When Did I Sign This 'Social Contract'?

Рет қаралды 45,982

12 жыл бұрын

Tom Woods replies to the common anti-libertarian argument that demands libertarians leave the country if they don't like the system, the rules, etc.
www.LibertyClassroom.com
www.TomWoods.com

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@Grero 10 жыл бұрын

Simply put, it's a circular argument. If I own my house, I can tell you to leave if you don't like it. But how or why does the state get to assume ownership and control?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The biggest problem with the social contract problem is that if the SC exists, it is embodied in our laws, and we debate how to change our laws all the time. In doing so, we are constantly re-negotiating the social contract. But as soon as someone argues for freedom, they don't have any right to participate in this process of re-negotiating the contract? Why is it only the advocates of freedom that are excluded from the process?

@ozcabal 11 жыл бұрын

Wow ! Finally someone verbally articulates in a coherent manner exactly what I've been trying to say ! Thank you!

@smorrow 3 жыл бұрын

Moreover, you need the government's permission to leave the country.

@s7ryk3r1337 10 жыл бұрын

I cringe every time I hear this as an excuse... Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

@HexTest 11 жыл бұрын

They went up after the general public took an interest in education. There's no evidence that private education would not have given the same results. And today the results of America's public schools versus homeschool students shows this even more soundly.

@Mablak200 11 жыл бұрын

I agree completely that the idea of implicit consent is a truly silly game. However, the main argument relating to the social contract is that the government making someone pay for a service they've used (even if they have to use it to get by) is no more illegitimate than a private company making someone pay for a service they've used (which they might also have to use to get by); you would generally have to pay if you started eating bananas in the produce section.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

We live in a (semi) free market, not a feudal dictatorship. You are free to acquire any part of the means of production you can. You are allowed to buy land, you are allowed to buy a building, you are allowed to buy raw materials. That you are unable to do so and many a profit by providing consumers with a product they want is nobody's fault other than your own.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

In fact, i just found a graph that tends to disprove the claim that it was falling consumer spending that cause the 2008 crash. "Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income". The higher the savings rate, the less consumer spending. Personal savings went to an all time low in 2005, dipping into the negative range, and stayed low through 2008, near zero. People were spending like crazy right up until the crash. Another graph of consumer spending shows it at 70% of GDP.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Why should I be held responsible for something that happened to me before I was capable of giving consent?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The only reason workers had nothing to spend was because the government's manipulations of the price system caused unemployment.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

What is supposed to keep the process under control is, if a lot of people default on their debts, the bank closes. Any other business, if it runs out of money, has to close up shop. But banks are bailed out, they get easy loans from the Fed, FDIC repays the depositors, way back when the paper was supposed to be a claim on gold they were allowed to suspend specie payments, and so on. Market processes are not allowed to work, which is why the system doesn't work like it is supposed to.

@atwaterpub 6 жыл бұрын

This is also a good critique of the basic philosophy of the demand of public education.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

However, if government tries to solve a problem, the agency and officials working on the problem are unmotivated in finding the correct solution. If they solve the problem, the very reason for their existence goes away.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

I did offer an explanation. I wrote: " When bank reserves run low, interest rates rise." And "As banks run short of money, they increase interest rates. But if there is a central bank, like the First Bank of the United States, or before that, state chartered banks, providing extra liquidity, they can keep lending till inflation threatens to get out of control. Then they government cuts off the new money flow, and we get a bank collapse."

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

No. All banks were required to use the ratings agencies in order to invest in derivatives. Not just pension funds and public investments.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The one I find, several copies and versions charted on different scales and in different colors, is labeled "United States - Unemployment rates (1890-2008)" In that graph, unemployment is always lowest on the dates just before the big crashes.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

If there is a problem, people are willing to pay money to anyone who has a solution to the problem. This motivates a search for profitable solutions to the problem.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

A peer review system? When consumer preferences and the availability of resources can change from one minute to the next, you expect people to write research papers, submit them to other people for criticism, get their feedback, modify your thesis to take their criticisms into account, and so on? When the price system does all that work almost instantaneously? When each transaction sums up all the information that each of the parties of the transaction have in their possession?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

If the government didn't spend so much, real productivity would be much higher, and real wages would match the measued productivity numbers.

