Anarcho-Mercantilist

The Means-End Dichotomy: Some Clarifications

2009-06-29T04:22:00.000-07:00

I replied to nirgraham's comment on Rejecting the Means-End Dichotomy.

You start out with what seems to be a straw man.

Let me explain that you also strawmanned me.

praxeology does not ontologically assert the existance of things called 'means' and 'ends' that are actually in you. like a heart 'is in you', nor are they intended to reflect the functioning of the human mind overall.

Praxeology ontologically asserts the means/ends dichotomy because it uses a "proof by performative contradiction." Ontology is implicit in the "proof by performative contradiction." (See below).

rather they are necessary, (though not sufficient), for the possibility of economically/politicaly/(and some might say morally) analysable 'human action'/

That was what I am arguing by the term "intrumental abstraction" or "non-precisive abstraction." I said that the means/end dichotomy helps us to understand Robinson Crusoe economics and the producer/consumer goods distinction.

So praxeology asserts the means-end dichotomy as both ontologically necessary and necessary for an understanding of economics. I was only arguing against the former, not the latter. However, you assumed that I was arguing against the latter. So you strawmanned me.

does praxeology want to or need to 'reflect the /whole/ mind'?, no! it needs to reflect on the mind that 'acts', it is focused on actions. we talk about the memory in so far as it provides datum for deciding on means, we talk about empathy in that it might be datum for means etc.

I neither argued that praxeology reflects the whole mind, nor argued that cognitive psychology reflects the whole mind. It is an impossiblility for any theory to map the whole mind, because it is impossible to fuse the map with the territory. Just because I asserted that the means-end dichotomy is less precise than the desire-instinct-habit trichotomy, this does not claim that the former is false nor the latter is true. The former is just less precise.

And I did not argue that the more precision, the better. Too much precision results in unnecessary complexity, making it difficult to analyze the essentials.

what about the means-end dichotomy? As said, we can consider it as an instrumental abstraction. Therefore, we cannot

its logically necessary given our purpose, so we can...

That is a strawman.

Let us look at my whole quote:

What about the means-end dichotomy? As said, we can consider it as an instrumental abstraction. Therefore, we cannot just assume "means" and "ends" and then apply it into any economic or ethical system without justifying it by precision arguments to understanding it."

I meant that Robinson Crusoe economics could justify the means-end dichotomy, but the means-end dichotomy cannot justify Robinson Crusoe economics.

I am arguing that Robinson Crusoe economics does not need too much precision, so it could justify the means-end dichotomy. However, more complex subjects such as ethics cannot justify the means-end dichotomy, because ethics requires extreme precision. The extreme precision that ethics requires must be counterbalanced by more precisive psychology rather than unprecise means and ends.

This is the main idea that I am arguing against:

Can we derive the means-end dichotomy from human psychology? (...), we cannot.

no, we derive it from the logical impossibilty of 'human action' occurring without means... and the logical impossibility of 'action' occuring without any goal (without any preference demonstration). (if you like, we are discounting any observable behaviour that is not purpuseful as being beyond our interest, it is not a human action, but mere datum that any actioner would take into consideration, but that is all).

nirgraham argued that a performative contradiction can "prove" the means-end dichotomy. However, I oppose the "proof by proformative contradiction" argument. Even though I disagree with the "proof by performative contradiction", I still accept that argument as logically consistent. However, I question the logical soundness of the "proof by performative contradiction."

All "proofs by performative contradiction" ontologically presumes the existence of its premises. Therefore, the conclusions of the argument depend on the soundness of its premises. However, the premises cannot be perfectly sound because you cannot fuse the map with the territory. Therefore, the conclusion of the argument also cannot be perfectly sound.

I may critique the "proof by performative contradiction" in greater detail in another post.

Abstract Words

2009-06-24T17:35:00.001-07:00

I posted a response to this discussion on the means-end dichotomy.

nirgrahamUK: http://mises.org/pdf/humanaction/pdf/Ha_04.pdf ? its 4 and a half big font pages.Thank you, though not for the link. I read Human Action from beginning to end.

I mean "thank you", for demonstrating that I had not written what I meant clearly enough. Thank you for showing that I had communicated my thoughts poorly.

You have done an important thing. You have demonstrated that you have terminological differences than me. I had probably used the word "axiom" an a way differently that you had interpreted it. Thank you for taking note of the different interpretations of the words I wrote.

I will write more carefully next time. I will not just write a few sentences to explain my thoughts. I understand the impossibility to express what I had meant with those meager sentences. I learned that no one could write understandable text in philosophy, without expressing each detail in several paragraphs or even pages. Philosophy, which deals with extremely abstract ideas, will inevitably have terminological problems.

More concrete ideas, such as a "pencil", have no definitional conflicts. Almost everyone has the same definitions for "pencil", "chair", and "table". But not so with more abstract ideas, such as "state", "nature", "aggression", "subjectivism", and "objectivism". For example, libertarians commonly define a "state" as a "monopoly of violence funded by taxation". Meanwhile, brainwashed statists defines the "state" as "a beneficial institution that provides services for the population." Generally, the more abstract the idea, the more conflicts over its definition.

Philosophy, ethics, and logic have a lot of abstract ideas. Therefore, those topics would probably have a potential significant amount of terminological differences. This thread itself deals with ethics. Therefore, this thread will, and has, suffered from semantic problems.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I could clearly write my thoughts clearly only if I expanded my writing. I must write several paragraphs or pages to express an idea clearly, not just in a few meager sentences.

However, we all hate to write long forum posts. As we all know, some readers do not enjoy going through long posts, because it consumes too much time.

Abstract topics, such as philosophy, ethics, and logic, make a lot of trouble in forums. Why? Because that we cannot clarify our semantics in a few sentences. It requires several paragraphs or pages to resolve a single definition.

Some members of this forum shortcut their communication. They write their ideas and critiques only in a few sentences. As we know, this will only make the text ambiguous to other members. These members think that they will save time by writing a few sentences for each idea. They think that they will save the time by not tediously going through several paragraphs or pages to describe each idea.

Wrong! This will only waste more time than doing it in the verbose way. Ambiguous text only bait irrelevant responses, strawmans, and red herrings. In addition, shortcutting their communication will only bait others to badly interpret the text, thus cause threads to go off topic. These threads will get boring, and will eventually end that way. Without a long post clarifying the terminology, those debates will never resolve.

This has happened to my long comments at blogs such as Polycentric Order. This has happened to my long posts here.

Because of this, I usually ignore debating philosophy, ethics, and logic within these forums.

I have now finished typing the first half of my post. In the second half, I will clarify what I had meant in my last post.

Rejecting the Means-End Dichotomy

2009-06-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

I posted a response to this discussion on the means-end dichotomy.

What do I mean when I say "I reject the means-end dichotomy"?

I mean that assuming that "means" and "ends" exist within humans is far too arbitrary. The abstractions of "means" and "ends" does not accurately reflect the human mind.

The means-end dichotomy can have useful applications. It helped us to understand Robinson Crusoe economics of how capital goods originate. Crusoe developed capital goods as a means to further his ends. The means-end dichotomy helped us to understand how producer and consumer goods behave in accord to human desires.

Therefore, the means-end dichotomy functions as an instrumental abstraction. Despite its unsoundness, it helps us to understand economic ideas. Roderick Long has used the term "non-precisive abstraction" to denote a similar idea.

So can we derive instrumental abstractions from science. Can we derive the means-end dichotomy from human psychology? However, we cannot.

We cannot derive instrumental abstractions from science. We can only apply instrumental abstractions to help us understand more complicated ideas. Mises has made a mistake of trying to derive instrumental abstractions from science.

For example, take Mises' argument for mythological individualism. Mises performed an ontological argument for methodological individualism. He said that "collectives do not exist, only individuals exist." He actually derived this instrumental abstraction.

However, in the social sciences, methodological individualism helps us understand social behavior with more precision. Because methodological individualism focuses on the individual to observe social trends, it has more precision than, say, examining social behavior by countries. Saying that "Germany attacked France" goes against methodological individualism, because it observes social behavior as countries instead of its constituent individuals.

However, as we emphasized, we cannot derive methodological individualism by making the ontological arguments. We can only justify methodological individualism for its practical application to help us understand social behavior with more precision.

We will discuss another mistake by Mises on instrumental abstractions. Mises derived ordinal value from science. He cannot do this. He can only justify ordinal value for its practical application.

We will list some practical applications of ordinal value over cardinal value in helping to understand the free price system:

The simplicity of ordinal value transgressing the overcomplicated numerical calculations of cardinal value.
A sound understanding of the behavior of the free price system does not require cardinal value.

Mises claimed the "impossibility" of cardinal value. This seems correct to some extent, because the human brain does not store utility in cardinal numbers. However, we could still implement cardinal value in economics. We can "numericalize" cardinal values by measuring pleasure experienced by neurons in the human brain and then converting it to some unit. Just like how we measure temperature by a thermometer. But we deny this, not because of its "impossibility", but of the two advantages of ordinal value over cardinal value: its simplicity and unnecessity.

We have demonstrated that ontological arguments such as "collectives do not exist" or "cardinal value does not exist" are irrelevant in the justification of instrumental abstractions. Mises could have truncated his ontological arguments in Human Action, while still making his book through and logical, or even better, because it's shorter. He could have explained that methodological individualism offers more precision in examining human behavior, instead of the ontological argument that "collectives do not exist." He could have explained that ordinal value offers more simplicity and the unnecessity of numerical calculations of cardinal value, instead of the ontological argument that "cardinal value does not exist." The incorporation of ontological arguments and the exclusion of precision arguments are one of the major mistakes in Human Actions.

Ontological arguments, besides its unnecessity, are even flawed in justifying instrumental values. To a certain degree, "collectives do exist". To a certain degree, "cardinal value does exist" (as shown by the neuron-thermometer example). Mises falsely assumed that the "existence" of an entity requires the unanimous existence in all contexts with perfect accuracy.

What about the means-end dichotomy? As said, we can consider it as an instrumental abstraction. Therefore, we cannot just assume "means" and "ends" and then apply it into any economic or ethical system without justifying it by precision arguments to understanding it. It is far too arbitrary to incorporate that "means" and "ends" into an ethical system just because these two words exist in the English language. Roderick Long extends the precision by splitting "means" into "constitutive means" and "instrumental means."

However, we could extend the precision further by replacing the two words "means" and "ends" with another set of words related to cognitive psychology. Instead of "means" and "ends", we could use "desires", "instincts", "habits", and "reflexes". Those four terms increase the precision further, instead of two under the means-end dichotomy. If interpreted under the means-end dichotomy, "habits" can sometimes be a means and sometimes be an end, and sometimes both. "Desires" can sometimes be a means because desires can change, and sometimes be and end in itself. While the means-ends dichotomy disregards and "desires" and "reflexes", cognitive psychology increases its precision further.

The means-end dichotomy is arbitrary because it disregards the precision, and oversimplifies them into means and ends. While Roderick Long and some Aristolean liberals improves upon it by either splitting "means" into "constitutive means" and "instrumental means," or, as in Aristotelian ethics, an "ultimate end to life". However, Aristotelian liberalism still has less precision than grounding ethics with cognitive psychology.

Ambiguous Ethical Terminology

2009-06-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

Roderick Long has written his argument for "natural law". We should first note that the term "natural law" has multiple definitions. Even Long himself confused the definitions.

Now we can see where Rollins' critique has gone wrong. Rollins is thinking of natural rights as if they were a special kind of legal right — a right legislated by God or Nature rather than by the state. Given that assumption, what he says makes sense: legal rights are of little value unless they are also de facto rights. (When Rollins refers to "real rights" as "those rights actually conferred and enforced by the laws of a State or the customs of a social group," he clearly has in mind de facto rights.) Just as it does me no good to have a legal right on paper that the state pays lip service to in theory but systematically ignores in practice, so it does me no good to have a natural right inscribed in the Law of Nature if no one is willing or able to enforce that right.

But this is the wrong way to think about natural rights. A natural right isn't a legal right, it's a normative right. To claim that natural rights don't protect anything is to miss the point; natural rights are supposed to receive protection, not to provide it. Likewise, the function of Natural Law is not to protect any claims, but rather to tell us which claims deserve protection. As normative concepts, natural rights provide guidance for people's conduct. Blaming natural rights for not protecting us is like blaming a cookbook for not making dinner. Cookbooks don't make dinner for us; their purpose is to teach us how to make dinner for ourselves. Likewise, Natural Law doesn't lead our lives for us; its purpose is to guide us in the living of our own lives.3

Long here wins the first argument.

However, Long had used a different definition of "natural rights" than what Rothbard uses. In addition, he has conflated "natural rights" and "natural law," which could mean two distinct topics.

A user named "wilderness" at the Mises Community has made the same mistake.

Taken to the further extreme it's why some can't figure out why protecting somebody's natural rights is in each individuals best interest. It's why somebody comes along and states, they "don't give a damn about liberty"... it's sickening. And why they can't understand murder, rape, and theft is not helpful. Secondly, cause of somebody like Rollins who is really confused.

Wilderness has conflated the "natural rights" written in the U.S. Constitution with the "natural law" of Rothbard.

Rollins is more willing than most critics of Natural Law to face the logical consequences of his position. But if morality is merely a tool for manipulating other people into doing what one wants, one wonders why people ever wrestle privately with moral dilemmas, why they ever find themselves compelled by conscience to do something that is unwelcome not only to themselves but to those around them.

More importantly, though, the question is why we should accept Rollins' claim that nothing is right or wrong and nothing is entitled to reverence. These are extraordinary claims, claims that run contrary to our ordinary beliefs and practices, and so the burden of proof rests with the person making such claims.

Long used a different definition of 'morality' than Rollins. Rollins does not reject 'morality' in the sense what Long uses. Therefore, Long made a strawman argument.

Long argues this from the "performative contradiction." Some self-identified "objectivists" use performative contradiction argument to criticize "subjectivism." They argue that "subjectivists believe that everything originate from subjective preference, but deny subjectivism itself as a subjective preference." However, the self-identified "objectivists" use a different definition of "subjectivism" than what the self-identified "subjecitivists" themselves do. The self-identified "subjectivists" could refute that argument by showing that each side uses a different definition of "subjective." They use the term "subjective" to mean beliefs and values in the mind.

Although we should not reject the "performative contradiction" as a valid argument, the performative contradiction argument has potential flaws. Its flaws stem from the soundness of its premises. The soundness of a performative contradiction argument depends on the soundness of its premises.

Some examples of performative contradiction arguments:

It is self-contradictory to reject the Aristotelian laws of identity, the excluded middle, and non-contradiction.
It is self-contradictory to reject Ludwig von Mises' law of human action.
It is self-contradictory to reject Ludwig von Mises' psychological egoism.
It is self-contradictory to reject "cogito, ergo sum."
It is self-contradictory to reject Murray Rothbard's argument for self-ownership.
It is self-contradictory to reject Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics.
It is self-contradictory to reject Stephen Kinsella's estoppel argument.
It is self-contradictory to reject Stefan Molyneux's universally preferable behavior.
It is self-contradictory to reject Ayn Rand's, Douglas Rasmussen's, and Douglas Den Uyl's attempts to derive "ought" from "is."

Long conflated five different definitions of "amoralism."

In the moral case, for example, Rollins, a self-proclaimed "amoralist," chooses to hold on to what most would view as a highly implausible belief — the belief that there is nothing wrong with "murder, rape, robbery, or torturing children" — and to reject more plausible beliefs whenever they come into conflict with that one.

