Anarcho-capitalism?

[Pod]

Just want to add a comment in relation to the: families being 'communistic' or 'socialist'. I used to think that, but they really aren't.

It is called:

Human Action - X. EXCHANGE WITHIN SOCIETY
1. Autistic Exchange and Interpersonal Exchange​

And it continues.. so in the family unit, dad essentially works, provides food for the family. It could be considered a gift, because he loves them, or naturally his self interest - they, in turn for getting food, shelter, clothing - help around the house doing chores as payment. Wants to see them prosper and grow into productive members of society.

You could probably whittle it down, that a socialist or welfare system within the family unit early on - (kids are spoilt, get cleaned up after themselves, don't do anything, just take) - can whittle their growth into independent adults, and instead remain stunted or dependent. </psycho babble stab in the dark> lol.. something Stefbot tends to do, but I think does have a lot of merit.

So are they socialist, or are they not?

 

[Paulitician]

Panarchist?

Yes, I basically hold the panarchist position to a T, although even under panarchy I'd still prefer to freely associate with more libertarian persons than not.


On the family, I think that saying the family unit is either communistic, or socialistic, or capitalistic etc. is to make an absolutist, false statement. And to say "well the family is communistic/whatever, therefore that's how all human relations should be such" is a non sequitur and lame argument. Personally, I find some notions and practices of "the family" to be sort of weird, which is also why saying "the family is like X economic system" holds no weight for me. But that's a whole other issue that will take thousands of words to explain. Basically, I believe the philosophy of individualism, voluntarism etc. should be applied to the family as much as possible/is healthy. And I don't hold the family, biological or otherwise, to be anything that is sacred.

 

[Conza88]

So are they socialist, or are they not?

Ha. :o

It is pretty blurry, yet I don't think it falls on a particular side of the fence.

No, in the sense that the exchanges taking place are acceptable and a given within a capitalist system. And I was just trying to make the point, that what is considered 'socialist' i.e the family unit, because of the vague notion that property seems like it is 'communal or shared', it actually isn't. It's dad's, mum's whoevers.

Kid Lib makes it crystal clear.

As Paulitican stipulated, it wouldn't make much sense to argue from the family unit perspective is __ this, that societies social system should be, or is __ this.

But I do think it would actually be beneficial in terms of personal relations within the family unit, or to make it work better - teaching your kids about property rights and living the example. That's the way I see myself doing it, if I ever have kids.. lol

 

[Pod]

No, in the sense that the exchanges taking place are acceptable and a given within a capitalist system. And I was just trying to make the point, that what is considered 'socialist' i.e the family unit, because of the vague notion that property seems like it is 'communal or shared', it actually isn't. It's dad's, mum's whoevers.

I`d say it depends on the culture. Certainly it is hard to argue that a traditional extended family where grandpa or the oldest uncle are making all of the calls is really about induvidual property.

But that is alright. The same way you can choose not to excercise your right to self-defense and opt for Tolstoyan pacifistic anarchism, you can choose not to excercise your rights of property.

The problem only arises should you want to browbeat everyone else in foregoing their rights as well.

Kid Lib makes it crystal clear.

I don`t use Rothbard as a reference in offspring issues. I think this is one area where he made mistakes.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Conza is correct in this post.

Well, essentially anarcho-capitalism is pure capitalism.

Capitalism = the private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism = the public ownership of the means of production.

Classical Liberalism (what I guess you associate as "pure capitalism", actually isn't.) And part of the reason for Capitalism's decline over the 20th Century / since the American Revolution, is because of democratic nature / tradition of the US (politicians / special interests) which even a Constitutional Republic, and Constitution - a MINIMAL STATE cannot protect against. It has inherent contradictions which itself cannot resolve.

Anarcho-capitalism is the logical extension of Libertarianism. The non aggression axiom (principle) and the Lockean / Rothbardian homesteading private property rights principle. This is applied to EVERYTHING. Others say: radical, I say: 'consistent'. It is the pure capitalism.

Libertarian socialist - is someone who is using the Libertarian in the European label sense of the world. When the socialists stole "Liberal" ie. morphed classical liberal to make liberal mean "socialist", in America - the free market folks where able to obtain the label "Libertarian".

A Libertarian socialist - is a Chomsky supporter. They are completely ignorant of economics, and think the State actually protects private property (lolz, it doesn't - it has to violate private property to exist). Confused and lost.