@roymarshall_ 11 жыл бұрын

If a thief holds me at gunpoint and takes my car, is the car "his"?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The first big peak in the graph I see comes AFTER the panic of 1890. The unemployment rate in 1890 is below 5%, I think around 3.5%. Then once the 1890 panic sets in unemployment rises to around 12%, AFTER the panic. The next panic is 1907, and unemployment is back down to below 5% by then. The graphs show the exact opposite of what we would expect if your theory was true.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The only 1921 crash I can find is the collapse of the New England Soccer League, or an airplane crash that killed a Polish aviator. That depression started in 1920, maybe 1919. The high unemployment of 1922 could not have been the cause.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

The fact is, the price system is so vastly superior to using a barter system that the barter system doesn't even look like a choice, even though nobody is stopping you from doing so. The thing is, you would have to persuade a lot of other people to use it, too. So there are two things keeping you from using a barter system. The fact that a price system works so much better, and the free choices of other individuals, neither of which you really have any cause to complain about.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Remember, none of these businesses operated in the absence of government interference. They all had regulations, subsidies, government guaranteed loans, previous bailouts, low interest rates from the Fed, and an environment of prices rising because the government was printing money like crazy. All of their decisions were heavily influenced by government, rather than market forces such as consumer demand and limits of supply.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

In principle, prices can rise for any number of reasons, and occasionally do. But the overall trend, as productivity increases, is for prices to fall. Supply increases, and the amount of work and resources needed to produce a unit of any good goes down.

@Rushmanyyz 11 жыл бұрын

I would also add: towards the foundational social contract that I spoke of, these are formed out of an evolved sense of fairness and self-protection (which are inherent in people). This might be seen as some to be a "natural right" but its simple common sense from a purely ontological standpoint. We can surely grasp that our deaths are not in our self interest. These are the foundations for us to accept the "I shall not kill" social contracts.

@IronicKismet 11 жыл бұрын

Government definition from wikipedia = In the case of its broad definition, government normally consists of legislators, administrators, and arbitrators. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organisation of a specific government. Taxation was not mentioned once in this definition.

@Rushmanyyz 11 жыл бұрын

If they had a right, and understood that fact, and it was immutable, unchangeable and fixed, we wouldn't ever have needed to argue the fact, people would just know it. This is even MORE evidence that morality is nowhere near innate.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

In fact, the overall trend in unemployment was downward in the 1920's. Then the crash hit, and unemployment skyrocketed. Your cause comes after the effect.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Mises? I said the BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS! The 1920 depression was caused by the government cutting back on war spending, so a short period of unemployment was inevitable so that the economy could be restructured and those workers be put to peacetime production. By 1928, the unemployment rate was down to 4.2$, which is considered arounf full employment.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

All that simply shows that the RESORUCES that the government wants to redistribute don't exist in sufficient quantity. Blaming money for that is like blaming a pressure gauge for showing dangerously high pressure in a boiler. You ignore the pressure reading, and then the boiler explodes, what do you do? Blame the pressure gauge that you ignored?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

What does that matter? It is partly privately owned, but it can order new money printed from the Treasury at will, and it has mandates from the government, and its officials are appointed by government, in particular its Chairman is appointed by the President. It is a Frankenstain;s Monster combination of both public and private. It is exactly what free market advocates say we should NOT have.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

More from "The Big Business-Government Alliance" by Murray Rothbard: "The push for the new corporate state was generated by an alliance between corporatist big-business groups and technocratic intellectuals, eager to help run and to apologize for the new system, which promised them a far plusher niche than did a freely competitive economy."

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

If there is, for instance, an open auction, and the private buyer pays a lot of money for something the government is privatizing, how is it a handout?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

No. You reduce the Austrian theory to "government bad", when in fact there is a complex theoretical framework of price theory, the capital structure of production, real loanable funds and interest rates, consumer spending, banking theory, and a subjective theory of value.

@LucidDream101 11 жыл бұрын

Do you need a lawyer to determine how much money to pay the kid that mows your lawn?

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

If I believe taxation is theft, WHERE THE $%&#@ do I relocate to? What nation, state or city does not impose taxes on people? WHERE DO I MOVE TO?????? This is an INSANE argument I keep hearing again and again and again, and every time it sounds JUST as insane as the last time. If i don't like paying taxes, I can move somewhere else. WHERE????

