1. It's not the the criticism of the state that's considered absurd. It's the lack of proffering an alternative to provide basic services essential to the functioning of a cohesive society that is.
2. The church never really performed that role because of feudalism. Which is why even strongly religious countries don't remain stable after the state collapses and resort to being fractured by rival warlords.
3. Companies regularly do whatever they want until their actions are eventually challenged by public pressure for regulation. How many companies simply dumped waste into the environment regardless of their effects until forced to stop? They did this because there was no connection between those unethical actions and the service to the customer. Hence you end up with big, popular brands like Nestle and Coca Cola engaging in highly unethical practices in localised areas that don't impact their global reputation and thus profits. Without state intervention in these actions do you believe they'd stop of their own accord?
Historically you're spoiled for examples. Phossy Jaw, Radium Girls, Breaker Boys, blood diamonds. All examples of companies engaging in unethical practices until forced by state intervention to stop.
All you really need to do is have a look at the list of US superfund sites to see what companies have done.
__________________ Sweating on the streets of Woking
1.) i disagree, the thing that would replace the state (something only favorable to small groups of people) is the free market (availible to all, bringing prosperity to all.)
Imagine if America actually acted as a republic, meaning the abolition of centralized power ala the federal government.
This would lead each state to create it's own government (something very different from a state.)
So if one lived in florida and found the way floridians governed florida to be unfavorable, one could vote with one's feet and live in a more favorable jurisdiction.
This form of pluralism would allow each state to develop social institutions, based on the needs of the group, through individualism and contractualism. Some places may set up churches, others charities, some mega monster truck derbys, the possibilities are endless.
This mosaic of social institutions would further fill the gap left by the deletion of the fed. Gov.
Furthermore your line of thinking assumes the state is a natural and necessary extension of the human experience and i adamantly disagree. For example social safety nets created and maintained through the state hemorrhage money like uou wouldnt believe. The alternative to state ran social safety nets are charities, philanthropies, non profits etc.
These groups are extremely wise with their money because they receive money through private donations. People who give private donations to look into how that money is spent vs. being taxed for social safety nets, thus the privately funded groups have a higher incentive to be fiscally efficient, other wise the donations would stop.
With that said, you tell me why, if i want to give my dollar to a homeless man, i need a middle man (the state) to be given the dollar first, take their cut, then pass on the scraps to the homeless man.
2.) the church, without a doubt, had a monopoly of power at one time or another. When nietzsche said god is dead, he meant belief in god. Without belief in god the need for church to have a monopoly of power fades, leaving a vacuum to be filled with civic religions (communism, fascism, constitutionalism, social justice warriors etc.)
That vacuum couldn't have been filled if the church never left it.
Another way to look at this is to ask yourself why every great thinker used to be a monk or a cleric, that's because the church had the power at that time, not the state.
Im open to more specific evidence tho because you do seem to be very informed.
Taxation is the only form of debt that ends in imprisonment.
If you resist the attempt to inprison you your life will be in mortal danger.
Therefore, taxation is propped up via the monopolization of the state.
What this means is a cop can come arrest me for tax evasion, shoot and kill me if i resist, and face zero repercussions. Meanwhile if i evade taxes, cop comes to my house, i defend against that and kill him. This would result in me going to jail for 2nd degree murder, perhaps 1st, and killing a cop, not to mention what else would get tacked on.
1. I think it's naive thinking to believe that the free market will bring prosperity to all. Predatory capitalism is simply the default position when there is no effective regulation of the corporations involved. This would have gotten worse over the years because during the industrial revolution there was a direct connection between business owners, their employees and the communities in which their businesses operated because they all existed in the same local area so factory barons gave land for public parks etc to their communities as part of their philanthropy. These days a global corporation can have it's executive offices in a first world country, it's manufacturing in a third world country with weak or non existent regulations so it can cut costs and it's registered office in a tax haven so no one gets any benefit except their shareholders. And that's exactly the crux of it. Companies in a free market only have responsibility to their shareholders and no one else.
