Andrew79

Evidently what you wrote wasn't that clear. The next sentence is needed to provide context, what you said was "This entire situation is voluntary. However, it is wrong, because it leads to wage-slavery."You very clearly introduced the concept of voluntary employment leading to a form of slavery. Which is complete nonsense. That's essentially the difference between a freelancer and an employee.If you don't like working for someone else, then don't. I didn't like it, so I set up on my own. But I'm not going to tell anyone else what to do, or what the right way to work is.Anarchism and freedom are about the lack of coercion, your personal preference is relevant only to yourself. No serious advocate of the free market claims it is perfect.If you have a better system please start a new thread on it... "Won't somebody please think of the children?"Can bad things happen in a free market? Of course. And again, no serious advocate claims everything would be perfect. The idea of utopia comes from socialism, not capitalism.And in today's world, in the UK and US at least, children are forced to spend years at school regardless of whether they want to or their parents want them to. So trying to use them as an emotional attack against the free market is laughable."What if..." scenarios are easy, if you've got an actual argument against the free market, state it. I don't know what you mean by this.

And yet they're smart enough that they're the boss and you're the worker.Most employees don't have the slightest clue what it takes to run a business. They're not aware of the sacrifices the boss will have made in order to keep the business going and pay his employees.If you're not willing to get someone a drink because it's not specifically in your contract, the chances you've got the attitude and ability to run your own business are roughly zero.And as for "wage-slavery", if you're not free to sell your labour, you're not free. You can't tell people they own 100% of their labour but that they can't sell it. That's not ownership and it's certainly not freedom."The greatest trick the socialists ever pulled was convincing the world they want freedom for the little guy."

It's just part of the ongoing attempt by the left to co-opt libertarianism.

Any chance of an answer to what an anti-property world would look like? (And as a bonus, if this thought process should be applied to anything else?) Links are fine. [Preferably from people who favour this view, I can do the realistic take on it myself.]

Because he's not arguing, or interested in arguing, in good faith.If it's not obvious from comments like, "I cannot control myself to spontaneously fly so please explain."Then surely his first post in this thread, where he acts like no-one's ever actually examined the basis for self-ownership, is enough to cast doubt on his intentions.And that's ignoring posts he's made in other threads...

Thank you for your answer. But evidently I needed to make myself clearer.What I really want to know is how things would work in an anti-property world.Under capitalism I can own a house and I can own a business. Property is property is property.Under a generic collectivism I can still own things likes a house and a car as they're classed as personal property. But I can't own a business because it would be classed as owning the means of production - and the means of production should be owned by the workers, with decisions being made democratically.Under anti-property anarchy I can't own anything, and I don't know how that would work.For example, I leave "my" house to get food. Does that mean my house is now not being used so anyone can enter it? Or was it never mine in the first place and anyone could've come in at any time anyway? How's all that decided? The same goes for business too.Would this be this enforced? If people are happy with the idea of property are they left to themselves?And would this apply to other social constructs such as language?

Do you have a link to a site, book, video, or any other source of information about how this would work?And would this thought process be applied to anything else?I'm always interested in learning more about new systems of property (or in this case anti-property), so thanks in advance.

I think for a lot of them, it's more accurate to say, "I don't believe in other people's property rights".

This neo-Luddite nonsense has absolutely no basis in reality.Technological unemployment has been with us ever since the first tool was invented. And it is a good thing. It doesn't make the workforce redundant, it shifts them to more productive work.If you're going to post anti-freedom material, at least have the integrity to make sure it's not thoroughly debunked rubbish, rather than trying to deceive people into believing in your utopian computer communist fantasy.EDIT - Beaten by Kevin.

Yes, I think the people advocating it believe they are the intellectuals who would tell everyone else how to live. Non-stop propaganda, indoctrination of the young, complete control of the education system, fear, re-education camps.It's one thing to know what you're being told is nonsense, but it's another to act on it when you run the risk of being shot, labelled insane or a traitor, or even worse... (lookup "three generations of punishment" to see the evil these people are capable of) Yep. When preaching to the masses they need to make it seem that it's all about them, but when preaching to the intellectuals they need to make it seem like it's actually all about them.

Yes, I understand their arguments.As I said in the part of the sentence you didn't quote, if you can't own property, if you can't decide what to do with property, then it must mean other people can.And having other people decide what you can or can't do is the very opposite of freedom.In a collectivist utopia, you still can't just walk into someone else's house and take their TV, or into a business and help yourself to a few chairs. Their concept of ownership is almost the same as private property - the difference is only who manages the property.Private property says the owner can manage it in all cases.The collectivists say people can manage their "personal property", such as their own house, car, etc. But for businesses, the workers must own the means of production.How do they do this? Through democracy. In other words, ultimately the best politicians, not the best producers, get control over business. Which leads to disaster. Historically we've repeatedly seen grinding poverty, mass starvation, and genocide.The idea that this is freedom is laughable, the theory crushes it, and real life has tragically proven the theory.Just because advocates of this head straight for the righteous, moral high-ground doesn't mean anything. Don't assume you need to prove your case to them when it's their ideas that always fail - they're the ones with zero credibility, not you.How people can seriously argue for it is beyond me. All I can think is that it's based in envy and hatred of the more successful. That's one of his arguments.

