Liberterians Love Fascism?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
81

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:
I’d say harder questions for libertarians would be should a free market be open to a nation that employs child slave, or forced labor. Taking the one means of capital that is available to every citizen and devaluing it by force seems counterintuitive to a free market. Allowing these countries to participate with no barriers is largely the same as acknowledging it is ok to take capital by force.

[/quote]

What in the hell makes you think Libertarians support child labor or slave labor? Seriously, where did you get that?

You guys seems to have some cooked up retardation thinking that libertarians support no government what so ever and let total anarchy rule?? All they are asking for is reducing the size of government and preserve the liberties of all. To not let govenment rule every apect of life from window tint to the speed you can push your shopping buggy at the store.
Not letting militias run wild on the street raping women and shooting up towns. Outside of Liftvs, I don’t know anybody supporting anarchy.

I don’t care that you don’t like libertarianism but criticize it’s actual tenets, not that garbage you have been led to believe by something or somebody…[/quote]

Libertarians support a free market internationally. If we do business with countries that use forced or slave labor without putting barriers in the market that is at least a tacit endorsement that the value of the free market overrides the morality of using such labor, but thats not the point I was trying to make. If we have an international market with no barriers and some participants bring down the value of one of the means of capital…in this case labor…artificially by force it compels the other actors in the market to keep the value of labor lower than it would be in a truly free market.
[/quote]

Support for a free market does not imply support for slave labor. There are laws and regulations to deal with it, libertarians do not support slave labor, sorry but you are introducing a huge stawman here.

Second, if you live where their is no free market, it’s all slave labor.

82

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:
I’d say harder questions for libertarians would be should a free market be open to a nation that employs child slave, or forced labor. Taking the one means of capital that is available to every citizen and devaluing it by force seems counterintuitive to a free market. Allowing these countries to participate with no barriers is largely the same as acknowledging it is ok to take capital by force.

[/quote]

What in the hell makes you think Libertarians support child labor or slave labor? Seriously, where did you get that?

You guys seems to have some cooked up retardation thinking that libertarians support no government what so ever and let total anarchy rule?? All they are asking for is reducing the size of government and preserve the liberties of all. To not let govenment rule every apect of life from window tint to the speed you can push your shopping buggy at the store.
Not letting militias run wild on the street raping women and shooting up towns. Outside of Liftvs, I don’t know anybody supporting anarchy.

I don’t care that you don’t like libertarianism but criticize it’s actual tenets, not that garbage you have been led to believe by something or somebody…[/quote]

Libertarians support a free market internationally. If we do business with countries that use forced or slave labor without putting barriers in the market that is at least a tacit endorsement that the value of the free market overrides the morality of using such labor, but thats not the point I was trying to make. If we have an international market with no barriers and some participants bring down the value of one of the means of capital…in this case labor…artificially by force it compels the other actors in the market to keep the value of labor lower than it would be in a truly free market.
[/quote]

Support for a free market does not imply support for slave labor. There are laws and regulations to deal with it, libertarians do not support slave labor, sorry but you are introducing a huge stawman here.

Second, if you live where their is no free market, it’s all slave labor.[/quote]
You aren’t really getting what I mean. I am not saying libertarians support slave labor like its a plank of their economic policy.

By and large libertarian policies arise from the idea that in a free market those that have merit will prosper and that this is a good thing. They are against government force effecting capital. To make it simple capital is basically property, labor and natural resources. So libertarians would be totally against slave labor, the government seizing property, the theft of natural resources.

Now if states that don’t follow these libertarian ideals are allowed to be a part of an international market they effect the costs of capital in the market. If you can pollute freely for example, the cost of natural resources are cheaper in that state. In the case of labor in states that use forced labor the value of labor is forced below what it would be in a free market. This effects the value of labor in other states that don’t allow this type of labor coercion. A couple ways to work around this are to refuse to do business with states that allow this or to tariff them so its not worthwhile for companies to either move factories to these countries to take advantage of said labor or to lower wages in their own country because of the availability of cheap labor elsewhere.

My point is that libertarians tend to be very vocal in defense of property but less so in defense of the devaluation of labor though the use of force. The value of labor effects the vast majority of citizens of a state much more than protecting private property.

83

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]koffea wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
[i]Friedrich von Hayek, who was, along with von Mises, one of the patron saints of modern libertarianism, was as infatuated with the Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet as von Mises was with Mussolini

(…)

The dread of democracy by libertarians and classical liberals is justified. Libertarianism really is incompatible with democracy. Most libertarians have made it clear which of the two they prefer. The only question that remains to be settled is why anyone should pay attention to libertarians.[/i]

http://politics.salon.com/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim/singleton/

Is this true, fellow libertarians? Did you masters really prefer dictatorship and/or fascism over democracy?

