Libertarianism, Wiccans and the freeish market

[kch49er]

I've realised a lot of my dislike for Libertarianism comes from encoutering so called free marketers, who the Libertarians may not even count.

I'd put those who opposed the 1833 factory act as Libertarian. After all restricting ten year olds from working more than nine hours a day is goverment interference right?

If you'r against child labour then your for goverment regulation in at least some form right?

(Before you think I'm ganging up on your philosphiiy, I'm sure you can make equally valid points about the danger of communisim,democracy,socialism)

Magic is not the right word. The basic logic is that letting things play out in a free market works out better than trying to control things via an abundance of one-size-fits-all government policies that always have unintended consequences, which not uncommonly serve to make the issue in question worse or create other problems (a transap might be different, if it's motivations were right). Allow me one real-world example to illustrate.

Better for whom? Why wouldn't a free market system cause unintened consquences?

High Minimum Wages: The idea is to help workers make a living. Here's are the problems. Money doesn't grow on trees, so businesses will have to make up for that somewhere. Either they'll hire fewer people, cut people's hours, raise their prices or even lower quality of whatever they make or do. Worst case, they can't afford to operate at all and they sink. On a large scale, if many businesses raise their prices, that basically causes inflation, so the raise may well not even do anybody any good. Also, low-wage jobs are low-wage because they're relatively unskilled and therefore can be done by almost anybody, such as teenagers and college students looking for summer work, or someone merely trying to supplement their household income, not necessarily people trying to make an independent living on that one job. Mandating a high wage prices such people out. It also has an effect on previously higher-paying jobs. My job for instances, pays a bit under the $15/hr living wage often talked about (I'm a Lab Tech II). If my state did that living wage, could my company maintain low turnover if they they raised us just enough to meet that, so that we're paid the same as the burger flippers across the street? Doubtful, at least not without downsizing us. My, and other jobs, would also need a raise to keep employees feeling they're paid well, or else they'll leave as soon as they find someone who can foot that bill. Same applies to next bracket up and so on, to lessening degrees. If only for my own job security, I really, really hope my state never passes a living wage law.

The minimum wage doesn't have to be provided by a business. Ration systems, goverment monthly income etc could also allow this.

Presumbaly then you'd be OK with a large number of immigrants entering the country(wouldn't want to interfere with the fre emovement of people in the market, would we?) Your company could then hire them at $1 a day( don't want to interfere with their minimum wage) You'd be ok to take that pay or job with similar wage?)

Again, a properly motivated Transapient would do as good or better job as a free market, they are after all incredibly smart. The only question really is how much would this abridge freedom, as it would require nudging or coercing people in certain directions, and how many would accept it? Some would, and they'd stay. Others would not accept it, they'd leave (assuming freedom of movement). Notice the free market solution to this one question, a.k.a. personal choice, not gov't policy.

I'd say a transap could quite easily hide it's interference from the fre market so it's not really freedom of choice.

Rynn - I agree that most humans will be good to one another if not provoked. But it only takes a tiny proportion of troublemakers.

The Wiccan principle has been posted earlier in the thread, but broadly speaking it's exemplified by the central philosophy as stated by many Wiccans: "An ye harm none, do as thou wilt."

BTW, I am fully aware that modern paganism, particularly Wicca, is largely an invention, with many deliberate archaisms such as the saying above, and isn't particularly faithful to ancient pagan traditions. Which is completely irrelevant to my point.

It's a nice idea, but of course this gets thorny. Define Harm. Is turning me down for a bank loan harming me? Different groups will come out on different sides of the equation.

[kch49er]

I also don't get how a Libertarian can support land ownership, copyright or patent laws(All state owned monopolies or what they'd have instead)

[Ares Johnson]

I'd put those who opposed the 1833 factory act as Libertarian. After all restricting ten year olds from working more than nine hours a day is goverment interference right?

If you'r against child labour then your for goverment regulation in at least some form right?