The first definition of "amoralism" signifies the descriptive notion that "rights do not tangibly exist." In the second sense, the term "amoralism" functions as a mere synonym for "quasi-realism" or "moral fictionalism." The third sense signifies the notion that using terms such as "right" and "wrong" in describing ethical commands can create conflicts between the interpretation of rights and grey areas. In the fourth sense "amoralism" signifies that "I do not feel any empathy for others. Therefore, I want to legalize rape and murder." The fifth sense of "amoralism" signifies irrelevant to morality, for example, "science is amoral because it does not deal with normative opinions."

Rollins probably used "amoralism" in the third sense, while Long probably used "amoralism" in the fourth sense.

We may think of our evolutionarily-implanted normative impulses as playing a role in moral reasoning analogous to the role that sensory experience plays in scientific reasoning. The data of the senses are one of the most important sources of our beliefs about how the universe works. But we are not confined to the sensory level. Our capacity for reason drives us to try to build up a conceptual picture of the universe that makes sense; and although we rely heavily on sensory data in building that picture, if we have to sacrifice some sensory data in order to achieve a scientific picture that makes a little more sense — if we have to decide that, despite initial appearances, the earth isn't flat, the sun doesn't circle it, and tables aren't continuously solid all the way down — then some of what the senses tell us may have to be scrapped for the sake of a more intellectually satisfying theory.

Long has used confusing terms such as "sensation," "perception," and "conception." He then equivocates "evolutionarily-implanted normative impulse" with the "sensory level." He has failed to define these three terms.

Likewise, our evolutionarily-implanted moral impulses are one of the most important sources of our beliefs about how we ought to live. But we are not confined to the instinctual level. Our capacity for reason drives us to try to build up a conceptual picture of right and wrong that makes sense; and although we rely heavily on innate impulses in building that picture, if we have to disregard some of our innate impulses in order to achieve a moral picture that makes a little more sense — if we have to decide that, despite our initial impulses, we shouldn't kill animals for food — then some of what our moral instincts tell us may have to be scrapped for the sake of a more intellectually satisfying ethic. Once again, a purely evolutionary account of our sense of morality, however illuminating, will be importantly incomplete.

Long presupposes a dichotomy between "innate impulse" and "reason." He then equivocates "innate impulse" with "evolutionarily-implanted normative impulse." I believe that Long has used a strawman argument against Rich Hammer. Hammer does not want to abolish "ethical reasoning" altogether in place of "evolutionarily-implanted normative instincts." If Hammer however wanted to abolish "ethical reasoning" altogether, then he would not have written his book.

This article is yet another example of how terminological differences can create chaos. Just imagine if we had resolved all of our terminological differences...

Psychological Egoism = Psychological Atomism

2009-06-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

This is previously posted on the Ludwig von Mises forums.

It is arbitrary to label the brain as "egoistic" when the components of the brain are not. Likewise, it is absurd to label the brain as "egoistic" when composites of the "whole brain" are not.

Let us look into this. Assume that the human brain is divided into parts or modules. Each part functions independently with each other. However, they often conflict with each other.

Let us imagine a brain with three parts. One part of the brain, called area-A, deals with the maximization of pleasure. Another part of the brain, called area-B, deals with the maximization of acquiring wealth. Another part, area-C, deals with the minimization of pain.

How do they function? Area-A tries to maximize pleasure when area-C tries to minimize pain. They conflict with each other: does area-A want more pain at the tradeoff of more pleasure, or vice versa? Does area-A want desire short-term pleasure at the expense of long-term pain of area-C? How much pleasure and pain should each of these areas settle?

How does area-A and area-C resolve those conflicts? Area-A sometimes have to sacrifice pleasure for less pain in area-C. Area-C may have to increase pain threadhold for area-A to gain long-term pleasure in the future. All these actions involves area-A or area-C sacrificing with each other. Area-C may sometimes altruistically benefit area-A, and sometimes area-C may be altruistic to area-A.

Should we say that area-A and area-C behave in their own interests, or they collectively interact for the greater interest to "maximize" the "whole brain," the composite satisfaction of area-A, area-B, and area-C?

The question is that the interactions between the three components are selfish or the component parts -- areas-A, area-B, and area-C -- are each selfish but altruistic relative to the composite brain combined?

Let us look at the family.

We will use a metaphor of brain parts to represent family members. One part of the brain, called area-A, represents the mother. Another part represents, called area-B, represets the father. The third part represents, called area-C, represents the child.

The family members help each other. Each family member help one another when one is sick. Each help one another on housework. Why do all three family members help one another? Because they have an innate instinct to help each family member. Humans have evolved an instinct to help their kins. Therefore, can we describe the whole family as based on "self-interest"?

Each person is interconnected with one another in the form of an instinct to help each kin, for the greater benefit of the family. Similarly, each part of the brain conflict with each other, for the greater benefit of the aggregate brain.

Psychological egoists describe each family member as "egoistic" even when they help one another. This seems intuitively correct. However, could we say that each of the three parts of the brain are egoistic themselves, just like what each family member are?

Likewise, could we describe the aggregate "whole brain" is overall egoistic? Psychological egoists would tend to agree. But could we describe the family collectively itself as egoistic? Psychological egoists may intuitively disagree.

Each of the three brain components conflict and compromise with each other, producing an overall equilibrium. Similarly, each family member may conflict and compromise with each other, producing an overall equilibrium. Could we say that the overall equlibrium is "egoistic"? Could we say that the aggregates of the three components are as egoistic as the aggregates of the three family members?

Why do psychological egoists arbitrarily pick the brain as "egoistic," while the family member as a whole as not "egoistic"? This is very arbitrary.

One may object that the best level is to pick the individual brain, instead of groups more than one person. They claim that is is more accurate to analyze action on the individual level rather than the group level. They practice methodological individualism.

However, picking the "whole brain" as the starting point of egoism is very arbitrary. Why do psychological egoists deny that "the family as a whole" as not egoistic but assert that "the brain as a whole" as egoistic? All parts in these two interact, conflict, and compromise with each other, right?

Ex Post Facto Rationalizations in Ethics

2009-06-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Below is a full reply to Cork's post on abortion:

The legitimacy of abortion should have nothing to do with your interpretation of the non-aggression and the proportionality principle. The non-aggression principle can have potentially arbitrary interpretations.

As you know, not all self-described "libertarian anarchists" hold the same views. For instance, some libertarians support animal rights, some oppose abortion, some criticize retributive punishment, and some others support some parental authority. Those views conflict and compete with one another to attract attention.

As we have said previously, one could interpret the non-aggression principle in about a gazillion ways. Some anti-abortionists might feel cognitive dissonance, and thus interpret abortion as a form of aggression. Likewise, some others may interpret retributive punishment as a form of invasion against the criminal. Let us recall the problems of interpreting the non-aggression principle.

Does does the "non-aggression principle" allow "right to self-defense" or the "right to violently punish others"? Does the "non-aggression principle" allow trespassing or hate speech? We will show that the term "aggression" is highly vague.

Some will define "aggression" as "the initiation of physical violence." However, the term physical violence is also vague. Does "physical violence" include noise pollution? Does it include perceived threats of violence? Does "physical violence" include fraud? Whether noise pollution, threats of violence, and fraud are "physical violence" still begs the question.

Libertarians usually defend the right for broadcasters to homestead radio frequencies. However, if a malicious broadcaster "trespasses" another broadcaster's radio frequency, can we label this as "physical violence"? Obviously, the criminal changed nothing physical or tangible. This, also, begs the question whether if we should consider it as "physical violence." This same argument applies with the ownership of domain names.

Consequentially, it begs the question to ask whether anti-defamation laws violate the non-aggression principle. It also begs the question to ask whether the prohibition of nuclear weapons violate the non-aggression principle. In addition, it begs the question to ask whether ordering carbon dioxide polluters to pay restitution violates the non-aggression principle.

Libertarians define "individual sovereignty" as a state in which no one commits aggression against any individual. So far so good.

However, as we recall above, the word "aggression" has arbitrary interpretations. As a result, "individual sovereignty," which depends on the definition of "aggression," also has arbitrary interpretations. I found your usage of "self-ownership" in you elucidation above, therefore, as problematic.

As a consequence, we should only establish the definition of "libertarianism," "non-aggression principle," and "self-ownership" only prototypically. By "prototypically" we meant the prototype theory of classification. Libertarianism does not have any clear-cut "essence," and so does not "aggression" and "personal sovereignty."

Let us take abortion as an example of the arbitrariness of law.

The genuine causes of the abortion controversy arise from religion, empathy, and the definition of life.

Referring to the non-aggression principle constitutes as a type of cognitive dissonance. Judges, for example, use the law to legitimize their evil decrees. They have the power to interpret the law in any biased way, even though the law appears "objective" to the general population.

Legitimizing morality in the name of "it confirms/violates the non-aggression principle" is an appeal to the rule of law. It does not state any reason of the immorality itself, but an appeal to the law of non-aggression. It also begs the question if specific acts violate the non-aggression principle.

"Unborn babies" are parasites and if the mother does not want one in her body, she should not be forced to support one.

I have an objection. It depends on your definition of "parasite."

Aging can also be considered a parasite. So does cancer. If cancer is a parasite, does it give any right for the patient to steal money from a rich person for his treatment? It is a type of theft against the rich person.

Anti-abortionists consider fetuses as living beings. Like the cancer patent, the mother does not have any right to murder against another person, the fetus.

However, I do not oppose abortion. I am making a point that the non-aggression principle and laws can have potentially arbitrary interpretations, and could possibly justify any evil behavior.

The reason the cancer patient should not be allowed to steal from a "rich person" is because the rich person is *not* the parasite.

That is a common objection, but it still depends on the your interpretation of "parasite."

You agree that life is more valuable than property. The rich person can be interpreted as a kind of "parasite" you allow the person to be rich at the expense of killing someone. The rich person could just donate his money on the condition that the mother does not abort the child. So the rich person is causing the mother the kill her child by not donating to the mother. Therefore, you are valuing the rich person's property greater that you value the fetus's life. You do not support subsidizing the mother giving birth instead of aborting her child.

The law forbids murder and rape. Therefore, the would-be murderers and the would-be rapists cannot satisfy their preferences. The would-be victims of murder and rape are technically "parasites" in a sense, because we our preferences for life and against rape are brought about the expense of the preferences of the murderers and rapists. The victims of rape and murder are parasites in a sense and the murderers and rapists are the "victims" in a sense.

So do laws that forbid petty crimes such as adultery. Suppose a wife has cheated on her husband with another man. The wife, here, can both be a victim and a predator. She is a "victim" of the in the sense that the anti-adultery law does not grant her the liberty to cheat on her husband, then punished for it. She is an predator in a sense since she violated the adultery law and that she has angered her husband.

So the rich person can technically be interpreted as a parasite, in a sense. The enforcement of property rights have positive effects on the intelligent and the productive people, at the expense of the unproductive, the lazy, and the dim-witted people. Since the rich person is rich because of property rights, he is a parasite to the poor people. And, because, the enforcement of "property rights" is just a law that makes some more productive at the expense of others, it can form parasites and the exploited: The enforcement of property rights exploit the mentally incompetent, the disabled people, and the unproductive people.

The rich person is a parasite to the fetus in a way that the rich is not subsidizing the mother on the condition that the mother will not abort the fetus.

My point is that the rich person can be interpreted as a "parasite" in a sense, depending on one's self-knowledge. But we have to go back to my original point is that it is circular reasoning to justify laws from the non-aggression principle. It begs the question.

Anti-murder laws restrain the would-be murderer's liberty at the expense of the would-be victim's liberty to be alive. Anti-adultery laws retrain the would-be cheater's liberty at the expense of the spouse's liberty to not be cheated. Property laws restrain the disabled, lazy, mentally incompetent, and the unproductive's liberty at the expense of the liberty of the productive, efficient, and intelligent to create wealth. Pro-abortion laws restrain the fetus's liberty to stay alive at the expense of the rich person's willingness to not donate money to the pregnant mother.

Those who violate the non-aggression principle are labelled parasites, predators, aggressors, or criminals. Those who have experienced a violation of the non-aggression principle are called the victims, the prey, the exploited.

So terms such as "parasite," "predator," "aggressor," "tortfeasor," "criminal," "victim," and "prey" depend on one's definition or interpretation of the non-aggression principle or the law. These terms have different meanings according to one's perspective to the law.

Even libertarians themselves have different meanings for these terms. Some libertarians oppose retributive punishment, some oppose abortion, and some support animal rights. They therefore, have different interpretations of the words such as "parasite," "predator," and "victim." Your argument for abortion is like telling a libertarian who supports animal rights that the abused animals are not the "victims" of human "predators." Since they hold a differing interpretation of "aggression," your usage of these terms are circular, and might never influence them.

This is the reason why your sophistic arguments do not work. What we should be really debating with the anti-abortionists is religion and what constitutes human life.

Here's an example of natural law:

Each and every individual should enjoy the full product of his labor. No one else other than the individual can accurately estimate cost of labor that he has worked to produce a good. Therefore, no one else can exchange his good with another good or take his good without the individual's permission because the cost labor he has put into producing the good may be more than others may have perceived. Exchanging a good without consent should be forbidden because the individual may lose some fruits of his labor due to the fact that others may underestimate how much labor one worked to produce that good.
If both parties agree to exchange, the exchange is voluntary. Each individual can accurately estimate how much labor he has worked to produce his respective good. Each individual can also estimate the usability of his traders' goods. Therefore, both would maintain their full products of their labor, plus the value each benefited from the exchange.

Organizational Structures in Market Anarchism

2009-04-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

Peter G. Klein has written a new criticism to the "left-libertarians" on organization theory. Both Klein and the "left-libertarians" have made some errors. We will identify some problems with the arguments pointed out by both sides below.

Klein, who cited Rothbard as a source, may have performed the argument to authority. Klein used Rothbard's "critique" of agorism, to exploit Rothbard's overwhelming popularity within libertarianism, to push his point-of-view. However, Rothbard, in his critique, entirely strawmanned Konkin's agorism.

Rothbard, in the first portion of his article, misinterpreted Konkin's objections to voluntary corporations and joint stock companies. Rothbard thought that Konkin wants to aggressively forbid the development of these organizations. Rothbard misinterpreted the statement "Konkin opposes wage labor."

Walter Block, Stephan Kinsella, and Murray Rothbard use and interpret the word "oppose" to mean that they oppose actions that violates merely the non-aggression principle.

However, the Aristotelian liberals, such as Roderick Long, defines morality differently. Aristotelian liberalism, which simply denotes a brand of market anarchism that preaches virtue ethics, defines "morality" as a broader system beyond the meta-normative conception of rights. The term "morality," in this sense, can imply voluntary ethical systems that does not necessary coincide with the non-aggression principle. When an Aristotelian liberal says that he "oppose something," he might actually mean that he want to voluntarily persuade others to avoid doing that thing. Likewise, when Roderick Long says that he "morally opposes wage labor," he actually meant to voluntarily advocate alternative arrangements besides wage labor. Long made a similar claim in his libertarian feminism article. When Long said that he "morally oppose prostitution," he actually meant that he wanted to voluntarily abolish prostitution by persuading prostitutes to look for alternative occupations.^[1]

We should not use the term "corporation" due to its vagueness. Often, people conflate the term "corporation" in its legitimate sense and "corporation" in the illegitimate sense. In its illegitimate sense, the term "corporation" signifies state privilege; and "corporation" its legitimate sense signifies an orgazation with limited liability contracts with explicit consent by all parties. This terminological barrier confuses the whole debate.^[2]

In addition, a "corporation" could mean a network of independent contractors,^[3] to borrow this phrase from Peter G. Klein. One could conceptualize this by imagining independent contractors as employees. Even in the real world, we find it hard to distinguish an independent contractor from an employee in the legal sense. Some might define the two terms as the degree of boss control, but we cannot find any strict distinction between independent contractor and employee. How much boss control, specifically, would make the worker an employee instead of an independent contractor? Because we cannot indentify the essential characterists of independent contractors from employment, some would denote these two terms as synonymous.