Meaningless, feel-good nonsense. Private property is freedom, it is the very essence of liberty, for if you don't have the highest claim over what you "possess" then it means someone else does. And there's mass grave after mass grave filled with the results of that philosophy. To help with your argument, here's a quick read by Hans-Herman Hoppe on private property: The Ultimate Justification Of The Private Property Ethic And here's his (free) book on the subject: The Economics and Ethics of Private Property And lastly, here's his book contrasting private property with the alternatives: A Theory Of Socialism and Capitalism

Yes, but because there are only individuals it's ultimately about doing what someone else tells you, rather than what you want.When collectivists talk about how they hate capitalism and the evils it brings, replace "capitalism" with "freedom" and you get far closer to what they're really advocating. Marx didn't just research, he came up with his own methods of research. He viewed simply looking at the world as too shallow, it suffers from what he called "the camera obscura" problem, you can't clearly see what's really going on.Which let him come up with all sorts of rubbish, and attracted "intellectuals" to his philosophy because they could claim they were looking at the world at a far deeper level than anyone else.In fact one of the most influential Marxists, Georg Luckacs, said that this style of research was the real Marxism, not the theories it led to. He says if "recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx's individual theses”, Marxism would still be valid. He would be thinking wrong and the Marxists would help educate him to the right way of thinking if he had a problem with it. When they say "owning the means of production" they mean in the same way you own the public property in your country. I don't believe you can in a principled way.Their non-exploitative business model is one where all the workers have an equal say in how the business is run (through some form of democracy) so that nobody has exclusive control over the means of production.

EDIT - @cab21: I'll have to answer you tomorrow, I need my sleep now. If you about homesteading and mixing your labour, then I'm sure you know the answer to this. Because you spent your time and energy on it. Cause and effect.And if they don't own it who does? Why is anyone else's claim greater?To ask everyone else if they have their permission to use it is impossible.Plus, if we don't have the right to control anything except our own bodies, the human race wouldn't last very long. So simply being alive presupposes private property rights.Or we can approach it from a economic viewpoint: a lack of private property means a lack of wealth because you remove the incentives for people to work. Self-ownership is inalienable, you always own yourself. That's not to stop you from selling "yourself", but because self-ownership is inalienable you could walk away anytime you wanted as you were never really owned. They own themselves. All resources are scarce, the only system that's shown it can efficiently handle this is private property. Land is no different.If at some point the earth does get completely full, then private property will deal with this in a far better way than any other system possibly could.Pointless, context-free "what-ifs" don't change that, especially when you look at what the alternatives to private property have always resulted in.

Knowing what's best for everyone is what collectivism is all about.The aim of Marxism is to abolish hierarchy, not establish equality. Hoping enough people decide to actually do some work. Marx believed that the conditions of communism would cause the new man to come into existence, by people rationally thinking about life. No, if there are any workers then they're being exploited, the profit just provides a means to calculate by how much. Ok, if anything, regardless of what it was, was used as the means of production, then any workers using it would be being exploited. He'd need educating on the fact he's being exploited then. Not just for emergencies, for anything that requires capital like the building and up-keeping of new factories/infrastructure/etc. Yes. But exploitation.

People don't really want to work for any longer than's needed to cover their living costs, essentially they're held hostage by their employer because he controls access to the means of production so he forces them to work longer than they want. Yeah, in our current society that would mean the person with higher living costs would need to work more. But in the Marxist socialist paradise it would not, as the family would be provided with what they needed regardless of their size. There would be a new breed of man who would happily work for the good of society rather than his own self-interest. This certainly seems to be the goal of the new communists (the zeitgeisters). It's not the capital itself that makes a capitalist, it's control over the means of production. For example, if you save and buy a new house and new car, that's fine. But if you save and use it to create a business then you're controlling the means of production and exploiting those that work for you. No, they believe self-employment is a good thing. But as soon as you take on another worker you become an evil capitalist. Yes, if people are encouraged to spend rather than save capital, their money would be frittered away (and they'd be no savings to help build the means of production, leading to a long-term lack of growth). The worker's don't realise they're being exploited, they accept their place in society without realising the difference between them and their boss is artificial and should be torn down. Yes, with no private means of controlling food production, it would be very scarce in any sort of socialist utopia.