First off, let me stress that I don't think libertarianism is a magic fix-all that would work in all times and places. In the past, society has operated in ways that make it very obvious a hands-off approach would not work...not then. Conditions today are not what they were back then and are only improving. People are much more educated, more informed and generally better off than they used to be. People today would not tolerate many of the things that used to be commonplace, even without laws to back them up. I shudder to imagine to public outcry (and possible violent vigilantism) that would occur if a company abused children now the way 19th century factories did. Just look at what tends to happen to pedophiles in prison...even the other criminals don't just let that slide.

That said, I think when most people hear the phrase "child labor", they think of such abuses. Does anybody bat an eye at assigning their children household chores, or even mowing the lawn, provided of course, no harm comes to them? Is that child labor? And what about kids who want to do some work? Around here, kids must be 16 to hold an actual job, not just oddjobs for a neighbor. What if some 14 year old actually wants to be responsible and start saving up some money for a car or college, or buy his own video games, or pay for dates? What if his family is poor and he wants to help out? Shouldn't he be allowed to get a job, should someone be willing to hire him and he wants to have one?

Better for whom? Why wouldn't a free market system cause unintened consquences?

Free markets don't have intentions, so it's all unintended, that's the point. Modern societies and economies are enormously complex and I have serious doubts anybody short of a real-life transapient could possibly hope to understand them completely and therefore make informed decisions that don't just blow up in their face. Setting policies, regulations and taxes in the hopes of forcing a fix in one place just creates another problem elsewhere, which demands another policy, regulation or tax to fix that, etc, etc and that's how you get legal codes so complex that large companies create entire legal and compliance departments just to keep up with it all. I hear people complain about Big vs Small Businesses, that government favors the Big. Well, guess who has access to more man-hours to tread all the rules and regs?

No one (reasonable) is saying that Free Markets are quick, easy and always clean. They're simply less cluttered.

The minimum wage doesn't have to be provided by a business. Ration systems, goverment monthly income etc could also allow this.

Shifting it to government doesn't remove the financial problems, it simply changes where and how they appear. Money has to come from somewhere and with government, that somewhere is usually taxpayer wallets.

Presumbaly then you'd be OK with a large number of immigrants entering the country(wouldn't want to interfere with the fre emovement of people in the market, would we?)

Freedom of Movement is important, yes. I've lately started pondering about Korea's DMZ in conjunction with this issue. Yeah, it keeps North Korea's military out of South Korea, but it does pretty much keep North Koreans stuck there, doesn't it? Might be more of them would get the hell out of dodge if they didn't have to worry about landmines.

Your company could then hire them at $1 a day( don't want to interfere with their minimum wage) You'd be ok to take that pay or job with similar wage?)

Dude, think about this one for a minute. Connecticut Minimum Wage is $8.70/hr. My position start at $14.50/hr, and we get annual performance-based raises and a benefits package. Ask yourself, why are they paying me some 70% more, and some of my more senior co-workers, double what they're legally required to? Why does any job you care to mention that pays more than minimum wage do so?

The answer is because the jobs are worth more than that to them. They need to offer that much because that's what it takes to bring people in. Why do high-skilled jobs that require lots of training, like Doctors, pay a lot? Because that's what it takes to encourage people to go through all of that crap. Would you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and a decade in college and grad school if your reward was a job paying 30,000 US dollars a year? Hell no.

The only jobs that will pay so poorly are jobs that can be filled that cheaply. And really, any job worth so little money will probably just be given to a machine. Already some fast-food places in the US are started to look into tablet-based devices to replace cashiers, especially in places with high minimum wages. See again point of unintended consequences.

It's a nice idea, but of course this gets thorny. Define Harm. Is turning me down for a bank loan harming me? Different groups will come out on different sides of the equation.

Harm is too broad a term, too fuzzy. I go with Aggression as it's generally understood in The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP).

...any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property or person, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner, are considered violent or aggressive when they are against the owner's free will and interfere with his right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership

In other words, any action taken against you or your stuff without your permission is Aggression and is thus wrong. You can do whatever you want with yourself and your stuff, provided you don't break this rule.

So, according to this, your example of the refused bank loan is a very clear No. That lender has a right to use their money as they see fit, it is their property. They can choose to lend, or not lend, to whoever they wish. Given that they make money off interest, they will in all likelihood only refuse loans to those they don't believe will be good for it. Should they have shadier reasons for not doing so (maybe they're racist or something), surely some other lender will not and will give the you loan if you're good for it. Your rights are not violated if they turn you down, though.

