Just a smidge of Glenn Beck

[Sarah Palin]

I was watching his show the other day and he had some conservatives from Britain on, and rather than interview them, Mr. Beck went off on what he calls socialism and the like. But I was rather bothered by the response of one of the british men. It was along the lines of "Well yeah, we have radical leftists over here as well. Just call the BNP."
That just bugged the hell out of me. Any thoughts?

[GPDP]

Not surprised at all. The sheer idiocy and misinformation of that show borders on Stormfront levels.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP, constantly calls the BNP a far left party on his blog at the Telegraph. Like, not just a throw-away comment, he has entire blog posts dedicated to "proving" his theory.

[Rusty Shackleford]

man, theyre doing a damn good job of killing both the far right and far left by associating fascists with communists. in the end we just get overwhelming support for centrism.

which according to political compass, Hitler was a Centrist Authoritarian, just a hair to the right... im not going by that as my definitive answer of what Nazism is. but its a great disservice to the left community.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Piece of advice: don't watch Beck's show, not even for an instant.

[Bud Struggle]

That just bugged the hell out of me.

That was his intention.

[Klaatu]

More on (moron?) Beck's show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/glenn-beck-spins-the-holo_b_214118.html

[GPDP]

I imagine giving a soap box to a common cappie troll the likes of which we get here in the OI from time to time would result in something similar to Glenn Beck. That's essentially what he sounds like.

[Bud Struggle]

You have to take Beck for what he really is--an entertainer (and there are a good number of people he entertains with his antics.) You certainly can't go to him for any REAL analysis of world events any more than you could have gone to someone like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. As a matter of fact, he's a topical commedian just like they were. His radio show even starts out with the line that the show is a fusion of information and entertainment. If you take him seriously you give him more credit than he even gives himself.

The thing is that people on the Left have been so used to "entertainers" being from the Left and making fun of the Right--they seem to have lost their sense of humor for a jokester that comes from the other direction.

[Rusty Shackleford]

if he is a comedian then why is he airing on a 'news' network. people are easily misguided and surely this is dangerous to mix comedy with actual news when not set in an actual comedic setting. like the daily show or the colbert repot. theyre on a comedy network. not a news network.


if it is comedy, then he failed at that.

[GPDP]

You have to take Beck for what he really is--an entertainer (and there are a good number of people he entertains with his antics.) You certainly can't go to him for any REAL analysis of world events any more than you could have gone to someone like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. As a matter of fact, he's a topical commedian just like they were. His radio show even starts out with the line that the show is a fusion of information and entertainment. If you take him seriously you give him more credit than he even gives himself.

The thing is that people on the Left have been so used to "entertainers" being from the Left and making fun of the Right--they seem to have lost their sense of humor for a jokester that comes from the other direction.

He ceases to be funny when so many actually take him seriously and agree with him. And lots of people do.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You have to take Beck for what he really is--an entertainer (and there are a good number of people he entertains with his antics.) You certainly can't go to him for any REAL analysis of world events any more than you could have gone to someone like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. As a matter of fact, he's a topical commedian just like they were. His radio show even starts out with the line that the show is a fusion of information and entertainment. If you take him seriously you give him more credit than he even gives himself.

The thing is that people on the Left have been so used to "entertainers" being from the Left and making fun of the Right--they seem to have lost their sense of humor for a jokester that comes from the other direction.

He is not a comedian, he uses that as a cover just as Rush Limbaugh claims that he is "only a comedian/entertainer" whenever he makes a sexist or racist comment.

Michael Moore is 10x funnier than him on an objective level (unless you are watching Beck to laugh at him) and no one calls Michael Moore a comedian as they shouldn't: he's a political writer/filmmaker who uses humor but the humor is subordinate to the point he's making. The Daily Show is a political comedy show, Michael Moore and Glenn Beck are not comedians.

Glenn Beck has repeatedly called for the "War on Terror" to become a war on all of Islam and believes that all of Islam is a threat to the west. If Beck is a comedian like George Carlin, then Hitler was Charlie Fucking Chaplain.

[Bud Struggle]

Well, maybe comedian may be the wrong word--but entertainer isn't. Beck is taking the news, giving it some off the wall spin--usually Conservative--and making it interesting for millions of listeners. And he's freaking successful at it--more so than Carlin or Bruce ever was, I read somewhere he makes somethng like 9 million dollars a year. That's a lot of money.

He's on the news shows as a pundit--and that just shows how the news isn't the "news" anymore--it's TV and Radio programing and it sells advertisment. It's entertainment.



If Beck is a comedian like George Carlin, then Hitler was Charlie Fucking Chaplain.



http://mp3.news.com.au/hwt/images/Chaplin1-350w.jpg

[Jimmie Higgins]

http://mp3.news.com.au/hwt/images/Chaplin1-350w.jpg

Ha! Nice reference.

[Marx22]

I can't even watch Glenn Beck for second; everytime I'm changing the channels and I have to pass by FoxNews, I make sure I swing by it really fast. Glenn Beck is a fascist and a liar. All he does is get people on his show that argee with him all the time and all he does on that show is spew his racist rants. I thought he was bad on CNN but on Fox, you'd think he was Nick Griffin's brother.

The BNP is a nazi group, end of story.

[Nwoye]

You have to take Beck for what he really is--an entertainer (and there are a good number of people he entertains with his antics.) You certainly can't go to him for any REAL analysis of world events any more than you could have gone to someone like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. As a matter of fact, he's a topical commedian just like they were. His radio show even starts out with the line that the show is a fusion of information and entertainment. If you take him seriously you give him more credit than he even gives himself.

The thing is that people on the Left have been so used to "entertainers" being from the Left and making fun of the Right--they seem to have lost their sense of humor for a jokester that comes from the other direction.
how you can possibly compare Glen Beck to George Carlin is beyond me.

[New Tet]

More on (moron?) Beck's show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/glenn-beck-spins-the-holo_b_214118.html

It would take a pretty stupid person to swallow the contradiction in Beck's attempt to associate the "Left" with fascism. I know, I know, a lot if not most who watch or listen to Beck (excluding our comrade who posted his concerns) are pretty ignorant people, but the present-day access to media helps dispell a lot of their ignorance very quickly, I dare say.

By now the "liberal/leftist" label is so deeply ingrained in the popular consciousness that it is impossible to abolish.

Since before WW2, millions of Americans have seen oodles of negative portrayals of Nazis in the popular media, subtly implying that a Nazi is far-"right" of any issue. In spite of the best efforts of some of the most renoun academicians and pulpiteers to link Nazis with "Leftists", most Americans today (I think) believe that Fascism is an ultra right-wing ideology.

Whereas, since at least the late 1950's (after the McCarthy fiasco) sectors of the popular media in the U.S. were begining to portray "leftists" in a gradually better light associating them properly with unionism, civil rights and feminism.

[krazy kaju]

As I've explained elsewhere, many pro-capitalist conservatives (like Glenn Beck) and libertarians (like me) view the right-left political spectrum as free market anarchism on the far right and state socialism on the far left. Advocates of limited and/or small government, free markets, low taxes, etc. are considered "right of center" while advocates of bigger government and more intervention are considered "left of center." The BNP, being an organization which advocates massive government intervention in the forms of restricting immigration, installing mandatory racial quotas, and restricting or even banning trade from non-white nations, is an organization which the likes of Glenn Beck, Daniel Hannan, and others would characterize as "left wing."

[New Tet]

As I've explained elsewhere, many pro-capitalist conservatives (like Glenn Beck) and libertarians (like me) view the right-left political spectrum as free market anarchism on the far right and state socialism on the far left. Advocates of limited and/or small government, free markets, low taxes, etc. are considered "right of center" while advocates of bigger government and more intervention are considered "left of center"

By whom, sir?


The BNP, being an organization which advocates massive government intervention in the forms of restricting immigration, installing mandatory racial quotas, and restricting or even banning trade from non-white nations, is an organization which the likes of Glenn Beck, Daniel Hannan, and others would characterize as "left wing."

And incorrectly so.

[krazy kaju]

By whom, sir?

Glenn Beck and Danniel Hannan are two, which have been explicitly mentioned already in this forum. I presume that some other libertarian-conservatives, like the Constitutional scholars Randy Barnett and Kevin Gutzman, would take a similar position.

Hans Hoppe, an economist and philosopher of the Austrian school, describes the political spectrum in a similar manner. He classifies everything into either "capitalism" or "socialism." To Hoppe, the US has a socialistic road, education, and court system.


And incorrectly so.

Why?

[ZeroNowhere]

By whom, sir?By many conservatives and neoliberals in general, as he said.


As I've explained elsewhere, many pro-capitalist conservatives (like Glenn Beck) and libertarians (like me) view the right-left political spectrum as free market anarchism on the far right and state socialism on the far left.
You may want to take that up with our local free market anarchist, GeneCosta. When I last saw him/her/it, he/she/it was puzzled over the identity of this 'Obama' figure. On the other hand, I'm sure you could cut off a little of the left wing there, seeing as, to quote De Leon, "No Socialist is a "State Socialist.""


Why?You do have a point here, it's not far-right economically, seeing as it embraces some left-populism. The Political Compass seems to place it to the left wing of capital, I'm not entirely sure.

[MikeSC]

It's not their protectionist-capitalist policies that define the BNP, though (not that they are at all left-wing. They're not laissez faire, so what? Their economic policy stems from Strasserism, which was only anti-capitalist in as much as they think capitalism is secretly run by jews. They wanted a new capitalism without what they thought was jewish interference. Hardly egalitarian-minded is it?)

It's their nationalism and their racism. They're no different really to the Tory party of the not so distant past. You might find THIS (http://www.davidosler.com/2009/06/daniel_hannan_next_leader_of_t.html#comments) blog post, and the comments section, of worth.

Nobody with even a superficial knowledge of political history can mistake the BNP for a left-wing party honestly.

EDIT: Don't you think it's completely and utterly idiotic, I mean idiotic beyond belief, to start using right-wing conservative definitions for socialism over the definition used by socialists? It's completely obnoxious when people start trying to correct other people over what they are or what their ideology is. You make a definition of socialism that no one who calls themself a socialist agrees with, and the people who do fit into that definition don't call themselves socialist. It's a completely stupid thing to do.

[Bright Banana Beard]

People need to stop take him seriously, he IS a entertainer. No I do not like him and he does this for money.

[Bud Struggle]

People need to stop take him seriously, he IS a entertainer. No I do not like him and he does this for money.

He is an entertainer but he does does it for more than just the money. (Not that the money he's paid is to shabby.)

He is doing to Obama and the Left (in American politics) exactly what the things like the Daily Kos did to Bush during his administration. He's trying to make Obama and all his fellow travelers look like incompetents and fools. He's throwing a bit of xenophobia for the fun of it as well.

He wants to piss Liberals off--nothng more. There is no reason for Communists to take him seriously.

[New Tet]

Glenn Beck and Danniel Hannan are two, which have been explicitly mentioned already in this forum. I presume that some other libertarian-conservatives, like the Constitutional scholars Randy Barnett and Kevin Gutzman, would take a similar position.

Hans Hoppe, an economist and philosopher of the Austrian school, describes the political spectrum in a similar manner. He classifies everything into either "capitalism" or "socialism." To Hoppe, the US has a socialistic road, education, and court system.



Why?

Because they're wrong?

[BobKKKindle$]

As I've explained elsewhere, many pro-capitalist conservatives (like Glenn Beck) and libertarians (like me) view the right-left political spectrum as free market anarchism on the far right and state socialism on the far left.It doesn't actually matter what you or any right-wing pundit thinks, and nor is whether we think of the BNP as being "left-wing" or "right-wing" really important, because all political designations involve a degree of subjectivity. What really matters is the issue of class rule. We stand for a society in which class divisions have been eliminated, through the abolition of private property and the withering-away of the state, with this form of society coming into existence after a transitional period, during which the proletariat will impose its own form of class rule on the remnants of the capitalist ruling class. The BNP does not support this kind of society - and like all representatives of the ruling class they attempt to turn different sections of the working class against each other (and thereby stabilize the class rule of the bourgeoisie) by means of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric. The fact that the economic policies they advocate seem to involve a greater level of economic intervention than the current government as well as the kind of policies you want to implement is not significant, because the ability of the bourgeoisie to exploit the working class does not depend on the existence of a free market, or even the existence of private property, as a component of the legal system - hence the term state-capitalism, in reference to class societies where the state owns the means of production, and the bourgeoisie continues to exist in the form of a state bureaucracy, which exploits workers through its privileged position within the state apparatus. Needless to say, you want to maintain a class society as well, because you support private property, and believe that gains which have been won by the working class through decades of struggle - the minimum wage, the right to unionize, universal healthcare, the eight-hour working day, safeguards against child labour, and so on - should be eliminated. In this respect, you and the BNP are politically similar.

On a more general note, it's worth pointing out that, throughout its history, capitalism has always depended on the state. The state is a necessary component of capitalism, because if the state did not exist to enforce contracts, and use armed force to protest private property, there would be nothing to stop workers from simply seizing control of the means of production and administering society in their own interests. As a form of class society, capitalism is prone to social conflict, and therefore requires a state in order to survive. In addition to this role of the state - which is a universal feature of all capitalist societies, regardless of any other differences, such as the level of economic development, and distribution of wealth - the state has also had an important historic function, as the state has historically been used to sweep away the last remnants of feudal property relations, especially through enclosure acts, and to impose capitalism on territories that previously operated under pre-capitalist economic formations, through colonialism. This is important from an ideological point of view because a favoured argument of Locke et al. is that private property is legitimately acquired through voluntary contracts, and people "mixing" their labour with the natural environment - if the early history of capitalism involved violence and conquest, clearly this argument cannot be accepted.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

As I've explained elsewhere, many pro-capitalist conservatives (like Glenn Beck) and libertarians (like me) view the right-left political spectrum as free market anarchism on the far right and state socialism on the far left.
Then your political spectrum is (a) woefully incomplete, and (b) illogical. Also, (c), it flies in the face of history.