The term "firm," like "corporation," also has a fuzzy denotation. A firm, for example, could mean a loose association of smaller firms. A firm could also man a cartel agreement among competing sub-firms, or a "business trust." Could we label a joint venture itself a firm even that it comprises of two smaller firms? If we go further with this, we could even label each "independent contractor" as a firm. One could simply imagine an independent contractor as a firm that associates with another firm that pays for its services. The arbitrariness of the term "firm" makes it hard for some to decode its meaning in certain contexts, such as the size of the firm in a free market. We cannot make a valid argument that the median firm will employ less workers in a free market, because of the vagueness of the term "firm."

However, I understand the gist of what the "left-libertarians" mean when they talk about "smaller firms" in a free market. We can rephrase this ideas to this:

Workers will have greater control over his workplace, instead of the CEOs and senior managers monopolizing control; management will be delegated to more specialized workers instead of unspecialized CEOs and senior managers; power will be distributed more evenly among the workplace; workers will have more freedom from boss commands

Obviously, I criticize the second half of Rothbard's article in defense of the reformist political process. Rothbard's critique of the U.S. Libertarian Party seems to not understand that Konkin opposes them on strategical grounds, not merely on meta-normative grounds.

Overall, Rothbard's wrote his article in an extremely legalistic tone. First, Rothbard strawmanned Konkin that he wants to illegalize corporations and wage labor. Secondly, Rothbard strawmanned agorists for their alleged belief them illegalizing the U.S. Libertarian Party and illegitimacy of voting. Even in an agoristic point-of-view, agorists do not want to illegalize either one of them. Agorists do meant "immoral" by "illegal."

When the agorists label corporations and hierarchy as "immoral," they do not mean that they want to prohibit them. They mean by a prediction that workers will find a lesser degree of hierarchy in a free market. The agorists also label "voting" as "immoral" because they consider voting as strategically counterproductive.

Rothbard, in a paragraph, uses over-systematized nonsense to defend the right for slaves to vote:

Let's put it this way: Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so. Of course, there might well be circumstances — say when both masters are similar — where the slaves would be better off not voting in order to make a visible protest — but this is a tactical not a moral consideration. Voting would not be evil but, in such a case, less effective than the protest.

Rothbard therefore strawmanned the agorists. Like Rothbard, the agorists also defened the right to vote. However, the agorists oppose voting on strategic grounds. Aside from the deontological moral arguments against voting, agorists oppose voting mainly for its impracticality and its bad consequences. Some agorists even have created a moral rule against voting because of its impracticality and its bad consequences.

I see problems with the term "agorism" because of its ambiguity. An "agorist" could mean a Carsonian mutualist who opposes stick ownership of capital and land. That just does not accurately describe my positions.

Setting terminology aside, the term "agorist" has another problem. Some agorists strategically support the black markets and unions. However, I previously described black markets and unions as counterproductive:

Anarcho-capitalists who advocate political reform is functionally a classical liberal, since they do the same thing. Similarly, a market-anarchist who supports syndicalism is functionally an anarcho-syndicalist. An agorist who only sells prohibited drugs is functionally the same to all of the other non-libertarian workers in the black market. Non-straightforward ways of promoting libertarianism are thus highly inefficient.

I emphasized above that grey markets differ from black markets. Grey markets, unlike black markets, can actually work. I support grey markets for its decreased risk.

I also see problems with the term "mutualism." However, that does not imply that I consider the current system as the lesser evil than a mutualist society. Indeed, like most Rothbardian market anarchists, I would rather live in a mutualist society than in any corporatist system, if I had to choose from these two options. Furthermore, if someone opposes the term "mutualism," it does not imply that she opposes allying with the mutualists. Someone can still hold an ardent alliance with the mutualists even if she dislikes to describe herself as a "mutualist."

I have read most of the chapters in Kevin Amos Carson's book Organization Theory. Ninety percent of its chapters deals with empirical "case studies." These "case studies" look redundant and uninteresting. I learned noting new from this book, as I already know the corporate privileges beforehard. Many market anarchists know that there exists significant principal-agent problems in all organizations, such as the oversight costs of employing workers and communication barriers. For proof, I commented about this at Francois Tremblay's blog:

I agree that employment has the principle-agent problem caused from asymmetrical information. I know the significant communication barriers and oversight costs of employing a worker. I also know that in the current system, the employer can give arbitrary orders to the worker whatever the employer feels like it. I agree that in a free society, more independent firms would function.

In a free society, more workers would create independent firms. Instead of the worker agreeing on a contract allowing the employer give arbitrary orders without any extra compensation, the worker owning his or her own firm would have more motivation to innovate instead of doing tedious work that the employer demands. Productivity and innovation would increase and the worker would actually appreciate their work.

I commented the above before Kevin Carson even released his chapter of how productivity and innovation would increase, and oversight costs will decrease under a free market. I commented this on October 7, 2008, but Kevin Carson released his chapter about this on November 2, 2008. Even Stephan Kinsella mentioned the obviousness of these agency costs in all organizations, before Kevin Carson released his chapter.

Therefore I regard Carson's book as a total waste of time. Many other anarcho-capitalists, such as Stephan Kinsella and Peter G. Klein, knew the problems of business organizations without even reading Carson's book.

Furthermore, I carefully noticed the differing definitions of "social hierarchy":

If you define a hierarchy as the criminals above-the-law who defends the state’s existence, I would oppose hierarchies. If you define a hierarchy as any middleman, such as those who transports goods throughout the society, I would support the hierarchies that function voluntarily.

[1]: I commented about this at Polycentric Order:

The word "oppose" has multiple meanings. In an article on Libertarian Feminism, Charles W. Johnson and Roderick T. Long "opposed" prostitution. However, they still support the right for individuals to exchange sex for money. They had used "oppose" to mean that they want to voluntarily abolish prostitution, but still support the right to exchange sex for money.

Likewise, when mutualists say that they "oppose wage labor," they do not mean that they oppose the right to create employment contracts. They mean by a prediction that workers will find better ways to make money instead of following the orders of his employer.
[2]: I commented about this at Polycentric Order:

Even though I oppose "corporations" in the sense of state privilege and involuntary limited liability "contracts," I still support "corporations" in the sense of purely voluntary limited liability contracts between two explicitly consenting parties.
[3]: I had previously used the phrase assocation of independent contractors in place of network of indepent contractors at Polycentric Order

you cannot assume that worker cooperatives will have less problems than an association of independent contractors ... Comparatively, democratically-controlled worker cooperatives would have more agency problems than an association of independent contractors.

Left-libertarians argue that in a free market, there would be "less" "vertically integrated" firms, partially got that idea from Kevin Carson, and from their logic. However, this is not true.

First, they did not agree to a definition of what a "vertically integrated firm" is. All factories are "vertically integrated firms" because they seperate the production processes to different machines. In this way, vertically integrated firms exist because they are more efficient, and do not have to pay for the cost for transportation, etc.

So, certain types of "vertically integrated firms" are more efficient. However, they also argue that because of our current monopoly of firms, there would be less because competition undermines these inefficient vertically integrated firms. They are using the words "but" in "but there would be less" without thinking about others.

There would be MORE vertically integrated firms and corporations in a free market because there are no barriers to entry to start a corporation or a vertically integrated firm in a free market. So arguing that there would be less "corporations and more private contractors" in a free market is nonsense.

Also, many libertarians argue on blatant geographical assumptions. For example, some left-libertarians argue that everything in anarchism is privatized. However, there could exist unprivatized land and atmosphere. For instance, Hans-Hermann Hoppe defend "immigration reduction" on the assumption that all land and atmosphere is privatized so many people would use them to block transportation. Another example is the belief in collectivist roads from left-libertarians, as they argue because all land is private, there should be some collective transporation to prevent the owners to charge high tolls.

Also, left-libertarians are more sympathetic to anarcho-communists. This is false. Anarcho-communism is a type of collectivist anarchism, where the workers and people collectively own all the means of production. This includes the military. Why would anarcho-communists have respect to the individual when the military is collectively controlled by the workers, just like democracy? Hence, anarcho-communism is a dictatorship by the workers.

Limited liability can be specified by contracts, but in the current situation, some limited liability businesses has an advantage over unlimited liability businesses. Suppose a robotic truck driver runs over your property. This cannot be contractually enforced because you did not buy the truck. The owner from the truck driving company cannot get sued, because he has a state-granted limited liability privelage. Therefore, the owner can malinvest by producing more robotic truck drivers regardless of safety to get money. The business, however, is protected by the state.

If you attempt to use PDAs defend against the truck driver in a statist society, you are liable for damaging their property. But in an anarchist society, you can use private defence agencies to offer compensation from the truck company.

However, because our current situation is not a market anarchist society, the trucking business cannot be compensated by PDAs because they are protected by the state. Thus, in some situations, limited liability is a priveladge from the state.

Another thing is their limited liability from intellectual property violations. They have an advantage in making products that violate patents. This is unfair to unlimited liability businesses. But the main problem is the legality of IP laws, which should be eliminated along with the state.

Yes, do not mistake me--some limited liability can be specified by contracts--but some do not and is a priveledge of the state.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Advocates Worker Ownership

2009-04-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

If you hear someone yelling the phrase "property is theft," you might intuitively label him as a communist or as an economic collectivist. However, many libertarian bloggers and blog commentators challenge this assumption.

First coined by a 19th century mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, contemporary mutualists and Rothbardian market anarchists continue to repeat this motto. Even that this aphorism sounds absurd at first, they generally claim that Proudhon did not meant "property is theft" in the literal sense; they claim that Proudhon referred it to the property stolen by the state. Therefore, they claim that merely "semantics" caused this terminological conflict. A blogger called "Brainpolice," in a post titled Remembering Proudhon at Polycentric Order, postulated this:

There is also a context in which Proudhon was very much in favor of private or individual property, viewing it as an indispensible [sic] counterweight to the state.

A lot of market anarchists therefore asserted that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon favors property, and that he used "property as theft" as a rhetoric to attract readers. Andrew's post and the commentators at this blog post unanimously cited Brainpolice's assertion without even reading the primary sources.

However, if we take a closer look at what Proudhon meant by "property is theft," Brainpolice got it all wrong. In Proudhon's treatise What is Property?, he advocates the "possession" or the "use-and-occupancy" theory of property. Proudhon, therefore, as he said, rejects sticky property (Lockean property), or the perpetual ownership of property:

So that in society the only thing which could bring back the inequality of labor would be the right of occupancy, -- the right of property. (Page 124)

Therefore, Proudhon used "property is theft" to mean that "sticky property is theft."

Brainpolice probably got this idea from Brad Spangler's post on Proudhon, which Spangler in turn got it from this web page. If Brainpolice took that idea from Spangler, then he certainly did popularize Spangler's claim to misrepresent Proudhon. Brainpolice claimed that Proudhon merely opposes state privileges on property, but advocates sticky property just like how the Rothbardian market anarchists do.

Also, in contrast to the popular opinion, Proudhon actually rejected "the fruits of our labor" as a justification for property. He repeats this position in Chapter 3 of What is Property. Proudhon only justified property by "possession" or use-and-occupancy.

Furthermore, Proudhon used "property is impossible" to mean his theory of primitive accumulation. Proudhon argued that in a society ruled by sticky property, over time, a few hands will eventually concentrate nearly all property. He argued that these proprietors will then rent out their property to serfs. Therefore Proudhon actually used "property is impossible" to mean that "sticky property will lead to feudalism, with the poor propertyless (i.e. impossible for the poor to own property)." Proudhon demonstrated this in Chapter 4 in What is Property:

Every possessor of lands, houses, furniture, machinery, tools, money, &c., who lends a thing for a price exceeding the cost of repairs (the repairs being charged to the lender, and representing products which he exchanges for other products), is guilty of swindling and extortion. In short, all rent received (nominally as damages, but really as payment for a loan) is an act of property, -- a robbery. (Page 167)

Many market anarchists blindly follow Brainpolice's authority for his claims. In the past, Brainpolice, in a comment on his website, dogmatically claimed that Mikhail Bakunin actually uses the phrase "collectivist anarchism"; and that Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker actually use the phrase "individualist anarchism" to describe themselves. We have also refuted this. We have dispelled these misconceptions.

How to Spot a Naïve Ancap

2009-03-31T17:15:00.000-07:00

We will make a quick post to list some 10 planks to distinguish a naïve ancap from a radical ancap.

Plank one. The naïve ancap estimates that labor productivity will merely double in ancapistan. Contrastingly, the radical ancap believes that ancapistan would have at least five times greater productivity than what we have now. The naïve ancap believes that taxation and inflation more-or-less cause only a 50% productivity loss, while the radical ancap knows that the state squanders at least 80% of our labor productivity.

Plank two. The naïve ancap follows mainstream supply-side celebrities like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and/or the conspiracy nut Alex Jones. The naïve ancap almost exclusively focuses on bail-outs, while avoiding all the other draconian privileges that the plutocrats loot from us. Contrastingly, the radical ancap focuses on the entire scope of state privileges, besides taxation. The radical ancap understands that state regulations, interventions, licensing, urban planning, and prohibitions more greatly impoverishes the economy besides merely taxation and inflation.

Plank three. Because the naïve ancap have a less radical view of economics than the radical ancap, they will often resort to a fetish for the past American government, in what they call "Restore the Republic." In doing so, the naïve ancap clungs to the U.S. Constitution, an obsolete document. Likewise, the naïve ancaps more likely vote for the "fiscal conservative" candidates who promises to slash the tax brackets by an only few percentage points. They will often fall into Ron Paul's traditionalist "Campaign for Liberty," the totalitarian "Free State Project," the theocratic "John Birch Society," or "Peter Schiff for Senator."

Plank four. The naïve ancap more likely follows stock market indices than the radical ancap. The stock-market indices, such as the Dow Jones Index, most likely measures the well-being of the most privileged firms. The 30 components of the Dow Jones Index consists of mega-corporations which gets subsidies and bailouts from the government, and regulations that cartelize them.

Plank five. The naïve ancap more likely favors gradualist and reformist polices that compromises the their goal. For example, the naïve ancap more likely praises welfare reform programs, such as FairTax, school vouchers, Health Savings Accounts, and the other of the so-called "market-based" solutions. Contrastingly, the radical ancap recognizes these schemes as simply the government as expanding out to quasi-statist firms.

Plank six. Because the naïve ancap trusts the state more, they will likely hold the status quo of legitimizing some state practices, such as immigration restriction or disallowing the "illegal" immigrants to use the bureaucratic hospitals or the state schools (indoctrination prisons).