On the flip side, should anyone compel a lender to make a loan they have not in some way consented to, their rights are violated.

The NAP also provides a means against things like pollution, seeing as pollution will somewhere, somehow, damage somebody's person or property. Granted this would not necessarily be neat or easy to figure out in some cases. However, given the increasingly widespread sentiments for being green, energy efficient and so on, it's not like companies don't have an incentive to clean up. Plus simple technological advance helps. Already industrialized countries are polluting less per capita, it's the poorer countries, with less efficient and advanced tech that are the biggest polluters now, and they'll improve with time as well.

[Drashner1]

While I'm rather a fan of capitalism, I am very much not a fan of totally unregulated capitalism. A lot of the arguments I see in favor of TUC seem to be based on assumptions that no longer apply in the real world. Case in point:

a) If a business is providing a bad service or overpricing or treating its employees badly, the market will punish them.

This might work in a 'mom and pop' type business environment with virtually all businesses being owned by individuals or families or small groups. It seems to demonstrably go off the rails when you consider corporations such as Wal-Mart or Apple or various other large companies. For example, Wal-Mart has been documented as coming into an area and undercutting the prices of all the local businesses, thereby driving them out of business such that Wal-mart becomes the only local supplier of pretty much all domestic goods and the only employer. At which point it raises prices and can treat its employees pretty much any way it wants (and often does).

As I understand free-market theory, 'the consumer' will punish Wal-mart for this behavior in some fashion - but in practice this doesn't seem to happen in any significant fashion. While a few people (in areas that do offer a choice of multiple retailers) may refuse to shop there (I'm one of them), most only look at the low prices and 'great deals' and either don't think about the backstory at all or feel a temporary twinge about it and then go right back to shopping. Then of course there are those people (such as Wal-mart employees) who are paid so little that they have no choice but to buy from the cheapest or only local supplier (meaning Wal-mart in many cases) regardless of what they may think about the situation.

Unless we presume some sort of fairly massive program of universal consumer consciousness raising/social engineering such that a corporation will consistently pay a significant negative cost all over for its actions in one place - the theory of 'the market' punishing these sorts of bad actors doesn't seem to work.

b) Unregulated free markets will always produce the best products and services - I would point to the publications of the past, specifically the so-called 'muckrakers' who, around the turn of the century, wrote numerous exposes about the awful conditions in such places as meatpacking plants (Upton Sinclairs The Jungle being the prime example), including spoiled meat covered up with chemicals and rats crawling on the meat and leaving excrement behind. At the time the industry was very lightly regulated - if it was regulated at all. Why should we not take this as an example of how an unregulated industry is more likely to operate? Particularly when the modern food industry can ship to locations that are nowhere near them.

On a somewhat different note:

a) A single individual being able to bring even the biggest and most beneficial project to a halt due to lack of eminent domain laws or the like - Doesn't it seem more likely that in this situation the individual in question would end up having an 'accident' that either suddenly convinced them to move or killed them, making the problem go away? Back in the good old 'unregulated' days before labor unions, there were documented instances of companies hiring people to beat up people trying to unionize or otherwise get better labor conditions. So there is precedent for people behaving in this fashion. How would an unregulated free market (or Libertarian system) prevent this sort of thing?

b) I made mention on another thread about people seeing government as a cookie jar. The response seemed to immediately equate that behavior with welfare - actually I was talking about 'good hard working Americans', specifically the people in my neck of the woods. In this area the roads have been in bad shape for years and for years people have been trying to come up with a way to improve them. A common theme throughout this whole issue has been 'good hardworking Americans', many of whom are self-avowed free-market conservatives who hate government regulation - suggesting that local taxes should not be raised to pay for local roads and that instead Federal funds should be used to pay for it. So apparently they are fine with taxpayer dollars being spent by the government - as long as it benefits them.

c) Natural Monopolies - earlier I mentioned these and someone claimed these don't exist - Based on my college political economics class (my minor is political science), I beg to differ. Let us consider the example of roads:

Say a company builds a set of roads and charges tolls to use them. Building the roads required a massive initial expenditure and the first company pretty much took most of the best routes between many locations (perhaps even the only viable route in some cases). Now the company starts charging very expensive tolls.