Why (a)? Because such a spectrum completely ignores the existence of 99% of anarchists - specifically, the anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists and so on - who oppose both the state and private property. It also ignores the existence of numerous authoritarians who support both an all-powerful state and rigidly enforced private property.

Why (b)? For several reasons. First, private property is a creation of the state, and the powers of the state over an individual within its territory are absolutely identical to the powers of a private landlord over an individual living on his land (assuming there is no state above the landlord). Indeed, the modern state pretty much evolved from the estates of medieval landlords.

Second, your spectrum is illogical because it assumes that all politics can be reduced to a single issue. But not all of us even care about your anti-state obsession. We don't oppose limited government so much as we don't give a damn about the "size" of the state as long as it achieves what we want it to achieve.

Why (c)? Because historically, the "right" has been composed of the supporters of tradition, cultural heritage and the "old ways," while the "left" has been composed of the supporters of radical change. And guess what? A powerful state is part of the tradition, cultural heritage and "old ways" of most countries on Earth.


Advocates of limited and/or small government, free markets, low taxes, etc. are considered "right of center" while advocates of bigger government and more intervention are considered "left of center."
"Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" are NOT all part of the same political group, whatever name you wish to use for that group. It is possible to use bigger government and more intervention to achieve diametrically opposed goals - you can use it to enforce economic equality or inequality, population control or large families, ethnic purity or multiculturalism, social darwinism or a welfare state.

If two groups both support large government but wish to use it for such diametrically opposed goals, then those two groups are natural enemies and cannot be placed in the same political category just because they both also happen to oppose your goals.


Hans Hoppe, an economist and philosopher of the Austrian school, describes the political spectrum in a similar manner. He classifies everything into either "capitalism" or "socialism." To Hoppe, the US has a socialistic road, education, and court system.
Hans Hoppe is a lunatic and a fascist. I do not throw that accusation around lightly. Hoppe wrote a book that attacks democracy and praises absolute monarchy (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684), for God's sake. A book that includes such tolerant, freedom-loving passages as the following:


There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
But anyway, quite separately from Hoppe's disgusting political views, classifying everything into either "capitalism" or "socialism" is stupid, ahistorical, and amounts to little more than a pathetic attempt at guilt by association ("I'm going to call everything I don't like 'socialism,' so I can make it look like everything is the work of the same ideology or the same group of people" - when in reality the state of our world is the result of a long and complicated historical process involving many opposing political groups).

[krazy kaju]

It's not their protectionist-capitalist policies that define the BNP, though (not that they are at all left-wing. They're not laissez faire, so what? Their economic policy stems from Strasserism, which was only anti-capitalist in as much as they think capitalism is secretly run by jews. They wanted a new capitalism without what they thought was jewish interference. Hardly egalitarian-minded is it?)

It's their nationalism and their racism. They're no different really to the Tory party of the not so distant past. You might find THIS blog post, and the comments section, of worth.

Nobody with even a superficial knowledge of political history can mistake the BNP for a left-wing party honestly.

EDIT: Don't you think it's completely and utterly idiotic, I mean idiotic beyond belief, to start using right-wing conservative definitions for socialism over the definition used by socialists? It's completely obnoxious when people start trying to correct other people over what they are or what their ideology is. You make a definition of socialism that no one who calls themself a socialist agrees with, and the people who do fit into that definition don't call themselves socialist. It's a completely stupid thing to do.

The problem with defining the BNP as right wing is that then the political spectrum makes no sense. On the right you have nationalist anti-capitalists, on the left you have anti-nationalist anti-capitalists, then you have all kinds of stripes of capitalists and anti-capitalists in the center... huh?

That's why some adhere to the "far right = anarchism and far left = state socialism" approach, since it actually makes sense out of the left-right spectrum.

That said, I still prefer that diamond or square shaped political spectrum where beliefs are put on a "social conservative vs. liberal" and "economic conservative vs. liberal" axises (or axes?). That eliminates the disagreement that people have arguing over a nonsensical left-right political spectrum.


People need to stop take him seriously, he IS a entertainer. No I do not like him and he does this for money.

I agree; Glenn Beck is an entertainer. I find his show to be occasionally interesting only because of his crazy antics. When you're really, really bored one day, tune in to his show and count how many times he points out he's fat or says "blood shoots out of my eyes when..." or "I'm a libertarian, but..." before he says something completely statist.


Because they're wrong?

At least you have the balls to admit that your beliefs are based purely on faith and not reason.


It doesn't actually matter what you or any right-wing pundit thinks, and nor is whether we think of the BNP as being "left-wing" or "right-wing" really important, because all political designations involve a degree of subjectivity.

I agree; the left-right spectrum is pretty arbitrary and silly to begin with.


What really matters is the issue of class rule.Yes, what matters is that there is no ruling class to begin with.


We stand for a society in which class divisions have been eliminated, through the abolition of private property and the withering-away of the state, with this form of society coming into existence after a transitional period, during which the proletariat will impose its own form of class rule on the remnants of the capitalist ruling class.Just that your Marxist-Leninist pipedream has never worked and will never work if only because people, once they gain power, do not want to give it up.


The BNP does not support this kind of society - and like all representatives of the ruling class they attempt to turn different sections of the working class against each other (and thereby stabilize the class rule of the bourgeoisie) by means of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric. The fact that the economic policies they advocate seem to involve a greater level of economic intervention than the current government as well as the kind of policies you want to implement is not significant, because the ability of the bourgeoisie to exploit the working class does not depend on the existence of a free market, or even the existence of private property, as a component of the legal system - hence the term state-capitalism, in reference to class societies where the state owns the means of production, and the bourgeoisie continues to exist in the form of a state bureaucracy, which exploits workers through its privileged position within the state apparatus. Needless to say, you want to maintain a class society as well, because you support private property, and believe that gains which have been won by the working class through decades of struggle - the minimum wage, the right to unionize, universal healthcare, the eight-hour working day, safeguards against child labour, and so on - should be eliminated. In this respect, you and the BNP are politically similar.We are politically similar in that even the BNP wants to have some semblance of human freedom intact with at least some form of property rights still existing. Besides that, the BNP, being a racist AND statist organization that supports an expansion of the massive British welfare state (as long as it exludes non-Britons), is at complete odds with my ideology.


On a more general note, it's worth pointing out that, throughout its history, capitalism has always depended on the state. The state is a necessary component of capitalism, because if the state did not exist to enforce contracts, and use armed force to protest private property, there would be nothing to stop workers from simply seizing control of the means of production and administering society in their own interests.[quote]

I guess someone has never heard of anarchism. :rolleyes:

SimplyAnarchy[dot]com is a good website to start. Theoretically, a purely capitalistic and anarchist society is possible; empirically, societies very similar to pure free markets have existed.

Defense, security, law, courts, etc. can all be bought and sold just like every other good and service. Private law has the added benefit of being more egalitarian than statist law while preserving the great engine of growth known as capitalism.

[quote]As a form of class society, capitalism is prone to social conflict, and therefore requires a state in order to survive.I could just as easily say "as a form of class society, communism is prone to social conflict, and therefore requires a state in order to survive." The fact of the matter would be that what I just said was an unproven statement, just like yours.

Capitalism itself is not prone to social conflict at all. The most capitalistic societies, like Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Australia, and Liechtenstein, among others, are some of the societies with the least conflict. Now compare that to more socialistic countries like the PRC, India, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, which are full of social strife and dissatisfaction.


In addition to this role of the state - which is a universal feature of all capitalist societies, regardless of any other differences, such as the level of economic development, and distribution of wealth - the state has also had an important historic function, as the state has historically been used to sweep away the last remnants of feudal property relations, especially through enclosure acts, and to impose capitalism on territories that previously operated under pre-capitalist economic formations, through colonialism.You're essentially saying that the state "imposed" capitalism by removing false property rights. That goes against your usage of the word "imposed" to begin with.


This is important from an ideological point of view because a favoured argument of Locke et al. is that private property is legitimately acquired through voluntary contracts, and people "mixing" their labour with the natural environment - if the early history of capitalism involved violence and conquest, clearly this argument cannot be accepted.A non sequitur. If we are to accept Locke, then the conquest and colonization of much of the world by Western Europe was immoral. I am agreement with that.


Then your political spectrum is (a) woefully incomplete, and (b) illogical. Also, (c), it flies in the face of history.

Why (a)? Because such a spectrum completely ignores the existence of 99% of anarchists - specifically, the anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists and so on - who oppose both the state and private property.

Not at all. Government is essentially any institution which retains the right to legitimately initiate violence against individuals and other institutions. If other kinds of anarchists agree that the initiation of violence and aggression is never acceptable, then they could be placed on the far right as well. However, if they view the initation of aggression as sometimes acceptable - by, say, a workers' militia - then they are in fact statists since they do not reject all rulers but simply want to replace the current rulers with others.


It also ignores the existence of numerous authoritarians who support both an all-powerful state and rigidly enforced private property.This is an oxymoronic statement. You cannot have an all-powerful state without having violation of property rights. An all-powerful state, as I understand it, is a state that retains the right to tax and regulate anything it wishes to tax and regulate. Seeing that taxation and regulation initiate aggression and therefore violate property rights, an all-powerful state cannot "riggidly [sic] enforce property rights." It is entirely possible that an all-powerful state could be more friendly to property rights than a full-blown state-socialist society, which would put it to the right of state socialism while still remaining solidly on the left side of the political spectrum.


Why (b)? For several reasons. First, private property is a creation of the stateNo it isn't. Private property exists naturally via homesteading. Whether or not that private property is enforced by the law is another question altogether, though we can say with certainty that private property can be enforced without the state but by private security, law, and defense companies. Again, see simplyanarchy[dot]com for further information (I cannot post links, sorry).


and the powers of the state over an individual within its territory are absolutely identical to the powers of a private landlord over an individual living on his land (assuming there is no state above the landlord). Indeed, the modern state pretty much evolved from the estates of medieval landlords.No, the powers of a landlord in relation to the powers of the state are not the same; yes, the medieval landlord was essentially a state within himself. Again, there is a difference between the primitive accumulation of land and capital, which defined feudalism, and the nonviolent accumulation of land and capital which defines pure free markets. You cannot tax, control, or kill someone only because they are on your property in a pure free market.


Second, your spectrum is illogical because it assumes that all politics can be reduced to a single issue.It doesn't really make it into a single issue. It instead lumps all issues together to make a more logical left-right spectrum. The spectrum, as defined by you, lumps together with completely different views on the right. Nazis have nothing in common with the Libertarian Party. This new left-right spectrum at least has some semblance and logical appeal as it does put Nazis and fascists on the opposite side of libertarians where they belong. I'm sorry to say that fascists have more in common with socialists than they do with advocates of true laissez faire.


But not all of us even care about your anti-state obsession.The left-right spectrum is not about any anti-state obsession. It is about rationally resolving the problems of the current left-right spectrum if we choose to still use it instead of replacing it with a series of spectrums like "pro-war and anti-war" or "socially conservative vs. liberal."


We don't oppose limited government so much as we don't give a damn about the "size" of the state as long as it achieves what we want it to achieve."Limited government" and "small government" are two different things. "Limited government," is a government that only does a few things, like provide for the common defense. Such a government could be huge if, say, the country were at war. "Small government" describes the actual size of government in relation to the economy.

Some libertarians advocate limited government, some advocate small government, most advocate both, and I advocate none. That said, I think almost everyone agrees that they don't care how large the government is as long as it achieves what we want it to achieve. The problem is that libertarians - myself included - see that government causes more problems than it solves, which is why we're opposed to government in the first place.


Why (c)? Because historically, the "right" has been composed of the supporters of tradition, cultural heritage and the "old ways," while the "left" has been composed of the supporters of radical change. And guess what? A powerful state is part of the tradition, cultural heritage and "old ways" of most countries on Earth.I completely agree. That places libertarians on the left. However, that propagates the confusing practice of putting extreme statists on both sides of the political spectrum and not organizing the spectrum in any rational order.

As I've stated before, this is best solved by doing away with the spectrum all-together, but if we are to remain with it, the best way to reform the spectrum would be by organizing it by how much one believes in the powers of government to solve individual problems.


"Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" are NOT all part of the same political group, whatever name you wish to use for that group.That's like saying "A is not A." That is clearly a false and logically contradictory statement. "Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" fall in the same group called "advocates of bigger government and more intervention," or "statists" for short, whether you like it or not.


It is possible to use bigger government and more intervention to achieve diametrically opposed goals - you can use it to enforce economic equality or inequality, population control or large families, ethnic purity or multiculturalism, social darwinism or a welfare state.True. This, however, if it is used to justify your previous statement, is a complete non sequitur. Only because one uses bigger government for disparate ends does not mean that we cannot classify people between those who wish to use bigger government as a means and those who do not.


If two groups both support large government but wish to use it for such diametrically opposed goals, then those two groups are natural enemies and cannot be placed in the same political category just because they both also happen to oppose your goals.If we use your argument, then we must do away with the left-right spectrum all together, which I would agree with. However, since it is in common usage, it is most rational to organize it in a way where people on the left have something in common and people on the right have something on common. Unfortunately, the way we use the political spectrum today, Nazis and libertarian-conservatives like America's founding fathers, have nothing in common, though both would be placed on the right. That is why classifying the spectrum in terms of the means rather than ends makes more sense, since it is not possible to create a single spectrum based solely on ends, since there are too many ends to put into a single spectrum.


Hans Hoppe is a lunatic and a fascist. I do not throw that accusation around lightly. Hoppe wrote a book that attacks democracy and praises absolute monarchy, for God's sake.Good way to slant a book you haven't even read. Hoppe is actually an anarchist, he praises monarchy as being superior to democracy, since democracy is simply mob rule. One might point to Hong Kong under the British or Singapore currently as two non-democratic nations that achieved superior results. However, many libertarians still vehemently disagree with Hoppe on this point.