Plank seven. The naïve ancap, in general, has greater faith in the state and its bureaucracy than the radical ancaps. We do not mean that the naïve ancap supports or even tolerates statism. We mean that they only believe that bureaucracies have 50% or so inefficiency than the so-called "private" companies. For example, the naïve ancap claims that school vouchers can more efficiently indoctrinate children than state schools. However, the naïve ancap never questions the state indoctrination centers itself. Contrastingly, the radical ancap believes that truly free market schools will have 95% more efficiency, not at indoctrinating children, but at educating them.

Plank eight. The radical ancap views the state as a criminal monster that deceptively steals at least 80% of our productivity, at least not as much as the naïve ancap does. Therefore the naïve ancap will likely vote and participate in electoral campaigns rather than education. Even if the naïve ancap wants to educate others, they will tend to use arguments justifying the status quo of our income distribution as a "natural" outcome of human nature or the economic system. Most of these arguments sound indistinguishable from what Such Limbaugh or Sean Hannity makes, that "tax cuts" benefits the economy, or "welfare" creates a spiral of dependence. They never question the state impoverishes individuals by its licenses, building codes, land-use regulations, red tape, and certification requirements which impoverishes them by wasting 90% of their productivity (the state steals 80% of the productivity from the middle class, but 90% of the productivity from the lower classes).

Plank nine. The naïve ancap will more likely get fooled by the glittering generalities and the vague words spoken by conservative politicians and radio hosts.

Plank ten. The naïve ancap still trusts mainstream media.

The Social Anarchist Assault on Ancapistan

2009-03-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Alex, thanks again for your criticism titled Fallacious Rejection of Anarchism.

First of all, I consistently describe myself as a "poor writer," which means that my writing often misrepresents by beliefs. For instance, I mistyped yesterday's response and it contained grammatical errors, and, as you all know, some misrepresentations. In addition, I forgot to edit, revise, and clarify my work. Therefore I will clarify my claims that I pointed out yesterday.

Alex said: This is a misrepresentation of me. What affiliation with minarchism? I had come to negatively define anarcho-capitalism after having been one myself! ... The claim that I was a minarchist while making such claims about anarcho-capitalism is false - I held the exact same position I do now upon making those claims and considered myself a market anarchist. The allusion to me as a minarchist has nothing to do with this.

Looking at Alex's old blog and his past influence from Ron Paul, I presumed that he had defined "anarcho-capitalism" that way. On his old blog, Alex had defined "anarcho-capitalism" as a system of competing private defense agencies operated by large bureaucratic firms. However, most self-described "anarcho-capitalists" disagree with Alex's narrow definition. These "anarcho-capitalists" define "anarcho-capitalism" more broadly, as a system in which its constituent individuals abide by the non-aggression principle. I hope this clarifies it up.

Alex said: My problem with anarcho-capitalism is in the assumption of a certain absolutist norm of property rights and by making a reductio ad absurdum out of what *some* anarcho-capitalists advocate. ... Anarcho-mercantalist would like to fool people into thinking that all of this is purely a semantic issue when it isn't. ... This is not merel about labels.

I agree with Alex here. I try to minimize my use of "anarcho-capitalism" because of its connotations, especially when I communicate with strangers. In general, as I mentioned before, I dislike to describe myself with one-word, two-word, or three-word labels. I also disagree with with the beliefs that some (or most) of the "anarcho-capitalists" hold. In your quote of me, I meant that some "non-vulgar" market anarchists continue to use "anarcho-capitalism" to label themselves, even if they know that some (or most) of the "anarcho-capitalists" conflate the current system with a free market.

Alex said: it is generally revolved around the concern that "sticky ownership of land" as a normative absolute can justify authoritarianism, have bad socio-economic consequences and ultimately devolve into states. The concerns about anarcho-capitalism are not merely over the term itself.

I know the consequences if we take "sticky" land ownership to the absolute. It might result in some cartelization of land, thus might devolve into a state. Nevertheless, the current system already cartelizes land.

Many "anarcho-capitalists" even favor land redistribution of past stolen land. See Rothbard's article on the Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.

Many mutualists therefore do not see much difference between mutualism and "left-Rothbardianism." However, as I described earlier in an unexpectedly famous post titled The Left-Libertarian Strategy, the "left-Rothbardians" and the mutualists differ by a lot.

Alex said: Some "anarcho-capitalists" likely dislike the term "market anarchism" precisely because it implies that they do not have a monopoly on free market ideas in anarchism. The resistance to "market anarchism" as an umbrella is a reinforcement of my own claim that "anarcho-capitalists" tend to be monocentric.

I only partially agree with you here. Let us clarify this below.

Alex said: I have never taken an absolutist anti-private-property position.

I apologize for misrepresenting you of opposing "private property" in all contexts. Anyway, I identify myself as a "poor and sloppy writer." Also, as you mentioned, I support "voluntary cooperatives" and oppose "corporations" if I follow your definitions.

I consider this sentence that I have written as unclear:

Anarcho-mercantilist said: I think Cork use 'private property' to mean the 'non-aggression principle'

So we will rephrase and clarify the above statement: Cork used "private property" to mean that "no social anarchist has the right to harm the legitimate private property of third parties." I used "legitimate private property" here to refer to the private property legitimately owned by individuals, not stolen property held by a monarch or by the state (which includes taxpayer-funded contractors).

Let us explain what Cork means below.

We find it unquestionable that all social anarchists—regardless of the anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, or anarcho-collectivist stripe—hate "capitalism" and "wage labor."

Thus, the social anarchists will invade ancapistan and attack their factory bosses, managers, landowners, and financiers—all the occupations that they consider as parasitic. Cork fears about this!

Alex might object to this claim because many social anarchists (such as Bakunin) speak of "voluntary associations." However, the social anarchists have a different conception of what "voluntary" means. As I mentioned before in another comment, the social anarchists define the expropriation of capital and land by the workers as a non-aggressive act. Therefore, because the social anarchists argue the expropriation of capital and land as "voluntary," they will invade ancapistan and attack their factory bosses, managers, landowners, and financiers.

Mike Gogulski (who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist) has commented his thoughts on the social anarchists in his post titled Agorism and Ancap Panarchy. Mike, in one of his comments, has expressed the same fear that the social anarchists will attack ancapistan.

We hope that this clarifies Cork's thoughts on the social "anarchists."

Anarchist Controversies

2009-03-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

I disagree with some aspects of libertarianism promoted by virtually all libertarian bloggers. Thus I unsubscribed to almost all libertarian blogs. I began to criticise libertarianism since then. I took useless notes in hundreds of text files since I felt like it. I felt obsessed with the fallacies. I plan to integrate these notes in some writings. Below, I posted a possible outline of the free online book on libertarian fallacies. Almost all of the materials below did not show on my blog or any other author. So this outline does not repeat any of the fallacious ramblings on this blog.

I integrated 22 separate articles to this book as "chapters." I sorted these chapters so they would build up in order. I might also add 15 additional chapters in the Fallacies within Libertarianism section.

The Abuse of Libertarian Theory
1. The Fallacies of the Rule of Law
  
  Why do authority figures abuse the rule of law? What incentives does the system lack? Can we even interpret the law clear enough? Indeed, libertarians often refer to the U.S. Constitution and the non-aggression principle as the "rule of law." Politicians use the "rule of law" to legitimize their beliefs. Wikipedia editors, likewise, abuse the "rule of law" for their own interests.
2. The Abuse of Libertarian Ethics
  
  Hans-Hermann Hoppe cites the "non-aggression principle" to justify closed borders. Likewise, some misapply the non-aggression principle for their own ends. Indeed, libertarian theorists cram their preferences with the non-aggression principle to promote their own interests.
Libertarian Semantics
1. The Confusing Labels of Libertarian Schools
  
  We often cannot attach any specific or concrete meaning to the words "liberal," "conservative," "capitalist," and "socialist." Despite such usual words, we also confuse terms such as "anarcho-capitalist." We found a surprising number of definitions of "anarcho-capitalism," from the broad meaning of the non-aggression principle, to the narrow, "hard propertarian" meaning resembling fascism.
2. Ontological Nonsense
  
  In ontology, the "study of being," we take different positions on "rationalism," "empiricism," "physicalism," and "idealism." We will show the meaningless of these terms.
3. The Semantic Abuse of Meta-ethics
  
  What does "objectivism," "subjectivism," "realism," and "nominalism" mean? Can we agree on a specific meaning of these terms? Can we "pick" a semantic interpretation of ethics such as "cognitivism" and "non-cognitivism"? No, we do not. Some will ignore this chapter as advocating "subjectivism" or "idealism," but we claim to not hold any position in meta-ethics.
4. The False Dichotomy of Consequentialism and Deontology
  
  Many libertarians divide between consequentialist and deontological ethics. We will deny this false dichotomy.
5. E-Prime and Libertarian Semantics
  
  Libertarians will often misrepresent others. How do we resolve it? Some will resort to redefining terms, while others avoid only those "controversial" terms altogether. We found a new method to do this. We resolve this by practicing a variety of English called E-Prime, which reduces labeling and ontological fallacies.
Fallacies within Libertarianism
1. The Slippery Slope of Lifeboat Scenarios
  
  Libertarians will often extort aggression in "extreme" cases of ethics as "lifeboat scenarios." However, they will often abuse it and unconciously label "lifeboat situation" to every subject that they repel. Indeed, many controversies orginate from lifeboat scenarios. Thus we will refine "lifeboat situations" to minimize ambiguity.
2. The Fallacy of Subjective Indeterminacy
  
  When debating with some statists, we often go into debates on whether we should support the state to fund some "public goods" such as health care and housing. Many libertarians, however, will go into the slippery slope fallacy of "subjective indeterminacy" when debating about "public goods." Even with noting the multiple meanings of this term, we still take the risk of going into a version of the Sorites paradox.
3. Market Forces and Cultural Preferences do not Mix
  
  Some will say market competition will increase "popularity." Some others claim that a product can "outcompete" others. However, we should never use the metaphor "competition" to describe social evolution. We often abuse free-market theory with social movements.
4. The Theory of Popularity and Fringeness
  
  Why many so many people adore a belief or ideology and ignore others? Why does not the majority of economists practice Austrian Economics? Why typists avoid the Dvorak keyboard layout? We will claim the underlying factors of popularity, and the unpopularity of non-mainstream viewpoints.
5. Why Do We Grow?
  
  What does it mean for the economy to grow? Does it mean increased labor productivity or increased use-value satisfaction of its individuals? Should we even consider individual productivity as a virtue? We will conclude "economic growth" as a nonsensical concept.
6. Free-Market Manorialism: Why We All Rent and Invest Capital
  
  Some will argue "rent" will decrease, due to increased land availble and lower time-preferenecs. Some will predict land prices to increase, thus labeling the free-market as "manorialistic." However, we will all ubitiquously rent in a free market, whether we like it or not.
7. The Myth of Regulatory Expansion
  
  Some net neutrality detractors, such as libertarians, oppose increased interventions on Internet service providers. However, they often oppose it for flawed reasons. Can citizens even restrain the state? Some will say no, and some will argue yes. The Public Choice Fallacy comes.
8. The Economic-Demographic Myth and Sociobiological Evolution
  
  Ronald Reagan once claimed the free-market as "the best contraceptive." Ludwig von Mises and Mary Ruwart said the same thing. Should we accept that free markets reduce birth rates? Despite this fad, the opposite actually happens. Free markets increase birth rates, and economic planning reduces it. Also, due to sociobiological evolution, even a socialist society will increase birth rates in the long-run.
9. The Dow Jones Fallacy
  
  Libertarian enthusiasts and economists capture stock market indices as a hobby. However, they fail to take account of the accuracy of the reporting. Can the Dow Jones measure the entire economy accurately? The Dow consists of the 30 privileged firms and biases itself on cartelized sectors of the economy. Simply no.
Libertarian Traps
1. The Ubitiquity of Policy Libertarianism
  
  Even many those libertarians who oppose electoral politics support some form of policy libertarianism, whether criticizing Obama as a person or promoting "welfare reform" as conservatives do.
2. Obama Will Not Instigate Revival
  
  Many conservatives and libertarians alike, applaud Obama. They want Obama to mess the economy up so the general population will see socialism, in general, as a failure. However, Obama supporters will not blame socialism in itself, but will blame Obama for "mismanaging" and "bad policies." Just like how the Democrats do not blame Bush for the war, but blame the "mismanagement" or "bad intelligence." They do not criticize the war in itself.
3. Against Anti-Federalism
  
  Almost all proponents of libertarianism, including many mutualists, support "states' rights" or defederalization of the federal republic. They will even support "local control of schools and health care" and every other thing.
4. Radicalism and the Politicial Process
  
  Politicans fool more libertarians than we know. They will often fool even those who do not practice electoral politics. In the early stages of the campaign, politicians will often lie to attract the radical grassroots first, and then speak in a less and less rhetoric towards the end stages of the campaign.
5. How Conservatives Deceive Libertarians
  
  Conservatives often speak of "deregulation," "less spending," and oppose "socialized medicine" that appeals to some libertarians. However, almost all of such terms have multiple meanings.
6. The Libertarian Case Against Wikipedia
  
  Often, libertarians will get stuck in a bureaucratic institution called Wikipedia. Not suprisingly, they often get wound up on wasteful debates about changing the article titles, prescribing their own definitions of some libertarian terms, and putting non-mainstream knowledge and links which invites editors to revert. Besides those numerous false sockpuppet convictions, the editors lack many incentives to improve articles and accept contributions from dissidents other than to revert their edits.

Against Information Privacy

2009-03-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

I dislike to describe my beliefs with one-word, two-word, or three-word labels. Such labels, which include "libertarian," "anarcho-capitalist," and "agorist," describe belief systems inaccurately and imprecisely. Also, I dislike to describe myself with words that I consider as glittering generalities, such as "individualist." I will therefore describe myself below in a precise and concrete dialect.

To label my belief system more precisely, I believe in total informational freedom and oppose all forms of censorship, informational privacy "rights," and publicity "rights." Such informational privacy "rights" only protect criminals (which includes the state), enhance groupthink, discourage group cohesiveness, encourages dishonesty and free riders, violates the freedom of thought, and contradicts with ethical individualism. And most arguments for informational privacy "rights" rest on the flawed argument that employers would "discriminate" employees. To achieve total informational freedom, I support the re-legalization of defamation, slander, libel, hate speech, blackmail, voyeurism, audio and video recording, eavesdropping, and the banned privacy-destroying technologies.

I posted this because many market anarchists, and self-described "individualists," support some types of censorship.

Against Punishment - Even Nonviolent Punishment

2009-01-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

I want to apologize that I misrepresented BrainPolice's position on punishment. I generally agree with his opinion in punishment. I view punishment as a "pragmatic measure to deter crimes that psychopaths plan to commit." While I do regard that the current statist society constantly misapplies punitive measures, I do believe, that even in anarchy, punishment must exist to deter certain crimes. I disagree that boycotts, as promoted by Stephen Molyneux (pages 118-119), stands as an effective measure to deter crime.

I disbelieve in the "indoctrination of children" and the "operant conditioning" pseudoscience promoted by the behaviorist school of psychology. In fact, I oppose punishment more than even the most radical detractors of corporal punishment. I differ from them because I do not only oppose corporal punishment, but I oppose all types of punishment inflicted on children (unless the child psychopathically committed a crime). I view punishment as an irrational act, and it suffers from agent-principle problems. Children can easily avoid being punished from their parents, just like how some drug dealers can avoid being kidnapped by the state.

