Originally Posted by Brian Rush

As there can be no market without the government, this distinction is meaningless.

The market and the government are not the same nor do they even have similar roles. It is the function of government to create an environment in which profit can be made.( In my mind, this is the sole justification for a corporate income tax. ) It is the government's job to keep civil order, enforce contracts, prevent monopolies, and keep transportation available to move products. When government moves beyond these tasks into engineering winners and losers, it oversteps its bounds and will eventually be crushed by the market.

But we can't be purists about these things. I am in SE Alabama this morning. Quite by chance, I had breakfast with a set of people who have worked in agriculture in this part of the world. They talked about growing vegetables such as tomatoes and sweet corn, cotton, as well as peanuts which operated under a quota system for many years. I had always known that agriculture was heavily subsidized in a variety of ways, but one guy said that when he went into the local post office, there were as many "green checks" for the farmers as there were for the SS recipients. He said no one would grow cotton except for the subsidies. All of them talked on and on about the chances farmers take and how the difference between success and failure was very small. In this case, the role of the government to keep agriculture on a somewhat even keel was key. No doubt there is money wasted in agricultural subsidies, but perhaps this interference is worth it in the long run.

I don't see that the distinction is meaningless.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

The market and the government are not the same nor do they even have similar roles. It is the function of government to create an environment in which profit can be made.( In my mind, this is the sole justification for a corporate income tax. ) It is the government's job to keep civil order, enforce contracts, prevent monopolies, and keep transportation available to move products. When government moves beyond these tasks into engineering winners and losers, it oversteps its bounds and will eventually be crushed by the market.

But we can't be purists about these things. I am in SE Alabama this morning. Quite by chance, I had breakfast with a set of people who have worked in agriculture in this part of the world. They talked about growing vegetables such as tomatoes and sweet corn, cotton, as well as peanuts which operated under a quota system for many years. I had always known that agriculture was heavily subsidized in a variety of ways, but one guy said that when he went into the local post office, there were as many "green checks" for the farmers as there were for the SS recipients. He said no one would grow cotton except for the subsidies. All of them talked on and on about the chances farmers take and how the difference between success and failure was very small. In this case, the role of the government to keep agriculture on a somewhat even keel was key. No doubt there is money wasted in agricultural subsidies, but perhaps this interference is worth it in the long run.

I don't see that the distinction is meaningless.

James50

Well!

In other words, James, markets can have imperfect outcomes and force citizens to take serious risks over which they have no control. One could easily suggest that government intervention thereby becomes appropriate to moderate those outcomes, both positive and negative.

It seems to me that one corollary of free-market dogma is the idea that all money made in the market is genuinely earned, and thus simply reflects the worth of the individual who earned it. I think reasonable people know that that is, at best, a half truth. Behind every great fortune lies, if not a great crime (as Balzac said), at least a great deal of luck. And that is another reason why society should share in those great fortunes and use them for the general good. This isn't making winners and losers, it's moderating both gains and losses.

Originally Posted by James50

The market and the government are not the same nor do they even have similar roles.

I didn't say otherwise. I did say that there can be no market without government. I also said that, given this, to say that "the problem is the government not the market" is meaningless. And to imply, as I'm sure JPT meant to do, that the government should stay out of the market, is equivalent to implying that the brain should stay out of the muscles. If the government stays out of the market, the market will cease to function.

It is the function of government to create an environment in which profit can be made.

I wouldn't put it that narrowly, although as far as it goes I agree. Let's say rather that one function of government is to create an environment in which the economy can operate -- in which wealth can be produced and distributed. Whether this takes the form of "making profit" is not necessarily a given, and certainly I would object to the idea that "making profit" is what the economy is all about. That reasoning leads to the idea that maximizing profit -- which means minimizing wages and maximizing concentration of wealth -- is a good idea.

When government moves beyond these tasks into engineering winners and losers, it oversteps its bounds and will eventually be crushed by the market.