Is that what you prefer?

Discuss.[/quote]

“the road to serfdom”, is essentially a book condemning socialism and what hyek believed to be the natural outcome of all socialist countries: fascism. Fascism being the ultimate destruction of freedom. so to suggest that hyek preferred to fascism is to really ignore his entire body of works.

as for pinochet, it was largely his economic reforms that friedman and hyek praised. not the man. they argued that only a dictator could implement economic reforms so quickly, but that once done he should step down and reform a democratic republic. [/quote]

Thank you for your explanation.

What reason do you have to believe that the role of government it currently holds won’t be appropriated by big corporations if a true free market is established? Iow, corporate fascism.

With the immense resources conglomerates have, what stops them from coalescing into Big Brother, the business edition?
[/quote]

1st question - in many ways this has already happened. an example is the military industrial complex. Obama administration is finding out right now just how many jobs are reliant on this insane budget. However, since this is about Hayek, Hayek actually warned about this and the support of national monopolies - especially in the case of the military industrial complex.

“Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers of coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play (in peaceful times).”

as for the other question, i would suggest that the failures of the mega mergers in the late 1990’s shows that it does not work. Mega corporations are not any more hyper competent than say . . . government.

84

[quote]koffea wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What reason do you have to believe that the role of government it currently holds won’t be appropriated by big corporations if a true free market is established? Iow, corporate fascism.

With the immense resources conglomerates have, what stops them from coalescing into Big Brother, the business edition?
[/quote]

1st question - in many ways this has already happened. an example is the military industrial complex. Obama administration is finding out right now just how many jobs are reliant on this insane budget. However, since this is about Hayek, Hayek actually warned about this and the support of national monopolies - especially in the case of the military industrial complex.

“Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers of coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play (in peaceful times).”

as for the other question, i would suggest that the failures of the mega mergers in the late 1990’s shows that it does not work. Mega corporations are not any more hyper competent than say . . . government.[/quote]

Incompetence is part of human nature, imo. A conglomerate is, perhaps, by definition inefficient but with enough recources inefficiency does not automatically mean bankruptcy.

But, to be honest, libertarianism confuses me. Libertarians want an unregulated free market? Or must there be at least some kind of government regulation to prevent abuse?

85

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Redistribution of wealth isn’t evil.[/quote]
If it is involuntary, then yes it is. It’s very evil. It’s theft and nothing else.
[/quote]

Theft assumes legitimate ownership in the first place. Fact is you have no inherent right to something you did not create or that you did not trade with someone who created it (or some such somewhere down the line).

Which means that claiming ownership of land is theft. You did not create it and neither did any other human. It does not belong to you. The same applies to oil and raw resources.

And in turn things that directly rely upon the ownership of land and raw resources also do not entirely belong to you.

It is the collective that gives the individual access to this property and allows them to treat it as private property. But we do this because it is for the general good. Not because they hold an absolute right.

86

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:
I’d say harder questions for libertarians would be should a free market be open to a nation that employs child slave, or forced labor. Taking the one means of capital that is available to every citizen and devaluing it by force seems counterintuitive to a free market. Allowing these countries to participate with no barriers is largely the same as acknowledging it is ok to take capital by force.

[/quote]

What in the hell makes you think Libertarians support child labor or slave labor? Seriously, where did you get that?

You guys seems to have some cooked up retardation thinking that libertarians support no government what so ever and let total anarchy rule?? All they are asking for is reducing the size of government and preserve the liberties of all. To not let govenment rule every apect of life from window tint to the speed you can push your shopping buggy at the store.
Not letting militias run wild on the street raping women and shooting up towns. Outside of Liftvs, I don’t know anybody supporting anarchy.

I don’t care that you don’t like libertarianism but criticize it’s actual tenets, not that garbage you have been led to believe by something or somebody…[/quote]

Libertarians support a free market internationally. If we do business with countries that use forced or slave labor without putting barriers in the market that is at least a tacit endorsement that the value of the free market overrides the morality of using such labor, but thats not the point I was trying to make. If we have an international market with no barriers and some participants bring down the value of one of the means of capital…in this case labor…artificially by force it compels the other actors in the market to keep the value of labor lower than it would be in a truly free market.
[/quote]

Support for a free market does not imply support for slave labor. There are laws and regulations to deal with it, libertarians do not support slave labor, sorry but you are introducing a huge stawman here.