I do not hold a Freudian view, as in Stephan Molyneux and Danny Shadar, that childhood experiences primarily determine the behaviors in adult life.

Limitations on Self-Defense

2009-01-20T12:51:00.000-08:00

In response to BrianPolice's view on self-defense, I posted my view on self-defense below:

Previous posts related to this topic include The Fallacies of Moral Subjectivism and Subjective Property

I will articulate my view below:

Some individuals will use strawman arguments against those who oppose deadly force when trespassing, as "anti-victim" or "anti-defense." They often misinterpret the definition of "punishment," so they will see the libertarian law of proportional punishment as promoting aggression. Too often, they conflate "punishment" with "self-defense." Punishment, however, is defined as the commission of deterrence only after the crime has commissioned; while self-defense is the use of force when a crime is commissioning. Thus, libertarian law does not forbid imposing "unproportional" force in the situation of self-defense.

Detractors of the libertarian law of proportional punishment argue that since value is subjective, no one can accurately determine the "proportional" compensation. However, as we will argue that property boundaries are also subjective, so these arguments presents a straw-man.

The law of proportional punishment can be better rephrased as the compensatory damages should be proportional. The law of proportionality, however, does not give any limit on the amount of punitive damages.

However, whether a "crime" has occurred or not is also subjective, but not to the extent of valuation. For example, if an individual mistakenly recognized one's house as a shopping store; he will come in; but the owner of the house will shoot him in the certain cultural context, if some walks up in the person's yard or walkway; the owner of the house does not have the right to kill him, since in the social context, yard's and walkaways leads to his door, in order to communicate.

Self-defense, unlike punishment, does not follow the proportionality law. The owner has the right to use deadly force against the aggressor; if the aggressor's knows that he is intentionally being mischievous and is harming you.

If the individual knows that he is intentionally being mischievous, and knows the risk that the owner might shoot him; but then aggresses your property anyway; then shooting him is certainly justified.

If an individual places a sign in front of his property that said "all trespassers will be shot," then it is possible that someone might still think that they are permitted to walk up in his walkaway or yard, to communicate with to owner. Individuals who do not know how to read English are more likely to ignore the sign. Even if the warning is very obvious to the common man, what if a colorblind person didn't notice the sign?

But it depends on the intentionally of the aggressor. If an robber uses his unloaded gun against you, the aggressor is clearly being intentional in this situation; so it is justified to shoot him.

However, suppose a random individual who is confused walks in your lawn; the individual might think that he is on commonly-owned property. Thus, the homeowner does not have the right to use deadly force against him.

If someone "breaks in" the house by breaking doors or windows, you clearly have the right to use deadly force; as the aggressor is clearly being intentional, as he destroyed your property.

Suppose you own a house, that has automatic doors, and has large windows that show a large variety of goods inside it. With both of these, your house displays the common features of a shopping store. Many individuals who look at your house would, according to the appearence, confuse your house with a shopping store. If the "shoppers" go inside your house planning to buy stuff; you do not have the right to shoot them; because the look and feel of your house resembles too much like a shopping store, thus displaying an "implicit contract" granting any individuals to enter.

Thus, it is too subjective if such "implicit contract" allowing individuals to enter exists. Suppose an individual grows up in a different culture that permits individuals to step on your front yard. When he moves to a different society with a different culture that does not tolerate anyone walking on the front yard, he will likely be shot. Suppose an individual that does not know English misinterprets your building as some public resort so he enters. He, too, will likely be shot.

Thus, we have proved that property boundaries may potentially have subjective interpretations.

Everyone has the right to self-ownership. Thus everyone has the right to die. So if an individual enter's another property and assumes that the risk that the homeowner will shoot him at self-defense, the homeowner can shoot. But due to vague property boundaries, no one can be sure if the individual is behaving mischievously.

So we will have a "common law" that establishes and objectively defines these boundaries.

We will have different arbitrators, because due to cultural and social differences, not all arbitrators are typically suited to judge within different cultural standards of aggression. For example, if some cultures define "hate speech" as a form of aggression, and some other cultures that that does not consider it as aggressive; different societies will construct different variants of common law that defines specific cases such as "hate speech" as aggressive or not.

Different versions of common law will define the "implicit contract" of the shopping store, as exemplified above. This will deter the arbitrary interpretation of subjective interpretations of aggression, thus will make individuals have greater confidence.

For example, if the common law approves the use of deadly force against merely trespassers walking on the front yard, then very few people will walk outside, in the fear that they will unintentionally step on someone's property and the owners will use deadly force against them. Therefore, a common law system will spring up in anarchy that forbids deadly force, in the case of trespassing when no greater threats or aggression is involved, to make people less worried of unintentionally stepping another's property.

Let us assume that a contract exists between the store owner and a shopper that permits the store owner to use of any force, or, in different case, if the aggressor fully knows that he is behaving aggressively, and he clearly understood that he will have risk if the crime has commissioned. Thus, following this logic, the store owner can legitimately use deadly force against individual who steals bubble gum, if the robber clearly knows that he will be facing serious consequences including being shot. However, too often the bubble gum theft occurs unintentionally, thus it will likely increase fear, and might make some avoid shopping in stores anymore. Also, it might be the case that the shopper brought his own gum to the store, so the store owner might mistakenly confuse their bubble gum with his. This will further instill fear, so individuals will likely avoid doing any action that might be misinterpreted by others.

A solution to these problems implying risk is to propose a common law specifying the property boundaries, the legitimate amounts of force in each given situation, and the agreeing in the amount of compensation in the event of property torts. Without common law defining, or "de-subjectifying" the values of various goods, proportional compensation and punishment is not possible. Common law is the solution to objectively definine the boundaries, the cultures (see the walkway example) and standards to judge the "implicit contract," so individuals will not be subject to various interpretations of boundaries and rules defining fraud. In addition, because the individual voluntarily agrees on a legal system that they chose themselves, this will solve the cultural problems and will not confuse the non-English speakers. At last, the legal system in an ararchic society will be competitive, and the individual may choose to live in societies enforcing any laws as he wishes.

The distinction between property damage and no property damage cannot be justified. The value of property and coercion is valued subjectively. Thus, it is impossible to objectively tell whether property damage has occurred.

Some people would consider that flying an airplane above some land is coercion and some would consider air pollution damage.

Suppose if one throws away some stuff that "looks" useless. However, the owner of the product have the knowledge of it, thus have the ability to estimate the value. The owner of the product sees it as highly valuable. Thus, that would cause conflict.

If an owner decides to leave a highly valued object outside, he is implicitly accpeting the risk of some person in a parachute landing there, some bird landing there or some airplane crashing in the object. Thus, the best way to prevent conflict is to protect the object, such as building a wall or moving it inside a house. Since value is subjectivly, it is very important to protect some objects that is subjectively valued important. Otherwise, the court might value the object lesser.

Another effect of applying this logic is proportional punishment. If a parachuter lands on the important object and breaks it, he does not deserve to die. Instead, he should offer compensation. Anyway, the owner of the object is implicitly accpeting the risks that are more likely to happen such as birds and crashing airplanes.

But if the owner puts the object inside a building or builds a wall, the intruder deserves much more servere punishment for breaking in.

Humans assume many biases, such as the assumption that every person owns the space directly above the land. However, this is false. One can fly airplanes or build houses that overlap them. These are legitimate only if they are not directly damaging property. But due to subjectivity, there is no clear line to define.

Suppose one surrounds a fence around someone's house to block them so they can starve to death. This is illegitimate sometimes and sometimes legitimate.

So commonly-agreed laws would form in an anarchist society to prevent such things. Voluntary associations would form to prevent them.

Libertarian Labeling and Stereotyping

2009-01-19T17:33:00.000-08:00

The last time I commented on Polycentric Order, I decided to do a critique of the "vulgar libertarian" concept. When I saw the term "vulgar libertarian" showing up on many of their previous posts, I eventually decided to give a shot on my objection to the term. After posting my criticism, the audience reacted furiously, winning the "troll of the year" awards. I think that I deserve the blame for not expressing my intentions clear enough.

Since then, in the midst of the confusion, at the risk of losing my prized, and patient, subscribers of my blog, I decided to overcome the miscommunication. The deteriorating post quality here, as you all may know, presents a significant barrier to rational understanding.

From time to time, we post these little, obnoxious, "anarcho-semantic" ramblings. This time, we will attempt to "solve" the mysteries of the "left"-libertarian game.

This article contains seven different sections, with each section devoting to an entirely distinct motive. To start the article, we will focus on our introductory section with FSK's comment that I did never reply. Second, we will investigate the logical fallacies that David Z. and BrainPolice have put in action. Third, we will began a rambling section discrediting the "troll." Fourth, we find an amazing confusion in BrainPolice, as well as other market anarchists, has attempted to "refute." Fifth, we will show that I am not paranoid in believing that some of the "left"-libertarians have played Devil's Advocate into conspiring a propaganda show. Sixth, we will argue that I am more "left" than even of the most vocal "left"-libertarians on the net. And finally, we will analyze the confusions between different libertarian circles.

You cannot arbitrarily interpret the non-aggression principle

FSK has posted in the past few months about the state.

Violent protests are a waste of time, because the State has superior resources. Violent protests create sympathy for the State, and violent protests are a violation of the Non-Aggression principle.

I disliked FSK's statement. I commented claiming that no one can interpret the non-aggression principle. FSK responded that "You are a troll" without any given explanation.

I criticized his statement because, as said above, that no one, can "interpret the non-aggression principle." It is impossible, to "interpret" the non-aggression principle, because it begs the question. To determine if an action constitutes aggression, one should define if the action constitutes an aggressive act or not. It is circular reasoning to "interpret" that a violent overthrow contradicts non-aggression principle, while at the same time the non-aggression principle defines defensive overthrow of the state as non-aggressive.

You can only define actions that falls into aggressive and non-aggressive types, not interpret these actions.

Let us say if some consider libel and defamation as aggressive acts. They will therefore interpret the non-aggression principle incorrectly, claming that libel and slander as aggressive acts. In order to resolve that, you have to define the non-aggression principle to tolerate libel and defamation. Murray Rothbard defined slander as a non-aggressive act in his Ethics of Liberty.

There exists multiple interpretations of whether a violent overthrow of the state constitutes an aggressive act. Some would say no, arguing that it is justifiable to use defensive violence to overthrow the criminal organization. They argue that it is their right to self-defend the statist aggressors, in proportion to the damaged they caused. Some others would say yes, it contradicts the non-aggression principle, since they interpret the non-aggression principle differently.

In summary, FSK should have defined that the non-aggression principle forbids aggressive overthrow of the state, not the other way around. It is circular reasoning if you did the latter.

I am not a "Vulgar Libertarian"

Let us say that you showed an argument to me. If I criticize the accuracy of a few specific details in your argument, you might apprehend that I reject the general idea of the argument. But I will respond to you that rejecting to specific parts, such as specific facts and inaccuracies of an argument, does not imply that I reject the "general idea" of the argument. You might, however, see my rejections of the specific parts of your argument, as strawmans to the "general idea." We will call this behavior the "double-strawman fallacy."

I have experienced the double-strawman fallacy in many cases. At one time, David Z. posted an example of the monetization of debt, showing the value of the dollar falling down. I responded to a specific factual inaccuracy, that the consumer price index (CPI) does not accurately represent the valuation of the dollar. David, however, thought that I rejected the "general idea" of his argument that the value of the currency has gone down. So he deleted my comment. But due to the double-strawman fallacy, David thought that my criticism of the CPI made me reject the "general idea" of the whole blog post, in which I actually believed the opposite.

Let us go back to BrainPolice's blog. I responded to his usage of "vulgar libertarian" in his most recent article at that time, because I get confused over his definition of "vulgar libertarian." BrainPolice used the term "vulgar libertarian" in his post entitled Positive and Negative Liberty:

BrainPolice said: In this context, a libertarian can consistantly [sic] advocate concepts such as mutual aid and cooperative management. This usually devolves into vulgar and thin libertarians denying the reconciliation vs. neo-artistotileans [sic] and left-libertarians defending such a reconciliation.

I do not know how BrainPolice defines the term "vulgar libertarian." I critiqued his usage of the term "vulgar libertarian." I did not mean to criticise his whole statement quoted above, only his usage of the term.

BrainPolice used the double-strawman fallacy when he criticized my "vulgar libertarian" statement. When I respond to BrainPolice questioning the definition of the term, BrainPolice assumed that I disagreed with the "general idea," of the statement, that "mutual aid and co-ops are consistent with libertarian legal theory." Just because I questioned the "vulgar libertarian" concept, it does not mean that I oppose his overall statement. In fact, I recognize the right for anyone to mutually aid one another and to form co-ops, and I even believed that co-ops may sometimes benefit the workers.

Am I a "Troll"?

I do not understand trolls. I do not understand how some individuals will purposefully make "false claims" to "provoke" responses. I do not understand why the "troll" will waste his time writing posts to provoke responses.

Usually, most of the people who are identified as "trolls" are not actually trolls. They did not intended to cause conflict, nor did they intended to post false information. Most of the time, the ones who accuse others for trolling will disagree with the "troll's" opinions so strongly that the troll seemed to intentionally make false claims. Even if the "troll" is just sharing his honest opinion on something, when others disagree with his opinions so strongly as "fringe," the other people will get an illusion that the "troll" is really intentionally making "fringe" statements, just because they disagree with his opinions so much. This occurs frequently. For most of the time, I see many people getting identified as "trolls" when their opinions are just "fringe." The trolls are just sharing an opinion that the majority of the users disagree. If there is no opposition party or some defenders of the fringe opinions held by the "trolls," even a small minority can convince everyone on the message board that he is a troll.

Neither do I understand how some will get "offended" by messages posted by "trolls" or messages that seemed to contain errors. Why wouldn't the individual simply ignore the messages posted by "trolls" if they do not want to get offended? I do not understand how just some text displayed on a computer monitor will get people offended.

Additionally, I do not understand how the "troll" likes to "mischievously" "force" others to respond to the message. If the "troll" thought that he is actually being "mischievous," then wouldn't he just feel guilty of "abusing" everyone else? Wouldn't his guilt encourage him to not "troll" on message boards anymore?

An objection to the above statement is that he is just a "psychopath" who does not feel empathy or guilt for his actions, so he can mischievously "provoke" responses continuously. This argument seems a rightful objection, since in reality there are some people who behave like that. But in my experience, the vast majority of the cases of accusing others for being a "troll" is wrongfully convicted. The "troll" is just sharing his opinions that happens to be "fringe" for the majority of the users, and when there are no opposition party or defenders of his "fringe" opinions. Therefore, the "troll" who is honestly sharing his opinions will get wrongfully convicted simply because the majority disagrees with him.

But there exists some objections to the above statement. Some will say that they can tell whether a troll is "indeed" behaving "mischievous" or not. However, as we discussed above, many individuals have an illusion that the troll is being "mischievous," merely when they strongly disagree with his opinions. Often, people mistakenly see a person as behaving "mischievous" or intentionally "provocative" simply when we disagree with his opinions. We call this cognitive bias the "dissident-troll bias."

Due to "collective reinforcement" of everyone on the message board, the one posting "fringe opinions" will more likely to be identified as a "troll," simply because more people are disagreeing with the "fringe opinions".

My point is that "trolls," are wrongfully convicted in the majority of the cases. Anyway, let us go back to the topic.