In order for 'the market' to address this it would seem to require another massive company to come in and expend massive resources in order to build an entire new set of roads paralleling the existing roads so they can then charge lower tolls to compete with the first company. Except what are the odds that this will happen and in particular how are they to address those sections of road where no other viable route exists?

I suppose the other option is for everyone to move so they don't use those roads but it seems a bit extreme when I have to move my entire household just to get away from a toll. Assuming I can get away from them of course without also switching jobs and schools and much else.

Similar examples can be found when considering cable systems or power companies and power lines.

Why should I believe all this inconvenience is worth the supposed 'freedom' of letting big corporations do whatever they want?

Anyway.

Todd

[Drashner1]

The NAP also provides a means against things like pollution, seeing as pollution will somewhere, somehow, damage somebody's person or property. Granted this would not necessarily be neat or easy to figure out in some cases. However, given the increasingly widespread sentiments for being green, energy efficient and so on, it's not like companies don't have an incentive to clean up. Plus simple technological advance helps. Already industrialized countries are polluting less per capita, it's the poorer countries, with less efficient and advanced tech that are the biggest polluters now, and they'll improve with time as well.

Of course the reason those countries have any sort of less polluted option to aspire to is because some countries passed laws forcing businesses there to reduce/regulate/eliminate their pollution. If no such regulations existed, what would be the incentive to do this? Wouldn't it be more likely that, since the degradation of the environment is generally gradual, that companies would meme the population into either thinking that conditions were 'the norm' or 'the price of progress' while pointing to all the great stuff folks have? And why do they need trees anyway? We see some of this already around climate change and the loss of honeybee populations (the cause of colony collapse disorder has apparently now been traced back to a particular chemical. Yet the companies that produce it aren't rushing to stop on their own).

I think part of the problem with letting private industry police itself is that it has a strong incentive not to. While 'market forces' might force a change eventually, what evidence is there that this change wouldn't happen a lot faster if government forces it?

A common saying in the US is 'you should just be happy you have a job' in response to anyone raising any complaint about working conditions. The message being that you should just shut up and tolerate (nearly) anything the employer wants to dish out so you have a job.

Saying that modern people wouldn't tolerate working conditions from the past doesn't really cut it I'm afraid. People obviously DID tolerate such conditions in the past. And some jobs in the present have pretty awful working conditions for that matter (ask a factory worker in China or a migrant farm worker in the US). While an employer attempting to go back to treating employees as they were a hundred years ago tomorrow might raise a cry - gradually reducing employee rights and options over decades could eventually get us back to similar conditions as once existed - and people wouldn't know any better.

As far as child labor - this would seem to run into the issue of informed consent. Presumably there is an age below which a child is not considered competent to make decisions about getting a job or being able to do it safely - they might be pressured into it by family or think they know what's best - but do they? Virtually every society seems to have some concept of children and adults and an age at which one converts to the other. So not sure how you get around that.

For that matter, if a 14yr old says they want to make porn, is that OK? Presumably in a Libertarian system child pornography is legal since its a business and as long as the actors say they are doing it of their own free will.

Todd

[Dalex]

Personally I think that lot of problems with environmental regulations would disappear at higher S levels since transapient would be, unlike CEO today. look more than just a decade or two forward because e would not have retire due to age.

[kch49er]

I'd put those who opposed the 1833 factory act as Libertarian. After all restricting ten year olds from working more than nine hours a day is goverment interference right?

If you'r against child labour then your for goverment regulation in at least some form right?

First off, let me stress that I don't think libertarianism is a magic fix-all that would work in all times and places. In the past, society has operated in ways that make it very obvious a hands-off approach would not work...not then. Conditions today are not what they were back then and are only improving. People are much more educated, more informed and generally better off than they used to be. People today would not tolerate many of the things that used to be commonplace, even without laws to back them up. I shudder to imagine to public outcry (and possible violent vigilantism) that would occur if a company abused children now the way 19th century factories did. Just look at what tends to happen to pedophiles in prison...even the other criminals don't just let that slide.

