Libertariansim and Anarchism; Delusional and Utopian

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05 Mar 2009, 8:20 am

I'm curious how standardization is good for product development /innovation ...
I mean, why should I make a better toner / ink system (which, by definition is not "standard"), if I can't sell it?

Who is John Galt?

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Awesomelyglorious
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05 Mar 2009, 10:02 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Your kidding.

One thing about you AG you never seem to put your beliefs on the line, as far as I can tell you are an anarchist, but you don't seem to be defending that position, obviously you only like to attack other peoples beliefs, well how about you actually putting your beliefs out for critical debate, or are you worried that the idiocy of anarchism would be too hard to defend.

Nope, am not.

I don't put my beliefs on the line. Why bother? I don't really want to be stuck defending something against all manner of inane arguments. I'll casually use evidence that defends the belief from time to time. I have gotten in a debate with Orwell about anarchism before. I just do not really want to bother with it, because honestly why care? In any case, there are a number of modern researchers in politically oriented fields that are anarchists, I can just use their arguments to some extent. The major issue is that what is more likely to happen is just a deadlock, rather than an outright refutation.

Dussel
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05 Mar 2009, 2:04 pm

MrMisanthrope wrote:

I'm curious how standardization is good for product development /innovation ...
I mean, why should I make a better toner / ink system (which, by definition is not "standard"), if I can't sell it?

Printers are today no longer subject for real innovation: If a new technology emerges than it is almost impossible to define new standards, but when a technology has been matured, than standards must be imposed.

MrMisanthrope
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05 Mar 2009, 2:07 pm

So, you need a Government to regulate Buggy Whips but not developing technologies which are far more likely to have negative consequences to the purchaser than any sort of buggy whip ever did.

Got it.

Do you realize how absurd that is?

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Dussel
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05 Mar 2009, 2:13 pm

MrMisanthrope wrote:

Buggy Whips can be quite dangerous for the child - therefore regulations for a minimum standard of safety are reasonable. Other issues are standards for mass produced goods like food or steel; to maintain a transparent market.

If something is new, than standardisations are naturally difficult to create.

DentArthurDent
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05 Mar 2009, 3:48 pm

For those of you that continually demonise Marxist economic analysis

Here is a a report to the SEP by Nick Beams back in 2000

''In the Christian religion, according to the priests, the soul takes leave of the body and ascends into heaven. The high priests of the market preach a similar doctrine, claiming that money can separate itself from the production process and enter a financial heaven where money endlessly begets money.

"Is it possible for capital to realize its dream of turning money into more money indefinitely? Or are there inherent limits to this process? Share values can continue to rise and profits can be made on share transactions so long as more capital keeps pouring into the market. In other words, income and profit can be accumulated in the manner of a pyramid scheme, or a chain letter.

"While it continually rises above and dwarfs productive capital, however, fictitious capital cannot escape its origins. At a certain point it is confronted with the fact that it is a claim on surplus, and this surplus value has to be extracted from the working class. ... [T]he structure of global capitalism increasingly takes the form of an inverted pyramid as the mass of fictitious capital claiming a portion grows by leaps and bounds in relation to the productive capital that must ultimately meet these demands."
................."This inverted pyramidic structure of global capital is the source of its extreme instability. Hundreds of billions of dollars of capital, seeking to sustain its rate of return, surge through world markets in search of profit.

"When the prices for property titles—stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.—are rising, capital pours in, seeking to make profit by buying cheap and selling dear. Everyone makes hay while the sun shines. But when the market falters, and it becomes apparent that capital values have been vastly inflated, the rush to exit assumes the form of a stampede and overnight capital values are destroyed—not only fictitious capital, but productive capital as well."

And again in January 2008

"2008 will be characterized by a significant intensification of the economic and political crisis of the world capitalist system. The turbulence in world financial markets is the expression of not merely a conjunctural downturn, but rather a systemic disorder which is already destabilizing international politics. ... Sixteen years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event which supposedly signalled the definitive and irreversible triumph of global capitalism, the world economy is in a shambles. The bursting of the housing market bubble in the United States, which had been fueled by uncontrolled speculative investments in sub-prime mortgages, has resulted in global losses of hundreds of billions of dollars for international banks and other financial institutions. ... The result is an international financial crisis which, in the words of one analyst, has called into question the viability and legitimacy of the Anglo-American system of capitalism." ...................''To put it in a nutshell: The expanded growth of China (along with other countries) would not have been possible without the massive growth of debt in the US. But this growth of debt, which has sustained the US economy as well as global demand, has now resulted in a crisis."

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MrMisanthrope
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05 Mar 2009, 3:57 pm

You are missing out on a very important point.

Fractional Reserve Banking (the cause of the current crisis) is NOT foundational to Capitalisim. It is, in fact antithetical to it.

It was created as yet another method by which the Mercaltilist System of Governance could manipulate production and consumption.

The US is not a Capitalist System. It has had a Mercantilist economic system almost since its inception.