I cannot even discern the reason why would anyone spread "fringe" ideas around the web in the first place. It does not work, others will ignore the messages, and it wastes the time of the person.

BrainPolice on "Economic Rent"

When I criticized the market anarchists' assumption that "economic rent" will fall to zero, BrainPolice replied using the red herring fallacy. Red herring fallacies are common when debating with someone else using words that have multiple definitions. In fact, BrainPolice fell on exactly that. He did not even know what "economic rent" means. The terms "economic rent" and "rent" mean completely different concepts. BrainPolice got confused with "economic rent" with "rent," so he interpreted my statement as "market anarchists oppose rent." He preceded, as usual, to refute that claim.

BrainPolice thought that I was criticizing Benjamin Tucker's prediction that rent (in the non-economic sense) will fall to zero. However, I was actually writing about economic rent, not rent.

If you look up "economic rent" in a dictionary, you will find the meaning similar to the "return on investment" from a capitalist's deterred time preference.

To prove this, Benjamin Tucker had actually rejected economic rent. Market anarchists also seemed to have a incorrect view of economic rent. They predict that non-entrepreneurial income earned by firms will fall to zero. While market anarchists correctly reject that rent would fall to zero (in the non-economic sense), they seemed to have a confusion on economic rent, as the mutualists did.

Homesteading abondoned property according to the Lockean theory is logical, but many self-identified market anarchists support some kinds of "homesteading" that might cause shortages. For example, they may oppose rent for some kinds of land and apartment buildings. Their belief is based on historical examples of feudal societies steal in the disguise as "rent."

Feudal societies do not compete so they can collude to set rent. But due to today's many land owners, it is almost impossible to form a cartel to set a high rent price.

However, in non-feudal societies, land should not be "homesteaded" while paying rent. If the society prohibits rent, then the owners would not offer the service in the first place. For example, if apartment rent is prohibited by "homesteading", then investors would not have the incentive to build apartments for people in the first place. "Homesteading" an apartment is a form of rent control, so it would cause shortages.

If people are freely to "homestead" arbitrary land, numerous questions arise. How much land should they homestead? If they mixed their labor with large pieces of land, should they allow it. What is the maximum of land can they possess? They can "cheat" by homesteading" large amounts of land by just using their low quality labor. Thus, no land is available.

Land, like other resources, are a natural resource. Therefore, they are limited to constraints. In order to perform the best use of land, land should not be "stolen" to allow marginal utility.

Murray Rothbard has proved that the price of rent equals the value of the good divided by the natural interest rate. For example, one rents a good priced at $1000 per year and the natural interest rate is 5%, then the actual price of the good is $1000/0.05 = $20,000.

This is an effect of entrepreneurs. If an entrepreneurs see that he can build an apartment at $20,000 and later get $1000, he might do it. But his decision is based on other stuff. It is equivalent that if he knew that he can also invest in a bank at interest by lending $20,000 and receiving $1,000 one year later as interest (at a rate of 5%). If his estimates that his interst from investing in apartments is greater than $1000, he would invest in apartments, and if it is the other way around, he would invest in a bank.

Going back to the apartment example, would a person actually pay $20,000 than rent $1,000 per year? They are equal, and the person can choose to buy it at $20,000 then sell it later or pay $1,000 per year.

If that person is poor, he would actually borrow $20,000 from a bank at 5% interest to buy that apartment. He has to pay back $20,000, plus the 5% interest, which totals $21,000. Thus, lending from a bank to buy the apartment and renting the apartment $1,000 every year costs the same amount of money.

Utimately, abolishing rent would leave the poor person without an apartment because he does not want to take the risk of borrowing that much and/or if the bank does not approve the loan.

Thus, it appears that the self-identified market anarchists do not understand the relationship of interest and rent.

Another consequence of "homesteading" land is the lack of knowledge. If an entrepreneur is buying unused land to build a football field, would he allow others to steal? If the field is unoccupied, others would pollute it. What if he dumps garbage on unused land to prevent theft? That would encorage them to malinvest such as polluting the land to prevent theft or building extreneous houses on land to prevent intrusion.

David Z., had refuted the market anarchist misconception that non-entrepreneurial corporate income is "unnatural." At my blog comment to BrainPolice, I was just trying to make similar criticisms about the market anarchists' objection to economic rent, as David Z. did.

It was actually my fault that I did not define "economic rent" at the time of my writing. I should have defined "economic rent," since lots of individuals do know what "economic rent" is. Anyway, however, I correctly claimed that the market anarchists' object to economic rent.

I am not Paranoid

I have a long-time suspicion that the "left"-libertarians are trying to redefine capitalism and anarcho-capitalism to the way they want it to mean. When I criticized BrainPolice of attempting of doing this, he said that I was wrong.

Anarcho-Mercantilist said: I see BrainPolice and Brad Spangler attempting to redefine anarcho-capitalism as a vulgar, conservative, political and feudalistic plutocracy. BrainPolice tried to deceptively redefine anarcho-capitalism by writing an article that emotionally associates anarcho-capitalists with conservatives. That trademark tactic did not work for me. I still consider myself as an anarcho-capitalist.

BrainPolice said: Nonesense. [sic] Your continual attempt to portray me and others as engaging in a propaganda campaign when we are merely logically extending libertarian principles is a joke.

If the "left"-libertarians aren't truly trying to run a propaganda campaign, then why do they claim that we should normatively redefine capitalism and anarcho-capitalism as a fascist, plutocratic, and paternalistic theology? Why should redefine the terms, when we can use them as-is, as in the dictionary definitions?

Why do the "left"-libertarians go through all of this? (I do not mean all "left"-libertarians):

...and so on...

All of these above links have articles written by people who want to normatively change the definitions of capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, and the rest of the terms that they dislike. They do not give any explanation of why we should adopt theses new definitions for these terms. The best that they can argue is to go through some historical and ancient definitions of these terms. The historical meanings, however, have since changed since then. So is now proper to use these according to the dictionary definitions.

If the "left"-libertarians say that we should normatively do that, and in this case, redefine the terms, then they are handling them as trademarks. They are exactly doing what the trademark owners do: they want to redefine and "purify" the definitions of these terms to what they want to mean. All trademark redefinitions are, indeed, propaganda campaigns. So it is illogical to argue that redefining capitalism isn't a propaganda campaign, while doing this with trademarks is propaganda.

I liked B.K. Marcus' observation that capitalism is historically defined as the "private ownership of the means of production." Most dictionaries, and including Karl Marx, basically define capitalism that way. The anti-capitalists oppose capitalism simply because they oppose the private ownership of the means of production.

Iain McKay, the main author of An Anarchist FAQ, even defined capitalism the usual way, as the "private ownership of the means of production." McKay posted on Usenet that private property will result in huge disparities of wealth.

It is also strange that the "left"-libertarians like to use the term "free market" when at the same time they object "capitalism." The term "free market" has just about the same meanings and connotations as "capitalism." I do not understand why they go contrary on these two terms.

This is proof that most of the anti-capitalists simply oppose the private ownership of the means of production.

I am more on the "left" than the "left"-libertarians

If I used BrainPolice's definition of "vulgar libertarian," then paradoxically, I am much less "vulgar" than most of the self-identified "left"-libertarians.

For example, IMHO, David Z. seemed to have more "vulgar" personality than me. For example, David Z., a "left"-libertarian, acted like a "vulgar libertarian" when he unconsciously defended the U.S. health care system by denying that U.S. already has socialized health care. Even though he opposes the U.S. health care system, he did never mention the corporatist privileges of the U.S. system. He denied that the U.S. already has socialized health care in his blog post.

I posted a critique of the "vulgar libertarian" concept, as promoted by "left"-libertarians', on another one of my blogs at Proprietary Anarchy. It seems as though the "vulgar libertarian" concept has no meaning to it, since the "left"-libertarians call me as a "vulgar" libertarian when they, themselves, have more "vulgar" tendencies. Therefore, I was curious on how the "left"-libertarians define "vulgar libertarian." So I asked BrainPolice to define the term "vulgar libertarian." But according to his definition, I am, indeed, less "vulgar" than most of the "left"-libertarians.

IMHO, I am also less "vulgar" than John Petrie. John once "defended" the recession as a "natural" "correction" on a blog post. But the recession isn't any "correction" at all. The recession would not occur if the state suddenly became abolished. Therefore, this "recession" isn't a "correction" of the economy, but is caused by continuous taxation and regulation of the economy. If the state suddenly vanished, this recession will turn into the largest economic euphoria in history. But the criminal orginization currently hampers the potential boom into a recession. So there isn't anything "natural" about this. I have already discussed about this in my 15 Mistakes by Austrian Economists post.

I have also refuted John's prediction that the collapse of the U.S. auto industry is "natural". I commented that the auto industry will expand in a free market, because there would be no taxation and regulations that hamper the expansion of the auto industry. Even if the state currently privileges the auto industry, auto industry will expand even more of the state is abolished. This is because there will be no criminal levels of theft and barriers to entry for potential automobile manufacturers in a free market. Because individuals will also be at least five times richer in a free market, individuals would buy more automobiles that would expand the industry. (By 'auto industry', I mean the auto industry in general, not the Big Three cronies.)

These is one reason of why I object to identify myself as a "left"-libertarian. The "left"-libertarians join alliances with the anarcho-collectivists. The "left"-libertarians arrogantly claim that I am more "vulgar" than them, even when, as shown above, that this is entirely the opposite.

If you want to see how should the terms "left" and "right" be defined, then go look at the article called Normative Semantics of Left and Right. This article actually defended the "left" if you used the term "left" correctly. But I still do not identify with the "left" because I reject the whole political spectrum.

Because no formal definition of leftism and rightism exist, people often criticize the other wing using the equivocation fallacies. Left-wingers criticize the right-wing's cultural conservative stereotype when the right-wingers criticize the left's economic stereotypes. They do not even argue about the same thing. Often, the left and right will randomly switch the definitions of the terms to mean one of the above stereotypes, and result in a confusing, convoluted argument with no concrete definitions of the terms left and right.

The real way to avoid the equivocation fallacy, as suggested by Overcoming Bias, is to taboo your words. For example, instead of saying "I oppose capitalism," we can do it in a better way such as "I oppose the private ownership of the means of production." Instead of uttering "I oppose 'left'-libertarianism," I can say "I oppose allying with the libertarian socialists" or "I support the legal possibility for the existence of corporations in the anarchistic legal system."

Kevin Carson misinterpreted my position about the legality of corporations in a free market:

Carlton Hobbs recently challenged the tendency of mainstream libertarians, free marketers and anarcho-capitalists to favor the capitalist corporation as the primary model of ownership and economic activity, and to assume that any future free market society will be organized on the pattern of corporate capitalism.

I did never regard that the corporate legal entity would function as the predominant model in anarchy. I do, however, defend the legal possibility of such legal entity existing in the free market. Actually, I envision an anarcho-capitalist society as radically different than the current fascist state.

I predict that self-employment and small enterprises will function as the predominant business model in anarchy. The median worker will earn five times more wealth, especially without the interventions such as the apprenticeship system, regulations, legal barriers, and extortion. Many workers will become so much wealthier that they can afford to invest their own capital. In a free society, the prevalence of authoritarian management will shrink to virtually nonexistent. Workers will have greater autonomy, and will have a working environment similar to independent contractors. I speculate that interest rates will fall, and innovation will greatly increase.

Semantic disagreements do play a role in every branch of science, not just in political ideologies. The anarcho-capitalists and mutualists would have more in common if we had resolved many of the semantic barriers. This does not, however, mean that anarcho-capitalists should defend, support or even ally with mutualists. Not even close. My opinion is that semantics do play at least some role.

Some "left"-libertarians get "offended" by the word "capitalism" because some mutualists, who ally with Rothbardian "left"-libertarians, oppose the private ownership of the means of production.

Brad Spangler did indeed conspire a propaganda show when he advocated "General Semantics" to make definitions more appealing those who oppose the private ownership of the means of production.

Anyway, I hope this is the last time I make a post on semantics. This is getting tiresome! Let us refocus our energies in countering the real enemy: the state. Forget about this conflict, and let's start our agorist revolution!

The Messy Definitions of "Left-Wing" and "Right-Wing"

2009-01-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

On the web, libertarians occurrently conflict with each other on the definitions of a few terms. We observed that these conflicts start from the mistaken and confusing definitions of the terms left-wing, and right-wing. We, in attempt to revolve this conflict, normatively propose more consistent definitions of these two terms. While no definitions of these terms accurately reflects the historical usage, our normative approach will in attempt to solve this problem by devising the original definition, along with a brief historical analysis on how the definitions changed its meanings today.

Libertarians and agorists mistakenly label themselves as revolutionary or leftist. This leads to great problems, and frequently cause confusions of the terms left and right. Unlike our previous attempts, we decide to find non-empirical definitions of the terms. This will, therefore, provide a consistent resemblance of the terms. We, in attempt to clarify the definitions, wrote a series of arguments formulating consistent definitions of radical, revolutionary, left-wing and right-wing.

The first section starts in distinguishing between the terms radical and revolutionary. In this section, we will refute the common misconception of the synonymy of these two terms. In the second section, we will devise simpler and more consistent definitions of the terms left and right, building up on the conclusions in the first section. Additionally, we will analyze the common mistakes and confusions of the terms, especially pertaining to the minarchists and the agorists. In concluding the argument, we will propose a fourth section, dealing with the historical mix-up and the origins of the confusions. Lastly, we will provide an appendix exemplifying the application of the newly defined consistent terms, while refuting the popular misconceptions of the meanings of these terms.

The Terms Radical and Revolutionary

Popular opinion often conflate the terms radical and revolutionary. While, on the surface, these terms appear similar, a we will argue that a significant distinction exists.

We notice that the terms left-wing has similar ideas as in radical and revolutionary. In order to isolate the distinguishing attributes from each of these three terms, we must find concise definitions for each of these terms.

We will use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to define the terms right-wing and left-wing.(webster-left) In contrast to other dictionaries, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary appears more historically accurate. We justify this from its accurate entry on the definition of mercantilism.(webster-mercantilism)

According to the commonly-accepted definitions, right-wing means status quo or status quo ante. Left-wing means radical.

The terms status quo and status quo ante, which appears as opposites of the revolutionary and radical. However, we find this as false. To demonstrate this, we will argue that there can exist revolutionaries that support the status quo ante. We will use Burkean conservatism, the traditional form of conservatism, to prove this.

Those who oppose the American Revolution and the French Revolution, labeled Burkean conservatives, opposes radical change. Burkean conservatism adores experience as one of the primary tenets of its reformist philosophy. It claims that experience, or historical implementations, demonstrates the feasibility of the ideology. Therefore, Burkean conservatism only accepts ideologies successfully implemented in real-life. A past or the current implementation of the ideology demonstrates the feasibility of the ideology. They advocate certain status quo or status quo ante of the ideology implemented.

Thus, we can consistently define right-wing as the status quo or the status quo ante.

Karl Hess', in attempt to devise the terms left and right, labeled Joseph Stalin as right-wing. We will, below, refute that claim.

Authoritarian socalists do not want to revert to the status quo or status quo ante. The ideologues claim its ideology as radical because it continuously tries to invent innovative solutions to implement a workable version of communism.

As we showed theory as much more important than implementation,(TheoryAndImplementation) we should view intent much more important than the result. We could all agree that the result of communism pertains to the status quo and the status quo ante, since all implementations of communism results the same old failure.