But "these tasks" themselves engineer winners and losers. What's more, there are many other functions of government which have powerful impacts on the economy. What about setting trade policy? What about setting labor rules? What about setting immigration policy, or the structure of taxes? All of these have a strong impact on who wins and who loses, and to what degree of each, and the consequences of winning and losing. And none of them is something the government can choose to do or not do. It can do them so as to maximize concentration of wealth, or so as to maximize wealth's broad distribution, or anything in between, but it cannot simply keep its hands off.

I know what you're saying, that there are things the government is doing today that it ought not to be, and while we might disagree on some of the specifics there are policies that work to ensure the dominance of big business which I'm sure are mainly on your mind and I would agree there. I would add that there are specific policies which suppress organized labor and encourage profit-taking that I would like to see stopped. But government and economy are so powerfully intertwined in an advanced industrial society that it doesn't make any sense to try to separate the two. Instead, where we need to focus is on the purposes for which it intervenes, and the place to start with that is to minimize corporate influence on the government by democratizing campaign financing, one way or another.

But we can't be purists about these things.

I completely agree.

Justin: I didn't say, or imply, that the government came first in any temporal sense. Obviously the market preceded the state, if not government in some form or other. However, that's not pertinent to the discussion. We do not live under the conditions that allowed us to do without a state, and under our present conditions of life in an advanced industrial civilization, the two (government and the market) are inseparable, and the market cannot operate without government involvement.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Well!

In other words, James, markets can have imperfect outcomes and force citizens to take serious risks over which they have no control. One could easily suggest that government intervention thereby becomes appropriate to moderate those outcomes, both positive and negative.

It seems to me that one corollary of free-market dogma is the idea that all money made in the market is genuinely earned, and thus simply reflects the worth of the individual who earned it. I think reasonable people know that that is, at best, a half truth. Behind every great fortune lies, if not a great crime (as Balzac said), at least a great deal of luck. And that is another reason why society should share in those great fortunes and use them for the general good. This isn't making winners and losers, it's moderating both gains and losses.

I think you will have to define a "great fortune" a little better. In my own case, I certainly had a lot of good fortune to be born into the family I was born into and to be given the opportunities I was given. But I think I have also worked hard and tried to play by the rules. I feel like what I earn is in fact earned. I benefit from a stable business environment engineered by the government, but I also pay taxes to assure that stability.

It is too easy to define something as luck when instead it was preparation meeting opportunity. That "meeting" may be coincidental, but the preparation was not. But certainly there are fortunes that started with a crime. Joe Kennedy's rum running during prohibition is an example.

It paints with too broad a brush to say that business people are close to criminals or merely extremely lucky. And, to tell the truth, it sounds like something someone in academia located safely above the tawdry business world would say. Come walk a mile in my shoes and then tell me what is criminal and what is lucky and what is people working hard to make a living

James50

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

As there can be no market without the government, this distinction is meaningless.

The level of ignorance you display with that statement is mind-boggling. I know that you probably have some specific, narrow definition of "market" in mind, but anyone with an ounce of education would know not to state it the way you did.


Paraphrasing the Wiki entry:

A market is nothing more than a situation where one or more people have something to sell, and one or more people want to buy it. If there are only two people, you have trade. If there are three or more, you have a market. A market requires that there is competition, either in supply or demand. For example, Seller A and Seller B each have a bar of gold they want to sell to Buyer A. They compete with each other by lowering the price until one of them makes the sale. That's a market. No government required.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The level of ignorance you display with that statement is mind-boggling.

Since you obviously haven't read the longer post I made in response to James, where I fleshed out this pithy statement, you might un-boggle your mind by reading it.

And until you have done so, and thus cured your OWN ignorance, I suggest you speak no further about mine.

Originally Posted by James50

I think you will have to define a "great fortune" a little better. In my own case, I certainly had a lot of good fortune to be born into the family I was born into and to be given the opportunities I was given. But I think I have also worked hard and tried to play by the rules. I feel like what I earn is in fact earned. I benefit from a stable business environment engineered by the government, but I also pay taxes to assure that stability.

It is too easy to define something as luck when instead it was preparation meeting opportunity. That "meeting" may be coincidental, but the preparation was not. But certainly there are fortunes that started with a crime. Joe Kennedy's rum running during prohibition is an example.