A book that includes such tolerant, freedom-loving passages as the followingHad you actually read the book and read that passage in context, you would have realized that Hoppe was stating that any voluntarily created land covenant would have the power to expel anyone they would not like. His statement about democrats and communists is also rather clear, since both advocate the legitimate initiation of violence by one group over another. The democrats favor the legitimate initiation of violence by the mobs while communists favor the legitimate initiation of violence by the working class. Both are incompatible with libertarianism, since libertarians view the initiation of aggression as completely immoral, unethical, and at odds with any libertarian society.


But anyway, quite separately from Hoppe's disgusting political views, classifying everything into either "capitalism" or "socialism" is stupid, ahistorical, and amounts to little more than a pathetic attempt at guilt by association ("I'm going to call everything I don't like 'socialism,' so I can make it look like everything is the work of the same ideology or the same group of people" - when in reality the state of our world is the result of a long and complicated historical process involving many opposing political groups).Wrong.

First, Hoppe's distinction does not attempt to amend the left-right spectrum, it simply provides another way of looking at societal differences. This would have been abundantly clear had you ever read Hoppe. Moreover, you would not have made this mistake had you read my post analytically and not grabbed false assumptions out of thin air.

Secondly, it has nothing to do with guilt association. Just as mine and some others' reorganization of the left-right spectrum, Hoppe separates societies (not necessarily politics) into different means. One means is government (which Hoppe defines as "socialism") and the other is no government (which Hoppe defines as "capitalism"). Whether or not one accepts Hoppe's terms is irrelevant, since I'm sure many would argue that capitalism and free markets are not identical and that socialism does not necessarily require government (e.g. true anarcho-socialism of theorists like Benjamin Tucker). What is relevant is the means used for whatever one's political ends are: whether or not those means involve government intervention.

[IcarusAngel]

"Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" are NOT all part of the same political group, whatever name you wish to use for that group


That's like saying "A is not A." That is clearly a false and logically contradictory statement.

You are a complete loon. Just because two things share a common characteristic, does not mean that they are the same thing. That's like saying that a chair and a table are the same thing, because both are furniture.

Furthermore, not everyone agrees with your asinine classification of capitalism as "small government" - especially since capitalist societies have constructed some of the most powerful governments in history, and also because having the government protect private property is very oppressive and limits people's choices and freedoms.

It makes much more sense to focus on who controls the resources and who has input (like democracy vs capitalism) and that is why political scientists use the scales they use.

[Demogorgon]

That's why some adhere to the "far right = anarchism and far left = state socialism" approach, since it actually makes sense out of the left-right spectrum.Except you are bunching together a bunch of people who have nothing in common for the sake of said "guilt by association".


Yes, what matters is that there is no ruling class to begin with.No capitalists then? Those that rule society are not merely those defined as constitutional Government, but those able to exercise significant influence. Governments, corporations and so on all fall into this category and all have the potential to be oppressive.


We are politically similar in that even the BNP wants to have some semblance of human freedom intact with at least some form of property rights still existing. Besides that, the BNP, being a racist AND statist organization that supports an expansion of the massive British welfare state (as long as it exludes non-Britons), is at complete odds with my ideology.Christ knows what planet you are on if you think Britain has a massive welfare state and besides the the BNP's policies on the matter look more like those of Milton Friedman than anything else generally favouring replacing the welfare system with something like a negative income tax.


Capitalism itself is not prone to social conflict at all. The most capitalistic societies, like Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Australia, and Liechtenstein, among others, are some of the societies with the least conflict. Now compare that to more socialistic countries like the PRC, India, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, which are full of social strife and dissatisfaction. What? The four examples of capitalism you give all have substantial welfare states and Government ownership. The examples you give would be more suited to an argument for social democracy.



Not at all. Government is essentially any institution which retains the right to legitimately initiate violence against individuals and other institutions. In other words they are any institution strong enough to get away with instigating violence? In that case a private company that uses violence to get its ends knowing it can get away with it can be called a Government?

In your kind of society at least some private companies would be strong enough to do so, consequently we would still have Government?



No, the powers of a landlord in relation to the powers of the state are not the same; yes, the medieval landlord was essentially a state within himself. Again, there is a difference between the primitive accumulation of land and capital, which defined feudalism, and the nonviolent accumulation of land and capital which defines pure free markets. You cannot tax, control, or kill someone only because they are on your property in a pure free market.Who is going to stop you? If you are the one able to bring the most force to bare, who can prevent you from doing so?


It doesn't really make it into a single issue. It instead lumps all issues together to make a more logical left-right spectrum. The spectrum, as defined by you, lumps together with completely different views on the right. Nazis have nothing in common with the Libertarian Party. This new left-right spectrum at least has some semblance and logical appeal as it does put Nazis and fascists on the opposite side of libertarians where they belong. I'm sorry to say that fascists have more in common with socialists than they do with advocates of true laissez faire.If that were the case you would find points of agreement along the lines you list, yet there is little to none, whereas fascists and libertarians have quite often found themselves allied. Indeed in some cases Pinochet for instance, they more or less merge into one.

The point of comparison you try to make is willingness to use Government to achieve certain ends, but that is like saying if I use a spade to dig a whole for growing plants and you use a spade to smash somebody's skull, we have done the same thing, given we have used the same tool.



I completely agree. That places libertarians on the left. However, that propagates the confusing practice of putting extreme statists on both sides of the political spectrum and not organizing the spectrum in any rational order.And what is a rational order? One that suits you. I know that Kwisatz Hadarech for instance favours a seven axis political spectrum to most accurately account for all the variations in thought. That seems more reasonable than your attempts to use a single issue regarding willingness to use a certain tool as a method to divide out all the complexities of political difference.

Of course in many ways inclined to say you could do very well simply by using a progressive/reactionary scale.


That's like saying "A is not A." That is clearly a false and logically contradictory statement. "Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" fall in the same group called "advocates of bigger government and more intervention," or "statists" for short, whether you like it or not.In that case "statist" is a meaningless category because virtually everyone falls into it regardless of what their actual political views are. You want to separate the spectrum into "fringe loons who want to replace all Government power with private power vs everyone else". It isn't going to work.


True. This, however, if it is used to justify your previous statement, is a complete non sequitur. Only because one uses bigger government for disparate ends does not mean that we cannot classify people between those who wish to use bigger government as a means and those who do not.In that case we can classify any people who use a given tool together. Karl Marx used both the English and German languages to express his views. Ludwig Von Mises used both the English and German languages to express his views. Therefore Marx and Mises fall in together with the same politics?

Such a position is absurd. Besides if you want to make a division along willingness to use institutions of power then stop drawing a false line between public and private power. The spectrum could be how accountable to the people power ought to be. That means fascists with support for unelected Government fall in with Libertarians with support for unelected private power (that is the power property confers) and are both opposite leftists who believe that power in all its forms must first and foremost be accountable to the people.

That is an important distinction incidentally. I don't believe the Government should be particularly powerful, rather I believe that it should not be the only elected source of power. I am happy to see other centres of power kept quite separate from the Government so long as they are also elected by the people. How does that fit in with your black and white view of politics?


Unfortunately, the way we use the political spectrum today, Nazis and libertarian-conservatives like America's founding fathers, have nothing in common, though both would be placed on the right. Oh boy, historical anachronisms concerning the framers of the America Constitution. The Libertarian's absolute favourite game. Truth is, if we were to anachronistically take the views of those men and put them into today's world they would actually look more like Nazis than anything else because of their views on race and the belief that military conquest to expand national territory is acceptable, even desirable. Of course place them in the context of the time and they were certainly progressive radicals who were greatly opposed by the Conservatives of the time.



Had you actually read the book and read that passage in context, you would have realized that Hoppe was stating that any voluntarily created land covenant would have the power to expel anyone they would not like. His statement about democrats and communists is also rather clear, since both advocate the legitimate initiation of violence by one group over another. The democrats favor the legitimate initiation of violence by the mobs while communists favor the legitimate initiation of violence by the working class. Both are incompatible with libertarianism, since libertarians view the initiation of aggression as completely immoral, unethical, and at odds with any libertarian society.Fine, if we are to play that game, then Libertarians advocate violence by property owner over non property owner and must too be oppressed.

Of course I am not one of those people who believes it is acceptable to persecute those who disagree with me.

It would also be interesting how you justify Hoppe's belief that homosexual's threaten Libertarianism and must too be violently excluded..

Here is a final thought BTW. You have been trying to define Government as the institution that can initiate force. Yet history is full of examples of private individuals explicitly granted that power with the Government stating it would not interfere. In the nineteenth century for instance the authorities in certain parts of Australia made it clear they would take no action against white people for what they did to the Aboriginal people. Hence white settlers acquired the legal right to initiate violence in any way they saw fit without being part of Government.

Note as well, before you start, that this was not enabled or assisted by Government in any means, it was just the Government saying that it would ignore it when it happened. People went on to use the most appalling violence imaginable against others. How does that fit into your binary world view?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Capitalism itself is not prone to social conflict at all. The most capitalistic societies, like Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Australia, and Liechtenstein, among others, are some of the societies with the least conflict. Now compare that to more socialistic countries like the PRC, India, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, which are full of social strife and dissatisfaction.
Large countries are more prone to conflict than city-states and micronations! Colour me shocked! :rolleyes:

The one decent-sized "capitalistic" society that you mentioned, Australia, curiously happens to have a more comprehensive system of public health care and welfare than China, India, Venezuela or Zimbabwe. According to the Gini index, Australia also has greater income equality than either of those four countries. It's also ahead of them in terms of gender equality, social liberalism, and pretty much every single thing that socialists value.

So, um, how exactly is a country that has come closer to socialist goals more "capitalistic" than countries which are further away from those goals?

Oh, and note that capitalism is a global system, so a comparison of the relative achievements of individual capitalist countries is meaningless because those countries are not independent systems and thus their achievements are not independent variables. Nice try, but you still fail at statistics.


A non sequitur. If we are to accept Locke, then the conquest and colonization of much of the world by Western Europe was immoral. I am agreement with that.
That's nice. Do you plan to do anything to redress this great immorality?

If the answer is no, then how do you choose which immorality to attack, and which to simply ignore?


Not at all. Government is essentially any institution which retains the right to legitimately initiate violence against individuals and other institutions.
Bullshit definition. If people do not agree that a government has legitimacy, is it no longer a government?


If other kinds of anarchists agree that the initiation of violence...
Stop right there. The "initiation" of violence is another bullshit concept. There is no way to distinguish "initiations" of violence from "retaliatory" violence without reference to some other ethical principle. For instance, suppose I blow up a barn that you built. Is that an initiation of violence? Only if you had a legitimate right to build that barn where you built it. If, on the other hand, your barn was infringing on some of my legitimate rights, then my violence was retaliatory.

Depending on what I consider to be legitimate rights, the same act of violence may be an initiation or it may be retaliatory.

I consider that all property rightfully belongs to all Mankind, so any violence against private property owners for the purpose of returning their property to collective ownership is retaliatory.


This is an oxymoronic statement. You cannot have an all-powerful state without having violation of property rights. An all-powerful state, as I understand it, is a state that retains the right to tax and regulate anything it wishes to tax and regulate. Seeing that taxation and regulation initiate aggression and therefore violate property rights, an all-powerful state cannot "riggidly [sic] enforce property rights."
What you just said was that an all-powerful state could violate property rights - if it wished. But there is always the possibility that it will not wish to do so. A state is not compelled to tax and regulate. It can act as it pleases.

The kind of state I had in mind was a state controlled and largely financed by landlords.


No it isn't. Private property exists naturally via homesteading.
No it does not, because nature does not divide land into parcels. Suppose you build a house on some unowned land - you do that homesteading thing. Now, how much land around that house is yours? Where are the borders of your land? Nature does not decide these things, people do. Or, more specifically, the state does.

And then there is another objection from that bane of all libertarians - reality. You see, in reality, only a tiny, insignificant fraction of currently owned land was acquired through homesteading. The vast majority was stolen from the previous owners, who stole it from another set of previous owners and so on. Most land ownership in Europe was granted in the Middle Ages by - you guessed it - the state. Most land ownership in the rest of the world was granted by various colonial states.


Whether or not that private property is enforced by the law is another question altogether, though we can say with certainty that private property can be enforced without the state but by private security, law, and defense companies.
Only until some of those companies decide to stockpile lots of guns, hire ruthless mercenaries, kill you, take your land, and declare themselves states.

Pretty much all anarcho-capitalist literature relies on the idiotic notion that killing, plundering and enslaving people is not profitable, so private companies won't do it. Excuse me, but what the fuck are you smoking? Over here in the real world, every private company would jump at the chance of seizing absolute power.


No, the powers of a landlord in relation to the powers of the state are not the same; yes, the medieval landlord was essentially a state within himself. Again, there is a difference between the primitive accumulation of land and capital, which defined feudalism, and the nonviolent accumulation of land and capital which defines pure free markets. You cannot tax, control, or kill someone only because they are on your property in a pure free market.
Axiom: You can do whatever you want, in any society, as long as there is no one with both the will and the power to stop you.

Therefore, in a pure free market, you can tax, control, or kill someone on your property if that someone does not have the power to stop you, or if his associates lack the power or the will to stop you. And since power is directly proportional to wealth, a pure free market allows the wealthy to kill, rape and enslave the poor with impunity. The rich can afford to hire many more men with guns than the poor, you see.

Oh, and please do tell, when was there ever any nonviolent primitive accumulation of land and capital - you know, in reality? And if all really existing property was initially accumulated through theft, doesn't that mean that all really existing property is stolen - regardless of whether it may be possible for property to be legitimate in some imaginary world?