Second, if you live where their is no free market, it’s all slave labor.[/quote]
You aren’t really getting what I mean. I am not saying libertarians support slave labor like its a plank of their economic policy.

By and large libertarian policies arise from the idea that in a free market those that have merit will prosper and that this is a good thing. They are against government force effecting capital. To make it simple capital is basically property, labor and natural resources. So libertarians would be totally against slave labor, the government seizing property, the theft of natural resources.

Now if states that don’t follow these libertarian ideals are allowed to be a part of an international market they effect the costs of capital in the market. If you can pollute freely for example, the cost of natural resources are cheaper in that state. In the case of labor in states that use forced labor the value of labor is forced below what it would be in a free market. This effects the value of labor in other states that don’t allow this type of labor coercion. A couple ways to work around this are to refuse to do business with states that allow this or to tariff them so its not worthwhile for companies to either move factories to these countries to take advantage of said labor or to lower wages in their own country because of the availability of cheap labor elsewhere.

My point is that libertarians tend to be very vocal in defense of property but less so in defense of the devaluation of labor though the use of force. The value of labor effects the vast majority of citizens of a state much more than protecting private property.[/quote]

Who is using labor by force, and which libertarians are supporting them? I suppose you must have at least one example, correct?

87

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]koffea wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What reason do you have to believe that the role of government it currently holds won’t be appropriated by big corporations if a true free market is established? Iow, corporate fascism.

With the immense resources conglomerates have, what stops them from coalescing into Big Brother, the business edition?
[/quote]

1st question - in many ways this has already happened. an example is the military industrial complex. Obama administration is finding out right now just how many jobs are reliant on this insane budget. However, since this is about Hayek, Hayek actually warned about this and the support of national monopolies - especially in the case of the military industrial complex.

“Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers of coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play (in peaceful times).”

as for the other question, i would suggest that the failures of the mega mergers in the late 1990’s shows that it does not work. Mega corporations are not any more hyper competent than say . . . government.[/quote]

Incompetence is part of human nature, imo. A conglomerate is, perhaps, by definition inefficient but with enough recources inefficiency does not automatically mean bankruptcy.

But, to be honest, libertarianism confuses me. Libertarians want an unregulated free market? Or must there be at least some kind of government regulation to prevent abuse?

[/quote]

Geez e, the information is out there. You pulling crap out of thin air.

“The only proper role of
government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a
legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.”

You can read their stances on issues here:

It took me two seconds to google it.

88

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
But at least in a free market we aren’t forced to buy from slave employers…and what’s more in a free market we are not slaves.

One can dream.[/quote]

Their is not a market that is totally free from government meddling. In fact it is government meddling that has caused the even bigger rift between rich and poor. In fact, in absense of the meddling some of these super rich that got even richer, would have become poor, because in lieu of a bail out, their interests would not have survived. But what happened is that the government sheltered their interests and then virtually ever dime they made became 100% profit.

The “let 'em fail” mantra wasn’t with out wisdom. If was fear of the unknown that drove the substantial tax payer checks.

89

[quote]phaethon wrote:

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Redistribution of wealth isn’t evil.[/quote]
If it is involuntary, then yes it is. It’s very evil. It’s theft and nothing else.
[/quote]

Theft assumes legitimate ownership in the first place. Fact is you have no inherent right to something you did not create or that you did not trade with someone who created it (or some such somewhere down the line).

Which means that claiming ownership of land is theft. You did not create it and neither did any other human. It does not belong to you. The same applies to oil and raw resources.

And in turn things that directly rely upon the ownership of land and raw resources also do not entirely belong to you.

It is the collective that gives the individual access to this property and allows them to treat it as private property. But we do this because it is for the general good. Not because they hold an absolute right.[/quote]

So if I farm a land for 10 years, irrigate it and increase its yield by a factor of 10 I don’t have as much as the tiniest claim on it? I strongly disagree with that. Once you’ve worked on land, once you’ve invested significant labor into improving it beyond its natural state it becomes yours. Now I’ll fully agree that when entities like the US government lay claim to vast swathes of land they haven’t even seen before, that’s illegitimate. But homesteading definitely isn’t.

90

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]groo wrote:
I’d say harder questions for libertarians would be should a free market be open to a nation that employs child slave, or forced labor. Taking the one means of capital that is available to every citizen and devaluing it by force seems counterintuitive to a free market. Allowing these countries to participate with no barriers is largely the same as acknowledging it is ok to take capital by force.

[/quote]

What in the hell makes you think Libertarians support child labor or slave labor? Seriously, where did you get that?