It paints with too broad a brush to say that business people are close to criminals or merely extremely lucky. And, to tell the truth, it sounds like something someone in academia located safely above the tawdry business world would say. Come walk a mile in my shoes and then tell me what is criminal and what is lucky and what is people working hard to make a living

James50

As you can probably deduce from their posts above, they believe profit is a crime.

The government facilitates the market by preventing (actual) crime (as in theft, fraud, and so forth) and enforcing contracts. The left goes beyond that, and believes it is the government's job to engineer the economy to bring about desired outcomes, rather than allowing the free market to operate on its own to determine what goods should be produced, how much they should sell for, how much people should be paid, and so forth. The results throughout time, over the course of history, have shown clearly that government intervention always distorts the market, leading to bad outcomes and unintended consequences, which in turn leads to a lower standard of living for everyone in society.

But they don't care. They want equality of outcomes. They want everyone to make the same amount of money whether they're a CEO or a janitor. If that means everybody ends up in poverty, fine. As long as "we're all in it together".

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The government facilitates the market by preventing (actual) crime (as in theft, fraud, and so forth) and enforcing contracts. The left goes beyond that, and believes it is the government's job to engineer the economy to bring about desired outcomes

I can't speak for anyone else, but what this leftist believes is that all of the above IS engineering the economy to bring about desired outcomes, and the idea of a "free market" in the sense of one where the state keeps its hands off is equivalent to the tooth fairy. It's not only undesirable but impossible.

What things are defined as "actual" crimes, and what are not? Do you think this is something written into natural law? No, it's written into criminal law and a decision by the state. What types of contractual obligations are permitted and what types are not? When enforcing contracts, where does the burden of proof lie? Again, these decisions are written into the law and there is nothing in nature that forces them to go one way or another. And without these functions of government, no market could exist.

Also, as mentioned above, there are certain operations of government which automatically and inevitably engineer the economy so as to bring about results (desired or otherwise). Tax policy, trade policy, labor policy, and immigration policy all do this. Can the government NOT levy taxes? NOT enter trade agreements? NOT set labor policy (bearing in mind that refusing to guarantee any rights of workers IS setting labor policy)? NOT set immigration policy? No, and all of these actions, one way or another, have a more powerful shaping effect on the economy than a lot of the things that you are probably mouthing off about.

There is no such thing as a "free market" and never has been. The government always and inevitably sets the rules of the game and the market's parameters. The only thing to decide is whether the government should set those rules and parameters so as to benefit the rich or the rest of us.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The level of ignorance you display with that statement is mind-boggling. I know that you probably have some specific, narrow definition of "market" in mind, but anyone with an ounce of education would know not to state it the way you did.


Paraphrasing the Wiki entry:

A market is nothing more than a situation where one or more people have something to sell, and one or more people want to buy it. If there are only two people, you have trade. If there are three or more, you have a market. A market requires that there is competition, either in supply or demand. For example, Seller A and Seller B each have a bar of gold they want to sell to Buyer A. They compete with each other by lowering the price until one of them makes the sale. That's a market. No government required.

I believe what he means is that without some way to enforce contracts and settle disputes, no market can function. Case in point: the market in goods and services that have been outlawed. Absent the governmental function of lawsuits, courts, and some sort of commercial code, contracts are enforced and disputes settled by violence.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I believe what he means is that without some way to enforce contracts and settle disputes, no market can function. Case in point: the market in goods and services that have been outlawed. Absent the governmental function of lawsuits, courts, and some sort of commercial code, contracts are enforced and disputes settled by violence.

Precisely. The trade in banned goods such as narcotics is a perfect example of what a genuine "free market" would be like. By foolishly trying to ban drugs altogether instead of regulating their commerce, the government has effectively abolished itself w/r/t that sector of the economy. The results are visible. Judge by them.

For-profit, competitive businesses will do whatever gives them a competitive advantage and is allowed by law. Where there is no law, they will do whatever provides advantage, period, including resorting to violence. In all cases, the ruthless drives the principled out of business. Where the law does not permit violence, violence is not employed, but any other means -- morally good or morally vile -- that the law does allow, will be employed.

