no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Considering Redistribution of Property

March 9th, 2009

I’m inclined towards the argument that it would be extremely unlikely (although probably not impossible) for an individual to amass vast fortunes, or even come to ‘own’ something like a factory in a free market, but the only arguments that I’ll entertain seriously, contra “capital” (defined as “non-trivial” means of production like factories, etc.) is the argument that in a free market, these phenomena would be unnecessary or unlikely from an economic viability point-of-view.

A while back, Brad Spangler wrote the following about the redistribution of property, with regards to the homestead principle.

With regard to property claim conflicts between owners and workers, let me say that I envision the revolutionary process as the bootstrapping of a non-state system of law and security. The nature of that law would tend to favor selective redistribution of property from state-allied plutocrats to the workers, but redistribution would be an affirmation of property rights (of the workers) rather than their negation. On the other hand, just because someone is rich wouldn’t make it okay to take their stuff. Rather than wealth being judged on amounts, its ownership would be evaluated methodologically (e.g. “How was this acquired?”) with state-granted privilege being regarded as criminal means of acquisition, thus negating the fake state-granted property title.

In other words: Although he may not have a perfect claim to his house, the tenant has a claim far superior than does the bank which relies entirely on government support to remain legally “solvent,” and that the employees of a highly leveraged firm in bankruptcy have a far superior claim than the lenders who “loaned” the corporations money over the years. I have no idea whether this is enough to appease the communists, the mutualists, the uber-left libertarians. I hope it would be, primarily because I’m simply not sold on the idea that individuals shouldn’t have the right to own and acquire productive assets, at least not on any moral grounds. I refuse to listen to any more commie arguments like “Socialism doesn’t permit individuals to own something like a factory.”

At what point along the continuum of production, consumption, and savings, do you draw the line: A man can own an axe and a saw, but not a lumber mill? He can own a lathe and a press, but he cannot own a building to shelter them? Nor can he employ others to use them? Oh, they scream that capital breeds exploitation! or that the freedom to amass capital is what causes human suffering, or some other nonsense that’s contradicted by centuries of history. But in a freed market, the only way that any man can ever acquire anything valuable, is by producing it with his own labor, and/or exchanging it with others. The latter implies that he’s been able to do something extraordinary for the “common good”, even if that was never his unique intention.

Not everyone who has is guilty of violating someone who has not and a great deal of even those who have not, are in-fact guilty themselves.

Is there a lot of unjust inequality, because of massive amounts of State interference (and church interference, and whatever) over the last few thousand years? Indeed all property has clouded title, if we look back far enough in time. Are there a lot of people sitting on fortunes that amount to essentially stolen property? To be sure, of course a tremendous amount of inequality exists in the world today, the result not of free markets and peaceful, voluntary exchanges, but rather is the result of state-sanctioned extortion, profiteering, rent-seeking, and monopolization. And although I think it’s a stretch, we could even potentially argue that all inequality in the world today is due to these factors.

But, extrapolating from Brad’s argument above, even if we could eliminate all of these injustices, we can’t assume that all inequality is exploitation; not all inequality is evidence of injustice. Because people are different, some are smart and others dull, some are apt and others clumsy, some are capable and others incompetent, some frugal and others spendthrifts, because they think differently and value things differently, a certain inequality is destined to exist. It may be more palatable, more tolerable than what we’ve got now, but it will still be inequality.

The fact of the matter is that no matter what “we” do in order to equalize the distribution of property, it’s extremely unlikely that this new distribution is sustainable for even a very short amount of time, without the assistance of a massively totalitarian force. For the record, I don’t give a damn whether this force is the communist Internationale, or the State’s Army. They both believe that might makes right.

Can the Profit Motive Save Us?

March 6th, 2009

At the Smoking Argus, Joseph Marohl inquires about the profit motive, in which he’s “never believed”:

How long have I heard it said that the profit motive is what makes the world the wonderful place it is? No, I don’t believe it.

Why must everything the U.S. government proposes, for the past two decades at least, be filtered through the beneficial effects of someone making a profit from it?”

I’d like to answer these questions. If enterprises are not profitable, they are destructive. If they are not creating wealth, they are consuming and destroying wealth. And the more wealth they destroy, the harder we work, the more we suffer, and the less we have. To clarify, I don’t mean “wealth” in a purely monetary sense. I mean real wealth: an abundance of goods and services that are available to alleviate some of the infinite inconveniences, pains, and discomforts that are present in a world where all resources are in limited supply.

Setting aside for the moment, the myriad problems I have with “the government” in general, it certainly makes sense that government propositions, like all purposeful human action, ought to aim at creating wealth of this sort, rather than destroying it. It is my understanding, however, that governments usually perform poorly at this task, because government failure rarely has severe, personal consequences for the decision-makers.

And I don’t know why so many people think it’s a good idea to funnel government funds into gigantic corporations

In a very limited regard, I agree with Marohl: I don’t want to see money being funneled through government to corporations, large or small. I don’t want to see money going to, or through government, period. But as long as the government is going to spend my money, our money, I’d prefer it be spent on food and housing for the homeless, than on bio-fuel or green energy subsidies. I’d prefer it be spent on roads and school buses, than on bombs and bullets.