It doesn't really make it into a single issue. It instead lumps all issues together to make a more logical left-right spectrum. The spectrum, as defined by you, lumps together with completely different views on the right. Nazis have nothing in common with the Libertarian Party.
Sure they do. You agree with the Nazis that people are not, and should not be made, equal. You agree with the Nazis that some people are superior to others, and those who are superior deserve more. You agree with the Nazis that the people you deem inferior deserve death.

You differ from the Nazis in the criteria you use to distinguish superior from inferior people, and in the methods you advocate for giving wealth to the superior and death to the inferior. For the Nazis, the criteria are race and ethnicity, and the method is state power. For you libertarians, the criteria are business skills, and the method is the free market.

And don't tell me you don't want anyone to die. Sure you do. You believe people who "do not wish to work" (that is to say, people who cannot find a way to survive in your savage capitalist society) deserve to starve to death.

According to my ethics, allowing someone to die when there were means available to save him is equivalent to murder. Therefore, libertarianism advocates murder on a grand scale. Therefore I consider you to be immoral scum.


The left-right spectrum is not about any anti-state obsession. It is about rationally resolving the problems of the current left-right spectrum if we choose to still use it instead of replacing it with a series of spectrums like "pro-war and anti-war" or "socially conservative vs. liberal."
I agree with you that it is better to replace the left-right spectrum with a series of spectra.

However, if we are to use the left-right line, there is no reason why we should base it on "small government versus big government" and not any one of an infinite number of other political dichotomies. Why couldn't we just as easily define the left as anti-war and the right as pro-war, and organize a left-right spectrum that way? Or define the left as socially liberal and the right as socially conservative? Both of these choices are just as valid (and just as flawed) as your small government versus big government axis.


"Limited government" and "small government" are two different things. "Limited government," is a government that only does a few things, like provide for the common defense. Such a government could be huge if, say, the country were at war. "Small government" describes the actual size of government in relation to the economy.
Thank you for that correction. I wasn't aware that libertarians saw the distinction. You are slightly more intelligent than I expected.


Some libertarians advocate limited government, some advocate small government, most advocate both, and I advocate none. That said, I think almost everyone agrees that they don't care how large the government is as long as it achieves what we want it to achieve. The problem is that libertarians - myself included - see that government causes more problems than it solves, which is why we're opposed to government in the first place.
Wait a moment here. There are two kinds of libertarians, the deontological and the consequentalist ones. You sound like you're saying that you wouldn't have a problem with big government if it achieved good results, which makes you sound like a consequentialist libertarian. But on the other hand, all the stuff about "initiation of force" makes you sound like a deontological libertarian who would oppose government no matter what it did. Which kind are you?


I completely agree. That places libertarians on the left. However, that propagates the confusing practice of putting extreme statists on both sides of the political spectrum and not organizing the spectrum in any rational order.
A political axis where right = tradition and left = radical change does have one virtue, however. It tends to coincide with real-world political alliances. The advocates of tradition tend to stick together, and the advocates of radical change tend to form alliances with each other, despite their differences, against the common enemy.

Furthermore, putting extreme statists on both sides of the political spectrum is no worse than, say, putting extreme social liberals on both sides of the political spectrum. No matter what single issue you choose to define your one-dimensional political spectrum, the spectrum will make no sense when you look at other issues.

Which is precisely why we need more than one axis. On this point I agree with you. And, incidentally, two axes are also insufficient. My personal model uses four (equality vs inequality, collectivism vs individualism, autocracy vs democracy, and social conservatism vs social liberalism). In this model, "state socialism" is egalitarian and collectivist (and can occupy any position on the last two axes), libertarian socialism is egalitarian, individualist, democratic and socially liberal, right-"libertarianism" is anti-egalitarian and individualist (and can occupy any position on the last two axes), and fascism is anti-egalitarian, collectivist, autocratic and socially conservative. Confusion averted.


That's like saying "A is not A." That is clearly a false and logically contradictory statement. "Advocates of bigger government and more intervention" fall in the same group called "advocates of bigger government and more intervention," or "statists" for short, whether you like it or not.
I'm sorry for not being specific enough. Of course you can form any group in your mind from the people who have any opinion X in common. But that commonality between them may be something very trivial - for instance, you can form a group composed of all the people who want their head of state to be called "President." Is that helpful for the understanding of politics? Not really.

My point was that the quality of advocating bigger government is precisely that kind of trivial similarity.


True. This, however, if it is used to justify your previous statement, is a complete non sequitur. Only because one uses bigger government for disparate ends does not mean that we cannot classify people between those who wish to use bigger government as a means and those who do not.
Correct. However, it does mean that you cannot talk as if all the advocates of bigger government form a united front, or as if they somehow bear collective responsibility for each other's actions. They do not.


Hoppe is actually an anarchist, he praises monarchy as being superior to democracy, since democracy is simply mob rule.
I'd much rather be ruled by a mob than a tyrant.


One might point to Hong Kong under the British or Singapore currently as two non-democratic nations that achieved superior results.
Superior results compared to whom? Superior by what standards? Are city-states even comparable with much larger nations?


Had you actually read the book and read that passage in context, you would have realized that Hoppe was stating that any voluntarily created land covenant would have the power to expel anyone they would not like.
...which I consider to be authoritarian, borderline fascist, and certainly a great tool for the enforcement of racism. Guess who will be the first to be expelled from a "land covenant" formed by Croatian nationalists, or North Irish Protestants, or - you get the point.


His statement about democrats and communists is also rather clear, since both advocate the legitimate initiation of violence by one group over another.
Whether or not we advocate the initiation of force depends on your view of legitimate property rights, though. If you believe that all property rightfully belongs to all of Mankind collectively, as I do, then what we are advocating is only retaliatory force against those individuals who have declared something to be their private property and thus have stolen that property from the rest of Mankind.


libertarians view the initiation of aggression as completely immoral, unethical, and at odds with any libertarian society.
It's a good thing that history's winners tend to be those who initiate force the most and strike hardest against their enemies. It should make it easier to beat you.


First, Hoppe's distinction does not attempt to amend the left-right spectrum, it simply provides another way of looking at societal differences.
You mean by reducing complex issues to over-simplified, childish dichotomies? Yeah, it does that.


Secondly, it has nothing to do with guilt association. Just as mine and some others' reorganization of the left-right spectrum, Hoppe separates societies (not necessarily politics) into different means. One means is government (which Hoppe defines as "socialism") and the other is no government (which Hoppe defines as "capitalism").
In other words, he re-defines the terms "socialism" and "capitalism" to have completely different meanings than those given to them by everyone else throughout history.


Whether or not one accepts Hoppe's terms is irrelevant, since I'm sure many would argue that capitalism and free markets are not identical and that socialism does not necessarily require government (e.g. true anarcho-socialism of theorists like Benjamin Tucker). What is relevant is the means used for whatever one's political ends are: whether or not those means involve government intervention.
Ok, that is at least a logically consistent idea, though I still believe that Hoppe's choice to use such loaded terms as "socialism" and "capitalism" for the different means betrays intellectual dishonesty. Imagine if he had called them "good" and "evil" instead. Sure, you could make the same argument that labels don't matter, that he might as well have called them "method A" and "method B," but his ulterior motive would be very clear.

[MikeSC]

The problem with defining the BNP as right wing is that then the political spectrum makes no sense. On the right you have nationalist anti-capitalists, on the left you have anti-nationalist anti-capitalists, then you have all kinds of stripes of capitalists and anti-capitalists in the center... huh?

That's why some adhere to the "far right = anarchism and far left = state socialism" approach, since it actually makes sense out of the left-right spectrum.

That said, I still prefer that diamond or square shaped political spectrum where beliefs are put on a "social conservative vs. liberal" and "economic conservative vs. liberal" axises (or axes?). That eliminates the disagreement that people have arguing over a nonsensical left-right political spectrum.So you agree that they're not left-wing- and they have far more in common with the right wing, maybe not the particular right wing ideology you subscribe to, but their conservatism, nationalism, racism, protectionism- these are the defining qualities of the BNP, and they are qualities that have traditionally been found on the right of the aisle.

And I disagree that anarchism would be on the far-right and state-socialism on the far-left- no anarchism with private property is an honest anarchism. That's merely selective statism, stripping away the particular state institutions that don't serve your personal interests but practically deifying the ones that do, like property.

And if you plot the positions of political parties throughout history you'll find that the trend is for leftists to be far more libertarian than their corresponding rightists. You can point out the Soviet Union and so on- but the right-wing opposition before either revolution were far more authoritarian than the Bolsheviks. A left-to-right spectrum would make far more sense with libertarian-socialists as the far left and ultra-conservative-capitalists on the far-right. This is a topic about Glenn Beck- Glenn Beck's authoritarian conservative anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-capital punishment etc style of right-wing politics is the norm.

The BNP is not anti-capitalist any more than the Tories, or UKIP, or New Labour, or the Lib Dems. None of these parties are free market- no party is completely free market. They're all capitalists, they just have (ever so slightly) differing opinions on what amount of state-intervention is best for the market (given that there definately has to be some, if only to seize commonly held land to put it into private hands.) Their economic policies are the protectionist economic policies of the old Tory party, not of the old Labour party, not of the Communist party or any of the myriad socialist parties.

[krazy kaju]

You are a complete loon. Just because two things share a common characteristic, does not mean that they are the same thing. That's like saying that a chair and a table are the same thing, because both are furniture.

Straw Man: I never said that nazis and communists are the same.


Furthermore, not everyone agrees with your asinine classification of capitalism as "small government" - especially since capitalist societies have constructed some of the most powerful governments in history

1. A small government can be a powerful government. If my economy is ten times the size of yours, but my government takes up only 1% of GDP compared to your 5% of GDP, my government is still much larger than yours, but small compared to my economy.
2. Pure capitalism means pure free markets. This negates the need for any government at all.


and also because having the government protect private property is very oppressive and limits people's choices and freedoms.

That's like saying "having government protect your life is very oppressive and limits people's choices and freedoms" - maybe your choices and freedoms to murder people. Theft and robbery are not much different from rape and murder. Your property is the natural extension of yourself, due to the homesteading principle (google it).


It makes much more sense to focus on who controls the resources and who has input (like democracy vs capitalism) and that is why political scientists use the scales they use.

You agree with me here. Fascists have the government control the resources as do state socialists. So, according to you, they're both left wing?


Except you are bunching together a bunch of people who have nothing in common for the sake of said "guilt by association".

Not at all. You're committing a straw man here. I'm not trying to accuse anyone of being anything they're not. I'm not trying to lump together disparate groups b/c of "guilty by association." The fact of the matter is - whether you like it or not - that fascists have more in common with state socialists than they do with libertarians.


No capitalists then? Those that rule society are not merely those defined as constitutional Government, but those able to exercise significant influence. Governments, corporations and so on all fall into this category and all have the potential to be oppressive.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara are all rulers on American college campuses then, since they have significant influence.

Technically speaking, ruling someone means that you have the legitimate right to force that someone to do something. Libertarians don't believe that anyone has the right to initiate aggression against anyone else. Thus, libertarians are truly the ones against rule, they are the true anarchists.


Christ knows what planet you are on if you think Britain has a massive welfare state and besides the the BNP's policies on the matter look more like those of Milton Friedman than anything else generally favouring replacing the welfare system with something like a negative income tax.
What? The four examples of capitalism you give all have substantial welfare states and Government ownership. The examples you give would be more suited to an argument for social democracy.

Two contradictory statements - the countries I listed have the freest markets in the world while the UK has a much more oppressive tax, regulatory, and welfare system than all of those I listed.

Here are just some of the BNP's notably left-wing positions with racist tints:

PENSIONERS - pensioners before asylum seekers! The conditions in which many of Britain’s old people are forced to live are a national disgrace.
We are pledged to ensure that all our old folk are able to live in comfortable homes, and will restore the earnings link with pensions.
Elderly people who have paid a lifetime of taxes and reared families should not have to sell their homes to pay for care.


ECONOMY - British workers first!
Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them.
Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers.
When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish, at last getting our people back to work and ending the waste and injustice of having more than 4 million people in a hidden army of the unemployed concealed by Labour’s statistical fiddles. We further believe that British industry, commerce, land and other economic and natural assets belong in the final analysis to the British nation and people.
To that end we will restore our economy and land to British ownership. We also call for preference in the job market to be given to native Britons. We will take active steps to break up the socially, economically and politically damaging monopolies now being established by the supermarket giants.
Finally we will seek to give British workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes


AGRICULTURE - quality before quantity!
We see a strong, healthy agriculture sector as vital to the country.
Britain’s farming industry will be encouraged to produce a much greater part of the nation’s need in food products.
Priority will be switched from quantity to quality, as we move from competing in a global economy to maximum self-sufficiency for Britain.
We will ensure a major shift to healthier and more sustainable organic farming. We are pledged to ensure the restoration of Britain’s once great fishing industry with the reimposition of the former exclusion zones around our coast.


HEALTH - first-class healthcare for all!
We are wholly committed to a free, fully funded National Health Service for all British citizens.
We will revitalise the Health Service by boosting staff and bed numbers, slashing unnecessary bureaucracy and by addressing the root cause of low recruitment and retention - low pay.
We will see to it that no money is given in foreign aid while our own hospitals are short of beds and the staff to run them. More emphasis must be placed on healthy living with greater understanding of sickness prevention through physical exercise, a healthier environment and improved diets.


TRANSPORT - time to invest!
Increased investment is needed in Britain’s public transport system to bring it up to the highest standards in the world. The fiasco of rail privatisation with different companies running services and track leading to higher fares and lower safety also needs to be resolved.
Congestion of our towns and cities must be eased by the provision of greater incentives to use rail and bus transport instead of private cars. The first step is to end the crime and squalor that puts so many people off public transport.
Motorists must not be made the scapegoats for government failure. Fuel tax should be cut, motorway speed limits raised, and hidden speed cameras should be banned.
Far more must be done to encourage the development and use of cleaner fuels.