But the intent of communism, as an ideology, pertains to its radicalness and opposes the status quo and the status quo ante. Communists want to implement new workable versions of communism resembling nothing to the historical attempts of communism. Therefore, we should define communism as opposing the status quo and the status quo ante.

We had argued that the theory or intent, not the implementation or result, determines the fundamental attributes of any philosophy. Because of the radical intent of communism, we must classify communism as left-wing, as in the above sense.

Right-wing means the status quo or the status quo ante. Left-wing means radical ideas.

Therefore, we should not claim left-wing authoritarianism, in the radical authoritarianism sense, as an oxymoron.

Both of the terms, even formally defined, contain ambiguity. The left-wing originally meant the opposition to the status quo. The left-wing includes the counter-revolutionary authoritarians and the radical revolutionary authoritarians.

However, an ideology labeled as radical does not necessary imply the ideology as revolutionary. Two types of radicalism exist: the revolutionary type and the reformist type. Radical reformists tend to hold radical intentions and principles, but does not necessary support drastic revolution in practice. Contrastingly, radical revolutionaries tend to support radical intentions and drastic revolution in practice.

These two terms, however, tend to get conflated, since the terms radical and revolutionary often gets associated. Those who have radical beliefs tend to support revolutionary means to achieve it, and those who support revolution tend to hold a radical opposition to the status quo.

But we should emphasize that we should not view two these two terms, radical and revolutionary, as necessary correlated. Some radicals oppose revolution, and some revolutionaries do not hold radical beliefs. The political anarcho-capitalists and the democratic socialists hold radical views but oppose revolution. Conversely, the counter-revolutionary reactionaries and the theocrats support revolution but do not hold radical views.

By the above conclusions, we have found a more consistent and concise definition of radical and revolutionary.

The term radical means philosophies whose intent support ideologies not implemented in the past or in the current situation. It therefore opposes the status quo or the status quo ante, the defining ideas for right-wing.
The term revolutionary means those who favor direct and immediate methods in implementing the ideology in practice, as opposed to politics or reformism. The term revolutionary does not necessary correlate with radicalness or left-wing ideology.
The term left-wing, if defined consistently, merely means a synonym for radical.
The term right-wing, if defined consistently, merely means a synonym for the status quo or the status quo ante.

The Terms Left-Wing and Right-Wing

We could formulate the left-wing and right-wing versions of libertarianism. The right-wing libertarian supports the status quo ante, or the old model of classical liberalism implemented after the American Revolution. The left-wing libertarian opposes the status quo and the status quo ante, therefore opposes the American Revolution and all of the quasi-libertarian societies implemented in the past. The left-wing libertarian supports radical notions of libertarianism never implemented in the past, and denies that any currently-existing society as libertarian. The left-wing libertarians, for example, denies Medieval Iceland or Somalia as libertarian societies.

We should emphasize that the term left-wing, a synonym for radical, does not necessary imply revolutionary. Hence, the left-wing libertarian, by definition, may support reformism.

Coincidentally, some of the self-identified "left"-libertarians, such as Kevin A. Carson, Roderick T. Long, and Charles Johnson, actually do support reformism.(TheLeftLibertarianStrategy)

We should also discredit the term radical right or right-wing radical as an oxymoron. Right-wing means a philosophy based on the status quo or the status quo ante. The term left-wing means the opposite. Left-wing philosophies does not base on the status quo or the status quo ante. Left-wing philosophies bases on innovative, radical ideas not implemented in history. Therefore, the term radical right has the two words meaning opposites.

Most of the self-identified "agorists" actually do not, by themselves, practice agorism. We can label them as theoretical agorists. Theoretical agorists include David Z., FSK, and others in the "left"-libertarian spectrum. Theoretical agorists frequently impose guilt trips on other theoretical agorists for not practicing agorism, even that they, themselves, do not practice agorism in the first place. While most self-identified "agorists" do not practice agorism, they do have the same radical beliefs as the practical agorists. Hence, we can label both the theoretical and the practical agorists as radical libertarians.

However, we cannot label the theoretical agorists as revolutionary libertarians. The theoretical agorists do not practice direct action, but impose guilt trips on others for not practicing agorism. The practical agorists, in contrast, do practice agorism. So we can only label the practical agorists as revolutionary libertarians, not the theoretical agorists.

In summary, we should label theoretical agorists as non-revolutionary libertarians and label practical agorists as revolutionary libertarians. But we can label both the theoretical and practical types as radical libertarians.

"Left"-Libertarianism and Politics

Historically, the agorist movement classified anyone who supports reformism or political methods as right-wing. The "left"-libertarians often claim that radicals, by definition, must oppose politics. We will discredit this.

Some libertarians may have radical intentions and may strongly oppose the status quo, but resort to using political methods and reformism anyway. They believe that reformism and politics can bring about this process, without revolution.

As we often conclude that using reformism and politics does not change anything other than the status quo, the result or implementation appears to coincide with the right-wing, a term meaning the status quo.

However, the determination of the philosophy depends on its intentions more than the implementation. A "left"-libertarian may strongly oppose the status quo but resort to political methods and reformism. Because the "left"-libertarians intended to exert radicalness, radical political libertarianism falls in the left-wing.

We should note that political libertarianism does not necessarily oppose the left, so there may exist political libertarians that may fall in the right.

Similarly, as discussed above, some right-libertarians support a non-political counter-revolution to go back two hundred years ago. But these libertarians, even if they oppose politics, do not fall in the left, since they oppose radicalism.

Problems with Secularism and Traditionalism

A secularist can have traditional beliefs, since traditional values does not require religion. But the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines left-wing as supporting secularism.(webster-secular) Therefore, in order to classify a person as having left-wing beliefs, he or she must hold radical (but not necessary revolutionary) ideas, and also support secular values. As we see secularism, by definition, as compatible to traditionalism, the secular left, by definition, does not necessarily oppose traditionalism.

Similarly, a traditionalist attempts to believe in traditional values, such as morals, ethics, and religion. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines right-wing, in addition to supporting the status quo or the status quo ante, as espousing traditionalism.(webster-traditional) But, as showed above, traditionalism does not necessitate religion. Concepts generally associated with traditionalism include hierarchy, authority, patriotism, nationalism, paternalism(paternalism-def) and religion.

So according to the above argument, both the left and the right both may hold traditional values. The left and the right only differ by religion, not tradition.

Leftism, socialism and economic interventionism

Prior to Karl Marx, both of the minarchists and the economic planners identify themselves as socialists. However, as the Marxist movement enlarged, the definitions changed. Because the Marxists had always referred socialism to economic planning, socialism got associated with economic planning, and then the denotation of socialism has changed to only represent economic planning.

Marxists oppose religion and support economic planning. Therefore, the term left-wing, after the Marxist movement, had become to mean something resembling Marxism, with the opposition to religion with the support for economic planning. Contemporary dictionaries define left-wing as a secularist, economic interventionist ideology, possibly due to the Marxists' identification with the left.

However, we should simply reject the terms left and right as package-deals. The left does not really support revolution, and many of the "left"-libertarians, as said above, support reformism. As argued above, the left also does not oppose traditionalism. The population has redefined left-wing as supporting socialism and economic interventionism, mostly of the Marxist movement. It makes the terms left and right as watered-down propagandistic euphemisms.

Appendix: Authoritarianism Example

We will briefly use the term radical and revolutionary to demonstrate the usage of these two terms. We will use authoritarianism as the example.

Two branches of authoritarianism:

Revolutionary authoritarianism
Anti-revolutionary or status quo authoritarianism

Revolutionary Authoritarianism

Two branches of revolutionary authoritarianism:

Counter-revolutionary or status quo ante authoritarianism
Radical (innovative) revolutionary authoritarianism

Since all these two support revolution.

Anti-Revolutionary Authoritarianism

Examples (in an anarcho-capitalist POV):

The U.S. Republican Party
The U.S. Democratic Party

Counter-Revolutionary Authoritarianism

Some authoritarians propose the status quo ante, by revolution. Also called counter-revolutionary authoritarianism and status quo ante authoritarianism.

Examples (in an anti-minarchist anarcho-capitalist POV):

The counter-revolution reactionaries
Theocracy
Monarchism
Paleocensarvatism
Ron Paul conservatism

Radical Revolutionary Authoritarianism

Some authoritarians do not propose to go back to any time period. They wish to implement an innovative version of authoritarianism that does not exist in the past.

Examples:

Jacobin
Stalinism
Maoism
Troskyism
Nazism
Fascism

The Historical Meanings of "Left-Wing" and "Right-Wing"

The original left-wing understood as those who sat on the left side of the parliament and right-wing who sat on the right side. Because there is only one dimension, no one can be arranged optimally.
The original left-wing composes of Democratic-Republicans, who oppose social, religious and military intervention and opposes spending. Supports states' rights.
The original right-wing composes of Whigs, who were religious and support social, religious and military intervention and supports spending. Opposes states' rights.
President Abraham Lincoln has defined the right-wing to support social and religious interventionism.
Since the election of Woodrow Wilson, the left-wing has and supported social intervention such as prohibition.
Since the elections of Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding, the left-wing has supported military intervention and the right-wing has opposed military intervention.
The elections of Herbert Hoover and FDR had defined the left-wing the pro-spending party and the right-wing as the anti-spending party.
The Barry Goldwater campaign and the Civil Rights act in the 1960s made right-wing religious as the Southern Democrats distrusted the Democratic party for supporting it. The right-wing has redefined to support social interventionism.
The Ronald Reagan campaign has defined the left-wing to oppose spending and the right-wing to support spending, all at the same amount of economic interventionism.
Ronald Reagan has defined the left to support environmentalism and the right to oppose environmentalism.
The two Iraq wars has defined the left-wing to oppose military intervention and the right-wing as military interventionist. The energy issue has defined both the left-wing and the right-wing to support environmentalism.

These events caused the vague notions of the left-wing and the right-wing as we use today.

How would the myriad political ideologies fit in just a one-dimensional spectrum? The political spectrum is not defined that way, the definition has induced from the empirical arrangement of French parliament. Groups of individuals sat next to each other in a way, while constrained by the one-dimensional parliament, to reduce tension between their neighbors. Because of the spatial closeness of the neighbors, the left-right spectrum forces one to join alliances with neighbors. The left-right spectrum arbitrarily forces a diverse array of ideologies to jam into a one-dimensional spectrum.

Many left-libertarians, particularily the ones who have a membership of Alliance of the Libertarian Left, would cite Karl Hess' or the left-libertarian's definition. However, his does not promote a solution because his inductive definition does not reflect the dynamic political spectrum. Words such as "left-libertarian" and "right-libertarian" seem vague.

Ramifications

No political "spectrum" can measure the "similarity" of one's ideology compared to others. The two-dimensional political spectrum is not an improvement over the one-dimensional one. To give an accurate representation of one's political views, it would require thousands of dimensions. But with thousands of dimensions, it would become impossible to compare your results with others. You cannot simply "match" your thousands of dimensions with another's thousands. Doing so would not give accurate results, since the more dimensions you match does not necessarily mean that you have closer views to him. The "dimensions" of the political spectrum are also picked arbitrarily, so it will give biased and "unmatchable" results.

A solution that we propose is neither left nor right. It is a simpler axis, one that Kel Weaver has proposed. It is simply anarchist or non-anarchist.

No definition of left-wing and right-wing that encompasses all its usages exist. Criticisms of leftism or rightism pertains to a specific stereotype listed below.

"Leftie" stereotypes

anti-capitalism
anti-corporation
anti-corporatism
anti-propertarianism
anti-racism
anti-religion
blank slate
class conflict
collectivism
cultural determinism
dialecticism
economic interventionism
egalitarianism
environmentalism
equality
forced integration
group rights
majority rule
moral relativism
multiculturalism
nurture over nature
pacifism
pluralism
political correctness
polycentrism
radical feminism
religious intolerance
reverse discrimination
secularism
social determinism
tabula rasa
tolerance
welfare state

Right-Wing stereotypes

anti-democracy
authoritarianism
capitalism
colonialism
conservatism
cultural conservatism
elitism
family values
fascism
feudalism
fundamentalism
genetic determinism
inegalitarianism
inequality
intolerance
landlordism
militarism
monarchism
monocentrism
monoculturalism
nationalism
nature over nurture
neo-Lockean theory of property
paternalism
plutocracy
pro-corporation
pro-corporatism
protectionism
psychological nativism
religion
social hierarchy
social order
status quo ante
status quo
traditionalism
traditionalist authoritarianism
uniformity
warfare state

I responded to the series of comments at Polycentric Order.

Cork said: Does it make any sense for left-libertarians to bash Hoppe but praise Proudhon, when the latter is far more culturally conservative?

Brainpolice used the term "left" in the sense of cooperative property rights, not to mean culturally liberal. He has posted a video defining "left" and "right." Cork replies to Brainpolice without understanding what he had meant.

Cork said: I don't want to give the impression that Proudhon is all bad, just because he had some nutty beliefs on cultural and political issues. For a proto-socialist, he was decent and relatively libertarian (well...at least in theory). He has some excellent quotes.

Brainpolice did not define "left-wing" and "right-wing" to distinguish cultural differences, he used them to distinguish economic differences, an in this case, property rights. He used "left-wing" to mean those supporting "loose" property rights and "right-wing to mean those opposing the "loose" property rights held by mutualists.

Brainpolice said: Furthermore, how can we possibly forget Gary North, who openly advocated a Christian theocracy as an anarcho-capitalist model? So spare me in your attempt to act like the libertarian right has some kind of highground.

BrainPolice has, once again, used the equivocation fallacy. He equivocated the term "right-wing" to represent theocracy, when he previously used the same term to represent those who "oppose" mutualist property rights.

Thus, I do not identify myself as either "left" nor "right," because the usage of these term often sprang up equivocation fallacies.

Scott said: Cork is clearly trolling.

Affixing the adverb "clearly" in this sentence not necessarily affirm accuracy of the predicate. Many individuals often abuse the word "clearly." For example, Statists will say that "the tax evader has clearly harmed people," "We clearly need a State," or "the drug dealer has clearly committed a 'crime'."

I oppose labeling, using, or calling yourself, or any other, as "left," "right," "anti-left" or "anti-right." This will instigate confusion. For example, by "anti-left," do you mean you oppose their economic stance or oppose their cultural liberalism? Well, the self-described "leftists" will interpret your statement as opposing both. Therefore, they will call you a "right-libertarian," and a culturally conservative bigot. The discussion will go on and on and go in a convoluted circle.

As shown, the usage of the terms "left" and "right" leads to equivocation fallacies. Therefore, we will propose eliminating all, each as every, instance of "left" and "right."

As similar in E-Prime, the term "to be" can easily get misused. Let us look at the similar case in E-Prime:

In principle, if not in practice, we agree that in some instances one could use forms of "to be" (in its auxiliary, existence, and location modes) without causing appreciable "semantic damage". Even so, most English teachers would agree that most of us overuse and misuse the verb, and that even a 75% reduction in its use would improve our writing and speaking skills. But why go to the extreme of trying to eliminate it totally? Because for better or worse, it looks like only an all-or-nothing approach to this problem works successfully. De Morgan, Santayana, Korzybski, and many general semanticists have warned against misuses of the verb like the "is" of identity, yet they continued to misuse it themselves!