@ohedd 11 жыл бұрын

And my point is the following. If the UPS and Fedex managed to out compete the government in package delivery despite the fact that the government had established a monopoly on postal services, the free market found a way to improve on it. But by going with the violent non-answer of the government gun to "solve" ALL of the problems, you'll end up with a society which stifles ingenuity rather than solving difficult problems.

@ImperatorZor 11 жыл бұрын

Technology is not the only thing that matters. If you just have the ship, it will be useless in a few years. There is Industry to make it, crews to operate it, facilities to repair and maintain it, infrastructure to support it and resources and finances to support it. Only a state can muster the resources to have one created and maintained for when it is needed.

@TheYiffingAtheist 10 жыл бұрын

Actually never mind there is a "social contract," only it's called citizenship. As long as you have citizenship the States will defend certain rights but also demand responsibilities. www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learners/citizenship-rights-and-responsibilities

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

I do not "imagine that somehow everything will be fine". There are important, clear principles involved here. With your "somehow" you brush aside everything I said about free market incentives and the consequences of a few banks failures on other banks.

@bajatmerc 11 жыл бұрын

The social contract doesn't conclude what form of government should be made. Many things are against the law in the current form of government, and many people still break the law. Enforcement of the laws is an organic development through necessity, which is a characteristic of the social contract. The social contract exists because of what is, not the other way around.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Prior to the first collapse there was a labor shortage and the money was flowing through the economy after it a major instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital was formed, industrialists were bleeding the economy. One of the consequences was for small businesses and entrepreneurs to rely on banker's credit, which meant the jobs they created were based on debt, the money they were paying out was debt money, the money speculators were making, was from debt.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Now that is a more complicated issue because we live in a mixed economy. Some of the rich got rich through crony capitalism, getting special favors from the government. But mostly, the rich got rich by actually producing something. They accumulated wealth by PRODUCING IT and saving it. And they had to do it in a way that pleased consumers. This is like a voting system. By paying them money, we are expressing our judgment that they have used resources productively, meeting our needs and wants.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

But here is a (very) brief summary: Morality is a consequence of the choice to live and causality, the fact that actions have consequences. Human beings generally choose to live, and that choice is the precondition of any other choices, so life itself is the primary value. Human beings survive through the use of reason. Reason is an individual faculty. One person can know things that another may not know, so people need the right to act on their knowledge without interference from others.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

"'Ayn Rand would have never advocated for the kind of policies Alan Greenspan instituted,' Brook says, citing the Fed's 1% fed funds rate in the years after 9/11 as exhibit A: 'By holding interest rates for two-and-a-half years below the rate of inflation, [Greenspan] encouraged the debt and credit boom we're suffering the consequence of' today -- and for the foreseeable future."

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Look up the graph "Consumption Spending and Mortgage Equity Withdrawls as % of GDP". It shows consumer spending as % of GDP steadily increasing from 61% in the 1960's to 70% in 2000, and staying at that high plateau till 2008. And GDP was rising the whole time, too, so there was no way there was a shortage of consumer spending that caused the 2008 crash.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Rothbard's criticism of "corporatist" was that the government had laws restraining corporations rights, recognizing them as persons, and enforcing laws which required them to turn a profit for investors. Rothbard was against government involvement in their existence, the cartelization of the corporate system. In fact he even says it in the quote you randomly pulled off the internet without bothering to read first. That's not Anti-Big Business, that's Anti-Big Government.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

When I say the value of labor was going up, I mean what the workers were producing were going up. In terms of supply and demand, how labor was valued by the employers, it was falling. Wages did not rise with profits, profits skyrocketed and wages stagnated, this created an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital, which resulted in the working class not having enough to spend, meaning the employers couldn't keep profits going, which led to debt and unemployment.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

The wage rates were falling because workers were being replaced by machines and put into competition with eachother for jobs, they weren't making enough to survive. Speculators industrialists and financiers were raking in huge profits but the workers were suffering, people literally had to clip coins in half to trade.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

No. Borrowers who default often go through bankruptcy, and their debt is erased.

@roymarshall_ 11 жыл бұрын

A lot of land was farmed and used by people long before the government had the ability to collect taxes or defend it with soldiers.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

The timing is only wrong if you fail to consider how the debt cycles from the first crash contributed to the second one.

@roymarshall_ 11 жыл бұрын

So in other words, they pointed at a place on a map and said "even though we haven't farmed or used it, and can't even really enforce it, we totally own this land" and that somehow gave them rightful ownership?

