Originally Posted by Politico

It's a bit too long for me to read right now.

I get the jist of the begining, that regulation is a two sided blade. The public is sold one thing but it is usually quite something else. For example, if you pick up cigarettes and smoke them now, you cannot sue the maker if you get cancer, because it says it causes cancer right on the side of the box. No, they didn't make them illegal. No they didn't force them to stop adding dangerous chemicals, they put a label on the side so the tobacco company is not liable if you get cancer. Who does that really protect? We already knew at that point that cigarettes caused cancer.

This is where the "people are too dependent on the government" mentality comes in, usually from the corporate right. They state people want the government to act like their mommy. Well we wouldn't need that if corporations acted responsibly. There is the overwhelming argument from the corporate right that those dependent on social programs are the wrongdoers and the real drain on the economy, when in reality if corporations acted in the best interest of society, there would be far less need for social programs. Generous benefits did not bankrupt us in the 1950's, and they wouldn't today, if corporations acted in the best interest of society.

Frankly, I'm tired of people stating corporate tax breaks create jobs, and corporations are the backbone of America. We, the people are the backbone of America, and corporations are squeezing everything from us. Corporations have one purpose, to make profits at any cost. And by allowing them to make our laws, they will change the laws to make more profits with less and less liability.

Originally Posted by Rude Boy

It's the general gist but it gets quite a bit more complicated than that. Suffice to say that capitalism (not free-market, which the author separates in the essay) is non-sustainable without the full utilization of the state. Whatever industry wants, industry will get but regulation/cartelization is a small price to pay in order to rape the public both domestically and in foreign markets. Big Business "bemoans" regulations but ironically, monopoly capitalism would not survive without them.

It's really a fascinating read because, while I am decidedly a Left-Libertarian and have read much of the Left's critique of capitalism, I haven't read much of the Right-Libertarian's critiques - but this essay, as the title's name implies, synthesizes both arguments against the state and capitalism.

Originally Posted by Politico

I do get it, however a self proclaimed anarchist is not going to get any attention other than "crackpot" and "anti-american" rhetoric. Interesting read no doubt, however the labels placed upon him by himself or others do little to support his ideals.

He also does play homage to Adam Smith's work, which proposes that people will act in their own self interest, therefore the rich get richer.

When things become prolonged and deluded, they tend to lose the message. Short and simple laws are the hardest to fight in a court, and there is a reason for that.

Originally Posted by Politico

If someone was labeled as a nazi, would you listen to what he had to say?

Originally Posted by Rude Boy

No, because I know what ideology they are trying to spout. They can dress it up in any manner they so choose, but it's still fascism. Nazism and anarchism are hardly they same thing.

Originally Posted by Politico

Didn't say they were. Anarchy is a bad word these days, in case you didn't know.

Originally Posted by Rude Boy

I'm bringin' it back in style.

Originally Posted by Politico

Generous benefits did not bankrupt us in the 1950's, and they wouldn't today, if corporations acted in the best interest of society.

Originally Posted by SamInTheSouth

Pick up a history book next time prior to using this argument. You'll look less ignorant of world history.

Originally Posted by SamInTheSouth

Pick up a history book next time prior to using this argument. You'll look less ignorant of world history.

Originally Posted by CONFISCATION AND THE HOMESTEAD PRINCIPLE
BY MURRAY ROTHBARD

http://williamgillis.blogspot.com/20...lowing-is.html

Karl Hess's brilliant and challenging article in this issue raises a problem of specifics that ranges further than the libertarian movement. For example, there must be hundreds of thousands of "professional" anti-Communists in this country. Yet not one of these gentry, in the course of their fulminations, has come up with a specific plan for de-Communization. Suppose, for example, that Messers. Brezhnev and Co. become converted to the principles of a free society; they than ask our anti-Communists, all right, how do we go about de-socializing? What could our anti-Communists offer them?

This question has been essentially answered by the exciting developments of Tito's Yugoslavia. Beginning in 1952, Yugoslavia has been de-socializing at a remarkable rate. The principle the Yugoslavs have used is the libertarian "homesteading" one: the state-owned factories to the workers that work in them! The nationalized plants in the "public" sector have all been transferred in virtual ownership to the specific workers who work in the particular plants, thus making them producers' coops, and moving rapidly in the direction of individual shares of virtual ownership to the individual worker. What other practicable route toward destatization could there be? The principle in the Communist countries should be: land to the peasants and the factories to the workers, thereby getting the property out of the hands of the State and into private, homesteading hands.

The homesteading principle means that the way that unowned property gets into private ownership is by the principle that this property justly belongs to the person who finds, occupies, and transforms it by his labor. This is clear in the case of the pioneer and virgin land. But what of the case of stolen property?

Suppose, for example, that A steals B's horse. Then C comes along and takes the horse from A. Can C be called a thief? Certainly not, for we cannot call a man a criminal for stealing goods from a thief. On the contrary, C is preforming a virtuous act of confiscation, for he is depriving thief A of the fruits of his crime of aggression, and he is at least returning the horse to the innocent "private" sector and out of the "criminal" sector. C has done a noble act and should be applauded. Of course, it would be still better if he returned the horse to B, the original victim. But even if he does not, the horse is far more justly in C's hands than it is in the hands of A, the thief and criminal.