ENVIRONMENT - a cleaner, greener future!
Our ideal for Britain is that of a clean, beautiful country, free of pollution in all its forms.
We will enforce standards to curb those practices, whether by business or the individual, which cause environmental damage.
“The polluter pays to clean up the mess” must become a fact of life, not an electioneering slogan.
In towns we would work to replace the brutalist modernism of 1960s-style-architecture with a blend of traditional local styles and materials and ensure that developments take place on a more human scale.


In other words they are any institution strong enough to get away with instigating violence? In that case a private company that uses violence to get its ends knowing it can get away with it can be called a Government?[/qoute]

Yes. It is a mini-government of sorts.


In your kind of society at least some private companies would be strong enough to do so, consequently we would still have Government?

No. Any institution or individual that would initiate aggression would be taken care of by private and collective security, defense, law, court, and insurance agencies.


Who is going to stop you? If you are the one able to bring the most force to bare, who can prevent you from doing so?

Monopolies cannot develop in free markets. I suggest you read the latest economic literature on this subject.

The fact of the matter is that if one firm decides to use force, then there are thousands of other firms and millions of individuals who have an interest in bringing that firm to justice. That is where the mechanism of private law comes in.


If that were the case you would find points of agreement along the lines you list, yet there is little to none, whereas fascists and libertarians have quite often found themselves allied.

List five examples and then explain to me how forcing libertarians to free Austria was a libertarian thing to do for Hitler.


Indeed in some cases Pinochet for instance, they more or less merge into one.

For some reason, I doubt how Pinochet agreeing to reduce his power is him becoming one with libertarians.


The point of comparison you try to make is willingness to use Government to achieve certain ends, but that is like saying if I use a spade to dig a whole for growing plants and you use a spade to smash somebody's skull, we have done the same thing, given we have used the same tool.

Not at all.

Using spades to classify people is obviously absurd. Using the role of government to classify political beliefs is not. Any expansion of government necessarily comes at the expense of liberty.


And what is a rational order? One that suits you. I know that Kwisatz Hadarech for instance favours a seven axis political spectrum to most accurately account for all the variations in thought. That seems more reasonable than your attempts to use a single issue regarding willingness to use a certain tool as a method to divide out all the complexities of political difference.

Which is why I have repeatedly stated that I prefer a different method, like the box/diamond which rates people on social and economic conservatism vs. liberalism.


Of course in many ways inclined to say you could do very well simply by using a progressive/reactionary scale.
In that case "statist" is a meaningless category because virtually everyone falls into it regardless of what their actual political views are. You want to separate the spectrum into "fringe loons who want to replace all Government power with private power vs everyone else". It isn't going to work.

It's called gradients, buddy.


In that case we can classify any people who use a given tool together. Karl Marx used both the English and German languages to express his views. Ludwig Von Mises used both the English and German languages to express his views. Therefore Marx and Mises fall in together with the same politics?

Straw man: Language has nothing to do with politics. Size of government does.


Such a position is absurd.

Yes, yes it is.


Besides if you want to make a division along willingness to use institutions of power then stop drawing a false line between public and private power. The spectrum could be how accountable to the people power ought to be. That means fascists with support for unelected Government fall in with Libertarians with support for unelected private power (that is the power property confers) and are both opposite leftists who believe that power in all its forms must first and foremost be accountable to the people.

How would fascists fall in with libertarians when libertarians support the individual as center of power? Since the individual would be able to choose who, if anyone, provides him/her with security services, the individual would be the one in control.

Fascists, socialists, democrats, "anarcho" syndicalists, and others all want someone else to make decisions for you - whether it is a majority of people, the majority of workers in your factory/city, the unions, bureaucrats, or some crazy racist in the capital.


That is an important distinction incidentally. I don't believe the Government should be particularly powerful, rather I believe that it should not be the only elected source of power. I am happy to see other centres of power kept quite separate from the Government so long as they are also elected by the people. How does that fit in with your black and white view of politics?

That is simply supporting the decentralization of government, not the reduction in government power or size.


Oh boy, historical anachronisms concerning the framers of the America Constitution. The Libertarian's absolute favourite game. Truth is, if we were to anachronistically take the views of those men and put them into today's world they would actually look more like Nazis than anything else because of their views on race and the belief that military conquest to expand national territory is acceptable, even desirable. Of course place them in the context of the time and they were certainly progressive radicals who were greatly opposed by the Conservatives of the time.

Many of the founders were racist, but beyond that, their similarities to the Nazis end. The nationalists and monarchists, dubbed empathetically by biased historians as "Federalists," like Madison and Hamilton, were the ones who hijacked the Republic and turned it into an expansive war machine with a powerful state, despite the efforts of the republicans (dubbed "anti-federalists") to limit federal and even state governments (see IXth and Xth Amendments for evidence).


Fine, if we are to play that game, then Libertarians advocate violence by property owner over non property owner and must too be oppressed.

Libertarians never advocate the initiation of violence. If you somehow abuse the property of another, you are initiating violence against that person, just as you would be initiating violence if you shot someone.


Of course I am not one of those people who believes it is acceptable to persecute those who disagree with me.

That makes two of us, at least.


It would also be interesting how you justify Hoppe's belief that homosexual's threaten Libertarianism and must too be violently excluded.

He doesn't support the violent exclusion of anyone.


Here is a final thought BTW. You have been trying to define Government as the institution that can initiate force. Yet history is full of examples of private individuals explicitly granted that power with the Government stating it would not interfere. In the nineteenth century for instance the authorities in certain parts of Australia made it clear they would take no action against white people for what they did to the Aboriginal people. Hence white settlers acquired the legal right to initiate violence in any way they saw fit without being part of Government.

Note as well, before you start, that this was not enabled or assisted by Government in any means, it was just the Government saying that it would ignore it when it happened. People went on to use the most appalling violence imaginable against others. How does that fit into your binary world view?

Again, that is simply the decentralization of government power, not the actual reduction of it.


Large countries are more prone to conflict than city-states and micronations! Colour me shocked! :rolleyes:

The one decent-sized "capitalistic" society that you mentioned, Australia, curiously happens to have a more comprehensive system of public health care and welfare than China, India, Venezuela or Zimbabwe. According to the Gini index, Australia also has greater income equality than either of those four countries. It's also ahead of them in terms of gender equality, social liberalism, and pretty much every single thing that socialists value.

And they have relatively low taxes and are one of the most deregulated countries in the world, ahead of the USA.


So, um, how exactly is a country that has come closer to socialist goals more "capitalistic" than countries which are further away from those goals?

See above. Australia has some of the lowest taxes and least regulation in the world. In Australia, it's easier to invest and start a business than in America. Moreover, Australia has a very conservative central bank.


Oh, and note that capitalism is a global system, so a comparison of the relative achievements of individual capitalist countries is meaningless because those countries are not independent systems and thus their achievements are not independent variables. Nice try, but you still fail at statistics.

Well then why is Hong Kong so successful compared to Shanghai? Nice try, but yous till fail at economics.


That's nice. Do you plan to do anything to redress this great immorality?

Do you? Because I don't know where to start.


If the answer is no, then how do you choose which immorality to attack, and which to simply ignore?

Within a system of private law and division of labor, different courts and legal agencies could focus on specific injustices, just as the monopolistic courts of today do, but with more justice and efficiency.


Bullshit definition. If people do not agree that a government has legitimacy, is it no longer a government?

Yes - it initiates force and views itself as legitimate. We could do away with "legitimate" if you want. Anyone who intiates violence is, in a way, a mini-government, since they are de facto attempting to rule over another's person or property.


Stop right there. The "initiation" of violence is another bullshit concept.

No it isn't. Just don't burst a blood vessel from your overboiling emotions there, buddy.


There is no way to distinguish "initiations" of violence from "retaliatory" violence without reference to some other ethical principle.

Incorrect. It is obvious that attacking any person is an initiation of violence. If I stab you, I am attacking your person, thus, I am initiating violence (assuming that no violence between you and me occurred before). Property is simply an extension of one's self, thus, attacking someone's property is just like lunging at them and trying to stab them.

Whether one views this as legitimate or not is irrelevant. You are attacking what someone else owns in that instance.

Hoppe makes a good point with his argumentation ethics - you cannot argue for the initiation of aggression without being inherently self-contradictory by implicitly consenting that others may use violence against your person.


For instance, suppose I blow up a barn that you built. Is that an initiation of violence? Only if you had a legitimate right to build that barn where you built it. If, on the other hand, your barn was infringing on some of my legitimate rights, then my violence was retaliatory.

Correct. This statement, however, does not prove your previous statement.


Depending on what I consider to be legitimate rights, the same act of violence may be an initiation or it may be retaliatory.

Wrong. Morality is not subjective.

The maxim "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" is unbeatable in its logic. Every single action you take you implicitly consent to having it done to you. If you violate someone in some way, you implicitly consent the victim or a third person to do the same, something similar, or something equivalent to you.


I consider that all property rightfully belongs to all Mankind, so any violence against private property owners for the purpose of returning their property to collective ownership is retaliatory.

The problem being that there is no proof for your claims. There cannot be some thing as "collective rights" if society is made of individuals. Only individuals are capable of mental faculties, not groups. You and I do not share the same thoughts, thus we both have individual rights but not collective rights.


What you just said was that an all-powerful state could violate property rights - if it wished. But there is always the possibility that it will not wish to do so. A state is not compelled to tax and regulate. It can act as it pleases.

Not at all. By definition, an all-powerful state is one that violates property rights. If you are all-powerful, you are only all-powerful because you tax and regulate every single action, leeching off of the productive capacity of individuals.


The kind of state I had in mind was a state controlled and largely financed by landlords.

So?


No it does not, because nature does not divide land into parcels. Suppose you build a house on some unowned land - you do that homesteading thing. Now, how much land around that house is yours? Where are the borders of your land? Nature does not decide these things, people do.

You clearly do not understand the concept of natural rights. Natural rights isn't about nature deciding anything any more than nature decides what the pull of gravity is on Earth vs. on Jupiter.

What is yours is yours by the virtue of you owning yourself. If you build a house on an unowned piece of land, the land your house is on becomes yours. The land you homestead around that house by virtue of farming it or gardening, etc. also becomes yours. Anything else is not yours and thus unowned.


Or, more specifically, the state does.

No it doesn't. Property exists outside of the realms of the state - e.g. black markets.


And then there is another objection from that bane of all libertarians - reality.

I guess this is what Oskar Lange thought when he straw manned Mises. I guess history proved Lange wrong.


You see, in reality, only a tiny, insignificant fraction of currently owned land was acquired through homesteading. The vast majority was stolen from the previous owners, who stole it from another set of previous owners and so on. Most land ownership in Europe was granted in the Middle Ages by - you guessed it - the state. Most land ownership in the rest of the world was granted by various colonial states.

Correct. However, since those times, the true claims on those lands have been erroded since the original proprieters have passed on and been lost in the tumult of history. Thus, this land has become unowned and has been re-homesteaded by the current proprieters.


Only until some of those companies decide to stockpile lots of guns, hire ruthless mercenaries, kill you, take your land, and declare themselves states.

Which is refuted by Roderick Long:


(4) Ayn Rand: Private Protection Agencies Will Battle

Probably the most popular argument against libertarian anarchy is: well, what happens if (and this is Ayn Rand’s famous argument) I think you’ve violated my rights and you think you haven’t, so I call up my protection agency, and you call up your protection agency – why won’t they just do battle? What guarantees that they won’t do battle? To which, of course, the answer is: well, nothing guarantees they won’t do battle. Human beings have free will. They can do all kinds of crazy things. They might go to battle. Likewise, George Bush might decide to push the nuclear button tomorrow. They might do all sorts of things.

The question is: what’s likely? Which is likelier to settle its disputes through violence: a government or a private protection agency? Well, the difference is that private protection agencies have to bear the costs of their own decisions to go to war. Going to war is expensive. If you have a choice between two protection agencies, and one solves its disputes through violence most of the time, and the other one solves its disputes through arbitration most of the time – now, you might think, "I want the one that solves its disputes through violence – that’s sounds really cool!" But then you look at your monthly premiums. And you think, well, how committed are you to this Viking mentality? Now, you might be so committed to the Viking mentality that you’re willing to pay for it; but still, it is more expensive. A lot of customers are going to say, "I want to go to one that doesn’t charge all this extra amount for the violence." Whereas, governments – first of all, they’ve got captive customers, they can’t go anywhere else – but since they’re taxing the customers anyway, and so the customers don’t have the option to switch to a different agency. And so, governments can externalize the costs of their going to war much more effectively than private agencies can.
(10) Robert Nozick and Tyler Cowen: Private Protection Agencies Will Become a de facto Government

Okay, one last consideration I want to talk about. This is a question that originally was raised by Robert Nozick and has since been pushed farther by Tyler Cowen. Nozick said: Suppose you have anarchy. One of three things will happen. Either the agencies will fight – and he gives two different scenarios of what will happen if they fight. But I’ve already talked about what happens if they fight, so I’ll talk about the third option. What if they don’t fight? Then he says, if instead they agree to these mutual arbitration contracts and so forth, then basically this whole thing just turns into a government. And then Tyler Cowen has pushed this argument farther. He said what happens is that basically this forms into a cartel, and it’s going to be in the interest of this cartel to sort of turn itself into a government. And any new agency that comes along, they can just boycott it.

Just as it’s in your interest if you come along with a new ATM card that it be compatible with everyone else’s machines, so if you come along with a brand new protection agency, it is in your interest that you get to be part of this system of contracts and arbitration and so forth that the existing ones have. Consumers aren’t going to come to you if they find out that you don’t have any agreements as to what happens if you’re in a conflict with these other agencies. And so, this cartel will be able to freeze everyone out.