That said, I think when most people hear the phrase "child labor", they think of such abuses. Does anybody bat an eye at assigning their children household chores, or even mowing the lawn, provided of course, no harm comes to them? Is that child labor? And what about kids who want to do some work? Around here, kids must be 16 to hold an actual job, not just oddjobs for a neighbor. What if some 14 year old actually wants to be responsible and start saving up some money for a car or college, or buy his own video games, or pay for dates? What if his family is poor and he wants to help out? Shouldn't he be allowed to get a job, should someone be willing to hire him and he wants to have one?

Around here a 14 year old or 13 year old for that matter can get a (part time) job. A 12 year old can't but they can't be exploited. One can argue over exactly where the line should be drawn. Should companies be able to offer sweatshop labour.

As to conditions today improving. The free market hasn't lead to everyone buying sustaniable wood or fair trade products or putting ivory traders out of business. Why should it in the future?

On the gripping hand presumably it would've also let some banks go bankrupt and everone would have changed lenders or more would have entered the market,so I'm wiht you there.

Better for whom? Why wouldn't a free market system cause unintened consquences?

Free markets don't have intentions, so it's all unintended, that's the point. Modern societies and economies are enormously complex and I have serious doubts anybody short of a real-life transapient could possibly hope to understand them completely and therefore make informed decisions that don't just blow up in their face. Setting policies, regulations and taxes in the hopes of forcing a fix in one place just creates another problem elsewhere, which demands another policy, regulation or tax to fix that, etc, etc and that's how you get legal codes so complex that large companies create entire legal and compliance departments just to keep up with it all. I hear people complain about Big vs Small Businesses, that government favors the Big. Well, guess who has access to more man-hours to tread all the rules and regs?

OK, so hear it's an argument for simpler regulation though that's not neccesary the same as none. Agree the market may have unexpected consquences though it does not have uninteded, I'm with you there. Presumably then your postion is unexpected consquences are OK, whatever they are because no one intedend them?

No one (reasonable) is saying that Free Markets are quick, easy and always clean. They're simply less cluttered.

Right their less cluttered, and a less clutterd market is better because?

The minimum wage doesn't have to be provided by a business. Ration systems, goverment monthly income etc could also allow this.

Shifting it to government doesn't remove the financial problems, it simply changes where and how they appear. Money has to come from somewhere and with government, that somewhere is usually taxpayer wallets.

Not neccasarily there is also soverign wealth funds which can be funded from exports- income and investments rather than taxation. I don't think any country relys 100% on this, but with a valuable enough export and small enoguh goverment they might.

Presumbaly then you'd be OK with a large number of immigrants entering the country(wouldn't want to interfere with the fre emovement of people in the market, would we?)

Freedom of Movement is important, yes. I've lately started pondering about Korea's DMZ in conjunction with this issue. Yeah, it keeps North Korea's military out of South Korea, but it does pretty much keep North Koreans stuck there, doesn't it? Might be more of them would get the hell out of dodge if they didn't have to worry about landmines.

Could be, though this mass exodus would have a big impact on South Korea.

Your company could then hire them at $1 a day( don't want to interfere with their minimum wage) You'd be ok to take that pay or job with similar wage?)

Dude, think about this one for a minute. Connecticut Minimum Wage is $8.70/hr. My position start at $14.50/hr, and we get annual performance-based raises and a benefits package. Ask yourself, why are they paying me some 70% more, and some of my more senior co-workers, double what they're legally required to? Why does any job you care to mention that pays more than minimum wage do so?

The answer is because the jobs are worth more than that to them. They need to offer that much because that's what it takes to bring people in. Why do high-skilled jobs that require lots of training, like Doctors, pay a lot? Because that's what it takes to encourage people to go through all of that crap. Would you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and a decade in college and grad school if your reward was a job paying 30,000 US dollars a year? Hell no.

The only jobs that will pay so poorly are jobs that can be filled that cheaply. And really, any job worth so little money will probably just be given to a machine. Already some fast-food places in the US are started to look into tablet-based devices to replace cashiers, especially in places with high minimum wages. See again point of unintended consequences.