Let us now apply our libertarian theory of property to the case of property in the hands of, or derived from, the State apparatus. The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty. In the case of the State, furthermore, the victim is not readily identifiable as B, the horse-owner. All taxpayers, all draftees, all victims of the State have been mulcted. How to go about returning all this property to the taxpayers? What proportions should be used in this terrific tangle of robbery and injustice that we have all suffered at the hands of the State? Often, the most practical method of de-statizing is simply to grant the moral right of ownership on the person or group who seizes the property from the State. Of this group, the most morally deserving are the ones who are already using the property but who have no moral complicity in the State's act of aggression. These people then become the homesteaders" of the stolen property and hence the rightful owners.

Take, for example, the State universities. This is property built on funds stolen from the taxpayers. Since the State has not found or put into effect a way of returning ownership of this property to the taxpaying public, the proper owners of this university are the "homesteaders", those who have already been using and therefore "mixing their labor" with the facilities. The prime consideration is to deprive the thief, in this case the State, as quickly as possible of the ownership and control of its ill-gotten gains, to return the property to the innocent, private sector. This means student and/or faculty ownership of the universities.

As between the two groups, the students have a prior claim, for the students have been paying at least some amount to support the university whereas the faculty suffer from the moral taint of living off State funds and thereby becoming to some extent a part of the State apparatus.

The same principle applies to nominally "private" property which really comes from the State as a result of zealous lobbying on behalf of the recipient. Columbia University, for example, which receives nearly two-thirds of its income from government, is only a "private" college in the most ironic sense. It deserves a similar fate of virtuous home-steading confiscation.

But if Columbia University, what of General Dynamics? What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to "private" property? Surely less than zero. As eager lobbyists for these contracts and subsidies, as co-founders of the garrison state, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. To say that their "private" property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murdered must be "respected".

But how then do we go about destatizing the entire mass of government property, as well as the "private property" of General Dynamics? All this needs detailed thought and inquiry on the part of libertarians. One method would be to turn over ownership to the homesteading workers in the particular plants; another to turn over pro-rata ownership to the individual taxpayers. But we must face the fact that it might prove the most practical route to first nationalize the property as a prelude to redistribution. Thus, how could the ownership of General Dynamics be transferred to the deserving taxpayers without first being nationalized enroute? And, further more, even if the government should decide to nationalize General Dynamics--without compensation, of course-- per se and not as a prelude to redistribution to the taxpayers, this is not immoral or something to be combatted. For it would only mean that one gang of thieves--the government--would be confiscating property from another previously cooperating gang, the corporation that has lived off the government. I do not often agree with John Kenneth Galbraith, but his recent suggestion to nationalize businesses which get more than 75% of their revenue from government, or from the military, has considerable merit. Certainly it does not mean aggression against private property, and, furthermore, we could expect a considerable diminution of zeal from the military-industrial complex if much of the profits were taken out of war and plunder. And besides, it would make the American military machine less efficient, being governmental, and that is surely all to the good. But why stop at 75%? Fifty per cent seems to be a reasonable cutoff point on whether an organization is largely public or largely private.

And there is another consideration. Dow Chemical, for example, has been heavily criticized for making napalm for the U.S. military machine. The percentage of its sales coming from napalm is undoubtedly small, so that on a percentage basis the company may not seem very guilty; but napalm is and can only be an instrument of mass murder, and therefore Dow Chemical is heavily up to its neck in being an accessory and hence a co-partner in the mass murder in Vietnam. No percentage of sales, however small, can absolve its guilt.

This brings us to Karl's point about slaves. One of the tragic aspects of the emancipation of the serfs in Russia in 1861 was that while the serfs gained their personal freedom, the land--their means of production and of life, their land was retained under the ownership of their feudal masters. The land should have gone to the serfs themselves, for under the homestead principle they had tilled the land and deserved its title. Furthermore, the serfs were entitled to a host of reparations from their masters for the centuries of oppression and exploitation. The fact that the land remained in the hands of the lords paved the way inexorably for the Bolshevik Revolution, since the revolution that had freed the serfs remained unfinished.

The same is true of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The slaves gained their freedom, it is true, but the land, the plantations that they had tilled and therefore deserved to own under the homestead principle, remained in the hands of their former masters. Furthermore, no reparations were granted the slaves for their oppression out of the hides of their masters. Hence the abolition of slavery remained unfinished, and the seeds of a new revolt have remained to intensify to the present day. Hence, the great importance of the shift in Negro demands from greater welfare handouts to "reparations", reparationsfor the years of slavery and exploitation and for the failure to grant the Negroes their land, the failure to heed the Radical abolitionist's call for "40 acres and a mule" to the former slaves. In many cases, moreover, the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed.

Alan Milchman, in the days when he was a brilliant young libertarian activist, first pointed out that libertarians had misled themselves by making their main dichotomy "government" vs. "private" with the former bad and the latter good. Government, he pointed out, is after all not a mystical entity but a group of individuals, "private" individuals if you will, acting in the manner of an organized criminal gang. But this means that there may also be "private" criminals as well as people directly affiliated with the government. What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not "private" property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property. It is justice vs. injustice, innocence vs. criminality that must be our major libertarian focus.