Well, could that happen? Sure. All kinds of things could happen. Half the country could commit suicide tomorrow. But, is it likely? Is this cartel likely to be able to abuse its power in this way? The problem is cartels are unstable for all the usual reasons. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible that a cartel succeed. After all, people have free will. But it’s unlikely because the very incentives that lead you to form the cartel also lead you to cheat on it – because it’s always in the interest of anyone to make agreements outside the cartel once they are in it.

Bryan Caplan makes a distinction between self-enforcing boycotts and non-self-enforcing boycotts. Self-enforcing boycotts are ones where the boycott is pretty stable because it’s a boycott against, for example, doing business with people who cheat their business partners. Now, you don’t have to have some iron resolve of moral commitment in order to avoid doing business with people who cheat their business partners. You have a perfectly self-interested reason not to do business with those people.

But think instead of a commitment not to do business with someone because you don’t like their religion or something like that, or they’re a member of the wrong protection agency, one that your fellow protection agencies told you not to deal with – well, the boycott might work. Maybe enough people (and maybe everyone) in the cartel are so committed to upholding the cartel that they just won’t deal with the person. Is that possible? Yes. But, if we assume that they formed the cartel out of their own economic self-interest, then the economic self-interest is precisely what leads to the undermining because it’s in their interest to deal with the person, just as it’s always in your interest to engage in mutually beneficial trade.




Pretty much all anarcho-capitalist literature relies on the idiotic notion that killing, plundering and enslaving people is not profitable, so private companies won't do it. Excuse me, but what the fuck are you smoking? Over here in the real world, every private company would jump at the chance of seizing absolute power.

The problem being that in a market, there are competitors. If you try to rape, pillage, and destroy there are competitors to hold you in your place. Those competitors see an advantage in colluding against you in this instance, since consumers would demand protection from such plundering mini-governments and hire competitors to defend the people.


Axiom: You can do whatever you want, in any society, as long as there is no one with both the will and the power to stop you.

You're statement is right; your use of the term "axiom" shows how painfully little you know about logic and how emotion rules your thoughts.


Therefore, in a pure free market, you can tax, control, or kill someone on your property if that someone does not have the power to stop you, or if his associates lack the power or the will to stop you.

Which, again, is impossible, since in a pure free market, it is beneficial for private courts and security agencies to side with you. If one private security firm steals from people in one area, then a lawyer at another security firm could see a potential to profit: why not take the other security firm to court, get damages for the victims, get a portion of the damages for legal services, and gain market share against the competitor?


And since power is directly proportional to wealth, a pure free market allows the wealthy to kill, rape and enslave the poor with impunity. The rich can afford to hire many more men with guns than the poor, you see.

Again, Roderick Long:


(7) Organized Crime Will Take Over

One objection is that under anarchy organized crime will take over. Well, it might. But is it likely? Organized crime gets its power because it specializes in things that are illegal – things like drugs and prostitution and so forth. During the years when alcohol was prohibited, organized crime specialized in the alcohol trade. Nowadays, they’re not so big in the alcohol trade. So the power of organized crime to a large extent depends on the power of government. It’s sort of a parasite on government’s activities. Governments by banning things create black markets. Black markets are dangerous things to be in because you have to worry both about the government and about other dodgy people who are going into the black market field. Organized crime specializes in that. So, organized crime I think would be weaker, not stronger, in a libertarian system.

(8) The Rich Will Rule

Another worry is that the rich would rule. After all, won’t justice just go to the highest bidder in that case, if you turn legal services into an economic good? That’s a common objection. Interestingly, it’s a particularly common objection among Randians, who suddenly become very concerned about the poor impoverished masses. But under which system are the rich more powerful? Under the current system or under anarchy? Certainly, you’ve always got some sort of advantage if you’re rich. It’s good to be rich. You’re always in a better position to bribe people if you’re rich than if you’re not; that’s true. But, under the current system, the power of the rich is magnified. Suppose that I’m an evil rich person, and I want to get the government to do something-or-other that costs a million dollars. Do I have to bribe some bureaucrat a million dollars to get it done? No, because I’m not asking him to do it with his own money. Obviously, if I were asking him to do it with his own money, I couldn’t get him to spend a million dollars by bribing him any less than a million. It would have to be at least a million dollars and one cent. But people who control tax money that they don’t themselves personally own, and therefore can’t do whatever they want with, the bureaucrat can’t just pocket the million and go home (although it can get surprisingly close to that). All I have to do is bribe him a few thousand, and he can direct this million dollars in tax money to my favorite project or whatever, and thus the power of my bribe money is multiplied.

Whereas, if you were the head of some private protection agency and I’m trying to get you to do something that costs a million dollars, I’d have to bribe you more than a million. So, the power of the rich is actually less under this system. And, of course, any court that got the reputation of discriminating in favor of millionaires against poor people would also presumably have the reputation of discriminating for billionaires against millionaires. So, the millionaires would not want to deal with it all of the time. They’d only want to deal with it when they’re dealing with people poorer, not people richer. The reputation effects – I don’t think this would be too popular an outfit.

Worries about poor victims who can’t afford legal services, or victims who die without heirs (again, the Randians are very worried about victims dying without heirs) – in the case of poor victims, you can do what they did in Medieval Iceland. You’re too poor to purchase legal services, but still, if someone has harmed you, you have a claim to compensation from that person. You can sell that claim, part of the claim or all of the claim, to someone else. Actually, it’s kind of like hiring a lawyer on a contingency fee basis. You can sell to someone who is in a position to enforce your claim. Or, if you die without heirs, in a sense, one of the goods you left behind was your claim to compensation, and that can be homesteaded.





Oh, and please do tell, when was there ever any nonviolent primitive accumulation of land and capital - you know, in reality?

There is no such thing as "nonviolent primitive accumulation of land and capital." Are you a Marxist or not? Because if you were, you'd understand that primitive accumulation is violent.

In any case, there has been plenty of nonviolent accumulation of land and capital. Take, for example, the homesteading of land by the world's first people, or the homesteading of land by early pilgrims who did not fight with Native Americans.


And if all really existing property was initially accumulated through theft, doesn't that mean that all really existing property is stolen - regardless of whether it may be possible for property to be legitimate in some imaginary world?

It means that the property was stolen at one point. It doesn't mean that it is still stolen property. If the original proprieters of that property have passed on or cannot be identified, the current proprieters rehomestead the land.


Sure they do. You agree with the Nazis that people are not, and should not be made, equal.

What about so called green nazis like those and nazi[dot]org? You agree with those nazis that people should be made equal. You agree with Hitler that we should wean off of oil. You agree with the NSDAP that private interests should be controlled and regulated.


You agree with the Nazis that some people are superior to others, and those who are superior deserve more.

Nope.


You agree with the Nazis that the people you deem inferior deserve death.

Not at all.

Judging by your last two accusations, which you probably picked up from government schools, I'm not surprised that you're a leftist. If that's what you sincerely believe, you're just mislead.


You differ from the Nazis in the criteria you use to distinguish superior from inferior people, and in the methods you advocate for giving wealth to the superior and death to the inferior.

Your premises are wrong, I do not advocate death for anyone or that anyone is superior or inferior; see the above.


For the Nazis, the criteria are race and ethnicity, and the method is state power. For you libertarians, the criteria are business skills, and the method is the free market.

I guess pro basketball players have a lot of business skills. :rolleyes:

When has the free market ever killed anyone?


And don't tell me you don't want anyone to die. Sure you do. You believe people who "do not wish to work" (that is to say, people who cannot find a way to survive in your savage capitalist society) deserve to starve to death.

Nope. If someone is unable to work, they could surely find support from private charities. Considering the billions of dollars donated to charities every year despite tax disincentives, and the very small amount of people unable to work, nobody would be forced to starve to death in a capitalist society.


According to my ethics, allowing someone to die when there were means available to save him is equivalent to murder.

It is not equivalent to murder, but one should do something to save people from starvation. Fortunately, the free market does this the best. Compare the rates of starvation between North Korea and the US.


Therefore, libertarianism advocates murder on a grand scale.

Non sequitur. Nobody starves in a libertarian society; as described above.


Therefore I consider you to be immoral scum.

Your simply reinforcing my view of leftists as burbling teenage kids with overactive emotions. Please stop, for your own sake.


I agree with you that it is better to replace the left-right spectrum with a series of spectra.

However, if we are to use the left-right line, there is no reason why we should base it on "small government versus big government" and not any one of an infinite number of other political dichotomies. Why couldn't we just as easily define the left as anti-war and the right as pro-war, and organize a left-right spectrum that way? Or define the left as socially liberal and the right as socially conservative? Both of these choices are just as valid (and just as flawed) as your small government versus big government axis.

Nope. Anti-war vs. pro-war only describes one issue, one end, which is why it makes no sense. It gives you no compass when it comes to other issues; you could be an anti-war socialist, conservative, or libertarian, for example. Small vs. big government explains a lot, however. For example, a pro war libertarian would be to the left of an anti-war libertarian, since the pro war libertarian would be for a larger government that is necessary for war. Government size gives you a barometer for other beliefs, your stance on specific issues does not.


Wait a moment here. There are two kinds of libertarians, the deontological and the consequentalist ones.

Correct.


You sound like you're saying that you wouldn't have a problem with big government if it achieved good results, which makes you sound like a consequentialist libertarian.

Nobody would have a problem with big government if it achieved the best results.


But on the other hand, all the stuff about "initiation of force" makes you sound like a deontological libertarian who would oppose government no matter what it did. Which kind are you?

Both. It just so happens that the deontological side of libertarianism and the consequentialist side of libertarianism fit together perfectly. The best thing for society is freedom and all of the things that freedom brings with it - property rights, freedom of association, etc.

In a free market, people will enter the societies that are the most successful. If one society requires you to save at least 20% of your income, which helps with economic growth and capital formation in that society, you might join because of the resultant prosperity from the saving.

If communism is the superior form of economic organization, then communes will begin to burst out throughout the country as people choose to live in the most prosperous society.

If syndicalism is the superior form of economic organization, unions would begin to set up worker-owned factories which would flourish, attract more workers and capital, and become the dominant form of business.

It's just how freedom works.


A political axis where right = tradition and left = radical change does have one virtue, however. It tends to coincide with real-world political alliances. The advocates of tradition tend to stick together, and the advocates of radical change tend to form alliances with each other, despite their differences, against the common enemy.

You do realize that libertarianism advocates radical change and several libertarians have allied themselves with leftists, right?


Furthermore, putting extreme statists on both sides of the political spectrum is no worse than, say, putting extreme social liberals on both sides of the political spectrum. No matter what single issue you choose to define your one-dimensional political spectrum, the spectrum will make no sense when you look at other issues.

It is worse, since social liberals would be more to the right anyway. Fake social liberals, like those who advocate affirmative action, would still be on the left, but to the right of those who advocate extreme segregation and racial extermination like the Nazis.


Which is precisely why we need more than one axis. On this point I agree with you. And, incidentally, two axes are also insufficient.

True, but then we have a problem have making the spectrum too complicated.


My personal model uses four (equality vs inequality, collectivism vs individualism, autocracy vs democracy, and social conservatism vs social liberalism). In this model, "state socialism" is egalitarian and collectivist (and can occupy any position on the last two axes), libertarian socialism is egalitarian, individualist, democratic and socially liberal, right-"libertarianism" is anti-egalitarian and individualist (and can occupy any position on the last two axes), and fascism is anti-egalitarian, collectivist, autocratic and socially conservative. Confusion averted.

Yes and no, considering that collectivism is the same as democracy which is not that different from autocracy, and there happens to be more than just democracy or autocracy.



I'm sorry for not being specific enough. Of course you can form any group in your mind from the people who have any opinion X in common. But that commonality between them may be something very trivial - for instance, you can form a group composed of all the people who want their head of state to be called "President." Is that helpful for the understanding of politics? Not really.

But identifying people via their means is. If you support larger government you are more likely to support social and economic interventionism than someone who supports smaller government.


My point was that the quality of advocating bigger government is precisely that kind of trivial similarity.

No it isn't. See above; you can tell apart someone's position by their advocacy of interventionism in society.



Correct. However, it does mean that you cannot talk as if all the advocates of bigger government form a united front, or as if they somehow bear collective responsibility for each other's actions. They do not.

I do not talk like that or at least I try not to.


I'd much rather be ruled by a mob than a tyrant.

Good for you. I rather rule myself.


Superior results compared to whom? Superior by what standards?

Hong Kong and Singapore have the highest average standards of living in the world.


Are city-states even comparable with much larger nations?

So you want to compare Hong Kong to any other city in China or even the world? Go ahead. I'll wager that Hong Kong is one of the top five wealthiest cities in the world when controlled for size.


...which I consider to be authoritarian, borderline fascist, and certainly a great tool for the enforcement of racism. Guess who will be the first to be expelled from a "land covenant" formed by Croatian nationalists, or North Irish Protestants, or - you get the point.

Nobody would be expelled from anywhere. If people around me want to a form a covenant that includes my land, they would need to have my permission. Obviously, I could refuse.

The point is that people could move away and form their own societies with their own preferences. For example, if you think abortion is wrong, you could form a special society where abortion is not allowed. This is fully consistent with freedom while allowing for personal disagreements.

Lastly, markets are the best way to fight racism and exclusion. Obviously, people and businesses who do not discriminate, will have the access to the greatest amount of products and workers and thus profit the most.

[quote]Whether or not we advocate the initiation of force depends on your view of legitimate property rights, though. If you believe that all property rightfully belongs to all of Mankind collectively, as I do, then what we are advocating is only retaliatory force against those individuals who have declared something to be their private property and thus have stolen that property from the rest of Mankind.

Nope. It is clear what is the initiation of violence, since property is simply an extension of yourself. Attacking someone else is clearly initiation of violence. The question is whether or not the initiation of violence is ever legitimate - which it is not, since any initiation of violence is self-contradictory and opens yourself up to being aggressed against.


It's a good thing that history's winners tend to be those who initiate force the most and strike hardest against their enemies. It should make it easier to beat you.