Business sinks to the level of depravity the law allows. If we do not wish business to behave in any given reprehensible manner, and it would provide a competitive advantage, we must not allow it. That simple.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Precisely. The trade in banned goods such as narcotics is a perfect example of what a genuine "free market" would be like. By foolishly trying to ban drugs altogether instead of regulating their commerce, the government has effectively abolished itself w/r/t that sector of the economy. The results are visible. Judge by them.

For-profit, competitive businesses will do whatever gives them a competitive advantage and is allowed by law. Where there is no law, they will do whatever provides advantage, period, including resorting to violence. In all cases, the ruthless drives the principled out of business. Where the law does not permit violence, violence is not employed, but any other means -- morally good or morally vile -- that the law does allow, will be employed.

Business sinks to the level of depravity the law allows. If we do not wish business to behave in any given reprehensible manner, and it would provide a competitive advantage, we must not allow it. That simple.

That's all well and good. Libertarians are not anarchists, and you just gave a good explanation of why stateless communism will never exist.

What I was referring to, and I assumed you would know well enough to understand, is government intervention intended to direct the flow of goods, services, resources, money and so forth in order to produce a particular economic outcome. A very simple example would be the minimum wage. A more complex one would be the government takeover of the nation's health care system.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Business sinks to the level of depravity the law allows.

Sort of like the government of Bell, California, then...

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

What I was referring to, and I assumed you would know well enough to understand, is government intervention intended to direct the flow of goods, services, resources, money and so forth in order to produce a particular economic outcome. A very simple example would be the minimum wage. A more complex one would be the government takeover of the nation's health care system.

Then there are the examples I already gave: tax policy, immigration policy, labor law, and trade policy. These affect many things, and they are not optional.

Taxes can be set so as to encourage or discourage profit-taking and concentration of wealth. In the period after World War II and continuing until the tax laws were radically changed in the 1980s, they discouraged concentration of wealth, resulting in several decades of high wages, full employment, narrow wealth gaps, and a robust, superbly-performing economy. Since the 1980s, low taxes on high incomes have encouraged profit-taking and wealth concentration, leading to reversals of all of these trends. But the government can't not tax. It must set tax policy somehow, and whatever it does will have an economy-shaping effect.

Or consider immigration policy. The government can tightly restrict immigration, resulting in tight labor supplies, driving wages up. Or it can allow high rates of immigration (either legally or by looking the other way), thus flooding the labor market and driving wages down. But it can't not set immigration policy, and whatever it does will have an economy-shaping effect.

Then there's labor policy. You mentioned the minimum wage. That's of some importance, but not much compared to 40-hour work week and overtime laws, workplace safety regulations, anti-discrimination laws, and protection for the right to form unions or lack thereof. The minimum wage only sets a floor under wages and not a very strict one. These other provisions all have a shaping effect on what must be paid to workers and therefore act to redistribute wealth wholesale, either downward or upward depending on how the policies are implemented.

Or consider trade policy. The government can adopt free trade agreements with developing countries that encourage American companies to invest there so as to produce goods for export to the U.S. market. If it does, the result will be a lowering of investment in the U.S., driving down prevailing wages. Or it can instead regulate foreign trade so as to promote investment in the U.S. rather than at home, or perhaps here plus other developed high-wage economies, which would have the opposite effect. But it can't not regulate foreign trade.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? The govenment inevitably shapes the economy. It has enormous effects on how wealth is distributed from top to bottom. There's no way for it not to. There is simply no way to have a "laissez-faire" "free-market" economy in a modern industrialized world. The market is as much a product of government regulation as it is of private enterprise.

EDIT: I do agree that stateless communism is impossible in a modern economy. I am not a Marxist, for that and a few other reasons.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The left interprets the issue as a problem with free markets, when it is a problem with government.

This assumes that the market and the rules enforced by the state are easily distinguishable. For example, it is typical to think of patent enforcement as a part of the "market" when, in fact, without the state, intellectual "property" would cease to exist*. Whether this intervention is of net benefit to society is debatable, but nonetheless, patents are a foundational aspect of industrial capitalism that conservatives and many libertarians consider completely appropriate. So, there is no way to get government "out" of the market. The government establishes ground rules that determine economic outcomes at a root level.