@ImperatorZor 11 жыл бұрын

Private Policing has been tried: Thief Takers in Georgian England and so forth. It does not work anywhere near as well as formalized police forces. Private Policing means that the law is up for hire. Justice is for those who can pay for it. Competition does not make things better in all cases. A single police agency would collect evidence from a scene and inform all officers as needed. Multiple private police firms would not, they want the competition to be less effective to get more contracts.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

It wasn't "trending down" it was going through boom and bust cycles as the system decayed.

@ImperatorZor 11 жыл бұрын

This is meant to illustrate that there is more to economic success than simple consumer pressure. If two companies make comprable products in comprable amounts, but one can pay it's work force half as much, that company has a greater bottom line. Private Education was insufficient to meat the demands of the modern world for a literate workforce. Private schools are "better" because they can kick out delinquents and invest more resources per student by charging huge fees for enrollment

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Again, banks can create their own currency unless legally prohibited from doing so, they always have when allowed. They fulfill the same functions as the mint and fed when you let them. They constantly pump debt into the economy unless legally forbidden to do so, and when those regulations forbidding them from doing so are removed, they go right back to it. The only reason your dollars aren't printed by the private banks is because your government won't let them print their own dollars.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Currency had deflated so much people were clipping pennies in half, people were being replaced by machines, in 1921 unemployment rose to as high as 11.7%, it then dropped and peaked with changed in the economy. Through this whole process the value of labor for those who had jobs was also decreasing.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Just an observation about those benefits. You aren't forced to pay for them, you can in fact opt out of the system. The same way you could opt out of paying for privately owned roads in a city where all the roads were owned by Wal-Mart. If you didn't like paying the bill, you could relocate. What? You don't feel like you should have to relocate? Well I don't think we should even have a price system, I'm forced to use one or die because all my means of survival are privately owned.

@ImperatorZor 11 жыл бұрын

UPS is Priority. It charges more per kilo than the US Post Office to deliver it faster. And never the less, the US Post Office competes with it and has paid for itself without taxes since the 1980s.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

In a free market, profits do NOT get taken out of the economy, but get re-invested. That prices go down is a GOOD thing. I am constantly surprised at those who think its a bad thing. When the prices of some goods come down, consumers have more money left over to buy OTHER goods. Cost of production doesn't go down simply because of international trade, but the use of machines, economies of scale, cost savings in other ways.

@perifule 10 жыл бұрын

What if you move in to a neighbourhood or city where everyone wears a funny hat?

@Raw420Films 10 жыл бұрын

Fantastic glad I found you.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

In 1921 unemployment was at 11%, and people started using debt to get out of it, which had a lot to do with the pattern you see before the collapse. If my theory were true, we would see exactly what we're seeing, because my theory is me reading the data to you, and being amazed at how you're reading it so differently when I have the same charts and graphs right in front of me and see it jumping up and down like a heart monitor.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

When used as an argument about what KIND of society we should have, what kind of rules, it is only used against libertarians. Like I keep saying, it CANNOT be used in any way to explain what kind of society we ought to create. It is only used against those who argue for freedom. Can you answer the last question I posted? Does SCT conclude we ought to have a democracy, theocracy, fascism, monarchy, constitutional republic, minarchy, totalitarian, tribal, liberal democracy, police state, ...?

@Mablak200 11 жыл бұрын

In the chip example, he uses the store's services out of necessity, even though he doesn't want to. For a libertarian driving on public roads, they use that service out of necessity, even though they don't want to. If it's all about what the user wishes, and forcing them to pay for the road use is wrong, then you're saying that in many private scenarios like these, it's also not alright to force them to pay.