You mean by reducing complex issues to over-simplified, childish dichotomies? Yeah, it does that.

Emotion, emotion, emotion. *tisk tisk tisk*


In other words, he re-defines the terms "socialism" and "capitalism" to have completely different meanings than those given to them by everyone else throughout history.

Not really, he defines capitalism as being free markets and socialism as being just the opposite - state control.

Of course there are people who would disagree with those definitions - e.g. mutualists (aka "free market socialists" or "free market anticapitalists"), but for the most part, I think the majority of people would agree.


Ok, that is at least a logically consistent idea, though I still believe that Hoppe's choice to use such loaded terms as "socialism" and "capitalism" for the different means betrays intellectual dishonesty. Imagine if he had called them "good" and "evil" instead. Sure, you could make the same argument that labels don't matter, that he might as well have called them "method A" and "method B," but his ulterior motive would be very clear.

There is no ulterior motive. The entire point is that you either endorse the initiation of force or you do not.


So you agree that they're not left-wing- and they have far more in common with the right wing, maybe not the particular right wing ideology you subscribe to, but their conservatism, nationalism, racism, protectionism- these are the defining qualities of the BNP, and they are qualities that have traditionally been found on the right of the aisle.

Only because they are traditionally found on the right doesn't make the tradition correct. The left-right spectrum could be flipped for all I care; my entire point is simply that it is more rational to organize the left-right spectrum on similarities between political ideologies.


And I disagree that anarchism would be on the far-right and state-socialism on the far-left- no anarchism with private property is an honest anarchism. That's merely selective statism, stripping away the particular state institutions that don't serve your personal interests but practically deifying the ones that do, like property.

If property is a creation of the state, why does property exist in black markets?


And if you plot the positions of political parties throughout history you'll find that the trend is for leftists to be far more libertarian than their corresponding rightists. You can point out the Soviet Union and so on- but the right-wing opposition before either revolution were far more authoritarian than the Bolsheviks. A left-to-right spectrum would make far more sense with libertarian-socialists as the far left and ultra-conservative-capitalists on the far-right. This is a topic about Glenn Beck- Glenn Beck's authoritarian conservative anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-capital punishment etc style of right-wing politics is the norm.

You're confusing the old left-right spectrum with the new. The new would put the authoritarian "White Russians" on the left of the "Red Russians" for instituting mini-governments via feudalism.


The BNP is not anti-capitalist any more than the Tories, or UKIP, or New Labour, or the Lib Dems. None of these parties are free market- no party is completely free market. They're all capitalists, they just have (ever so slightly) differing opinions on what amount of state-intervention is best for the market (given that there definately has to be some, if only to seize commonly held land to put it into private hands.) Their economic policies are the protectionist economic policies of the old Tory party, not of the old Labour party, not of the Communist party or any of the myriad socialist parties.

The disagreement here is simply over the definition of capitalism then. So let's change the spectrum: it should be the most free market on one side and the most statist on the other. We might as well eschew the usage of "capitalism" and "socialism" and simply use free market vs. statism. That said, the BNP is very statist. The BNP is more market then, say, the Communist Party, but they are very statist.

[Demogorgon]

Before I launch into one hell of a reply to all of this, let me ask you a simple question, do you really think we haven’t heard all of this before, often in more eloquent form? That might explain why people are getting a little tetchy with you.

Calling certain people here uninformed in certain areas where they plainly know more than you, particularly economics, will not really endear you to anyone or help your your case.

Pure capitalism means pure free markets. By what definition? When “capitalism” started being used as a term in the nineteenth century, that certainly wasn’t what it meant. It meant an economic system dominated by Capital. Throughout the twentieth century it did not mean that either. It meant the economic system prevalent in the west. And no mainstream definition of capitalism I know these days defines capitalism the way you define it either.

Who has given you the authority to redefine the word?


The fact of the matter is - whether you like it or not - that fascists have more in common with state socialists than they do with libertarians.
Convince me. You say that a person’s view as to how large a role Government should play will define their overall political outlook. Assuming this is true, then people favouring a similar level of Government involvement will have matching views on al sorts of things. List some of these other areas where there is a clear overlap in policies?


Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara are all rulers on American college campuses then, since they have significant influence.With the exception of Castro they are all dead so those individuals are unable to exert much influence. By “influence”, I mean the ability to direct others to act in a certain way, by one means or another. To explain my view of what constitutes power and influence, I will quote a bit of my own writing:
A problem we have with our contemporary analysis of Government is that we focus too narrowly on what we might call “Constitutional Organs”, that is the official branches of Government designated as such by our legal constitutions or their equivalents. Other sources of authority are seen as separate and not relevant to the question of governance; we are asked to draw a clear line of distinction.

It is an artificial distinction though. The source of any authority that imposes upon an individual a requirement to act in a way other than he or she might wish to hardly matters to the one being so directed. An organ of Government, an employer or even an entity of organised crime can all force us to follow a certain set of rules or carry out a certain form of tasks. In capitalist society there are multiple entities-that we might describe as “centres of power”-all co-existing with one another, both acting as a check on each others power and sometimes acting to enhance the power of one another.

The most obvious of these centres of power are easy to identify: elected politicians, Government bureaucrats, corporate power, the media, and in more corrupt systems organised crime and essentially independent military leaders. Each group has their own field of influence where they exercise said influence either directly or indirectly and are also able to influence one another due to their overlapping areas of concern.

This means that modern capitalist society is in fact a form of coalition between several different powerful groups. Such groups influence and are in turn influenced by each other, limit and in turn are limited by one another. Each group has its own areas where it is most likely to get its way and certain areas where it will be all but impossible to do so, but when it comes to the most fundamental issues facing any society, firm opposition by any major centre of power can generally halt or at least severely slow down any action.Note that each center of power I describe is not equally bad, one could argue that the elected politicians are the least objectionable because they are the most accountable to the people (though degree of accountability will greatly vary from system to system.


Technically speaking, ruling someone means that you have the legitimate right to force that someone to do something. Libertarians don't believe that anyone has the right to initiate aggression against anyone else. Thus, libertarians are truly the ones against rule, they are the true anarchists.

It is a lovely word game, but the difficulty is you have a different definition of “rule” to everybody else due to having a different definition of “initiating force” (I will return to this further down) so it is a little misleading to say you are against “rule”


Two contradictory statements - the countries I listed have the freest markets in the world while the UK has a much more oppressive tax, regulatory, and welfare system than all of those I listed.Hang on. The UK has lower taxes than Australia, about equal to Luxembourg and Hong Kong in complicated by the fact that most Government revenue comes from land rent (no private land ownership) rather than from taxes and also many of the functions of Governemnt there are carried out by China (and formerly Britain) without paying taxes for those.

As for Lichtenstein, it is smaller than most towns, collects a substantial amount of its national income from selling stamps to stamp collectors and has the Swiss Government handle many of it affairs for it. Not a particularly good comparison?

All four jurisdictions have Universal Healthcare, well funded public education, good social welfare provisions (well Australia, Luxembourg and Hong Kong do, my knowledge of Lichtenstein’s welfare system is not all it could be) and so forth.


Here are just some of the BNP's notably left-wing positions with racist tints:
[snipped to save space]

Notice a lot of what you have there is nice feel good statements of what they want (better lives for old people) and so on without much to say on how you are actually going to get there. Unless you are claiming that to be right wing you have to want pensioners to be worse off, the environment to be more polluted and so on, those fuzzy statements don’t mean much. It is the meat of the policies that matters and you will find that a lot of what they actually propose to achieve those things is a mixture of the sort of thing you would more commonly find from Ron Paul and “if there were no immigrants everything would by okay”.


Yes. It is a mini-government of sorts.Interesting. I’ll remember that




No. Any institution or individual that would initiate aggression would be taken care of by private and collective security, defense, law, court, and insurance agencies.What makes you so sure of that? Things like private courts are useless when it comes to this. Courts can define their jurisdiction in two ways. Either those who consent to jurisdiction or those who can be held under its jurisdiction through a state mandated police force. The latter is inconsistent with your views and the former will be quite meaningless as those intent on mischief simply wont consent to the jurisdiction of these courts.

When it comes to security agencies and so forth, I’m not sure I can even bring myself to write a rebuttal, I have done so so often. Kwisatz Haderach always answers that one more entertainingly than I do anyway, so I’ll leave it to him.


Monopolies cannot develop in free markets. I suggest you read the latest economic literature on this subject.You mean latest literature from the junk science at Mises.org? The “fact” that monopolies cannot form in a completely free market is a catechism of the Libertarian faith, but it doesn’t bare out in practice. If it were the case markets that were “more” free would tend to have fewer private monopolies (even if they still had some due to the market not being entirely free), but the opposite tends to be the case. The Thatcher years in Britain saw (in addition to publicly owned firms becoming private monopolies) vast numbers of large firms with monopoly power emerge from what had previously been many firms. As the Government deregulated industries, what had once been thriving markets with many competitors turned into Oligopolies.


The fact of the matter is that if one firm decides to use force, then there are thousands of other firms and millions of individuals who have an interest in bringing that firm to justice. That is where the mechanism of private law comes in.

So what? These firms can form alliances, pay enough people to fight form them and so forth. Of course by no means will they all do that, but the ones that play nice won’t last very long and the rewards for driving them out of business will likely be worth the cost of taking up arms.


List five examplesPinochet instituting a fascist style military dictatorship and handing control over the economy to the Friedman trained “Chicago boys”, Von Mises working as chief economic adviser to Dolfuss and also advocating cooperation with fascists as they were preferable to Communists, Anders Lange and his movement, consistent Libertarian backing for the apartheid Government in South Africa (which was more or less fascist) and present day crossover between the movements in America. David Duke supporting Ron Paul and all that.

and then explain to me how forcing libertarians to free Austria was a libertarian thing to do for Hitler.

What on earth does that mean?


For some reason, I doubt how Pinochet agreeing to reduce his power is him becoming one with libertarians.

And that?


Using spades to classify people is obviously absurd. Using the role of government to classify political beliefs is not. Any expansion of government necessarily comes at the expense of liberty.
A Government is a tool to achieve a particular set of policies. The fact that you and your fringe movement is fixated on it doesn’t mean that everyone else is. If you are going to use a defining issue to create a political spectrum on, it has to be one that is a relevant point of division in society. Whether there should be a Government or not simply isn’t such a division, what it should be used for is




Which is why I have repeatedly stated that I prefer a different method, like the box/diamond which rates people on social and economic conservatism vs. liberalism.
Like the political compass then? Funny thing about that is you would come out more authoritarian than me on their social axis as well. What does that tell you?


How would fascists fall in with libertarians when libertarians support the individual as center of power? Since the individual would be able to choose who, if anyone, provides him/her with security services, the individual would be the one in control.Currently I can go to any European Union country I please without having to go through any immigration procedure whatsoever (well I have to show I am an EU citizen and that I’m not there to blow up their parliament or whatever). I can choose the protection of any EU Government in other words and the cost of moving to another EU country can potentially be offset by the fact that the cost accommodation in many of them is less than it is here. Is that making me the centre of power?

Libertarian rhetoric about “the individual” presumes the individual is wealthy enough to purchase all she needs and does not have to make undesirable compromises with employers and so on to get the money she needs to live on. Fact is the wealthy will end up having a great deal of power indeed over the less wealthy.


Fascists, socialists, democrats, "anarcho" syndicalists, and others all want someone else to make decisions for you - whether it is a majority of people, the majority of workers in your factory/city, the unions, bureaucrats, or some crazy racist in the capital.

There is such a thing as voting. You take part in a democratic process to decide what is done. Under your system, those who own most of the property are the only ones with a say and everyone else has to just go along with it.


That is simply supporting the decentralization of government, not the reduction in government power or size.

What do you mean by Government then? Is the simple act of making something that was not previously elected, elected, making it into an instrument of Government. If that is the case how is it a bad thing to expand Government? How is it reducing freedom to turn places of work into places where people vote on what is to be done rather than having to go along with what they are told.


Many of the founders were racist, but beyond that, their similarities to the Nazis end. The nationalists and monarchists, dubbed empathetically by biased historians as "Federalists," like Madison and Hamilton, were the ones who hijacked the Republic and turned it into an expansive war machine with a powerful state, despite the efforts of the republicans (dubbed "anti-federalists") to limit federal and even state governments (see IXth and Xth Amendments for evidence).
Well you can talk about “hijacking” American politics all you like, but those men were part of the process from the beginning. What is striking about early American history though is right from the beginning, from the time of the Articles of confederation onwards, the country expanded at a huge rate seizing land from the native people or getting it from other European powers by one means or another. Very soon most of the land area making up the United States was territory under the direct control of the federal Government. Expansionism was the order of the day from the beginning.

Besides I fail to see how simply limiting the federal Government was supposed to be about freedom. Government is government and the anti-federalists were happy for the states to do very nasty things indeed.

This notion is thrown into sharper focus later on in American history when you lot start saying that the federal Government stopping segregation was an infringement of “State’s Rights” and start claiming the right of the states trumped the rights of the individuals within them and believe thing went very wrong indeed with the notion of “get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights


Libertarians never advocate the [I]initiation of violence. If you somehow abuse the property of another, you are initiating violence against that person, just as you would be initiating violence if you shot someone.
And here is the clincher, you say you do not support initiating violence but then define it in a way that nobody except your fringe do. See most people use the word violence to refer to physically attacking somebody (or sometimes an animal). Not to refer to non-violent crime against property. You then advocate using violence against someone who has committed a non-violent infringement against your property and tell us it isn’t initiating violence at all because under your selectively expanded use of the word they have already been violent.

Trouble is, if you get to expand the word, so do I. I am going to expand it to say that claiming private ownership over something that could be better used for the collective good of the human race is an act of violence and any force we use to take it from you will be “retaliatory force”. Problem solved.

What makes your expansion of the word better than mine? Any attempt to say it is about the legitimacy of property rights will simply be begging the question.


