Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:30:44 +0000
From: Iain McKay <iain.mckay-AT-zetnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: LibCapitalism, Enemy of Rationality


hello all

"M.A. Johnson" wrote: 
> MJ
>    Aaah  ... the continued failure to comprehend the
>    difference between PRIVATE and GOVERNMENT.
> Iain
>   let me guess. The libcap approves of PRIVATE coercion,
>   authority, exploitation and oppression while opposing
>   GOVERNMENT coercion, authority, exploitation and
>   oppression (except when it ensures the former).
>   Am I right?
> 
> MJ
> Well, Cocksucker (is that the correct protocol?) I suppose
> you would FIRST need to define what it is you imagine
> 'private coercion' to entail.

wow, insults in the first reply. Always shows a loser who
avoids addressing the issue.

private coercion? well, how about a boss telling a worker
"do this very dangerous job or I fire you"? That is an 
order based on an unpleasant consequences if not done. 
Ah, of course, the worker is free to leave. just as the
citizen is free to leave the state. please explain the
difference. I'll be interested to see the logic in why
one is different.

Or, for that matter, say a big corporation which kicks the
local tribe off their land. Private company coercing others.
and if you say that the corporation is violating their 
property rights, then you have to admit to a third party
(the law, society, the state, whatever) which is part of
the two-model transaction model you said capitalism was
based on. the third party which defines what a right is and
is not.

> Iain
>   seems to me the central fallacy is thinking that the boss
>   ordering you about is any different than the politician
>   doing it.
> MJ
> Perhaps this is a great portion of your troubles.

oh, now I understand. It's all a case of belief. If you believe hard
enough then the obvious similiarities simply disappear. Objective 
reality does not exist, it's all in your mind. Is that it?

but notice how our capitalist fails to defend his ideas or even
address the criticisms. Not a coincidence, me thinks!

> I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and
> yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish
> to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his
> back.  -- Leo Tolstoy

funny, that quote by Tolstoy was directed (if memory serves) at the
Russian landlord class. Ah, the irony! 

As you quote Tolstoy, what do you think of his anti-capitalist comments 
on property? Why did you not quote, for example, Tolstoy when he argued 
this:

"Tens of thousands of acres of forest lands belonging to one proprietor
-- 
while thousands of people close by have no fuel -- need protection by
violence. 
So, too, do factories and works where several generations of workmen
have been 
defrauded and are still being defrauded. Yet more do the hundreds of
thousands 
of bushels of grain, belonging to one owner, who has held them back to
sell at 
triple price in time of famine." 

or

"the manufacturer is a man whose income consists of value squeezed out
of the 
workers, and whose whole occupation is based on forced, unnatural
labour"

yes, yet another "anarcho"-capitalist who quotes extremely selectively
from
real anarchists. Stick with quoting capitalists, it's less embrassassing
--
for all of us!

Iain