tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post5452741525866668895..comments2024-03-13T06:57:54.343+00:00Comments on Obnoxio The Clown: My take on left-libertarianismObnoxio The Clownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-63772536912372706142010-05-24T07:56:41.865+01:002010-05-24T07:56:41.865+01:00"Don't worry, Phil, you wont get a reply ..."Don't worry, Phil, you wont get a reply as I failed to elicit much debate from Obo post-challenge."<br /><br />Perhaps because I've got other things to do?Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-20370928691199880522010-05-24T07:36:42.785+01:002010-05-24T07:36:42.785+01:00"expropriation of surplus value–i.e., capital..."expropriation of surplus value–i.e., capitalism–cannot occur without state coercion to maintain the privilege of usurer, landlord, and capitalist"<br /><br />I'm really not sure I agree with this in the slightest. I am quite certain that surplus value can be created without the state. Carson is quite entitled to his opinion, but I don't think it's any more valid than any of the right-libertarians who believe such a thing is, indeed, possible.<br /><br />At a micro-economic level, it's quite easy to see that any voluntary trade between two parties involves some creation of value, so I'm not sure why a state is necessary for this to occur.Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-5505338072849319052010-05-24T07:30:58.389+01:002010-05-24T07:30:58.389+01:00@Tomrat: I think being out of the EU and having no...@Tomrat: I think being out of the EU and having no government to pay those subsidies would change things a little. :o)Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-33041475150936024412010-05-24T07:29:50.984+01:002010-05-24T07:29:50.984+01:00"In an anarchic society, without a state and ..."In an anarchic society, without a state and without an body of law, how do you have a free market?"<br /><br />One possible way is through voluntary submission to a private "regulator".<br /><br />One of the consequences of "we are where we are" is that the ownership of private land is already clearly defined. But that's my own personal "get-out" clause, other people have researched and postulated many different options and if a truly free and reasonably well-informed market existed, I'm sure that between 6 billion (or even 60 million) of us we could work something out.<br /><br />One of the things I haven't even thought about is what would happen with state-owned land, for instance. But I'm sure we'd work something out.Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-77314647655608918302010-05-23T18:46:39.636+01:002010-05-23T18:46:39.636+01:00Don't worry, Phil, you wont get a reply as I f...Don't worry, Phil, you wont get a reply as I failed to elicit much debate from Obo post-challenge. This is because he has no answers to the questions and comments posed in opposition to his stance.<br /><br />He has been thoroughly bested in debate.<br /><br />Unlucky Obby, better luck next time.John Demetriouhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08162148219333846404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-9187052927470169252010-05-23T10:41:19.721+01:002010-05-23T10:41:19.721+01:00"Why would you bother to expend any effort if..."Why would you bother to expend any effort if, in the UK, you would only get 1/61,000,000 of the reward you make from any given set of resources? (Excluding what you get from your direct labour.)"<br /><br />Obo,<br /><br />Since you've made exactly the fallacy I was referring to, I'll repost part of my comment from B&D's blog;<br /><br />The problem with right-libertarianism lies in private property. Free markets and free communism aren't incompatible, as long as both exist without coercion, and the likelihood is that practical application would see the two being closely interrelated.<br /><br /><b>Private property, however, requires coercive enforcement</b>. There is a common fallacy that communism means every bit of everything being divided into 6-billionths, but that's simply not true. <b>"Ownership" is determined by occupancy and use</b>, essentially Rothbard's homestead principle without the ability to keep something without ever returning to it yourself. In a property system, the state or something akin to it is required, and you're left with either feudalism or its private equivalent in corporatism.<br /><br />Or, as Kevin Carson put it, “expropriation of surplus value–i.e., capitalism–cannot occur without state coercion to maintain the privilege of usurer, landlord, and capitalist.”Phil Dickenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10997342020819898243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-29591268330817997762010-05-23T00:49:20.109+01:002010-05-23T00:49:20.109+01:00I know that Konkin and the agorists define "L...I know that Konkin and the agorists define "Left Libertarianism" as anarchists who are opposed to intellectual property.sconzeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01908181786934308463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-71233151014354989762010-05-21T22:21:50.496+01:002010-05-21T22:21:50.496+01:00@Obo
I accept your point that there is a raft of ...@Obo<br /><br />I accept your point that there is a raft of regulation already, but it is all basically shite, or counterproductive, & the few worthy scraps are poorly enforced.<br /><br />Something I doubt we could do without were the key parts of Glass-Steagall such as the seperation of commercial & investment banking. Anything that would allow the banks to hold us to ransom, again.<br /><br />@KingBingo<br /><br />Again, obviously I accept that what we have now is far from a free market, but my concern is that the free & unregulated financial system would also have severe pitfalls. If you take the seperation of investment & commercial banking on its own, you can see that not enforcing this played a part in allowing the 'too big to fail' situation.<br /><br />I'm as sure as I can be without a few years at the Mises Institute that there would need to be some safeguards.<br /><br />What am I missing?<br /><br />And please don't say a brain... =)BigGibbhttp://twitter.com/BigGibbnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-8763107116141643632010-05-21T11:49:54.167+01:002010-05-21T11:49:54.167+01:00My mind keeps coming back to this. It is the only...My mind keeps coming back to this. It is the only truly stimulating thing I have seen since I discovered the blogosphere last week, mainly for the reason that it resonates with beliefs I held in my adolescence, only half-remembered now. I would have been glad of the libertarian label; it has a ring about it that would have helped to wind up the opposition.Sam Bucketthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00664585344479727266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-77146384581021204472010-05-20T16:20:45.426+01:002010-05-20T16:20:45.426+01:00Obo