The jobs are only that much higher because of lack of competiton, due to green cards etc.

It's a nice idea, but of course this gets thorny. Define Harm. Is turning me down for a bank loan harming me? Different groups will come out on different sides of the equation.

Harm is too broad a term, too fuzzy. I go with Aggression as it's generally understood in The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP).

In other words, any action taken against you or your stuff without your permission is Aggression and is thus wrong. You can do whatever you want with yourself and your stuff, provided you don't break this rule.

So, according to this, your example of the refused bank loan is a very clear No. That lender has a right to use their money as they see fit, it is their property. They can choose to lend, or not lend, to whoever they wish. Given that they make money off interest, they will in all likelihood only refuse loans to those they don't believe will be good for it. Should they have shadier reasons for not doing so (maybe they're racist or something), surely some other lender will not and will give the you loan if you're good for it. Your rights are not violated if they turn you down, though.

On the flip side, should anyone compel a lender to make a loan they have not in some way consented to, their rights are violated.

The NAP also provides a means against things like pollution, seeing as pollution will somewhere, somehow, damage somebody's person or property. Granted this would not necessarily be neat or easy to figure out in some cases. However, given the increasingly widespread sentiments for being green, energy efficient and so on, it's not like companies don't have an incentive to clean up. Plus simple technological advance helps. Already industrialized countries are polluting less per capita, it's the poorer countries, with less efficient and advanced tech that are the biggest polluters now, and they'll improve with time as well.

OK

While I'm rather a fan of capitalism, I am very much not a fan of totally unregulated capitalism. A lot of the arguments I see in favor of TUC seem to be based on assumptions that no longer apply in the real world. Case in point:

a) If a business is providing a bad service or overpricing or treating its employees badly, the market will punish them.

This might work in a 'mom and pop' type business environment with virtually all businesses being owned by individuals or families or small groups. It seems to demonstrably go off the rails when you consider corporations such as Wal-Mart or Apple or various other large companies. For example, Wal-Mart has been documented as coming into an area and undercutting the prices of all the local businesses, thereby driving them out of business such that Wal-mart becomes the only local supplier of pretty much all domestic goods and the only employer. At which point it raises prices and can treat its employees pretty much any way it wants (and often does).

As I understand free-market theory, 'the consumer' will punish Wal-mart for this behavior in some fashion - but in practice this doesn't seem to happen in any significant fashion. While a few people (in areas that do offer a choice of multiple retailers) may refuse to shop there (I'm one of them), most only look at the low prices and 'great deals' and either don't think about the backstory at all or feel a temporary twinge about it and then go right back to shopping. Then of course there are those people (such as Wal-mart employees) who are paid so little that they have no choice but to buy from the cheapest or only local supplier (meaning Wal-mart in many cases) regardless of what they may think about the situation.

Unless we presume some sort of fairly massive program of universal consumer consciousness raising/social engineering such that a corporation will consistently pay a significant negative cost all over for its actions in one place - the theory of 'the market' punishing these sorts of bad actors doesn't seem to work.

b) Unregulated free markets will always produce the best products and services - I would point to the publications of the past, specifically the so-called 'muckrakers' who, around the turn of the century, wrote numerous exposes about the awful conditions in such places as meatpacking plants (Upton Sinclairs The Jungle being the prime example), including spoiled meat covered up with chemicals and rats crawling on the meat and leaving excrement behind. At the time the industry was very lightly regulated - if it was regulated at all. Why should we not take this as an example of how an unregulated industry is more likely to operate? Particularly when the modern food industry can ship to locations that are nowhere near them.

