Some objections to AC

[DougShrapnel]

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There would also likely be other consequences for not helping in time of invasion such as ostracism of that person, both socially and finacially.


[/ QUOTE ] Sounds like a voluntary exchange to me. If this sort of coersion is exceptable in cases of defense why do you think it won't be used to accomplish other non-voluntary exchanges.

[theweatherman]

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How is someone who voluntarily enters an employment contract a "slave"?


Think sweatshops.

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Something you will learn very soon is that ACers do not believe that sweat shops are a bad thing. Since there is no one forcing the people to work (except for the specter of starvation of course) then they are willingly consenting to work 18 hr days for 50 cents and hour.

Besides they are improving their lives by accumulating wealth! Whet could be better?!? Voluntary accepted wages with endless opportunity to make a buck! Sweet!

Although youd have to wonder how many would still see it this way if they were born in Bangladesh, or how many would send their own children b/c it is really in the child's best interest to work.

[DougShrapnel]

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Could you give examples? Your original point was confusing.


[/ QUOTE ] I can give a ton, but I'd rather just give one. Sceintific research.

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Ok, now I'm even more confused. What would be "perfectly fine" with having a dictatorship and what does that have to do with AC?


[/ QUOTE ] That it is the people with the power that determine the correctness of a economic, societal system. Not entirely the system.

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Walking up to someone and sticking a gun in their face and telling them to give you all their money is initiating coercion, but defending yourself against that attacker is not.

[/ QUOTE ] And this is different than what we have now how exactly?

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Right now the state is needed. Most ACers here don't dispute that because we're smart enough to realize that if the entire government shut down tomorrow there'd be chaos. Not something an ACer wants. I'm talking about the future. With low enough time preferences and ever expanding pools of technology and resources, a state would be less and less necessary until it was unnecessary. At such time, it would be regression to continue on with a state instead of progressing without.

[/ QUOTE ] Smart people like you might be better coming up with a system that improves the way society acts not merely shifts it's faults.

[Riddick]

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If a doctor voluntarily enters into a contract with an insurance company, how is that you claim this doctor's actions are now being coerced by the insurance company?


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Is medical school free now? I don't see how this doctor can do anything but work. A large portion of potential positions will be working for insurance companies.


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You didn't answer my question. But anyways, the doctor voluntarily entered medical school, correct? And who forces an individual with a medical degree to work for an insurance company?

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If the "security force" voluntary contracts with the highest bidder, what individual or group of indivuals has coerced this "security force" into entering this contract?


[/ QUOTE ] Us for setting up the society to act in this fashion.


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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Can you explain this just a bit? Through what actions did *I* set up society? Through what actions did *you* set up society? Through what means are *my* actions or *your* actions coercing some unrelated firm's acceptance of a contract from the highest bidder?


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Who coerces the poor into stealing?


[/ QUOTE ] Maslov.

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Now I'm just lost. Explain please how "Maslov" coerces one individual into theft of another individual's property.

In fact, I'm lost as to the rest of your responses as well, pending at least minimal explanation by you.

You do understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary, correct?

[Riddick]

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Something you will learn very soon is that ACers do not believe that sweat shops are a bad thing.

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I suppose if sweatshops were a "bad thing" then all of the sweatshops disappearing would be a "good thing", right?

[DougShrapnel]

I apologize for my brief comments. My verbosity, spelling, and diction is atrocious.

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You didn't answer my question. But anyways, the doctor voluntarily entered medical school, correct? And who forces an individual with a medical degree to work for an insurance company?

[/ QUOTE ] I think freewill vs determinism might help. AC depends on the existance of freewill for it to be a viable option. I'm not sure freewill is decided yetWiki on freewill I'm sorry I just can't discuss this issue if you insist that the Doctors action are free. They are at the very least forced by reason, or emotion. And it's possible they are entirely determined.

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Through what actions did *I* set up society? Through what actions did *you* set up society? Through what means are *my* actions or *your* actions coercing some unrelated firm's acceptance of a contract from the highest bidder?


[/ QUOTE ] Are you not advocating a society that rewards these types of action? If you aren't advocating for AC then I'm not sure why we are discussing it.



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Explain please how "Maslov" coerces another individual into theft of another individual's property.


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Maslow Particularly the idea that ones need for saftey goes out the window when ones physiological needs aren't being met.

[moorobot]

Suppose that a large estate that you would have inherited in the abscensce of an inheritance tax now becomes a public park or a low-income housing project as a result of the tax. The inheritance tax does not eliminate the freedom to use that property, rather it redistributes that freedom. If you inherit the estate, then you are free to dispose of it as you see fit, but if I try to have a picnic or garden without your permission, then I am "violating your rights" and the government or a private arbitratory/court will intervene and coercively deprive me of the freedom to continue. On the other hand, my freedom to use and enjoy the property is increased when the state taxes your inheritance to provide me with affordable housing or a public park. So the free market restrains my freedom, while the welfare state increases it.