I'm very sorry for being slow to respond ...Obo<br /><br />I'm very sorry for being slow to respond to all this. Work has dragged me away from my blog and I've been, how does the excuse go?...busy.<br /><br />But I will write my take on this very soon.<br /><br />Good piece by the way.<br /><br />regards<br /><br />JDJohn Demetriouhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08162148219333846404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-68492388991891000542010-05-20T10:32:16.458+01:002010-05-20T10:32:16.458+01:00Anna, I'd be flattered if you did. ;o)Anna, I'd be flattered if you did. ;o)Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-40484981208274619772010-05-20T10:19:44.230+01:002010-05-20T10:19:44.230+01:00Obo,
Could I have permissiont to cross post this? ...Obo,<br />Could I have permissiont to cross post this? <br />It is excellent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-36049370683428850362010-05-20T09:42:20.160+01:002010-05-20T09:42:20.160+01:00“Alan Greenspan considered himself a libertarian &...“Alan Greenspan considered himself a libertarian & was a big Ayn Rand fan, but look what his so-called libertarian deregulation did to the western economy.”<br /><br /><br />BigGibb, <br /><br />Greenspan was in his youth an outspoken advocate for monetary responsibility, which is a shame because he abandoned those beliefs in the fed and substantially increased the money supply. This lead to false signals to the market and mal-investment. <br /><br />This mal-investment was amplified by government policy that forced banks to act in a non-optimal way. For example the US 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. It forced banks to make sub-prime lending to non-crediworthy borrowers. <br /><br />I am perfectly happy to concede to you that the markets caused the crash in 2008 and indeed all other modern crashes. The greatest favour you could do to your understanding of the world you live in is to ask what caused the preceding boom. In all modern cases I believe you will discover it was government, partially their inflation of the monetary base and partially their distortion of normal pricing signals and investment decisions.Kingbingohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08943872286295476316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-27093660311236444632010-05-20T09:27:13.023+01:002010-05-20T09:27:13.023+01:00“I think that this is probably a source of some co...“I think that this is probably a source of some confusion. I am an anarchist who supports private ownership of resources and a FREE market (not the current corporatist abomination.)”<br /><br />Dear Clowny,<br />In an anarchic society, without a state and without an body of law, how do you have a free market? A prerequisite to a free market is property rights. Without property rights you cannot enforce ownership claims except through the brute force that you can command to do so. <br /><br />Ultimately to have a free market you need a small state that can effectively enforce a simple body of law. This does not mean you need to buy into the sort of bloated 50%+ of GDP state we have today. It simply means you acknowledge the need for a state. <br /><br />I note this country commanded the world during the Victorian era with a government that stretched to only 5% of GDP, and whos London executive and bureaucracy in absolute terms numbered less than a modern town council, not a district or country council, a bloody town council!<br /><br />But it was a state nonetheless and NOT anarchy.Kingbingohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08943872286295476316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-37364983971572221812010-05-20T09:13:50.555+01:002010-05-20T09:13:50.555+01:00Good, but you leave out any reference to a crucial...Good, but you leave out any reference to a crucial factor: information. Free markets lead to perfect competition with perfect information. Monopolies would be less likely if competitors knew what they knew. <br />Banks aren't under-regulated, just wrongly-regulated; lack of access to information is the the problem. <br /><br />The one-dimensional left-right spectrum has always been far too simple anyway. I don't know where I am on it but I am a transparency extremist, wherever.ejofthewebhttp://trustrans.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-46624913768329790642010-05-20T09:04:28.768+01:002010-05-20T09:04:28.768+01:00More and more each day I am convinced of a need fo...More and more each day I am convinced of a need for LVT and a properly thought out IPVT for many of the reasons you have ably fisked here. It is important to differentiate between deriving a Ricardian tax from <i>land</i> value taxes (ownership being nearly impossible to prove or define when considering that at some point in the dim distant past <b>no one</b> owned any partiilar piece of property); to moot that maybe we should call it quits on fighting for land rights because everyone who originally fought and was disenfranchised by said land grabs is dead whiffs a bit - generations are disenfranchised, not just one person.