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Showing results for tags 'coercion'.
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I have just watched the last video from the channel, american renaissance, and my jaw dropped when Jared talked about eugenic. He proposed that the government should be given the power to prevent undesirable members of society to procreate or to incentivize sterilization. I cannot think of a more horrible coercive power then to decide who breeds and who doesnt. And to give this power to the government is insane. The next time the democrats would get elected, they might decide to sterilize all the republicans, people could get sterilized for not being in the right social class, not have the right beliefs or not the right color of skin. I have always had respect for Jared Taylor until now. Now I realize that he doesnt believe in the libertarian principals of the funding fathers. He doesnt believe in basic freedoms, such as the freedom to procreate. He is clearly a statist and he advocates for changes done by force to obtain his white utopia. I'm sorry to see that he has lost his mind.
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The discussion below arose out of an article I was referred to by an acquaintance of mine, a student of political science, on how the workplace is a greater source of coercion than the state. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/ I responded with various commentaries on the points made by the article. One particular comment was opposed quite strongly. My comment: "Where an employee can be fired to the disadvantage of the employee, an employee can also quit to the disadvantage of the employer. It works both ways. The reality of the situation is that the reason the employer has the power in the situations mentioned in this article is that there is a surplus of labour rather than a shortage. Because the employer is able to replace the employee fairly easily. If there was a labour shortage (such as the trade shortage that happened when all the plumbers and electricians headed up to the mines) or the job was for a more skilled position where the number of people with those skills was fairly limited, then the situation would be reversed, the power would be in the employees hands, and they would be free to say all the things the author quotes above." His response: "If I quit, my boss will hire someone else to do my job. They hire people all the time, it's easy. It'll be a minor inconvenience for them at worst. I, on the other hand, need to pay rent every week or I will be kicked out of my flat. I need to buy food. I have all sorts of expenses that must be paid for. If I lose my job, either by quitting or getting fired, it's a potentially life-ruining problem. And I'm a young, healthy single guy with qualifications. If I had kids or a health problem (or god forbid, kids with a health problem), I would be in serious trouble. If I was living in libertarian land with no unemployment benefits or equivalent, I need to get a new job that pays just as well as the old one, or I and my children might well end up homeless. And what if nobody is hiring? I need to keep this job. I need it really badly. Unless a particular employee has an incredibly rare and special skill, losing them is almost never as big a deal for the employer as it is for the employee. For many jobs, particularly the sort of unskilled jobs that marginal people (non-white, single parent, few qualifications etc.) work, it's potentially life-ruining for the employee but no issue at all for the employer. That power disparity means that the boss can often do whatever he likes (it is mostly he). There are a lot of examples of this. Sexual abuse is very common in garment factories located in developing countries, for example. The workers there are basically interchangeable, mostly women, and the bosses take advantage of them all the time. What are you going to do? Quit? You need this job. So you bend over for the boss. I don't know if you think this sort of thing is okay, or you didn't think it through, or you think I'm making it up, or you consider it an acceptable price in order to live in a society without taxes or police (except for the for-profit police who will patrol the gated communities of the rich, beating up any poor people who try to sneak in)." How do I adequately rebutt this comment, specifically the part about sexual abuse, from an an-cap perspective? I don't find it okay that this happens. My main thoughts were to focus on why the situation arises in the first place (that the state induces a situation where these women in third world developing countries are uneducated, stopped from forming labour associations etc.) Then follow with how a free-market anarchic situation would reduce or prevent the power disparity. Finally I also planned to outline just how an employer is affected by an employee quitting because people don't always think about these things, having been brought up all their life being told that employers are evil and need to be reigned in by the state.