* One can argue that the same is true for physical property. There is a notable difference in that people do, typically, recognize and accept the ownership of objects and, to a lesser extent, land use. Ideas, on the other hand, are viewed as something to be shared.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Instead of taking away the money so the politicians are not tempted, how about taking away their power so they have nothing to sell?

The problem with that view is that either a) the government has nothing to do, in which case you're advocating anarchism** or b) you're just labeling particular government actions as "natural" and "free market" based solely on your own whim. You're not really advocating taking away power, so much as restricting who can benefit from state action. Minarchism is incoherent and utopian. There is no fallen moment when America had "too much" intervention. The nature and type of intervention has changed, but there has never been a time when the government wasn't determining economic outcomes.


** Which you obviously don't advocate. Justin '77 is an anarchist, and does take this argument to its logical conclusion. Of course, this results in a decidedly more "leftist" tone to his politics.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Sort of like the government of Bell, California, then...

Don't think I've ever been to Bell and I'm not familiar with it, but as a general rule, government also sinks to the level of depravity allowed by law. And we shouldn't let it out without a keeper, either.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

This assumes that the market and the rules enforced by the state are easily distinguishable. For example, it is typical to think of patent enforcement as a part of the "market" when, in fact, without the state, intellectual "property" would cease to exist*. Whether this intervention is of net benefit to society is debatable, but nonetheless, patents are a foundational aspect of industrial capitalism that conservatives and many libertarians consider completely appropriate. So, there is no way to get government "out" of the market. The government establishes ground rules that determine economic outcomes at a root level.

* One can argue that the same is true for physical property. There is a notable difference in that people do, typically, recognize and accept the ownership of objects and, to a lesser extent, land use. Ideas, on the other hand, are viewed as something to be shared.



The problem with that view is that either a) the government has nothing to do, in which case you're advocating anarchism** or b) you're just labeling particular government actions as "natural" and "free market" based solely on your own whim. You're not really advocating taking away power, so much as restricting who can benefit from state action. Minarchism is incoherent and utopian. There is no fallen moment when America had "too much" intervention. The nature and type of intervention has changed, but there has never been a time when the government wasn't determining economic outcomes.


** Which you obviously don't advocate. Justin '77 is an anarchist, and does take this argument to its logical conclusion. Of course, this results in a decidedly more "leftist" tone to his politics.

The examples being given here to "counter" my statements are mostly examples of the government protecting property rights. The policies of the left I'm talking about are all about violating property rights, either by telling people what they can or cannot do with their property, or simply taking their property from them for whatever purpose the government sees fit.

My original post that you're quoting was about the origin of government corruption. My argument was that it does not originate from business or corporations. It originates from government, and the power it holds. Specifically, the power to violate property rights, create anti-competitive regulations, and so on.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The examples being given here to "counter" my statements are mostly examples of the government protecting property rights. The policies of the left I'm talking about are all about violating property rights, either by telling people what they can or cannot do with their property, or simply taking their property from them for whatever purpose the government sees fit.

But property rights are arbitrary and shifting, and the policies that "protect" property rights are rooted in ancient privilege, and to a large extent create property rather than merely defending it. Kurt pointed out how the example of intellectual property runs counter to common intuitive usage, and that's a good example but not the only one. Look at the concept of owning land. In a pre-civilized society, the idea of individual land ownership was wholly foreign. It was introduced with the onset of agriculture, but even then, proto-civilized societies typically modified it or avoided it altogether. Many, such as the Iroquois, continued the communal land ownership that was normal in pre-civilized life. Others, such as pre-monarchic Israel, redistributed land ownership periodically. Even as late as medieval Europe, land was thought of as belonging to the Crown and only "held" by feudal lords. Of course, that was a fiction, but an illustrative one. Land ownership, which is the original form of capital property ownership, is not instinctive or intuitive with humans and is an artifact of civilization.

The only instinctive and intuitive from of property is personal property, stuff that I own and intend for my personal use. The further one moves from this idea, through ownership of land, into ownership of abstract conceptions such as a company, and even of ideas, the less natural and intuitive property becomes.