On a somewhat different note:

a) A single individual being able to bring even the biggest and most beneficial project to a halt due to lack of eminent domain laws or the like - Doesn't it seem more likely that in this situation the individual in question would end up having an 'accident' that either suddenly convinced them to move or killed them, making the problem go away? Back in the good old 'unregulated' days before labor unions, there were documented instances of companies hiring people to beat up people trying to unionize or otherwise get better labor conditions. So there is precedent for people behaving in this fashion. How would an unregulated free market (or Libertarian system) prevent this sort of thing?

b) I made mention on another thread about people seeing government as a cookie jar. The response seemed to immediately equate that behavior with welfare - actually I was talking about 'good hard working Americans', specifically the people in my neck of the woods. In this area the roads have been in bad shape for years and for years people have been trying to come up with a way to improve them. A common theme throughout this whole issue has been 'good hardworking Americans', many of whom are self-avowed free-market conservatives who hate government regulation - suggesting that local taxes should not be raised to pay for local roads and that instead Federal funds should be used to pay for it. So apparently they are fine with taxpayer dollars being spent by the government - as long as it benefits them.

c) Natural Monopolies - earlier I mentioned these and someone claimed these don't exist - Based on my college political economics class (my minor is political science), I beg to differ. Let us consider the example of roads:

Say a company builds a set of roads and charges tolls to use them. Building the roads required a massive initial expenditure and the first company pretty much took most of the best routes between many locations (perhaps even the only viable route in some cases). Now the company starts charging very expensive tolls.

In order for 'the market' to address this it would seem to require another massive company to come in and expend massive resources in order to build an entire new set of roads paralleling the existing roads so they can then charge lower tolls to compete with the first company. Except what are the odds that this will happen and in particular how are they to address those sections of road where no other viable route exists?

I suppose the other option is for everyone to move so they don't use those roads but it seems a bit extreme when I have to move my entire household just to get away from a toll. Assuming I can get away from them of course without also switching jobs and schools and much else.

Similar examples can be found when considering cable systems or power companies and power lines.

Why should I believe all this inconvenience is worth the supposed 'freedom' of letting big corporations do whatever they want?

Anyway.

Todd

I'm with Todd on this. He raises some good points, though nowdays power generation could presumably be provided by micro-generation so that can set a limit on how abusive the company can be. So I can see how technolgy can affect this. If flying cars are avalible at a certian price, road companies will price themselves out of the market. How it'd work now is beyoned me

[Ares Johnson]

I think I need to say explicitly something I've only said implicitly so far. I am only in favor of Anarcho-Capitalism in a society that is at least capable of being post-scarcity/labor. I strongly suspect a place like the NoCoZo could function, as the incredible cheapness of goods, food and education available in such a technological setting mean that even the poorest person would, one way or another, have all needed things. You'd likely just be short on luxuries, if that.

For now, the real modern world, I tend to mostly agree with Jon Stossel and advocate Minarchism. I want government small and out of people's way in most cases. The only crimes should be those that clearly fall under the Non-Aggression Principle as I previously defined, no victimless crimes. Drugs should be legal and sold openly just as alcohol is by stores, not gangs and cartels. Marriage should at worst be open to all, no discriminating, and at best not in its purview at all. Taxes should be limited solely to a consumption tax; not based on income, no heavily taxing vices or discounting kids, marriage or other things we "should" be doing (social engineering, I call it), none of all that crap. H&R Block will hate it, but the rest of us will never have to file taxes again or worry about entire bookshelves of tax law and I'm sure we'll be happy for it.

I support the idea of a self-defensive military, not the giant bloated thing America has spread everywhere that functions as the world's police. Education, I'd like to at least least the Federal government out and let states handle it (pretty sure the constitution doesn't give them this authority, anyway). I really think Social Security needs to be phased out or at least be completely restructured, as it cannot last in its current form. I fervently think government needs to get out of health insurance and healthcare, or at least massively scale back its involvement. And for the love of all that is good, absolutely no carrying a national debt, always keep a balanced budget. No government program should ever be passed without some way to pay for it.

Now, for some specific stuff.

Eminent Domain- The Lone Holdout: First off, trying to protect someone from one form of Aggression by committing another is not a solution. Second, Aggression is exactly why police and private security exist. Third, I expect someone in the path of something this big will consider possible consequences and choose to either risk it or take the offer, as is their right.

Monopolies: While I don't think these are intractable as some think, I expect these will cease to be a major problem as tech improves. When flying cars and trucks become economical, roads will be at least in poorer demand and at most obsolete. Power Companies will be less powerful or obsolete once solar power, wind power, fuel cell and battery technology improve to the point where everyone can just produce and store their own energy. I expect cable companies will out on their asses soon, as the business models of companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video and the like become the norm for television. Add in more ubiquitous internet access through self-replicating aerostats or satellites to take away their niche for providing the access and they really will have no chance.