Cooperative models are the only viable alternative. Individualism isn't feasible in most cases because it doesn't address things such as the disposal of waste. The maintenance of infrastructure etc. You couldn't rely on charities to perform these functions because if people were told they would receive the service but paying was optional they wouldn't pay. If every service was provided by a private enterprise in which individuals had to enter their own contracts with the service providers then the administration costs would go up exponentially and thus the costs of those services to the individual would be completely prohibitive.
Charities are also not better with their money. By their very nature they don't keep reserves of cash and so have no resilience. Even the biggest have, at best, 3 months of funding. Almost all small to medium sized charities have zero reserves. What if funding dries up to a charity providing essential services?
Besides, more charities providing the same service in small locales simply means more people doing the same job meaning more money goes on pay rather than providing the service.
2. The church didn't provide the functions of the state. There was no stability under the power of the church. Entirely the opposite due to the competing denominations.
3. So far I've read the first article (thanks for the links).
Take this quote as an example
"Now one of the main functions of profits is to shift the control of capital to those who know how to employ it in the best possible way for the satisfaction of the public."
This is just simply not true. If it were there wouldn't be colossal amounts of wealth being hoarded in tax free offshore havens serving no one's interests but the shareholders.
The article is filled with nonsensical leaps of logic.
"Imagine a construction worker, concerned about society at large, deciding to use less concrete in his project, with the intent of repurposing the savings to wage increases for the workers. Or a pharmacist, dispensing lower-dosage pills than prescribed, and using the money saved to benefit other “stakeholders.” We would consider these both to be crimes"
Uhhh wut?
This is simply nonsensical gibberish.
"The CSR movement implicitly endorses the idea that corporate CEOs, whose expertise is in making and selling widgets, ought to also be dilettantes in figuring out how to improve their communities, and in the process earn lower profits to pass on to charity-shareholders, whose own expertise is precisely in how to do good for the community".
The CSR are movement doesn't say the CEO should be diverting their skills in figuring out how to improve their communities. It says they should be employing people to perform that role. It's the basic difference between responsibility and accountability. The responsibility for carrying out that function would fall to the person employed to do it. The accountability for it being or not being done would fall to the CEO or board.
__________________ Sweating on the streets of Woking
For whatever reason the quote button isnt working.
So im going to attempt to shift gears, because im on my phone and cant keep flipping between your post and what im typing.
You make cogent points and are perhaps a better debater than me.
However, im less interested in debating than i am in becoming effective at spreading these ideas to minds that will value them.
Tax havens = this is, for me, further evidence that the state is anti business. Businesses wouldn't need tax havens if they werent charges taxs.
I agree that predatory capitalism is the default (i think this because people want to do the most with the least amount of work for the highest amount of profit.)
However, once a business acts in an unethical or inefficient manner profits would stop coming in in a free market.
Under the state these businesses persist in the form of something like a bailout, or via sneakier measures ala raising the fed minimum wage so that smaller companies cant afford to pay their people (think walmart paying everyone 12 a hour vs. A small business)
So from my pov any business that fails is a good thing because the resources are redistributed to others who can use then without failing.
Here is the primary evolution of thought that occured for me, tell me where we differ and how and why we differ (if you feel like it, of course).
So for me i started out as a commie, but without calling myself that. I thought the gov. should fix any and every problem.
Then i started to read the classical liberals like locke, jefferson, paine etc., which made me pivot to classical liberalism.
From there libertarian only made sense, which is actually what von mises meant by liberal but the term was stolen and it's meaning mutated. Libertarians typically support a night watchmen state or make the distinction between a state and a gov.
From there i thought, if i earnestly believe that anything the state does is inefficient, mostly immoral, sometimes ineffectual then why the hell would i think they wouldnt fumble national defense.
This lead to my discovery of murray rothbard, the most radical dude to ever live.
He shows quite clearly, and with good humor, why the state in it's entirety is not only superfluous, but totally deleterious.
Again i cant explain any of these ideas half as well as actual an caps, but the central argument makes sense to me in a way other systems of organization do not.
I agree, i appreciate your time. I thought about what you said for a full day and kept going back over it to see if i could come up with anything better.
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Sep 19th, 2020 07:33 PM