Hope that helps.

 

[swirling_vortex]

To throw my two bits in, I'll agree that left-wing anarchy and libertarianism is a farce. At no point in history has a collective of some sort survived without it degenerating into a dictatorship. You can't have a bunch of followers function without a leader, even if the leader is totally corrupt. In this respect, capitalism and other market economies have been able to put feudalism and communism in the dust bin because people become more independent. This would make anarcho-capitalism the desired choice.

The problem I have is with anarchy in general. For instance, if Company A believes that Company B stole from them, they could both use their private police forces against each other. I also don't see how something like national security could be possible without a military. That's one of the reasons the Articles of Condeferation failed is because of the lack of funding and mobility of resources for defense purposes. I see a minarchy as desirable, but no less than that.

 

[Conza88]

I`d say it depends on the culture. Certainly it is hard to argue that a traditional extended family where grandpa or the oldest uncle are making all of the calls is really about induvidual property.

But that is alright. The same way you can choose not to excercise your right to self-defense and opt for Tolstoyan pacifistic anarchism, you can choose not to excercise your rights of property.

The problem only arises should you want to browbeat everyone else in foregoing their rights as well.

I'd say it depends on praxeology. i.e the action axiom. And culture influences those individuals actions.

I don`t use Rothbard as a reference in offspring issues. I think this is one area where he made mistakes.

I don't think he made mistakes, and I'd like to know what you think they are. The only thing, which Block extends from Rothbards analysis would be in regards to Evictionism. (abortion)

 

[Conza88]

The problem I have is with anarchy in general. For instance, if Company A believes that Company B stole from them, they could both use their private police forces against each other. I also don't see how something like national security could be possible without a military. That's one of the reasons the Articles of Condeferation failed is because of the lack of funding and mobility of resources for defense purposes. I see a minarchy as desirable, but no less than that.

YouTube - Stateless Dictatorships

and

The Myth of National Defense, Hoppe (ed.)​

And the articles of confederation didn't fail. The US Constitution was a coup d'etat.

 

[swirling_vortex]

And the articles of confederation didn't fail. The US Constitution was a coup d'etat.

I wouldn't call it a coup. The AoC gave the federal government no govering power and it couldn't enforce laws. For one thing, it had little funding, so it paid troops through use of printing money. There was no mobility for the military to fight the well organized British because the states kept squabbling with each other. The Consitution, in turn set up a more stable form of taxation and military which later proved to be much more effective. As Washington said, it was "little more than the shadow without the substance."

 

[South Park Fan]

I wouldn't call it a coup. The AoC gave the federal government no govering power and it couldn't enforce laws. For one thing, it had little funding, so it paid troops through use of printing money. There was no mobility for the military to fight the well organized British because the states kept squabbling with each other. The Consitution, in turn set up a more stable form of taxation and military which later proved to be much more effective. As Washington said, it was "little more than the shadow without the substance."

That didn't exactly work out to our benefit, though. Even if the accusations against the AoC are true, I would much rather have a federal government that couldn't enforce laws than the police state we have today.

 

[swirling_vortex]

That didn't exactly work out to our benefit, though. Even if the accusations against the AoC are true, I would much rather have a federal government that couldn't enforce laws than the police state we have today.

True, the AoC did do one thing right: Restrain the federal government. I haven't done much research on anarcho-capitalism or other successes of limited government, so I guess my opinion doesn't hold much weight.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I wouldn't call it a coup. The AoC gave the federal government no govering power and it couldn't enforce laws. For one thing, it had little funding, so it paid troops through use of printing money. There was no mobility for the military to fight the well organized British because the states kept squabbling with each other. The Consitution, in turn set up a more stable form of taxation and military which later proved to be much more effective. As Washington said, it was "little more than the shadow without the substance."