So with the possible exception of personal property owned and intended for personal use, there isn't anything natural or pre-legal about property. The state doesn't "protect" rights to property in the same sense as it protects people's lives. That is, it doesn't extend legal safeguards over something pre-existing and natural. Rather, it creates a right to own capital property.

My original post that you're quoting was about the origin of government corruption. My argument was that it does not originate from business or corporations. It originates from government, and the power it holds. Specifically, the power to violate property rights, create anti-competitive regulations, and so on.

But Kurt's point, and mine, is that this power is inseparable from the existence of a capitalist, or indeed any modern industrial, economy in the first place. There is no choice about exercising it. It's true that there would be no possibility of corporate interests influencing government to use that power on the corporations' behalf if the government didn't have that power. But then, if the government didn't have that power, the corporations themselves would be nonexistent, making that corruption doubly impossible.

What you're arguing here is sort of like the president of a company that is having trouble with consumer boycott advocating ending the boycott by going out of business. It would work, technically speaking -- but it's self-defeating.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Libertarians are not anarchists

Quite a few of them are. Take, for example, this article about libertarianism and union solidarity. Here you have a libertarian anarchist arguing that, while sometimes off base, unions deserve the support of libertarians. I imagine you disagree, but I would encourage you to read the whole article and see whether you're consistently applying your own principles.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The examples being given here to "counter" my statements are mostly examples of the government protecting property rights.

And where do property rights originate? Consider just how much property in our society was originally acquired through violence and conquest. Most, if not all, of the world's land can reasonably be said to have been allocated by force rather than free occupation and use. Even in cases where "homesteading" was encouraged by the U.S., there was often violence involved in the acquisition (amongst whites) and many (non-whites) were completely excluded from the legal process where such land was "homesteaded." There is also the problem of certain non-whites who were already using the land in question, just not as intensively as the settlers intended.

There are many other questions about ownership that all legal systems must answer and where those answers have huge consequences. A partial list would include: the status of absentee ownership, time of abandonment, rules of inheritance, distinguishing between harmful and inconsequential externalities, which qualities of ownership can be severed or shared and which cannot, etc.

The only way that a state can be neutral on these matters is to have mechanisms for considerable local variance in these rules -- at which point, you don't really have a state anymore.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The policies of the left I'm talking about are all about violating property rights, either by telling people what they can or cannot do with their property, or simply taking their property from them for whatever purpose the government sees fit.

All you've done is selectively chosen certain state actions as being "protections" of property rights and others as "violations." The only reasonable way to distinguish between a market and a command economy is to distinguish between open, free competition and monopoly.

To reiterate an earlier point: Do you consider patents to be good policy? If yes, then you support a temporary monopoly backed up the power of the state. How is that a market?

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

My original post that you're quoting was about the origin of government corruption. My argument was that it does not originate from business or corporations. It originates from government, and the power it holds. Specifically, the power to violate property rights, create anti-competitive regulations, and so on.

These rules are facilitated by the state, yes -- but who is determining the content of the rules? Obviously the wealthy elite. There's a chicken-and-egg quality to this debate that strikes me as pointless. Did Dick Cheney switch sides when he moved from Halliburton to the White House? No, he was a part of the ruling class throughout, and still is.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The examples being given here to "counter" my statements are mostly examples of the government protecting property rights. The policies of the left I'm talking about are all about violating property rights, either by telling people what they can or cannot do with their property, or simply taking their property from them for whatever purpose the government sees fit.

My original post that you're quoting was about the origin of government corruption. My argument was that it does not originate from business or corporations. It originates from government, and the power it holds. Specifically, the power to violate property rights, create anti-competitive regulations, and so on.

Sure, just let the government endorse whatever the biggest landowners and other property owners want to do and all will be wonderful. Liberty extends to the ability to do to people whatever those who control the means of survival wish to do to keep the helpless in line.

Human dignity trumps property rights. That explains why all civilized societies prohibit slavery even though such a prohibition denies a "property right" that could be very lucrative for an owner. Tangible property is a clear right in most places, but an income stream unencumbered by taxes is not so clear a right. Taxes are necessary for government, and they are most appropriately applied as they do least harm. A tax that denies a plutocrat the means of buying another horse for the stable is less harmful than one that takes food off a laborer's table.