The employee's wage isn't profit, it's his living costs. The high pay would be treated as profit. Not even that I'm afraid, because the person would more than likely need both extra capital and workers to help build the robots (the capital for new businesses comes from planning committees).What tends to happen when the incentives for profit are removed is that while some people will look for ways to get round it, the majority will just let themselves become dumbed down and lose their creative and entrepreneurial drive. The worker doesn't work to profit, he works so he can live (pay his rent, put food on the table, etc).It's the employer's fault because he controls access to the means of production, when it should be the workers themselves who control it. They'd typically be chosen by vote, in other words they'd be politicians. But due to the enormity (impossibility?) of the task, I don't think anyone could do a competent job at it. I believe the philosophy's primary purpose is to attack the successful, anything else is an afterthought.

Yes, Marx contradicted himself on this in the last volume of Das Kapital, leading to him stopping work on it.But he didn't have the integrity to admit he was wrong. That doesn't matter, the amount of profit the employer makes lets you work out how exploited the worker is, but just as long as the employer intends to profit he's being exploited. Same principle, the exploitation would be the profit per widget. Tough luck for the employer. He intended to profit, so he was still exploiting the worker, it wasn't the worker's fault he failed. Councils, planning committees, and the like. It would, but because people don't get to decide what they need it goes the other way - people slack off instead.

Marxists split labour into two categories: necessary labour and surplus labour.Let's say you make 8 widgets a day. The first four cover your cost to the employer - that's necessary labour. The next four provide profit to your employer - that's surplus labour.Marxists believe that the surplus labour is the exploitation. It's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and although Marx popularised it, it was a French socialist slogan.It means to break the link between production and consumption. In other words what someone produces should have no relation to what they can consume.This would work by pooling everything that's been produced and then giving it out on the basis of need.

As Dsayers wrote, there is no fact, this is just idle speculation.Monopolies and cartels require government.And with regards to food production, the only times anything your scenario has happened were the Great Leap Forward in China, and the Holodomor in Russia. Both, of course, were government projects.The free market removes any danger of this happening by its very nature."What ifs" based on any negative scenario you can come up with are utterly pointless. Especially when reality has shown the exact opposite to be true.

Yes, this.The basic Marxist theory is that workers are exploited because they're not being paid the full value of their labour.

Cool.Could you help clarify this for me then as I've not come across a third way: Ok, so there's a business/factory/whatever who controls it?Capitalism says the owner. Collectivism says the workers. Anarchy says...A link to a site, book, or video's fine, I'm always happy to read/watch.And: It's either by collective choice, or it's the individual's choice.And as far as I'm aware the standard collectivist line on this is that getting rid of capitalism would automatically get rid of the "over-specialised" division of labour.Admittedly they then usually go on to talk about the schemes they would put in place to enforce this, demonstrating that they know they're lying.

Ok, so there's a business/factory/whatever who controls it?Capitalism says the owner. Collectivism says the workers. Anarchy says... If you're not going to use force to impose your philosophy, fair enough (not sure about the use of "in my example" though). Absolutely, we only have scarce resources after all, we don't want to waste them. And the most efficient way of using them is through private property and prices. And that's the excellent thing about capitalism, no one's going to force anything on you. If you don't want to be part of it you don't have to be.There's plenty of people all over the world who claim to despise capitalism, under anarcho-capitalism there'd be nothing at all to stop them from getting together in communes, or some going into forests to setup environmental communes, or whatever.It's the anti-capitalists who tend to want to force their philosophy on others.

Woah!You had a reasonable defence of your "version of moral ownership" going until this.This is nothing but an empty, disingenuous, emotional sound-bite.It's designed to make people think that under your collectivist anarchy, people in the future would have the sort of good life we have now, or better (because it's the future).But that's not the case. Switching to collectivism would send humanity back in time, and without private property and money, progress, if there was any, would be in super-slow-motion.So while collectivism would be able to maintain the same standard of living for centuries, it would be a very, very low standard.If you're happy with that, good for you. But I don't want you forcing that on me, and I'm sure they'll be plenty of others who agree with me.As I said in the other thread, collectivists have these wonderful stories, but that's all they are, stories.And note how they usually take place in the future...

Capitalism says you can own stuff, that's all. And the alternative to being able to own stuff is poverty. Ludwig von Mises explained exactly why this is inevitable, in painstaking detail, in his book "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis", published back in 1922. And reality itself has demonstrated there is no rebuttal to his work. The alternatives to capitalism like to point out everything that's wrong with the world, all the injustices, all the evils. Then they tell you wonderful stories of a world where everyone's equal, where there's limitless abundance, where no-one's getting rich off someone else's sweat... But ultimately they are only stories - these philosophies bring poverty and death. They can bring nothing else.