You guys seems to have some cooked up retardation thinking that libertarians support no government what so ever and let total anarchy rule?? All they are asking for is reducing the size of government and preserve the liberties of all. To not let govenment rule every apect of life from window tint to the speed you can push your shopping buggy at the store.
Not letting militias run wild on the street raping women and shooting up towns. Outside of Liftvs, I don’t know anybody supporting anarchy.

I don’t care that you don’t like libertarianism but criticize it’s actual tenets, not that garbage you have been led to believe by something or somebody…[/quote]

Libertarians support a free market internationally. If we do business with countries that use forced or slave labor without putting barriers in the market that is at least a tacit endorsement that the value of the free market overrides the morality of using such labor, but thats not the point I was trying to make. If we have an international market with no barriers and some participants bring down the value of one of the means of capital…in this case labor…artificially by force it compels the other actors in the market to keep the value of labor lower than it would be in a truly free market.
[/quote]

Support for a free market does not imply support for slave labor. There are laws and regulations to deal with it, libertarians do not support slave labor, sorry but you are introducing a huge stawman here.

Second, if you live where their is no free market, it’s all slave labor.[/quote]
You aren’t really getting what I mean. I am not saying libertarians support slave labor like its a plank of their economic policy.

By and large libertarian policies arise from the idea that in a free market those that have merit will prosper and that this is a good thing. They are against government force effecting capital. To make it simple capital is basically property, labor and natural resources. So libertarians would be totally against slave labor, the government seizing property, the theft of natural resources.

Now if states that don’t follow these libertarian ideals are allowed to be a part of an international market they effect the costs of capital in the market. If you can pollute freely for example, the cost of natural resources are cheaper in that state. In the case of labor in states that use forced labor the value of labor is forced below what it would be in a free market. This effects the value of labor in other states that don’t allow this type of labor coercion. A couple ways to work around this are to refuse to do business with states that allow this or to tariff them so its not worthwhile for companies to either move factories to these countries to take advantage of said labor or to lower wages in their own country because of the availability of cheap labor elsewhere.

My point is that libertarians tend to be very vocal in defense of property but less so in defense of the devaluation of labor though the use of force. The value of labor effects the vast majority of citizens of a state much more than protecting private property.[/quote]

Who is using labor by force, and which libertarians are supporting them? I suppose you must have at least one example, correct?[/quote]

Are you arguing against the existence of forced labor?

Or against the idea that there is no regulation against using it in a free market?

Or that it effects the overall value of labor?

Or are you simply taking a contrarian position.

Every country including the US uses forced labor to some degree. It only becomes an issue when its allowed in the private sector as part of the free market where it devalues labor.

I have never seen a libertarian view of macro which would allow tariffs or holding states out of an international market because of the use of such labor. If you can provide one I am interested in seeing it, but until then I’ll go with the assumption that free markets have no barriers. In fact there would be no labor laws in a libertarian free market other than no coercion.

Its more of a consequence of an entirely free market with no regulation as states with no compunction will take advantage of the market through coercive force.

There are organizations to combat this abuse of labor and economic studies on it. I can link them if you like, but I don’t think its necessary as they are easy to find.

The only thing that would be contentious is how much the use of forced labor in an international market effects the value of labor.

91

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:
So if I farm a land for 10 years, irrigate it and increase its yield by a factor of 10 I don’t have as much as the tiniest claim on it? I strongly disagree with that. Once you’ve worked on land, once you’ve invested significant labor into improving it beyond its natural state it becomes yours.
[/quote]

So if I hire you to work on my land for 10 years and you add significant value to it…you have a legitimate claim of ownership to it?

What if you came and worked on my land, significantly increasing its value, without ever asking for a penny? Do you then have a legitimate claim of ownership?

You sound like a crazy commie who thinks those who create value from private property have a claim to ownership of it. All that crazy crap about the workers owning the means of production seems appropriate here.

In truth you don’t have any more claim to it than anyone else. Perhaps I got significantly more value in terms of enjoyment walking around the undeveloped land before you turned it into farmland. It is society that gives you ownership of the land because we acknowledge that you are generally increasing the value of the land for society as a whole. It is not an inherent right you get from simply working on it.

In the example you have provided you have a reasonable claim to the actual food you produced with the farm. But certainly not the land itself. And in truth at least a portion of that food belongs to society for granting you use of the land.

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:
But homesteading definitely isn’t.[/quote]

By what reasoning? That if you improve or utilize or add value to something it becomes yours?