As a rule, the rich often benefit out of proportion to government expenditures. They may have gotten more:

1. Public education. High-school dropouts generally don't get as much out of life as do college graduates from (often) state-subsidized colleges and universities. People that the system fails don't have as much duty to make contributions as those that the system allows to succeed.

2. Highways. Government-built or subsidized transportation can obviously bring more luxuries to a plutocrat than they can to a pauper.

3. Defense. When commies were a real threat, the rich had far more to lose than did the poor.

4. Law enforcement. The rich have more to protect.

5. Courts. Enforcement of contracts that underpin successful commerce is essential to capitalism.

6. Government contracts. Most large corporations have some potential for lucrative dealings with the government.

7. Welfare. Better welfare than revolution, wouldn't you say? When the property owners bungle their role in the economy, the government obviously must step in lest revolutionaries decide to chop off heads or shoot people seen as causes of recent suffering and hardship.

8. Control of the money supply. The connection between the money supply and economic activity should be obvious enough.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

But property rights are arbitrary and shifting, and the policies that "protect" property rights are rooted in ancient privilege, and to a large extent create property rather than merely defending it.

Plus, if you really force yourself to think about it, the concept of land ownership is bizarre. I know a lot of Westernized property rights stem from the right to own real property, but it is an odd concept that someone could simply claim a piece of land for themselves, fight off others for control of it and develop a system of laws to protect your "owned" land.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Quite a few of them are. Take, for example, this article about libertarianism and union solidarity. Here you have a libertarian anarchist arguing that, while sometimes off base, unions deserve the support of libertarians. I imagine you disagree, but I would encourage you to read the whole article and see whether you're consistently applying your own principles.

Left-leaning libertarianism (which is very close to an oxymoron, although I leave room for potential semantic confusion), like all left-leaning ideologies, requires a mountain of rationalization to even begin to appear coherent, and even then at best leaves the issues more confused than when the advocate started talking.

In the article you linked, the author used the words "corporations" and "the rich" interchangeably. That was enough for me to conclude that he was an idiot and tune him out, although I did read it completely. If he had a point, I'm not sure what it was, other than that labor unions and libertarianism are not at odds, which he completely failed to prove. I would say there is no problem with private sector labor unions, as long as they're voluntary. As soon as someone is forced to join one, they are oppressive organizations.

Arguing about how some long-dead person or group of people may or may not have illegitimately acquired property is utterly irrelevant to the present and the future, and serves as nothing more than an excuse to punish people now living for the actions of someone they never even knew.

Libertarians and anarchists, as the two groups exist today, are not remotely the same thing. Anarchists are continually trying to claim the libertarian label for themselves, because they know it is much better advertising than the appropriate label: communist. The goal of anarchists is the stateless communist Utopia that Marx looked forward to, without the whole twisted mess of Marx's theories about how to get there.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Plus, if you really force yourself to think about it, the concept of land ownership is bizarre. I know a lot of Westernized property rights stem from the right to own real property, but it is an odd concept that someone could simply claim a piece of land for themselves, fight off others for control of it and develop a system of laws to protect your "owned" land.

I like to think of "property rights" in an ironic way, at least to its defenders. Property rights are a government program, because our tax money goes to pay for police, courts, clerks, etc. to make the deeds and enforce these rights (I won't put rights in quotes; I think property is a good thing, to a degree; but not the shibboleth its proponents claim. But "property is theft" and "capital is theft" are correct at least as much as "taxes are theft").

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

If the Democrats' only hope is to convince people that 30 years of a booming economy is bad, while the economies of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are good, they really are through.

Reagan's performance (average real growth of 3.69%) was an improvement over Carter's (average real growth of 2.83%), which everyone thinks was horrible - even though it was better than Nixon/Ford at 2.34%. Of course, Reagan had the luxury of starting in a trough and ending on a peak. George HW Bush only managed 2.02%, while Clinton managed 3.84%. Bush the Younger was running 2.39%, just before the bottom dropped out. If you think how much debt was needed to fuel a piss-poor performance, and the comparison is even worse.