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TZM tzm tzm. you say we should get rid of money.let's say we achieve an RBE (resource based economy).are people free to do what they want? what if they create a cryptocurrency like bitcoin? supercomputers is not a magical answer to infinite everything. scarcity will still exist, whether it be in the form of gold, bottlenecks on production capabilities, inflexibility of capital goods, or limited living space in 3d.When the supercomputer cannot create the things people want in time, people will want to exchange among themselves. But how do you trade a car for some bread? how much is worth what? And lots of goods don't last very long, how will save up to trade those? They also need to barter, because there is no medium of exchange.People will naturally start instituting money in one form or another - (again, stop with the delusion that suptercomputers will put an end to scarcity. if it's not infinite, it's scarce. It just means the world will be able to support a lot more people, but once that limit is reached, scarcity will apply once again).So once a currency is instituted, there will be so many advantages to it, that it will stick around. TZM ppl like Peter Joseph say states are a natural result of freedom of action and wanting better for yourself in competition with others. Well, that's questionable. What's more solid is that media of exchange will arise naturally in an RBE.Now My big question is this: Will the people in charge of the central RBE system forcibly outlaw and ban money, in order to maintain the RBE? Or will people be free to do what they want, and use whatever media of exchange they want (or not) under an RBE? Will they be "cut off" from receiving resources from the RBE supercomputer, or in reduced amounts (I know you will say "no", but scarcity will hit, so that is not a legitimate answer). Will you support the RBE system to the point of disallowing the monetary system that was so reviled by TZM-ers? Will you engage in force to stop monetary systems from coming back alive? Will money be the new 'sin" of the new "state"?And while we're at it, when scarcity hits, and everything is free, how do "runs" or flocking to deplete the resource about to become in shortage get prevented? In a market system, prices go up, and you have a nautrally self-regulating feedback mechanism, which also sends signals to tell people to produce more of it and increase the supply. if you can push a button and just get it, you've essentially engaged in price-fixing, so you will get the same results as rent-control: no additional housing development, and massive shortage of housing (or the particular good). *edit: tries really hard not to calling TZM-ers economic illiterates, and instead posts this instead.My real question and purpose of this thread is to inquire about the policy and use of force of the RBE / TZM utopia, knowing that the time would come when they'd have to face that decision. You do have to face that decision because scarcity is not gone with a supercomputer whose magical algorithm is not even being developed by TZM as far as i know.Also, is there only one super computer that handles all the variables of everyone's supplies and demands and preferences and tastes? or can there be multiple? If multiple, who decides which computer governs which area or number of people? If so, is there a central management group that does this? What if everyone wnats to work for that? Who says they can or can't? Can there be overlapping of geographic or person coverage by different supercomputers? Why is it so deplorable to rely on supply and demand, property rights, voluntary trade, and the price mehcanism, which accomplishes things that no central supercomputer can't? the supercomputer would have to tap into everyone's brains (or just get super super scarily accurate in predicting what people want) to be anywhere near accurate. privacy issues. do we even want such a computer? Isn't that much power just a giant barrel of gunpowder waiting to be lit up by a violent sociopath that works for the world's suptercomputer department? It hardly seems stable from a game theory point of view.I used to be pretty ignorant, but critical of anarchy before i heard how it would work and all of the game theory objections were addressed by podcasts 1,2,64,131,and 203. So it's possible I'm being like that again about RBE. But i've yet to hear any real address to these issues. Why not have a king of the hill approach to truth? Science seems to do that just fine. But seriously, if we're going to talk, you have to accept that scarcity is not rid of by a supercomputer (again, which you aren't building). You have to learn basic economic principles. edit: excuse the grammar and the spelling. I just don't really care that much. Infer or impose whatever irrational, or statistically true judgement you want. I'm more concerned about the substance of the discussion, and if you're not, then do what you want. If I'm making money with this, or doing it for some professional thing, I'd consider it, but I just don't care. Just like I don't wear suits in my own home or when I visit my neighbor's house.
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If society demanded that government be based on the principle of non-aggression, and all of it's services were funded voluntarily, is it still government? Myself, and others get hung up on the anarchy bit, feeling a need to maintain a public organization for, and by the people, but also agree that it must adhere to the principle of non-aggression. Other organizations, private or public, should be able to compete, and everything must be done in adherence to voluntarism, free of coercion/extortion. Why draw an anarcho-capitalist line, when we could draw a non-aggression capitalist line?
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