IMHO, it was a Coup.
~HB34~

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Founding Father of Constitutional Subversion[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Upon learning that my new book on Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for Americans Today) will be published in October, a law student from New York University emailed to say how excited he was to hear of it. He wrote of how sick and tired he was listening to one of his NYU law professors, Nadine Strossen, constantly invoking Hamilton’s judicial philosophy (and that of his political descendants) to promote bigger and bigger government, day in and day out, in class. Being schooled in the classical liberal tradition, this student understood that bigger and bigger government always means less and less individual liberty. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton was indeed the founding father of constitutional subversion through what we now call "judicial activism." That’s why leftist law professors like Strossen lionize him in their classrooms while barely mentioning opposing viewpoints. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton was the leading advocate of a constitutional convention to "amend" the nation’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. He lobbied for seven years to have such a convention convened, constantly complaining to George Washington and anyone else who would listen that "we need a government of more energy." Patrick Henry opposed Hamilton by sagely pointing out that the Articles of Confederation had created a government powerful enough to raise and equip an army that defeated the British empire, and that that seemed sufficient to him. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] At the convention, which scrapped rather than amended the Articles of Confederation, as had been promised, Hamilton laid out his grand plan: A permanent president who would appoint the governors of each state, and who would, through his state-level puppets, have veto power over all state legislation. A national government with the president given essentially the powers of a king is what he advocated. It was all rejected, of course, when the convention spurned Hamilton’s nationalism and adopted a federal system of government instead, with only a few powers delegated to the central government by the sovereign states, mostly for foreign affairs. Hamilton subsequently denounced the new constitution as "a frail and worthless fabric."[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] He and his political compatriots, such as Senator Rufus King of Massachusetts, and John Marshall of Virginia, then set about to sabotage the new Constitution by "reinterpreting" the document as something very different from what was clearly written in black and white. His purpose, wrote Cornell University historian Clinton Rossiter in his book, Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution, was to build "the foundations of a new empire." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Jefferson and most other founders viewed the Constitution as a set of constraints on the powers of government. Hamilton thought of it in exactly the opposite way – as a grant of powers rather than as a set of limitations – a potential rubber stamp on anything and everything the federal government ever wanted to do. He and his fellow nationalists (the Federalists) set about to use the lawyerly manipulation of words to "amend" the Constitution without utilizing the formal amendment process. "Having failed to persuade his colleagues at Philadelphia of the beauties of a truly national plan of government," Rossiter wrote, "and having thereafter recognized the futility of persuading the legislatures of three-fourths of the states to surrender even a jot of their privileges, he set out to remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy."[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]And how did he "remold" the Constitution? He began by inventing a number of myths (i.e., lies) about the American founding. On June 29, 1787, before the Constitution was even ratified, he said that the sovereign states were merely "artificial beings" that had nothing to do with creating the union – despite the fact that the Constitution itself (in Article 7) declared that the document would be ratified (if it was to be ratified) by the citizens of at least nine of the thirteen states. He told the New York State Assembly in that same year that the "nation," and not the states, had "full power of sovereignty," clearly contradicting the written Constitution and actual history. This lie would be repeated by nationalist politicians from Clay, Webster and Story, to Lincoln. It is still repeated to this day by various apologists for the American empire. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] When President Washington asked Hamilton his opinion on the constitutionality of a national bank, Hamilton responded with a long-winded report that argued that if one reads between the lines of the Constitution, one discovers "implied powers" that are not specifically delegated to the central government by the states. Like the creation of a central bank, for instance. Secretary of State Jefferson was also asked his opinion on the matter, and essentially said that all he saw "between the lines" of the Constitution was blank space. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton prevailed, setting the template for the eventual destruction of the Constitution. "With the aid of the doctrine of implied powers," Rossiter wrote approvingly, Hamilton "converted the . . . powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8 into firm foundations for whatever prodigious feats of legislation any future Congress might contemplate." He established the foundations for unlimited government, in other words. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton also invented the "doctrine" of "resulting powers." If the united States ever conquered one of their neighboring countries, he wrote, "they would possess sovereign jurisdiction over the conquered territory. This would be rather the result from the whole mass of government . . . than a consequence of . . . powers specially enumerated." Thus, if government engages in an unconstitutional act, such as an undeclared war of conquest, then according to Hamilton, the fact that the conquest occurred would create a new constitutional right. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] It was Hamilton who first advocated the broadest possible interpretation of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution so that he could make his case for corporate welfare in his 1791 Report on Manufactures. "It is . . . of necessity left to the discretion of the National Legislature, to pronounce upon the objects, which concern the general Welfare," he wrote. Naturally, the legislature would be eager to define every piece of special-interest legislation to be serving "the general welfare." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Again celebrating the political trickery of his hero Hamilton, Rossiter wrote that "Thus with a flourish did Hamilton convert the fuzzy words about the ‘general Welfare’ from a ‘sort of caption,’ as Madison described them, into a grant of almost unlimited authority" of the federal government. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton was also likely to be the first to twist the meaning of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gave the central government the ability to regulate interstate commerce, supposedly to promote free trade between the states. Hamilton argued that the Clause was really a license for the government to regulate all commerce, intrastate as well as interstate. For "What regulation of [interstate] commerce does not extend to the internal commerce of every State?" he asked. His political compatriots were all too happy to carry this argument forward in order to give themselves the ability to regulate all commerce in America. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Hamilton also invented the notion of special "war powers" that are not specifically delegated to the federal government by the states. He subsequently argued for a standing army, funding of the army "without limitation," and the nationalization of all industries that supplied goods to the army. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Jefferson opposed Hamilton on this and all of his other constitutional subversions. In his first annual message to Congress as president, he said that it is neither "needful or safe that a standing army should be kept in time of peace." In a September 9, 1792 letter to President Washington, Jefferson wrote that he "utterly . . . disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the Treasury [Hamilton] . . . . His system [of a national bank, protectionist tariffs, and corporate welfare] flowed from principles averse to liberty, & was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic . . ." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Clinton Rossiter’s book on Hamilton and the Constitution is a masterwork of scholarship, but when Rossiter editorializes he sounds quite giddy in his celebration of Hamilton’s subversion of the Constitution. "Hamilton had no equal among the men who chose to interpret the Constitution as a reservoir of national energy," he wrote. All of the nationalist politicians and jurists of early America, from John Jay to Rufus King to Joseph Story and John Marshall, owed Hamilton a debt of thanks for "having taught his friends how to read the Constitution." Senator Rufus King of Massachusetts was so impressed by Hamilton’s conniving slickness, and its potential to cause government to grow vastly larger than what the Constitution called for, that he promised him "assistance to whatever measures and maxims he would pursue."[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Justice Joseph Story became "the most Hamiltonian of judges," according to Rossiter, faithfully reproducing the lie that the states were never sovereign; he "construed the powers of Congress liberally"; and "even found the Alien and Sedition Acts constitutional in retrospect." (The Sedition Act outlawed criticism of the federal government, a crystal-clear repudiation of the First Amendment). Story’s book, Commentaries on the Constitution, published in 1833, was a roadmap for nationalists who wished to further destroy constitutional limitations on government. It could just as well have been entitled "Commentaries on Alexander Hamilton’s Commentaries on the [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Constitution," says Rossiter. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The book was essentially a political training manual for "the legal profession’s elite – or at least among the part of it educated in the North – during the middle years of the nineteenth century." The Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution, based on actual historical reality as opposed to the lies, myths and superstitions of Hamilton, Marshall and Story, was more popular in the South. (Perhaps the best exposition of this tradition is St. George Tucker’s A View of the Constitution of the United States.)[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution was all but wiped out by Lincoln’s war, after which Hamiltonian hegemony prevailed for decades. Slowly but surely, virtually all vestiges of Jefferson’s strict constructionism were swept away so that by the 1930s the "principles of nationalism and broad construction expounded by Hamilton and his disciples" finally monopolized constitutional law in America, wrote Rossiter. Between 1937 and 1995, not a single federal law was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hamilton’s "rubber stamp" constitution was firmly in place. It is little wonder that a law student like our NYU correspondent, who is familiar with the Jeffersonian and classical liberal traditions, would be disgusted by his pontificating professor’s expositions of Hamilton’s subversive constitutional trickery.[/FONT]

 

[swirling_vortex]

Very interesting heavenlyboy34, although the article sounds like Hamiltion made a coup on the Constitution rather than the Constitution itself.

One question though, how do you deal with the issue of Somalia? A lot of liberals tend to tar small government folks by saying present day Somalia is the "libertarian paradise".

 

[South Park Fan]

True, the AoC did do one thing right: Restrain the federal government. I haven't done much research on anarcho-capitalism or other successes of limited government, so I guess my opinion doesn't hold much weight.

I would recommend Medieval Iceland as a start.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Very interesting heavenlyboy34, although the article sounds like Hamiltion made a coup on the Constitution rather than the Constitution itself.

One question though, how do you deal with the issue of Somalia? A lot of liberals tend to tar small government folks by saying present day Somalia is the "libertarian paradise".

I agree with Stefan Molyneux's assessment of Somalia.

YouTube - True News 19: Somalia Part 2

YouTube - True News 18: Somalia

Mises Institute has lots of good stuff as well, including:

this and this.