If you take all the years since 1929 (the first year real data is available), and compare Rs to Ds, the average is Rs: 1.91%, Ds: 5.68%. If you prefer to start with Eisenhower rather than Hoover, the numbers are less striking but still favor the Ds by a wide margin, Rs: 2.62%, Ds: 4.24%.

Though the BS still seems to be working for you, you guys need a better story.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Reagan's performance (average real growth of 3.69%) was an improvement over Carter's (average real growth of 2.83%), which everyone thinks was horrible , even though it was better than Nixon/Ford at 2.34%. Of course, Reagan had the luxury of starting in a trough and ending on a peak. George HW Bush only managed 2.02%, while Clinton managed 3.84%. Bush the Younger was running 2.39%, just before the bottom dropped out.

If you take all the years since 1929 (the first year real data is available), and compare Rs to Ds, the average is Rs: 1.91%, Ds: 5.68%. If you prefer to start with Eisenhower rather than Roosevelt, the numbers are less striking but still favor the Ds by a wide margin, Rs: 2.62%, Ds: 4.24%.

You guys need a better story, though the BS seems to be working for you.

I believe the issue in question was "the economic policies of the last 30 years", instituted by Reagan and more or less maintained by all of his successors until Obama. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower are therefore irrelevant to the subject, and if they are to be counted, they should be counted with all of the presidents between FDR and Reagan. Of course then you run into the problem of Kennedy, whose across-the-board tax cuts were the precursor to Reagan's, but were then quickly followed by the welfare state insanity of LBJ.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Libertarians and anarchists, as the two groups exist today, are not remotely the same thing. Anarchists are continually trying to claim the libertarian label for themselves, because they know it is much better advertising than the appropriate label: communist. The goal of anarchists is the stateless communist Utopia that Marx looked forward to, without the whole twisted mess of Marx's theories about how to get there.

I suppose you think that is an accusation? If Marx' communist utopia were feasible, it would represent the ideal society. No more greed, no more wars, no more government, no more hunger, everyone living in peace and sharing all the world, like John Lennon's song. Who, aside from the greedy and selfish, could complain about that? Why do you think Marxism has had so much appeal for so many people over the years? The only thing wrong with it is that it can't be done.

In any case, that doesn't put anarchism in opposition to libertarianism. Libertarians basically are anarchists who have made a compromise with reality, as they are liberals who have refused to make a further compromise with reality. And anarchists are liberals without any respect for reality whatsoever. All three philosophies properly belong on the left, not the right. As, of course, does Marxism -- not for the turnip-ghost reason you would probably assume (since clearly anarchism does not push for "big government," nor in the theoretical end does marxism, and in fact nor does either liberalism or libertarianism, so you're batting zero there), but because all four are motivated by the well-being of ordinary people against the oppression of privileged elites.

I read over the piece that Kurt linked, too. Here is a very important passage that I find represents a common recognition by left-libertarians. In fact, one can distinguish left- from right-libertarians on the basis of whether they acknowledge this economic/political reality.

Working class activism is generally perceived in libertarian circles as collectivist, riddled with economic fallacies, and as yet another coercive state intrusion into the voluntary and peaceful exchange of goods. This very well might be true, but mainstream labor activism is in reality a well-justified but misled reaction to the horrors of state power and capitalism. After all, the elite have been using the state to rig the scales in their favor for virtually all of history. It should come as no surprise when people fight fire with fire by trying to steer the state into advancing their interests instead of that of their oppressors. Unfortunately, libertarians leave out the first part of this cycle and focus exclusively on the statism of the unionizers, ignoring the original anti-market behavior committed by the capitalists.

These positions are chosen as a result of the system of false choices which confront us politically

Now I don't necessarily agree with everything that author says, but this is pretty clear. The government intervenes in the economy on behalf of entrenched private power, and that is the source of the capitalist system in the first place. This is, in large measure, an economic injustice inflicted on the people by the state, and so to combat this is in keeping with libertarian principles. To forget that, to pretend that the capitalist system arose naturally and could persist without constant government support, while at the same time working against all efforts to ameliorate the vile results, is not in keeping with libertarian principles.

Capitalism and libertarianism are natural foes, not allies.