Several of the Founders fought hard against it, but they ultimately lost out to the ideals of that little Facist Hamilton. (Economically Mercantilisim & Facisim are of a piece)

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

This is what Hamilton wanted, and got. Jackson did his best to scuttle the National Bank, but it was brought back to fund another war with more Fractional Reserve Accounting.

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Dussel
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05 Mar 2009, 3:59 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Perhaps I am the only one how does not see this a crisis, but as a healthy process of the market to revalued assets and to bring the fictional numbers of capital into a relation with the the material assets "on the ground".

Marx was right in the 3rd volume of "Das Kapital" when he analysed this process as rapid and brutal. But he was not right when saw this as bad - it is needed and shows the functioning of the markets. Real ("productive capital") will be not destroyed: The factories, the building, skills of workforce, etc. are still here. Houses will have a value, because people like or need to live in any place.

The current crises is a needed readjustment-process and I see the main problem in the intervention of the government and central banks in this process (just today's news from Bank of England).

---

If the governments really want to do something than they should ease the results for less well off classes of society, but they shall not intervene into the market.

EDIT: Forget to type a "not".

Last edited by Dussel on 05 Mar 2009, 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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05 Mar 2009, 4:21 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

For those of you that continually demonise Marxist economic analysis

The analyses are right where they talk about facts known by all people, and they are wrong when they talk about something purely Marxian.

DentArthurDent
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06 Mar 2009, 12:03 am

Dussel wrote:

Well it really depends on your perception! If you look at it from the perspective of history, and have no actual personal experience of the event, then maybe, you can sit back in the cosiness of your present prosperity and unemotionally state, that the major depression of the first part of the 21st century was a good thing.

If on the other hand you are in the same boat as the current working class, and are facing the possibility of 10 to 20 years underemployment along with the effects of draconian austerity measures, I think you would be quite correct in describing the current capitalist meltdown a crisis.

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06 Mar 2009, 12:11 am

Dussel wrote:

That really does understate what happens. There is more to the functioning of an economy than that. When the market crashes, it takes with it the mechanism to allocate stuff efficiently. Markets don't *just* deflate and correct themselves; they overcorrect, things become undervalued, and this destroys organizations which would otherwise have long term viability, it prevents investment, etc. The production of the "material assets" is contingent upon your "fictional assets".

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06 Mar 2009, 12:38 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

In the Christian religion, according to the priests, the soul takes leave of the body and ascends into heaven.

Funny thing, Heaven has been said to be a socialist utopia.

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06 Mar 2009, 8:31 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Dussel wrote:

At first: A real crisis looks differently. People measure terms like "crisis", especially in the US, only on the recent 30 or 60 years. Societies survived much worst issues. When 1648 about a 1/3 of German population was dead and hardly any town or village was not destroyed (there are many regions in Germany were find hardly a building prior 1650) this was crisis. The supply with food is still working, the infrastructure too. There are no extensive outbreaks of deadly diseases. So it is not a real crisis. We had to see our current situation in a longer perspective. Even in the high of the depression in 1929 ff. the standard of living of the lowest classes was still well above any standard in known history.

Second: As I said, I am favour to ease the consequences for the workers, by raising social benefits, health care etc. But I thuibk it is pure madness to intervene into the clearance of the markets - let go then bust!

Last edited by Dussel on 06 Mar 2009, 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

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06 Mar 2009, 8:44 am

twoshots wrote:

Dussel wrote:

If an organisation does not survive such a crisis by building up in a boom reserves to survive does not have a "long term viability". Such a crisis will kick such organisation, lacking long term planning, out of the business. That's one of the most healthy effects. If owners of companies were so greedy to take money out companies instead of transforming the profits into financial reserves, they deserve no better.

twoshots wrote:

The production of the "material assets" is contingent upon your "fictional assets".

This function is based on the way banks and other financial institutions are turning savings and other free flowting capital into investment capital - will say productive factories, well skill employees, infrastructure, etc. In current situation banks are not fulfilling this function because of the so-called "toxic assets" in their books. Such banks are therefore for the economy worthless. It wrong to save such bank buy putting this "toxic assets" into the central bank or the treasury, what currently happens (compare the balance of the FED one year ago and now, look into the statements the Bank of England did yesterday).

It would be on the short term more painful, but easier to let the current banks go bust and rebuild the banking system from the stretch new (here the money from the taxpayer would be spend much better). The main looser would be the stockholders of the banks and people how trusted those banks - they do not better deserve.

MrMisanthrope
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06 Mar 2009, 2:49 pm

Quote:

"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery they may indeed wait for ever." ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)

As to the "Consent of the Governed":

Quote:

The consent, therefore, that has been given, whether by individuals, or by the States, has been, at most, only a consent for the time being; not an engagement for the future. In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot – which is a mere substitute for a bullet – because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him. ~ Lysander Spooner, 1867

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert17.html

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True Liberty Expressed as Fiction: http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn

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