Right their less cluttered, and a less clutterd market is better because?

Not really sure how to explain that. Less cluttered and easier to understand just means more efficient,

Not neccasarily there is also soverign wealth funds which can be funded from exports- income and investments rather than taxation. I don't think any country relys 100% on this, but with a valuable enough export and small enoguh goverment they might.

Alright, now you're talking. I would tolerate a low consumption tax, but if a government could actually support itself, that would be fantastic.

Could be, though this mass exodus would have a big impact on South Korea.

Might not be so bad. I hear they're pretty good about taking in North Koreans when they do show up. And who says they all would need to stay? South Korea could just be a stepping stone to elsewhere if needed or desired.

[Drashner1]

So, saw kch49ers post re decentralized power generation and that got me thinking and then Ares' post re advanced technology made me think we might be onto something here. Will also post it to the Libertarianism in OA thread since it is more focused on OA and might also fit into the update that Rynn is planning to do. Hope you like

One of the primary issues I see with Libertarianism or other 'free market heavy' social systems is that I don't see them working well within the context of our modern industrial civilization. But maybe that's actually a key point where OA is concerned.

Each of the sephirotics is essentially a constructed society, created and shaped by the ruling transapients. In the case of the NoCoZo, perhaps this takes the form (at least in part) of designing a society that uses decentralized technology and small communities. Such a system might lend itself more readily to a more libertarian/minimal government way of doing things. Advanced tech would make a lot of the things we currently have governments doing either obsolete (who needs roads when you have aircars?) or within the purview of individuals or small groups equipped with advanced automation.

NoCoZo systems might have fewer megastructures and more orbital bands of habitats, ranging in size of from 'small' habs (relatively speaking - they might be Island 1 or Island 3 size) housing individuals or single households to larger habs that are essentially small towns. Individual habs would be nearly self-sufficient, getting energy from the local sun and resources from local asteroids/comets/moons that they either own or buy materials from. Perhaps part of the social ethos engineered into the society is that self-sufficiency and wealth are good, but that greed is not so good (to prevent massive land grabs and related things).

On a final note - A lot of the issues I see with uber free-market systems seem to come out of huge corporations getting involved vs 'small business owners'. And in a highly decentralized and mostly self-sufficient society, there would seem to be less need for big companies anyway. So perhaps we should look at tweaking the current mention of NoCoZo megacorps (we've long struggled with just what a megacorp actually IS or why they would be extant for thousands of years as a type of entity). Perhaps something that is more transient - call it a 'metacorp' - a temporary corporate entity that is created when a number of NoCoZo citizens need to get something done on a scale none of them can do individually - business ventures presumably. Individuals would pool resources (either literally or in the form of capital) and a dedicated project manager may be hired. PMs in this context are specialized AIs or heavily augmented beings who specialize in coordinating all the moving parts of massively complex projects. In some cases, the principles of a project may use something like Unityware or Deeper Covenant emotion ware or MPA Dreamseat tech to form a composite intelligence that runs the project. In some cases a PM may be a transavant or even a transapient in the case of very large and complex projects.

On a smaller and more per person note - The NoCoZo seems to live and breath contracts which would seem to require lots of contract negotiations. Perhaps NoCoZo citizens run specialized exo-selves (or programs in their exo-selves) that are designed for rapid contract negotiation. The user indicates what they want and the Negotiator program then goes out and hammers out a contract that is mutually satisfying for all parties. This could save a lot of time when nearly every interaction is treated as a commercial transaction.

Anyway, just some thoughts,

Todd

[Lewx_Lucas]

The only thing that really disturbs me with libertarianism is their way of redefining capitalism so that any human being engaging in any form of economic activity is a "capitalist". That is perverting the language, and is only done to obfuscate the lines between capitalism and other form of voluntary economic systems (of which capitalism is one of the least voluntary, as it has been born out of government intrusion into the economy).

Libertarianism in the US is a petty-bourgeois reaction against capitalism. The fun thing is that they don't understand it themselves, and that their solution would basically achieve none of the things they think it will achieve.