The only people I know of who actively support these ideas, are people in the government, and the rent-seekers that intend to benefit thereby. All of the opinion I’ve heard, seen, and read of late, suggests that most people think the current bailout, for example, is a damn lousy idea; perhaps one of the few times in history when “most” people were right.

Marohl makes some solid critiques of modern capitalism, railing against the “what’s good for GM…” and the problems presented by corralling employees in to stock purchase plans and 401k programs that are also going belly-up. But he also refuses to view public school teachers, the quality of whose product over the past 40 or 50 years has been in measurable decline, as part of the problem, indeed he seems to argue that Teacher Unions are the last bastion of salvation, preventing schools from turning “into a mere training post for cheap, acquiescent labor,” despite the fact that most kids these days graduate high school with nary a marketable skill, trade, ability or experience.

Although his derision of the profit motive alludes to his hatred of free markets, this fundamental belief is buried deep in the essay:

No, I don’t believe. I’m an unbeliever in free enterprise, free market, laissez-faire, trickle-down, all of it.”

Let me get this straight… He doesn’t believe in free markets (we’re about a million fucking miles from a free market, FYI, and he doesn’t believe (or has lost all faith) in governments. Profit and productivity can’t save us, nor can Papa Government. I’m going to take the rare opportunity to invoke my blog’s title: there isn’t another way. There is no third solution.

A comment I left there asked him just what the f*ck he does believe in?

This is a serious question. If the language or the tone strikes anyone as rude, it’s because the notion that humankind can benefit, can advance, can thrive or even merely survive without actually increasing wealth from one period of time to the next, is so fantastically ignorant as to warrant nothing more than ridicule.

How Government Destroys Community

February 5th, 2009

Christopher Wellman lays out a clear and concise comparison between taxation and theft, on pages 3 to 5 of Is There a Duty to Obey the Law?, which after the introductory paragraph on page 3, was a pleasant surprise. Evidently, though, he is “not an anarchist”, a decision he bases presumably on several “plausible” premises which must obtain in order to justify the state, the crucial element of which is the consequentialist appeal: “States can render their services without imposing unreasonable costs upon those they coerce.”

Now, unreasonable is a fairly ambiguous term, devoid of objectivity. Who determines what is (or is not) unreasonable? Is it unreasonable if the poor man can’t find a job because of restrictive wage laws or occupational license requirements? Is it unreasonable if the wage-earner can’t escape the shackles of his Nine-to-Five in order to self-employ, because of onerous and often unfavorable tax codes? Is it unreasonable to destroy families in an unwinnable “war” on drugs? Is it unreasonable to use taxpayer money to bail out the Financial Elite responsible for bringing the world economy to its knees?

Those are surely questions worth asking. But instead, Wellman resorts to the Hobbesian war, of “all against all,” in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the benefits of political society is to imagine what life would be like if your state were to go completely out of existence. Unless one lives in a very close-knit, face-to-face community where everyone knows each other and is invested in the group as a whole (which almost none of us does), it seems unrealistic to think that life without a political state would be anything but a horribly chatotic and perilous environment where one would lack the security necessary to pursue meaningful projects and relationships. In other words, for the vast majority of us, it would be virtually impossible to live a rewarding life.

Wellman qualifies his argument with an important assumption, that meaningful existence is not possible “Unless one lives in a very close-knit, face-to-face community where everyone knows each other and is invested in the group as a whole (which almost none of us does).” I believe that the question which really needs to be answered here is: why not?

Why don’t we have a vested interest in our communities?

A simple answer is that we don’t live in genuine communities. Genuine communities have largely been co-opted or destroyed by governments. Governments “take care of the poor” so we don’t feel the responsibility to take care of ourselves. Governments “protect us” so we don’t responsible for our own protection. Governments give us “work” so we don’t need to be productive.

But in order to provide (technically, this is just redistribution) any of those things, the factions competing for control of the Government instigate class warfare, pitting individual members of society against one another, communities against communities, interests against interests. The resultant decline in genuine community is then used as justification for even more government. We don’t look out for one another anymore, because those who aspire to rule have the population convinced: not only are the “others” not looking out for you, they’re also your enemy.

The real “enemy” is anyone perpetuating this fiction.

What really happens, is the Hobbesian evil is concentrated, distilled by the existence of the State. According to numerous philosophers, anthropologists, and sociologists, Hobbes was wrong

[I]it is civilization, and the technology we have organized ourselves to produce, that enables us to kill millions half-way around the globe at the push of a button. This is the ultimate proof that Hobbes was wrong–civilization is the way we organize ourselves to commit mass violence, not the way we organize ourselves to contain it.

If we live in a violent world today, it is because life is out of balance, because our “animal pity” has not learned to cross the same distance that our missiles can.

The latter opinion is something I’ve argued before, far from being the savior or protector, governments are the single greatest threat to the human species. To be sure, some are less oppressive or less violent than others, but taken as a whole, they’ve slaughtered many millions more than individuals (no matter how evil) could ever dream of doing on their own.

We need more “community.” But government isn’t going to give it to us, we have to build it on our own.