<br /><br />As it stands I think we have an uphill battle to get LVT; few (including myself) barely understand it, and againt modern promegeniture, the CAP and who knows what else involving <i>paying for people to own land</i> we have a great wall to scale; I'm not holding my breath.Tomrathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15442487511149915434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-65854209448847407452010-05-20T06:40:53.722+01:002010-05-20T06:40:53.722+01:00Interesting. I agree with AntiCitizenOne about Gre...Interesting. I agree with AntiCitizenOne about Greenspan and currency. I also tend to see uninterest (as opposed to disinterest) in property ownership as a more sophisticated/evolved incarnation of the human condition. But that could either be prejudice or naivety, who's to say?<br /><br />Ultimately, I think the moral compass thing has it right - right/left, libertarian/authoritarian are two different things. I'm a vertical mirror reflection of you.Jillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01708444000412716821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-26247928321693892332010-05-20T05:44:23.466+01:002010-05-20T05:44:23.466+01:00"I realise I'm probably alone in the UK i...<i>"I realise I'm probably alone in the UK in believing this, because every bugger seems to have some sort of grievance about it, but to my mind it's much more internally consistent to me that people who own resources should benefit from them, and those who have nothing to do with them should receive nothing from them."</i><br /><br />Well, you're certainly not alone in that.JuliaMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07844126589712842477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-9680008233696374752010-05-20T00:26:46.967+01:002010-05-20T00:26:46.967+01:00When you're flush you're a capitalist, whe...When you're flush you're a capitalist, when you're poor you're a socialist and if you're clever, you're both.<br /><br />Just ask Lord and Lady Kinnock.Jack'd Ripp'dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12351036498486478128noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-83017896686366894602010-05-19T23:45:31.794+01:002010-05-19T23:45:31.794+01:00@AC1- thanks, will reflect upon geonomics.
@BigGi...@AC1- thanks, will reflect upon geonomics.<br /><br />@BigGibb: If you really think the financial market is deregulated, consider these:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Services_Authority<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_European_Banking_Supervisors<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEIOPS<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_of_Securities_Commissions<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_regulation<br /><br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Loss_Prevention<br /><br />http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs128.htm<br /><br />http://books.hse.gov.uk/hse/public/home.jsf<br /><br />https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/pci_dss.shtml<br /><br />This list is by no means exhaustive. In fact, this is just a handful of UK legislation. Most financial institutions will also have different regulations for each geography in which they do business. There is probably also a shedload of EU regulation which I haven't even looked at.<br /><br />Do you really, <i>really</i> think banks are not regulated enough?Obnoxio The Clownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12012089552153702526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-34377165101641954802010-05-19T23:18:04.994+01:002010-05-19T23:18:04.994+01:00Greenspan didn't understand he was regulating ...Greenspan didn't understand he was regulating a currency, which is a government monopoly. <br /><br />In effect he turned the credit market into a commons.<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commonsAntiCitizenOnehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00017073518049848696noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-41604129837270413232010-05-19T23:15:41.288+01:002010-05-19T23:15:41.288+01:00Very interesting.
I'm a liberal, but also lib...Very interesting.<br /><br />I'm a liberal, but also libertarian. <br />Which to me basically means that I think Libertarianism is the best base we have to work with, but it still needs some work to be perfect.<br />I'm not against the free market, but I am against monopolies, <br />& a financial free market is flawed.<br />For example Alan Greenspan considered himself a libertarian & was a big Ayn Rand fan, but look what his so-called libertarian deregulation did to the western economy.<br /><br />There's work still to be done.BigGibbhttp://twitter.com/BigGibbnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-42490877247298231402010-05-19T23:10:44.621+01:002010-05-19T23:10:44.621+01:00> How would you calculate the value of the reso...> How would you calculate the value of the resources you need to distribute? What happens if there's a dispute over the valuation of the resources? <br /><br />http://anti-citizen-one.blogspot.com/2008/05/geonomics-geonomics-is.htmlAntiCitizenOnehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00017073518049848696noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-21791639894411963332010-05-19T22:50:38.937+01:002010-05-19T22:50:38.937+01:00Well written piece there obo well impressed,
this ...Well written piece there obo well impressed,<br />this is exactly what the mongs<br />in Parliament can't understand<br />because they are incapable of getting their heads round the complexities of it, the thick twats.The Boggarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951122521884080319noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471993488623327927.post-62198499799124638682010-05-19T22:38:01.941+01:002010-05-19T22:38:01.941+01:00If nobody can claim resources, who would invest to...If nobody can claim resources, who would invest to expoit resources and with what?<br /><br />If I want to "exploit" land to live on or build a factory, why should I if what I produce has to be shared?<br /><br />Now, you could say taxation is another form of this, but LeftLibs seem to think their version is somehow morally correct whereas I consider taxation as an evil that is for now necessary. Quite different.<br /><br />The problem with saying land is nobody's forgets a) that many people turned up at a place first and deprived nobody of that land and b) how on earth to get to "there" from "here"?Roger Thornhillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03591327286533118901noreply@blogger.com