: : I still don't understand why we have to assume such assumptions under capitalo-fantasism: Oh, socialist-infantile-dreamism
: See, name calling is not a constructive method of discussion.
SDF: I haven't displayed any socialist infantile dream. I think you've got me confused with Red Deathy, who has an alternative impractical global dream. "Socialist infantile dream" appears for you because for libertarians "socialist" is synonymous with "enemy". You can't even succeed in calling me names! Sorry!
: : There are all sorts of reasons compelling renters to pay rent, to live in the same places for extended periods of time over moving whenever "the market" might justify looking for a place with cheaper rent.
: "the market" means those compelling reasons.
SDF: I've already detailed why "compelling reasons" don't compel. You're reiterating your point rather than confronting reasons why it is not so.
: : SDF: Because it's difficult to move, and because it's more profitable just to charge high rents and compel the tenants to pay them.
: The all your arguing is that rent can be high because its expensive to move. That doesnt really constitute any more than an observation. It still holds that charging too much means people move on.
SDF: No it doesn't. I've already told you that there may be no space to move.
: : and evict people willy-nilly for the sake of profit.
: So good stable contracts are of market value to consumers.
SDF: Yes, and if the landlords collude, such market value can be as high as you please. Collusion bankrupting the landlords indeed! (Whistling sound of another Gee presumption falling off the cliff...)
: : SDF: Look, at the beginnning of the 19th century,
: Without which the west would not have its abundance, it longevity, many of its medicines and technologies. Dont even attempt to persuade me that life in the middle ages was better. People in the future will shreek in horror at 40 hour weeks in those dreadful office buildings with germ infested air conditioning. Relative to now, the past always looks worse, humanity is a progression.
SDF: You missed ENTIRELY the point of my discussion of the history of capitalism. The capitalist past of the late 18th and early 19th centuries looks worse not merely because it was relatively worse (for the working class) than the past of the 16th century, but also because THAT EVIL BIG DADDY GOVERNMENT imposed laws such as the Ten Hour Law limiting the work day, with its subsequent lengthening of worker's lives.
: : SDF: Profit, or have you forgotten the purpose of capital accumulation?
: Better made by actually accumilating it in selling the use of the road, not holing up.
SDF: I see. So Gee has actually conceded that predatory road tolls ARE profitable, whereas in his PREVIOUS arguments he had argued that only people who wanted to bankrupt themselves would do such a thing. But now he forestalls the inevitable conclusion, that predatory capitalism is often much more profitable to the predators than this fantasy of his of "liberty based capitalism," by arguing that road owners will ALWAYS earn MORE profit by charging tolls. Got to admit, Gee, that your argument here has the advantage of vagueness, that you still hold the cards because I can't really tell what you're saying here...
: : SDF: I didn't say it was. (Maybe if you actually read E.P. Thompson's THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS you'd find out about the statist historical origins of capitalism.)
: And that would make me reject liberty in property?
SDF: I have already explained in depth what the importance of the above text is. This sarcastic question only serves to deflect the issue which I have raised in various above posts. Capitalists have only been able to get the members of various pre-capitalist societies to behave like capitalists only by imposing statist capitalism upon these societies. This context of statist capitalism, and its delivery of profits to its primary predatory capitalists today, cannot just be wished away.
: : I don't think one has to have any philosophical objection to "liberty based capitalism" to understand its impracticality in the present day.
: If you mean that statism grows arounf abundance like a weed then I agree there is need for a weed killer, but not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
SDF: What "weed killer"? Still no plan that would do anything, and would have the unintended results of having people work together to their mutual benefit, i.e. the dreaded "collectivism"...
: : To summarize -- to make people behave like capitalists
: you mean like the 'capitalist' state wanted, ie state dependant state feeding.
SDF: No, I mean to create the basic impulses that Jeremy Bentham describes in his caricature of human behavior in his books on morality, that humans are little calculators of pain and pleasure... it goes that deep, that the creation of state capitalist systems is the parent of all capitalist social behavior.
: : Merely removing the state does not abolish the repressive context of capitalism, the context created by statist capitalism -- and, as I have already explained time and time again, those with a business interest in the state will re-invent the state if, supposing some feat of magic with the power to abolish Earth's enormous nuclear stockpiles, the state is abolished without removing its capitalist context.
: Yes thats a good point, I fear the same - the second rate wealthy would try to shore up against superior up and coming ability and state makes the job oh so easy. But socialising property does not resolve the problem of state creation, in fact I believe it makes it, sadly, inevitable.
SDF: Libertarians would love to imagine that "socializing property" is the ONLY alternative to their own private pet project.
: : If you really want to abolish the state, you'll have to radically re-distribute power, wealth, and resources in favor of the working classes of the world, by organizing a popular revolution against the state.
: Yes, the unholy marriage of liberty and state has resulted in a status quo. I would prefer to remove the protectors of the power brokers, not to distill each persons interest into a collective for the sake of a few.
SDF: Still haven't addressed the results of revolution, eh Gee?
