoth population these days.
If you wanted to slash to population of the world to 1850's numbers I'm sure the ideas would be grand and work well. Unfortunately the world has moved on long ago into a different era where voluntary support structures that prevent things like warlordism are ineffective.
And most of those that try these experimental communities in the 1800's died out by the 1920's. The experimental communities of the 1960's died out by th e 80's. The only long lasting communities that even approach this are peoples such as the Amish and Jews and specific American Indian tribes in the states. Even then, the point of drift is still there culturally. New Amish sects pop up, Judaism is changing in its traditional structures, and the various tribes have few centralized tribes that have poverty, alcoholism, and obesity issues.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Right Morgan - the only recent time it's been tried to my knowledge (Columbia, MD) didn't even last a single generation. (~1980 to ~1995ish before most of it fell apart)
While it's a societal thing that really worked for us well in the tribal days and to some extents the medieval days - in the industrial era and beyond it's just not very practical because of communities overlapping and overexpanding.
Even the best examples of mini-societies that do this now (i.e. Cubans in Southern Florida) have almost as many detriments (i.e. gangs) as they have positives.
Familiar with supply and demand? There's always limited numbers of people that voluntarily give up their time/effort for the general good and/or a limited number of people that a given person can help.
With populations being so dense now - a doctor locally that is willing to see 1 out of 10 patients for free for example generally has a waiting list of A YEAR - and he doesn't even let it be public knowledge that he does it, just something he informs his office to extend to patients that seem to be in a needy situation.
Voluntary social contracts by the opposite token work very well in small communities - a doctor might even work for free for the patients they have, but the community takes care of him fully as well. (i.e. in the "Wild West" doctors were rarely paid at all, they just had a house and supplies provided for free by the town and they took care of the town's medical needs in return)
I think relating it to Dunbar's Number exclusively is a bit of an exaggeration - but it does certainly give the right gist, especially since it's much easier to occur within a tight knit circle.
[Dunbar's number is a really neat concept I'd not been familiar with - well the idea I was familiar with obviously, but the fact that it was termed and researched]
There's always limited numbers of people that voluntarily give up their time/effort for the general good and/or a limited number of people that a given person can help.
Why wouldn't the limited number of people willing to engage in acts of altruism grow proportionately with the population?
But that is besides the point. There is no reason to suspect that a statist society would fare any better than a stateless one, ceteris paribus, regardless of the number of altruistic human beings in the society.
Well if you think of a community as an extension of a family in a manner of speaking, the current developments in society actually are going towards SHRINKING the number of people involved closely with someone.
[font=Times New Roman] As a raw number, or a proportion, it probably would. That's not the problem, and you demonstrate a complete failure to understand the concept.
You have indeed stated a commonly believed myth.
Note that you agree as long as it doesn't descend into it's nadir.
The only fundamental difference between the "not-so-wild" West and the warlord economies are that there was a bit of unwritten social contract involved - sheriffs worked often for just the pride of keeping things safe for their friends, doctors often treated patients for pretty much cost, etc - there was tons of VOLUNTARY socialism that kept it going to the nadir that the warlord variation has become.
And government and free market are tangential to each other under your own philosophy that you espouse so what is even the point of the "warlord calling himself a government" bit exactly?
And honestly are you claiming in a "free market anarchy" (or whatever terminology you prefer) that there wouldn't be a total wealth distribution similar to the African warlord situation?
All of the best examples of "free market anarchy" have had plentiful levels of voluntary social contract, plentiful enough resources, and small enough communities that voluntary social contract was effective. There's a world of difference between trying to operate those philosophies in an era of 10k population cities versus one where cities regularly reach the millions.
Even places founded on the principals of such in recent memory, like the Rouse project in Columbia, MD have gone from having a heavy amount of voluntary social contract to almost none in a generation. That's how fleeting the concept is these days. (And note, that Columbia's prosperity as the level of social contract has slipped has slouched quite a bit)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Are you really saying there are free markets? Your "Wild West" example is pretty bad, they were called Railroads and they set prices due to their monopoly.
More recent scholarship shows that the railroad prices weren't being jacked up, the one economic historian I'm thinking of actually won a Nobel Prize in part because of his work on that topic, slavery and another one.
But overall, yea the public-private partnerships were used to excess in the Early Republic and through a lot of the 20th century even. That's not really "anarcho-capitalism" which is why Rothbard sucks as a historian, because he ignores some of the damage caused by slapshot work in infrastructure projects during the "golden age of capitalism."
The larger problems were the civil rights abuses on workers, which helped to stew socialism and communism in the States and in Europe. It's undue exploitation that undermines pure capitalism without an interventionist state, which while imperfect does a better job than before.