That property rights increase some people's freedom by restricting others is obvious if we think about the orgin of private property. Since private owneship by one person presupposes non ownership by others, the 'free market' restricts and creates liberties, just as redistribution both creates and restricts liberties. Private property is a distribution of freedom and unfreedom. Hence, the sentence "free enterprise constitutes economic liberty" is demonstrably false.

Michael Bakunin notes that these facts put the worker in the position of a serf with regard to the capitalist, even though the worker is formally "free" and "equal" under the law:


"Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 187-8]
Obviously, a company cannot force you to work for them but, in general, you have to work for someone. This is because of past "initiation of force" by the capitalist class and the state which have created the objective conditions within which we make our employment decisions. Before any specific labour market contract occurs, the separation of workers from the means of production is an established fact (and the resulting "labour" market usually gives the advantage to the capitalists as a class). So while we have a very limited ability to pick which capitalist to work for, we, in general, cannot choose to work for ourselves (the self-employed sector of the economy is tiny, which indicates well how spurious capitalist liberty actually is). Of course, the ability to leave employment and seek it elsewhere is an important freedom. However, this freedom, like most freedoms under capitalism, is of limited use and hides a deeper anti-individual reality.

Here is Adam 'laissez faire' Smith on this issue:


"It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties [workers and capitalists] must, upon all ordinary occasions... force the other into a compliance with their terms... In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer... though they did not employ a single workman [the masters] could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scare any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. . . [i]n disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage." [Wealth of Nations, pp. 59-60]

[moorobot]

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Something you will learn very soon is that ACers do not believe that sweat shops are a bad thing.


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I suppose if sweatshops were a "bad thing" then all of the sweatshops disappearing would be a "good thing", right?

[/ QUOTE ] The corporations themselves created the high supply of people who must seek out wage labor in order to survive. What would have been better is if the companies never would have systematically wiped out traditional economies in the first place or if they create better conditions for their workers-and it can't get much worse than 70+ hours a week for subsistence pay with no benefits and unhealthy working conditions living in company towns while getting physically and mentally abused at work: The companies could still make a huge profit treating these people decently, as evidenced by their billions.

First, most people in 3rd world countries had a better job (farming and local businesses) before corporations bought up all the farm land and wiped them out with competition to create a high labor supply for themselves and/or dictators kicked them off in exchange for bribes etc. from corporations, and put local business owners out of business via competition and/or violence that was not stopped or even helped by the undemocratic states(Most fortune five hundred companies have a GDP higher than most of the common sweatshop countries, anyway) (How about that for "voluntary and free" transactions, Boro?-what sheer and utter nonsense) Sweatshops are based on an artifically high labor supply that was forced into existensce by market power, which is much more powerful than you ACers seem to realize. These corporations have set the "price of labor" by eliminating the other options.

Secondly, and less contingently, better to have a job that pays a living wage, with decent working hours and conditions, than either of the other two options. If the arbitrary baseline was a situation in which John (representing the current market circumstances and working conditions (largely) imposed upon people by capitalists, with the rest being imposed by the capitalist system) kept Jim (representing workers) in a cage and beat him daily, it would not mean that John was suddenly behaving decently/acceptably if he took Jim out of his cage one day but continued beating him. If I started paying my slave 1 cent more a week I may be benefiting him compared to an arbitrary baseline, but I am still commiting an injustice compared to the only important standard.

Justice is based on impartiality, not on "mutual advantage" or "mutual benefit". These companies should be treating their workers better-sweatshops are not good enough regardless of whether they are bad compared to the arbitrary baseline of now which has been created by injustice and violence. Period. And we should be working to ensure they treat them better.

[Riddick]

Doug,

It appears we are arguing on two different planes here.

First, if you believe that all action is predetermined, then I just don't know what to say [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

Second, the Darwinian struggle against Nature (ie death) will always (strongly) encourage a human being to choose his or her best alternative in the means to win this struggle. Nature does not, however, "force" one choice or another, since clearly an individual is free to succumb to death.

Also, an individual's best alternative, contrary to what you are implying as the set-up of society, is not always the alternative with the highest monetary reward.

Lastly, coercion is, by definition, forcing action under the some sort of threat, usually violence. A coerced action is by definition involuntary. None of the examples you have given demonstrate coercion.

I shall cite some Rothbard for further clarification:

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A common complaint is that the free market would not insure the elimination of poverty, that it would “leave people free to starve,” and that it is far better to be “kindhearted” and give “charity” free rein by taxing the rest of the populace in order to subsidize the poor and the substandard.

In the first place, the “freedom-to-starve” argument confuses the “war against nature,” which we all conduct, with the problem of freedom from interference by other persons. We are always “free to starve” unless we pursue our conquest of nature, for that is our natural condition. But “freedom” refers to absence of molestation by other persons; it is purely an interpersonal problem.


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[Riddick]

going to bed, then finals, will reply later