@jdlambert8 9 жыл бұрын

Mr. Woods, I have trouble thinking since I had encephalitis a while back, and I am trying to understand this. It seems to me you are implying the answer to "When did I sign this 'social contract?'" is that you did not sign or agree to a social contract. If that is correct, do you believe there is a social contract? If there is not one, do you believe there could be one under some circumstances? Thanks.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Reject it out of hand if you want, but if you aren't going to learn what it is, don't criticize it.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Funny how, when government outlaws such a practice, it starts printing play money itself. A free money, without the government's "safety net" would impose discipline. Banks would be allowed to fail, and their management would be out of the banking industry. Those remaining would learn the lesson and act responsibly. But government bails them out and perpetuates such irresponsible practices.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

The banks were printing notes that had no money to back them before the US government was even formed, on their own, with no central bank. They were doing it until the constitution was written explicitly forbidding the practice. I don't know what strange power you think the government has that gives them the ability to do it, but makes it impossible for banks.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

I never said I didn't see the dips and spikes. Its just that all the dips in unemployment come before the crisis, and the spikes come after the panics. No way the spikes are causing the panics, because the timing is wrong.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Poverty went DOWN once the New Deal was dismantled. Look up that graph I mentioned. The poverty rate declines from 1959 to around 1970, and then stops going down. That coincides pretty well with Johnson's anti poverty measures and the abandonment of the gold standard. Things were going well after we got back on a semi-gold standard with Brenton Woods, but then stagnated again once we abolished it, ramped up the wlefare state, and the government started spending to shame a drunken sailor.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

What page/chapter is that? When I get home I want to read it in context.

@electronworld4996 3 жыл бұрын

You’re free to relinquish your citizenship and any licenses at any time.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

A government bills everyone. Its called taxes. A private business only charges those who use the service.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

3: It presumes that the "freedom" of action in that "state of nature" represents rights which we "voluntarily" give up for security against other excercising those supposed rights. But there is no such thing as a right to violate other people's rights by rape, murder, assault or theft. 4: And the argument I am most trying to get across, is that SCT is most often (in my experience) used to deny libertarians participation in changing the laws, i.e renegotiating the "Social Contract".

@Rushmanyyz 11 жыл бұрын

It explains how we accept the values in a societal context... we have to agree on terms, implicitly and explicitly that what is good for me should be good for others in order to, as you said, secure our future.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Wages are ultimately determined by productivity. Although it is often profitable to hire Chinese workers at low wages, it is still true that American workers have a productivity advantage, which is the main reason why there still IS employment in manufacturing at all in America, and why American workers are paid more.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

"Like I said, if their assets are seized, the banks lose out." That's only true in some cases in others the banks come out ahead. Often the person being foreclosed on will have already made sufficient payments to cover the loan, or to cover enough of it that auctioning off their assets will cover the rest with a profit. Banks only seize your assets when it's more profitable than not doing so, also your argument requires that anyone who can't make a payment automatically file bankruptcy.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Your theory is that high unemployment and the resulting low consumer spending is what causes depressions. How could the 11% unemployment in 1921 cause a depression that started in 1919, when the 1919 unemployment rate was 3%?

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

So true. 5% of the population owns more than all the other 95% put together, then past that the same pattern repeats a few time, until we find that most people are just subsisting, renting apartments trying to survive paycheck to paycheck afraid of losing their income because a single missed payment can mean being trapped in debt for life. We can produce abundance, yet because everything is privately owned and concentrated, people are forced to suffer scarcity.

@55Quirll 3 жыл бұрын

I don't see everything being privately owned, too much is owned by the Government which has no authority to own anything except what the Constitution dictates - forts, magazines and ship yards to build ships. It isn't authorized to own any land such as in Nevada, Alaska or many other states. People who suffer do so do their own faults. Having children while in High School, get a low skilled job and demanding high wages rather than learning a good trade - electrician, carpentry, plumping, mechanics, engineering, welding - which would mean they wouldn't be living from pay check to pay check. It is our responsibility to take care of ourselves and lives and futures not the Government. Just my opinion, take care and have a Happy New Year.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

I do believe there should be a government that protects property rights against force and fraud. Counterfeiting is fraud. But why is it suddenly not fraud then the government does it by printing paper money? If a bank does it, even if the government doesn't interfere, printing more money devalues that bank's currency, and people stop wanting to use it, the bank fails, goes out of business, leaving the market open to more responsible banks.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Like I said, if their assets are seized, the banks lose out. They take a loss, practically every time. The assets are never worth as much as the original loan. The banks lose when people default on their debts, unless the government helps them out. Markets are supposed to have a negative feedback system, punishing businesses for the kinds of behaviors you describe. They can only get away with it, avoid the market's discipline, with government help.