Hitchens in an interview even stated that libertarianism without the existence of economic prosperity couldn't exist, and I frankly agree with him. Many anarch-libertarians are typically well off and insulated to some degree. Anarchism is just like a sort of sexy American form of reverse Marxism. And in the same event Hitchens said, "I guess Americans just don't like being taken care of." In response to whether we'd ever have socialized healthcare, and I think he's right. Individualism as we understand versus more classically about the reliance on improving oneself in various arenas has degenerated into consumerism and "keeping up with the Joneses." And anarchism is responsible for that.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
(Didn't read the whole thread).
You cannot blame a recession on a single one person.
But looking from hindsight, the war in Iraq was a very bad decision, and it costed the US about a trillion. That money (the resources used to make war in Iraq) could have been used more wisely.
These are the decks that I have constructed, and are ready to play:
01. Ankh Sligh to be exact.
On a related topic, how can a president start 2 wars and not stimulate his country's economy? How can we invade an oil rich country and still be paying $4 a gallon for gas? These questions are the ones that bother me, because history shows us that wars are generally good for the economy, and the winner of the war usually gets perks, like running Germany for a decade or 2. What good came out of these wars besides Haliburton making a buttload of cash?
Oh the "wars trigger an economic" boom doesn't exist in a sustained sense, it creates an immediate expansion sustained through debt, currency manipulation, and tax hikes before, during or after the war. After the war there's a recession with returning soldiers to an economy, and a contraction from both a combination of inflation and requirement to pay off that deficit. Some people have argued that the Great Depression didn't truly end until the 1950's, it's not a popular theory but it's something to be wary of when thinking of these historical arguments.
On the whole oil, gas, and minerals I'll give you two words: Chinese contracts. Yes American blood and treasure made China richer.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what prevents warlordism.
Wasn't stating otherwise - point was that it's the minor bits of social contract that prevented it from being quite the terrible nadir that it is on "that side of economic stuff"
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Anarchists don't oppose social cooperation.
Why do you keep trying to make implications that I'm not saying? The problem is that social cooperation on a voluntary level is almost impossible to accomplish due to our mammoth population these days.
If you wanted to slash to population of the world to 1850's numbers I'm sure the ideas would be grand and work well. Unfortunately the world has moved on long ago into a different era where voluntary support structures that prevent things like warlordism are ineffective.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
And most of those that try these experimental communities in the 1800's died out by the 1920's. The experimental communities of the 1960's died out by th e 80's. The only long lasting communities that even approach this are peoples such as the Amish and Jews and specific American Indian tribes in the states. Even then, the point of drift is still there culturally. New Amish sects pop up, Judaism is changing in its traditional structures, and the various tribes have few centralized tribes that have poverty, alcoholism, and obesity issues.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
While it's a societal thing that really worked for us well in the tribal days and to some extents the medieval days - in the industrial era and beyond it's just not very practical because of communities overlapping and overexpanding.
Even the best examples of mini-societies that do this now (i.e. Cubans in Southern Florida) have almost as many detriments (i.e. gangs) as they have positives.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
How's that?
Familiar with supply and demand? There's always limited numbers of people that voluntarily give up their time/effort for the general good and/or a limited number of people that a given person can help.
With populations being so dense now - a doctor locally that is willing to see 1 out of 10 patients for free for example generally has a waiting list of A YEAR - and he doesn't even let it be public knowledge that he does it, just something he informs his office to extend to patients that seem to be in a needy situation.
Voluntary social contracts by the opposite token work very well in small communities - a doctor might even work for free for the patients they have, but the community takes care of him fully as well. (i.e. in the "Wild West" doctors were rarely paid at all, they just had a house and supplies provided for free by the town and they took care of the town's medical needs in return)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Dunbar's number. Reciprocal altruism doesn't work nearly as well among strangers who are never going to see each other again.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
[Dunbar's number is a really neat concept I'd not been familiar with - well the idea I was familiar with obviously, but the fact that it was termed and researched]
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Why wouldn't the limited number of people willing to engage in acts of altruism grow proportionately with the population?
But that is besides the point. There is no reason to suspect that a statist society would fare any better than a stateless one, ceteris paribus, regardless of the number of altruistic human beings in the society.
Shouldn't man evolve out of Dunbar's number through natural selection?
That takes time. Man has only lived in large-scale communities as opposed to small tribes for a very small period of time, evolutionarily.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
If the global population really is growing at the rate claimed in this thread, then it should take quite little time, evolutionarily speaking.
Please explain.
The response was to an entirely different challenge than Dunbar's number, the concept hadn't even been brought up.