92

Property belongs to those who claim it and are able to hold on to it either trough their own ability to defend it from others who want to claim ownership or by having an external entity defend it for you aka a state. It is as simple as that regarding property. No need for a moral legitimation for it.

ps. Regarding gaius`s wiews on property and that “the fruits of your labor are yours” idea is from Lock. Both socialists and liberalists( free-market fans ) have used it to justify their position. From an idealistic wiew point, Locks wiews on property rights are good, but they have sadly enough no corelation with how the real world funktioning.

Just my 2cents regarding the topic.

93

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[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

One can dream.[/quote]

94

[quote]phaethon wrote:

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:
So if I farm a land for 10 years, irrigate it and increase its yield by a factor of 10 I don’t have as much as the tiniest claim on it? I strongly disagree with that. Once you’ve worked on land, once you’ve invested significant labor into improving it beyond its natural state it becomes yours.
[/quote]

So if I hire you to work on my land for 10 years and you add significant value to it…you have a legitimate claim of ownership to it?
[/quote]
No more claim than you allow him. The unowned land was UNOWNED so he made it his by “mixing his labour” with it. This is simply an extension of self-ownership. Your land is OWNED so he does not have a “right” to it.

This is not complicated stuff.

95

[quote]Jab1 wrote:

[quote]phaethon wrote:

[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:
So if I farm a land for 10 years, irrigate it and increase its yield by a factor of 10 I don’t have as much as the tiniest claim on it? I strongly disagree with that. Once you’ve worked on land, once you’ve invested significant labor into improving it beyond its natural state it becomes yours.
[/quote]

So if I hire you to work on my land for 10 years and you add significant value to it…you have a legitimate claim of ownership to it?
[/quote]
No more claim than you allow him. The unowned land was UNOWNED so he made it his by “mixing his labour” with it. This is simply an extension of self-ownership. Your land is OWNED so he does not have a “right” to it.

This is not complicated stuff.[/quote]

Actually its no more claim than the GOVERNMENT allows him. You have nothing to do with it. Look at taking the land from the Native Americans in the US, or the way that Israel was formed. Property is only owned and held through the force of the government backing it. If there was no government backing property would only be held by the rule of might.

96

[quote]groo wrote:
Property is only owned and held through the force of the government backing it. If there was no government backing property would only be held by the rule of might.
[/quote]

Ahem…

97

[quote]Jab1 wrote:
The unowned land was UNOWNED so he made it his by “mixing his labour” with it.
[/quote]

According to whom though? I just said I owned it because I wandered around on it (and I gained immense value from this walking around)? Would it have been mine even though I left it as undeveloped land?

How do we objectively measure value? I might value completely different things to you. Such that you think utilizing the land to produce a lot of food adds value…whereas I think leaving it to be a nature park adds value.

In which case could I have a legitimate claim to thousands of acres of land simply because I gained incredible value by knowing I owned the land?

[quote]Jab1 wrote:
This is not complicated stuff.[/quote]

Yet as far as I can see it just boils down to might makes right mixed with a little first come first served.

98

“Liberterians Love Fascism?”

Yes, and the sky is purple, frogs fly in the wind, and elephants jump over rainbows.

Are you serious? Lay off the drugs people.

99

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]koffea wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

What reason do you have to believe that the role of government it currently holds won’t be appropriated by big corporations if a true free market is established? Iow, corporate fascism.

With the immense resources conglomerates have, what stops them from coalescing into Big Brother, the business edition?
[/quote]

1st question - in many ways this has already happened. an example is the military industrial complex. Obama administration is finding out right now just how many jobs are reliant on this insane budget. However, since this is about Hayek, Hayek actually warned about this and the support of national monopolies - especially in the case of the military industrial complex.

“Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers of coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play (in peaceful times).”

as for the other question, i would suggest that the failures of the mega mergers in the late 1990’s shows that it does not work. Mega corporations are not any more hyper competent than say . . . government.[/quote]

Incompetence is part of human nature, imo. A conglomerate is, perhaps, by definition inefficient but with enough recources inefficiency does not automatically mean bankruptcy.

But, to be honest, libertarianism confuses me. Libertarians want an unregulated free market? Or must there be at least some kind of government regulation to prevent abuse?

[/quote]

Geez e, the information is out there. You pulling crap out of thin air.

“The only proper role of
government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a
legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.”

You can read their stances on issues here:

It took me two seconds to google it.[/quote]

the key words here being
“provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.”

essentially there are some regulations, and the government does play a role. what it does not protect against is mass hysteria. but i would argue that things such as the housing bubble, dot com bubble, etc and the regulations that have resulted from each of these has proven that the government really cant stop mass hysteria in a capitalist society. Actually, even the soviet union was not able to stamp out speculation under threat of death.