@bajatmerc 11 жыл бұрын

I only got a minute into the video. The guy with the gun gets to say who leaves.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Businesses that make big profits plow those profits back into the business. It is only when government punishes them for making profits that they begin hoarding their profits, putting them in tax shelters and holding cash or gold instead of re-investing. That is what happened in the 1930's, as first Hoover, then Roosevelt raised taxes to confiscatory levels, and FDR constantly harangued businessmen as the enemy. That scared the rich into hoarding wealth instead of investing.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

If the market were free, people could avoid letting a bank they did not deal with by not dealing with it, not using its paper, and so on. Even some of the depositors can get back some of their deposits if there is anything left if the government enforced contracts. It might take down its depositors, but nobody else, because everyone else can protect themselves by not dealing with the bank. The damage would be limited to the bank and its immediate customers.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

There is always low unemployment before the bust, and high unemployment after the bust. Consumer spending is high before the bust, and falls in the wake of the bust. High unemployment and low consumer spending cannot be the cause of the busts, because they follow the busts. Like I said, cause does not follow effect in the real world.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Why would I want to do that? The many businessmen in our economy can only offer products, ones which would not exist without someone producing them. And that takes work. Do you expect to get the food, clothing and shelter you need to survive, at the expense of other people's hard work, without paying for it? Or, you could buy the goods from individuals who do all the work themselves, without employing workers. Look up the "50 mile suit" for what you would get that way.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

What would stop banks from printing paper not backed by gold is that people would stop using it as they found it lost value. People aren't that stupid!

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Sorry, That was BRETTON-WOODS. Sorry for the typo. Look it up. Though it did not put us on a true gold standard, requiring the Fed to peg the value of the $ to gold severely limited its ability to manipulate interest rates or the money supply, and at the same time limiting the Federal gov's ability to borrow money and run budget deficits. The 1950's growth happened while the two above mentioned gov interventions were minimized.

@bajatmerc 11 жыл бұрын

They have private security competition, individual sovereignty, and a free market. They make more profit by eliminating government officials, and competition. It isn't zero aggression, but zero aggression does not define anarcho-capitalism.

@Rushmanyyz 11 жыл бұрын

Actually Bajatmerc, I took a bit of an irritable sarcasm with your question. Please accept an apology on that account. But yes, I don't think there are any Inherant rights. Rights are given or acknowledged between parties. They are not innate - simply because they are destroyed as soon as someone else decides not to give them to you anymore. A right is useful in Law because there is already a foundational social contract that we should follow societal laws.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

I don't know if its possible to speak of a "first collapse" at all, since the farther back we go, the worse the quality of the data is. One of the earliest known economic collapses in MODERN times was the collapse of the Bank of Amsterdam in the 1700's. Older collapses include the fall of the Roman Empire, which involved debasing currency and a welfare state. So WHICH first collapse?

@Mablak200 11 жыл бұрын

For this example to match up to public services, you'd have to be dishing out so much beer to so many people that you couldn't directly talk to them all; you still intend to charge a tab and do tell people they have to pay this tab, but you tell them via rules that are posted at the entrance to the bar, since you don't have time to talk to each customer. Doesn't mean any amount you charge is moral though, even if it's agreed to. The amount should be based on what's best for societal well-being.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

Yes he does overlook it. Private banks were loaning out sub prime mortages, a practice they have ALWAYS done, because it's profitable for them to trap working class people in debt so that they spend the rest of their life paying off the debt. This time they got greedy in a speculation bubble and when unemployment spiked and the credit bubble the banks started ended, they were left with a lot of people who couldn't pay back loans.

@shazbovalen7026 11 жыл бұрын

In a resource based economy the prices wouldn't even be a factor because the incentives would be to maximize sustainable production not to maximize the profits of the owners. Prices only go down with increases in productivity if it's profitable to the owners, otherwise production ceases leaving less competition and less incentive to keep prices low. Otherwise it's a race to the bottom that sacrifices labor, even if prices are lowered if that comes at the cost of lost pay it damages customers.

@ImperatorZor 11 жыл бұрын

Name one non government entity which makes use of functional armed modern warships on the scale of a corvette.

@SaulOhio 11 жыл бұрын

Those systems where the division of labor exists in systems with no internal price systems: You probably mean corporations. But even those exist within the context of a larger society with a price system. The Soviets managed to muddle along a bit by using the Sears catalog and world commodity prices. A corporation still takes prices into account, and the whole process is subject to REAL economic peer review, the profit/loss system.