Who are any of us, really? We all have our public life, our private life…
And your secret life. The one that defines you.
The idea of a “social contract” is flawed in the sense that it is not a contract at all, as it is unilateral in nature.
Voting and taxation do not necessarily imply explicit consent with how government (the monopoly on violence) works.
The dilemma is how you define harming others and what implies being intolerant to an idea rather than a person holding that idea.
Economists of the classical school were right to define a monopoly as a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting. Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even the attempt should be regretted since it is a great benefit to consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function. The term “monopoly price” has no effective meaning in real market settings, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change. A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas.
Amazon is just another big company that benefits from corporatocracy.
Under TRUE capitalism the market is free but regulated as needed.
The market can’t be free if it’s regulated. Any intromission of the State in any voluntary exchange is stepping in the natural rights of its citizens.
We don’t live in real capitalism, there is no regulation, the oligarchy has captured the agencies that were supposed to regulate the market.
The agencies are the oligarchy. The politicians and lobbyists benefit each other by the existence of regulations, taxation, subsidies, FIAT money, intellectual property, public licenses, monopolical privileges, etc.
Yes, we don’t live in “real capitalism” (that is, in a free-market setting), we live in a corporatocracy.
Part of a larger quote, but I agree with it.
I don’t like representative democracy.
Better it goes into government so at least people can vote to change it.
We can’t change it. Politicians would still have their monopolical powers because they help each other. Don’t trust the government. Billionaires not only influence it, they also receive help from them.
It would appear that democracy benefits the rulers, as democracy alone has provided the most consistent means for those formerly in power to sleep and die in peace. And the same holds for the courtiers, nomenklatura, and apparatchiks. These sycophants need no longer dread midnight’s knife and muffled cries, and the subsequent crowning of a new king. The elite and bureaucracy can retire to their farms and while away their passing years without fear — their riches and posterity intact. As I see it now, democracy is not to the advantage of the demos, it is to the advantage of the power elite. Something to think about.
In a short-term, yes. Long-term? A complete disaster.
You mean all these private international businesses have a hard time going around worldwide regulations?
Quite the contrary; the State by lobbying, subsidies and “international aids” is actually benefiting the giant businesses, as the coercion made by the State harms the SME’s and we the common people to trade with other countries.
Basically, I’m describing corporatocracy (the State is dominated by corporate business interests).
Do you know, that even with the sanctions, russia exports and imports (almost) as usual, because internationally nobody cares? And if sb cares, they will make a daughtercompany in no time which does the trade?
By “russia exports and imports” (fallacious use of collective nouns), I’ll interpret it as businesses affected by the sanctions.
As I said before: “Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics”. You can’t just infere those sanctions are not working from having analyzed statistics and economic history. You need first an economic theory that tries to explain how the economy works by identifying the causal relationships between economic actions and events.
I’d recommend you to read about Mises’s Human Action (praxeology based on methodological individualism).
Man wtf. We had over 100 Years of almost free market and look where we are now.
I don’t know what you interpret as “free market”, but the mere existance of a Monopoly of Violence, lobbying, manipulation of money, state licenses, blah, blah, blah… is not free at all.
Businesses in germany have to pay a fuckload of taxes and still get richt as fuck.
Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics.
If there is no free market on a national scale, than there is a almost anarchytical free market on an international scale.
What about protectionism, tariffs, special licenses, international regulations, “common goods”, the World Bank Group, the IMF, and very much any kind of coercion made by “Welfare” States?
And they have to pay back what they destroyed. Like everybody else, when you destroy sth, either on purpose or without, you need to pay.
“Virtually all issues concerning the environment involve conflicts over ownership. So long as there is private ownership, owners themselves solve these conflicts by forbidding and punishing trespass. The incentive to conserve is an inherent feature of the market incentive structure. So too is the incentive to preserve all things of value. The liability for soiling another’s property should be borne by the person who caused the damage. Common ownership is no solution. Because national parks, for example, are not privately owned, the goal of economical management will always be elusive.”
the people can rise up against the capitalists to stop them from poisoning our only habitat we are all wholly dependent upon
Are you ignoring all the labor these “capitalists” and their workers do to provide you the goods we all wholly demand upon? All of this is done by social cooperation between both of them by voluntary association.
We can stop the self-destructive madness of demanding infinite growth carved out of the ass of a finite world.
This would work if the price system would actually work as intended (free from the intervention of the State) to distribute all the scarce resources in a free-market setting.
Greta is doing the right thing in the face of Armageddon
By wanting the Monopoly of Violence to step in? To call the international organizations (spoilers: they don’t care about us) to intervene in foreign countries?
Almost everyone else will either continue begging the sociopathic oligarch polluters to stop
They can actually do that because of the existence of “common goods” and of the monopolical privileges granted by the same State, such as subsidies, regulations discreetly affecting SMEs, the lack of enforcement of private property to protect those “common goods”, etc.
but those are usually the same people that get angry at others for claiming the “free capital market” isn’t the cure for the many self-inflicted human crises caused by the “free capital market.”
On the contrary; they love subsidies, they love intellectual property, they love FIAT money, they love the monopolical privileges: basically, their activities depend entirely on the mere existence of corporatocracy.
The temptation and crucial flaw of a totalitarian mind are that everyone must play a part in a superstructural battle between good and evil. Standing on the sidelines or taking a neutral position on present topics is not allowed; one may not merely observe or ignore the madness played out among the power hungry.
Everyone needs a take; everyone needs to “be informed” on the grand, irrelevant events of our broken times. Everyone needs a flag in their profile picture—a not-so-grand gesture indicating that they support the “latest thing.”
Sorry, but I don’t love the taste of the boot of the monopoly of violence (the State) and it’s robbery (taxation), mass murder (war) and slavery (conscription).
Bureaucracy, corruption, FIAT money, intellectual property, common goods, the welfare state… The idea of an oligarchy of politicians controlling and regulating the economy and our private lifes in the name of “democracy” and “the common good” is actually helping those billionaries we BOTH hate so much.
Social democracy is practically the same thing as corporatocracy, but with a little of populism. On the other hand, “any step toward socialism is a step toward economic irrationality”.
Tell me how you don’t know the difference between corporatocracy and capitalism without telling me how you don’t know the difference between corporatocracy and capitalism.
Every person who think that their vote (in a representative democracy) matters, is a victim of the illusion of universal participation in the use of institutional coercion, that is, the state.