He doesn't support the violent exclusion of anyone.
So gay people will be peacefully thrown out of the community? Lovely.


Again, that is simply the decentralization of government power, not the actual reduction of it.

How exactly? The Government declared it would not get involved and individuals went out to oppress all by themselves.


See above. Australia has some of the lowest taxes and least regulation in the world. In Australia, it's easier to invest and start a business than in America. Moreover, Australia has a very conservative central bank.

Where are you getting this shit about Australia? Its taxes are a lot higher than America’s for instance. Indeed they are firmly above average for the world in general.


Well then why is Hong Kong so successful compared to Shanghai? The overall size of the two cities economies is about the same and Shanghai will likely overtake Hong Kong on a per capita basis in the next ten to fifteen years.



Within a system of private law and division of labor, different courts and legal agencies could focus on specific injustices, just as the monopolistic courts of today do, but with more justice and efficiency.
I’m sure they can be more efficient. They will have a much lighter caseload. Many parties will simply refuse to consent to their jurisdiction.



Yes - it initiates force and views itself as legitimate. We could do away with "legitimate" if you want. Anyone who intiates violence is, in a way, a mini-government, since they are de facto attempting to rule over another's person or property.
Which means so long as anyone has the strength to use violence against another, Government will remain under your system.


Incorrect. It is obvious that attacking any person is an initiation of violence. If I stab you, I am attacking your person, thus, I am initiating violence (assuming that no violence between you and me occurred before). Property is simply an extension of one's self, thus, attacking someone's property is just like lunging at them and trying to stab them.Compare a person who has been stabbed with someone who has had their house broken into and you might see a difference.



Wrong. Morality is not subjective.
This one is outwith the course of this discussion and the actual answer is both enormously complex and frustratingly vague, but don’t you think it is mighty convenient that this “objective” morality just happens to coincide with what it suits you for it to be?

The maxim "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" is unbeatable in its logic. Every single action you take you implicitly consent to having it done to you. If you violate someone in some way, you implicitly consent the victim or a third person to do the same, something similar, or something equivalent to you.You have a bit of trouble here. If I don’t mind paying taxes so long as they are not being spent on wars or whatever, is it then fine for me to expect others to pay them?

If I always help those in need to the best of my ability, is it then reasonable for me to expect the same of them? The “golden rule” is indeed a very good one (not perfect of course, but it is a good start) but it works best when you remember that not everyone is a sociopath.


The problem being that there is no proof for your claims. There cannot be some thing as "collective rights" if society is made of individuals. Only individuals are capable of mental faculties, not groups. You and I do not share the same thoughts, thus we both have individual rights but [I]not collective rights.
There is no proof of your claims either. At the end of the day rights are not abstract things, they are essentially what society says they are. That might differ from what they should be, but what they are is very much a positive rather than normative question.

And normative rights are decided by whatever the moral values of the person claiming them are really. There is no great metaphysical entity decreeing what our rights are.



Correct. However, since those times, the true claims on those lands have been erroded since the original proprieters have passed on and been lost in the tumult of history. Thus, this land has become unowned and has been re-homesteaded by the current proprieters.

What?! When exactly did this case of it becoming unowned and “re-homesteaded” take place? Certainly not in the last few centuries. Pretty much all land has been under continuous ownership since then. Indeed in Europe you would have to go back thousands of years to find unclaimed land (excluding arctic wilderness). Homesteading simply hasn’t happened at any verifiable point.



In any case, there has been plenty of nonviolent accumulation of land and capital. Take, for example, the homesteading of land by the world's first people, or the homesteading of land by early pilgrims who did not fight with Native Americans.
What does any of this have to do with today? The fact that property might just have been acquired legitimately a long time in the past (mostly at a time when private property was not recognized, after all people moved in tribes and new land was regarded as the collective land of the tribe.


It means that the property was stolen at one point. It doesn't mean that it is still stolen property. If the original proprieters of that property have passed on or cannot be identified, the current proprieters rehomestead the land.

So if we communists “steal” all the property and then redistribute it, after a while our redistribution will become legitimate?


What about so called green nazis like those and nazi[dot]org? They are at least partly a joke site. But you will noptice that amongst the serious ones. Plenty of them play up on the “libertarian” side of things.

When has the free market ever killed anyone?
Contract killings?

Seriously, I made a thread with quite a good example a while ago

http://www.revleft.com/vb/initiated-force-highland-t89984/index.html?t=89984


Nope. If someone is unable to work, they could surely find support from private charities. Considering the billions of dollars donated to charities every year despite tax disincentives, and the very small amount of people unable to work, nobody would be forced to starve to death in a capitalist society.
What makes you think charity would be sufficient. The reason there was such pressure to introduce social welfare provisions was because charity wasn’t sufficient.


It is not equivalent to murder, but one should do something to save people from starvation. Fortunately, the free market does this the best. Compare the rates of starvation between North Korea and the US.What about the Bengalese famine. More than enough food was produced in Bengal that year to feed the population but because the people were too poor to afford it it was mostly exported and people starved to death. If the British authorities had intervened, enough food could have been kept in the province to feed the people. But they put their faith in the market and around three million died.


Non sequitur. Nobody starves in a libertarian society; as described above.

Plus we have all these actual real world examples to prove it! Oh wait…


Your simply reinforcing my view of leftists as burbling teenage kids with overactive emotions. Please stop, for your own sake.

What do you think you are doing to our views of your lot?


Nope. Anti-war vs. pro-war only describes one issue, one end, which is why it makes no sense. It gives you no compass when it comes to other issues; you could be an anti-war socialist, conservative, or libertarian, for example. Small vs. big government explains a lot, however. For example, a pro war libertarian would be to the left of an anti-war libertarian, since the pro war libertarian would be for a larger government that is necessary for war. Government size gives you a barometer for other beliefs, your stance on specific issues does not.
I’ve already given my opinion this, so I will just add that you are attempting to use exactly the same spectrum Rothbard tried at one point. Except you have reversed the ends. Before he became a ridiculous social as well as economic reactionary, Rothbard claimed he was far left-to the left of socialists as he advocated the Governemnt not involving itself in economic as well as social areas. He more or less put it as His lot-socialists-conservatives (to heavily simplify it). Given that you are trying to use the same line as him, why reverse it? Could it be that this spectrum is so vague that it is impossible to pin who goes where?


Nobody would have a problem with big government if it achieved the best results.

So all that stuff about big government being inherently bad regardless of what it was used for wasn;t really meant to be taken seriously?

It is worse, since social liberals would be more to the right anyway. Fake social liberals, like those who advocate affirmative action, would still be on the left, but to the right of those who advocate extreme segregation and racial extermination like the Nazis.Not exactly how it played out in the real world is it?

In South Africa, the racists who have seen their system crumble down no veer back and forth between advocating a Volkstaat (apartheid on a smaller scale) and decrying affirmative action, saying there should be no racial distinction. If they were at the opposite end of the spectrum they would pass through the middle (supporting affirmative action) wouldn’t they?

The actual spectrum there is white dominance vs racial equality. Those who favour equality want to allow blacks entry into the economic system that continues to shut them out. Those who wish to retain white dominance will use whatever policies they can to maintain it, whether that be attempting to restore what they can of apartheid or simply try and stop disadvantaged blacks from joining in through proclaiming a newfound devotion to requality on paper-but funnily enough, not in practice/


True, but then we have a problem have making the spectrum too complicated.

So let’s just simplify it down to whatever advantages out particular ideology the most!



But identifying people via their means is. If you support larger government you are more likely to support social and economic interventionism than someone who supports smaller government.
Are you really still struggling to understand the difference between supporting Government attempts to achieve equality and Government attempts to achieve inequality?


Hong Kong and Singapore have the highest average standards of living in the world.
According to what exactly? The HDI has Hong Kong 22nd and Singapore 28th.

Mind you, both countries have pretty good welfare states so you would expect at least reasonable standards of living.


So you want to compare Hong Kong to any other city in China or even the world? Go ahead. I'll wager that Hong Kong is one of the top five wealthiest cities in the world when controlled for size.
Count it as a separate country to China and it is twenty-somethingth in the world by per capita GDP. That would make it impossible for it to be anywhere near the top five cities.


Nobody would be expelled from anywhere. If people around me want to a form a covenant that includes my land, they would need to have my permission. Obviously, I could refuse.It would be a little harder if you were one of the many people who rents an apartment or something.


Lastly, markets are the best way to fight racism and exclusion. Obviously, people and businesses who do not discriminate, will have the access to the greatest amount of products and workers and thus profit the most.

Do you think so? History tells us that in racist areas businesses that do not discriminate are boycotted by the majority and either go out of business or have to start discriminating themselves. Very often business put up separate entrances for black and white people simply because white people couldn’t bare to go through the same door as blacks. Not discriminating probably got more black customers but whites had more money.


Nope. It is clear what is the initiation of violence, since property is simply an extension of yourselfSmash my arm and the pain wil be horrendous. Smash my computer and I won’t feel anything at all. Disfigure my face and I will likely be disfigured for life. Disfigure my house and I will again by unharmed. Spot the difference?


Only because they are traditionally found on the right doesn't make the tradition correct. The left-right spectrum could be flipped for all I care; my entire point is simply that it is more rational to organize the left-right spectrum on similarities between political ideologies.
You say that and then do the opposite. You try and bunch ideologies based on internationalism with ideologies based on xenophobia for heaven’s sake!


If property is a creation of the state, why does property exist in black markets?

It depends how black the black markets are really. In some cases they are just people trying to trade out of sight of the taxman. In that case the Government will chase the sellers up for unpaid taxes but still recognize the actual property as theirs. In nastier black markets, you might find yourself knee-capped if you infringe on somebody else’s “property”


The disagreement here is simply over the definition of capitalism then. So let's change the spectrum: it should be the most free market on one side and the most statist on the other. We might as well eschew the usage of "capitalism" and "socialism" and simply use free market vs. statism. Where would you put someone like David Schweickart then? And how would you justify the discrepancy between where you place him and where he places himself and is accepted by his fellows as being?

[MikeSC]

Only because they are traditionally found on the right doesn't make the tradition correct. The left-right spectrum could be flipped for all I care; my entire point is simply that it is more rational to organize the left-right spectrum on similarities between political ideologies.

They are similar, for the millionth time. You're only argument is that they're not completely free market capitalists. 99% of right wingers are not as extreme in their free marketism as yourself, it's completely obnoxous to think you can override accepted definitions based on your fringe position and expect everyone else to take you seriously.


If property is a creation of the state, why does property exist in black markets?

If the stuff sold on these black markets has been acquired through state-sanctioned ownership, like if they've grown weed on land they've bought or funded the acquisition of these black market goods with cash or anything like that- then they are equally results of state seizure. Otherwise, they'll be of individual seizure, if they're stolen or whatever- is individual seizure any more legitimate than state seizure to you?


You're confusing the old left-right spectrum with the new. The new would put the authoritarian "White Russians" on the left of the "Red Russians" for instituting mini-governments via feudalism.

Bullshit- just because you've took it into your head to overturn generally accepted and widely used distinctions, used by people on all points of the spectrum, doesn't mean it should be accepted. I could make a scale going from "angels to bastards" and put whatever I want, where I want- I wouldn't be justified in trying to force this new system on anyone else.


The disagreement here is simply over the definition of capitalism then. So let's change the spectrum: it should be the most free market on one side and the most statist on the other. We might as well eschew the usage of "capitalism" and "socialism" and simply use free market vs. statism. That said, the BNP is very statist. The BNP is more market then, say, the Communist Party, but they are very statist.

You're a joke. Why would I want to change the spectrum so that there were no leftists? You are just as statist as the BNP- you just worship one state institution, while the BNP spreads it out over several.

[Angry Young Man]

You have to take Beck for what he really is--an entertainer (and there are a good number of people he entertains with his antics.) You certainly can't go to him for any REAL analysis of world events any more than you could have gone to someone like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. As a matter of fact, he's a topical commedian just like they were. His radio show even starts out with the line that the show is a fusion of information and entertainment. If you take him seriously you give him more credit than he even gives himself.

The thing is that people on the Left have been so used to "entertainers" being from the Left and making fun of the Right--they seem to have lost their sense of humor for a jokester that comes from the other direction.

I'll admit that satire's only funny when you agree with the satirist, but regarding the 'fusion of information and entertainment', there's a noted absense of the former. He's not that funny, either - he's like a mergence of an embarrassing dad and a paranoid cul-de-sac resident. Like Jon Stewart, only not taking the piss.

[Comrade Anarchist]

glen beck is a raging fucktard. He gets tons of raging fucktard right wingers to watch him and his "comedy" and slowly brainwash them to fucking lunacy. Why is there not a single person on his show that tells him what socialism really means. I mean the head of Communist party of the united states was on there and all he did was say obama is doin a great job which makes communism look like state capitalism and Big Business Obama look like a socialist.

[GPDP]

glen beck is a raging fucktard. He gets tons of raging fucktard right wingers to watch him and his "comedy" and slowly brainwash them to fucking lunacy. Why is there not a single person on his show that tells him what socialism really means. I mean the head of Communist party of the united states was on there and all he did was say obama is doin a great job which makes communism look like state capitalism and Big Business Obama look like a socialist.

Because he deliberately gets equally fucktarded commies that would not tell him otherwise and are there for him to easily ridicule because they're weak and spineless?

[Holden Caulfield]

Glen Beck is offensively stupid. I'm not even saying that because of his politics, I find, the similarly wrong, Ron Paul pretty interesting, engaging and intelligent even if he is massively wrong in what he says.

Glen Beck just shouts about bullshit, makes no attmempts to back up his claims, and makes petty childish remarks to try and make his guests look foolish.

Glen Beck is a moron even amongst capitalists, even amongst shouty right-wing TV broadcasters, O'Riley looks like the reincarnation of Lenin compared to Glen Beck. T