So even if we carefully attempt to carefully use "left," it can easily get misused. For example, we identified four different definitions of "left-libertarianism":

Charles Johnson defines "left-libertarianism" as "thick" libertarianism muddled with feminism and other cultural values, as supposedly shared by the Democratic Party. However, Johnson did the "hasty generalization" fallacy in doing that.
Brainpolice defines "left"-libertarianism as cultural liberalism with anarchistic economics. However, on a YouTube video, he mysteriously redefines "left" and "right" as an economic spectrum.
FSK defines a "left"-libertarian as an agorist.*
Brad Spangler defines left-libertarianism as a revolutionary type of libertarianism and while opposing "vulgar libertarianism." This implies that left-libertarians must advocate mutualism or neo-mutualism.

We defined "left"-libertarianism a long time ago and many replied that we did not represent all "left-libertarians." I do not represent all of them because we defined "left-libertarianism" differently.

All statists, minarchists included, propose aggression on others. Statists only tinker with the Leviathan and parliamentarianistically waste their energies with political compromise.

The terms left-wing and right-wing are highly vague, and no definition exists. They are highly contextual, and can have completely different meanings hinging on the speaker's ideology and alliances.

Bibliography

\begin{thebibliography}{9}

\bibitem{webster-mercantilism}
 Anarcho-Mercantilism over Market Anarchism.
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 \emph{Anarcho-Mercantilist}
 \url{http://anarcho-mercantilist.blogspot.com/2008/10/anarcho-mercantilism-over-market.html}

\bibitem{webster-radical}
 Radical.
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 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/radical}

\bibitem{webster-revolution}
 Revolution.
 2009.
 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/revolution}

\bibitem{webster-left}
 Left.
 2009.
 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/left}

\bibitem{webster-right}
 Right.
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 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/right}

\bibitem{webster-secular}
 Secular.
 2009.
 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secular}

\bibitem{webster-traditional}
 Traditional.
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 \emph{Merriam-Webster Online.}
 \url{http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/traditional}

\bibitem{TheoryAndImplementation}
 We will discuss this in another article.

\bibitem{TheLeftLibertarianStrategy}
 The Left-Libertarian Strategy
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 \emph{Anarcho-Mercantilist}
 \url{http://anarcho-mercantilist.blogspot.com/2008/12/left-libertarian-strategy.html}

\bibitem{paternalism-def}
 Multiple, confusing definitions of \emph{paternalism} exist. In this case we mean to aggress others ``for their own good."

\end{thebibliography}

On FSK's blog:

If you're on your own blog, ignoring or calling out trolls is usually sufficient. For example, "[anarcho-mercantilist]" (see above) describes himself as "anti left-libertarian". If that's your philosophy, then why are you trolling here? If you believe that agorists are full of ****, then why are you wasting time reading this?

The Real Chile

2008-12-28T23:58:00.000-08:00

Many Austrian economists at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, such as George Reisman, cited the Pinochet regime in Chile between 1973 and 1982 as an example of the free market. The Chile dictator during that time, Augusto Pinochet, underwent a gradual policy called "privatization." The Pinochet administration sought to implement the "privatization" plan by working with the Chicago Boys, who studied economics at the Chicago School. Many individuals, and even some libertarians, falsely proclaim the Chicago School as a "free market" school of thought. The Chicago School, however, did not have libertarian policies, it proposes active state intervention in the macroeconomic sphere.

Contrary to the popular myth, the Pinochet administration only had started to gradually implement the neoliberal "privatization" policies only after 1975 and reversed the reforms by 1981. The "privatization," policies did not significantly decrease economic intervention.

Under the Pinochet administration, Chile still had a 20% value-added tax, 10% welfare "pension," and 10% income tax. Chile had only gradually reduced tariffs from about 35% to 15%, subsidized "private" contractors as "privatization" of state industries, and "liberalized" price controls as "deregulation." The state only cut marginal tax rates, other types of confiscation rates stayed the same and even increased. Thus, direct taxation totaled over half of the income.

While Pinochet eliminated unions, he replaced it with government imposed wage floors, indexed to inflation. Pinochet's indexation plan created the massive unemployment there, which reached 22% in 1983.

Actually, much of Chile's "growth" came after 1982, after its implementation of more Keynesian policies. Quoted from this article:

By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat "Grupos" defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists.

The Chilean government also reintroduced intellectual "property" privileges, and increased subsidies. The Chilean state has implemented the "East Asian" model for export "growth."

The East Asian states used mercantilist policies for "export" led growth. It maintained subsidies, import tariffs, restrictions, and quotas, financial interventions, investment planning, infant industry "protections," export business subsidies, privileged loans to favored export industries, and big industry regulations. A majority of the East Asian states actually implemented an import-substitution policy, which raised tariffs on imports to protect its domestic industries.

As quoted from the above link:

That these countries’ export success was achieved with major government subsidies and interventions – and that they strictly limited imports and tightly regulated finance and investment policy – was conveniently omitted from the story.

Their success based on non-neo-liberal principles continued until rapid financial liberalization triggered the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which then rolled back decades of economic development progress.

Under the U.S. 1960-70's "deregulation," the government only liberalized price controls and transportation restriction for trucking, railroads and airline tickets; while keeping all of the other regulations and subsidies intact.

Generally, when speaking of "deregulation," most of these plans focused on these three points:

Deregulation: Liberalizing price controls as "deregulation," while keeping the price-unrelated regulations the same or higher. Examples: Liberalizing price controls for transportation, minimum wage decrease instead of elimination, and outlawing of unions and instead set up a new wage control system.
Privatization: Attempts to "privatize" but resort to subsidized state contractors. Examples: "Privatizing" welfare ("Social Security") and health insurance, but instead set up forced savings accounts to subsidize contractors. This also includes education vouchers and the "privatized" No Child Left Behind policy (called the Education Reform Act 1988 in the United Kingdom), which the Adam Smith Institute endorses.
Tax cuts: Cutting marginal tax brackets as cutting "pork barrel spending," as part of the trickle-down policy. Examples: Removing marginal tax brackets, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and marginal corporate taxes. Margaret Thatcher and the Adam Smith Institute advocated "poll tax" reformism.

Economic Stupidity Does Not Exist

2008-12-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Libertarians generally agree that some individuals close-mindedly reject Austrian economics due to their aversion to extreme ideologies. This motivates the libertarians to call these situations causing from "economically ignorance," or ecognorance, what Michael Wiebe calls it.

For many libertarians, some say that there exists some "economically stupid" individuals. Economic stupidity, however, does not exist. General stupidity, can exist, but the specific economic stupidity, does not. No one has economic stupidity, since, by definition, in order for one to seem stupid, he has to appear stupid at all scientific and logical realms, not only in economics. Therefore, an individual must either have economic ignorance or general stupidity, not economic stupidity, since it does not exist.

The modern leftists, in fact, have extreme economic ignorance that may sometimes display themselves as generally stupid. Yes, this may seem true at times, since they often resort to emotional fallacies. Most of the modern leftists, however, would actually understand Austrian economics if they feel more open-minded about libertarianism. This shows that the leftists can understand Austrian economics, and proves that most of them do not have "stupidity" as defined as incapability, not close-mindedness, to understand Austrian economics.

So most of the leftists can understand Austrian economics if they chose to. But why would they close-mindedly reject libertarian ideology, as a whole? This has many causes, but the primary causes include the vulgar libertarian movement, as we will explain below, and the empirical/historical fallacies that libertarians use to defend their position.

Most libertarians would likely fall into the trap to defend that the current distribution of wealth would continue to similarly exist in a free market. This defense often shows up when debating health care and welfare topics. Instead of realizing that almost everyone would possess many times more wealth and would afford health care in a free market, the libertarians, however, would often defend the current American health care system and propose a welfare system funded by private charity.

This type of argument, however, would resort to problems. The "quality of health care," for example, differs from individual to individual. While the American may arrogantly claim that socialized health care would result in "slow waiting times," the Canadian would attempt to refute his claim, revealing evidence that he, in fact, did not wait very long. When the American, again, arrogantly claim that Canadian health care has low quality, the Canadian would attempt to refute it, by defending specific scenarios when the Canadian health care performs better. This debate would go on and on, making specific claims about each others system, until the Canadian exhausted his patience, and he would never again, try to confront a libertarian anymore. No one can "objectively" appraise his own or another's health care system.

The above scenario, however, demonstrates an inherent fallacy, resting on a huge mistaken assumption. The American, in refuting Canadian "socialized health care," implied that the United States has a free market health care system. But in fact, as you all may know, that the U.S. has a corporatist system that does not, in any way, resemble the free market.

While the American may have knew that the U.S. does not have a free market, he somewhat unconsciously "defended" the U.S. health care system. By arguing that while the Canadian "socialized care" has the supposed long waiting times, he implied that the U.S. does not have socialized health care (i.e. free market health care) and has short waiting times.

The conflation of the free market with corporatism, as with the health care example, occurs too often among libertarians. In fact, this occurs in even many of the self-identified left-libertarians. For example, David Z., a left-libertarian, acted like a vulgar libertarian when he unconsciously defended the U.S. health care system by denying that U.S. already has socialized health care. Kevin Carson termed this behavior as vulgar libertarianism, which means the defense of the current economic inequality and conflation of corporatism with the free market.

The empirical/historical arguments exemplify another reason of why the health care debate fails. Because the American and the Canadian use empirical arguments to examine the quality of health care systems, and since empirical examples have a hard time to advocate or refute, it will result in a convoluted discussion. And, because no discussion of theory exists, the Canadian might "subjectively" value his system better, with no knowledge of how bureaucracies and subsidized contractors of health care services causes massive inefficiency.

But socialized health care proponents primarily defend their position from a fallacious assumption in economic inequality. They think that because a free market has an inherent tendency to have vast inequalities of wealth, the rich should subsidize health care for the poor—who would not exist in a truly free market. Not just health care, but almost all of their positions—schooling, "education" subsidies, subsidized housing, wealth redistribution, and many other "social" programs. If the libertarian refuted that a free market does not have vast inequalities of wealth, he might refute the need for all of the social programs.

Another common example bases on the supposed "privatization" and "deregulation" in the real world.

The Left-Libertarian Strategy

2008-12-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

The word "left-libertarian" does not mean that libertarianism should be left-wing. It is a movement with a specific strategy.

The left-libertarians usually define left-libertarianism as an egalitarian philosophy. Actually, the terms left-wing and right-wing are meaningless. The left did not always support egalitarianism, and the right did not always support the status quo more than the left. Though the left-libertarians claim that they use the term "left-wing" to refer to the seating arrangements of the French legislature, they amazingly redefine "left-wing" as the ideology of the Civil Rights Movement.

However, the real definition of left-libertarianism is the strategy of achieving anarchy, as advocated by the left-libertarian alliance, by making alliances with mutualists, geolibertarians, green anarchists, and anarcho-collectivists. Thus, a "left-libertarian" actually means any member of the left-libertarian alliance or one who practices such strategy. The left-libertarian strategy supports making many alliances with others, even those opposing pure free markets.

However, the mutualists, geolibertarians, green anarchists, and other anarcho-collectivists, even though they support free markets, are, however, economically ignorant. For instance, the mutualists and geolibertarians advocate redistribution of capital goods and land, not because the current system is unfair, but because they believe that a strict propertarian free market will intrinsically result in an uneven distribution of wealth. Thus, the mutualists advocate the continuous redistribution of capital goods by their "use and occupancy" laws and the geolibertarians advocate a tax on land and "unproductive" use of resources.

While the Rothbardian privatization strategy of worker's homesteading the state-owned factories and land does not seem to violate the non-aggression principle because state ownership is illegitimate, and that many corporations are extensions of the state; the left-libertarians, unlike the Rothbardian philosophy once-only redistribution, advocate continuous redistribution of land. This is based on the fallacious belief that in a strict propertarian free market, income inequality will increase without redistribution of capital goods or land.

The income inequality fallacy of the free market is also believed by the contemporary social democrats. Thus, the mutualists and geolibertarians have the same economic ignorance as the contemporary social democrats, all three believing that large disparities of wealth is inherent in the market without redistribution of wealth, capital or land.

Another fallacy based on the income equality fallacy is the mutualistic position on abandonment. Because the mutualist thinks that income distribution is inherent in a propertarian free market, they think that the rich, who are non-existent in a free market, would abandon their useless property rather than to make a profit by selling it.

The left-libertarian strategy involves making as many allies as possible. Because the left-libertarians, by definition, ally with the mutualists and other economically ignorant libertarians, left-libertarians are thus forced to oppose capitalism. The left-libertarians, also, are forced to defend mutualism and anarcho-collectivism, since they ally with them. Making too much allies with others will degenerate the purity of libertarianism, into a philosophy of reformism, redistribution of capital and land, and end in an endless debate between the alliance members.

The left-libertarians are divided on strategy. On one side, they advocate a reformist strategy and "thick" libertarianism. These left-libertarians include Charles Johnson, Roderick T. Long and Kevin Carson. On the other side, there are left-libertarians who see agorism as more effective than "thick" libertarian propaganda, such as BrainPolice, FSK and David Z. The latter three individuals explicitly oppose labor unions and anarcho-syndicalism as a strategy, as they see it as "working within the system."

Anarcho-capitalists who advocate political reform is functionally a classical liberal, since they do the same thing. Similarly, a market-anarchist who supports syndicalism is functionally an anarcho-syndicalist. An agorist who only sells prohibited drugs is functionally the same to all of the other non-libertarian workers in the black market. Non-straightforward ways of promoting libertarianism are thus highly inefficient. Promoting or package-dealing some other values other than the core libertarianism philosophy destroys the purity of libertarianism. The only way to effectively promote libertarianism is by straightforward, non-propagandistic education.

While some kinds of counter-economic propaganda may, indeed, make others more open-minded about libertarianism, utilizing pure agorism, without spending on education, will fail to achieve anarchy.

By straightforward, non-propagandistic education, we mean by not making alliances that are incompatible with libertarianism (such as the "left-libertarian" alliance); not promoting a specific candidate or criticizing specific state policies such as Social Security, school privatization, etc.; and not advocating political compromises. We mean, is, to educate others about the free market, without any empirical arguments.

Prominent left-libertarians:

David Z.
FSK
BrainPolice
XOmniverse
Roderick T. Long Roderick Long has wrote an article saying that the difference between anarcho-individualists and anarcho-collectivists is entirely semantic.
Charles Johnson Charles Johnson, who wrote a "thick" libertarian strategy, advocated using non-straightforward propaganda to promote anarchy, and making alliances with ideologies such as the vulgar-libertarian pro-state feminists, anarcho-collectivists, and egalitarians. The "thick" libertarian strategy is about indirectly, and non-straightforwardly promoting libertarianism via propaganda.

The Trend Towards Self-Employment

2008-12-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

While I support the labor theory of value as an accurate explanation of prices in a static economy, find it contradictory to support both self-employment and the labor theory of value at the same time. Self-employment will only be profitable when the agency costs or risks exceed the economies of scale. In more technological or creative industries, the agency costs of employing workers are very high, because it's hard for employers to determine the compensation for the workers. In creative jobs, such as software development, web design, composition, engineering, and the arts, managers would find it hard to set the salaries for the workers, due to too many variables, so the individuals working in these sectors would more likely to work be self-employed instead of working as an employee for others, due to agency costs. Also, in more creative areas, the worker's ability vary greatly. For instance, the top 10% of the best computer programmers are 100 times more productive than the average programmer. Therefore, all of the computer programmers would find self-employment better than working for an employer. A fortiori, the "labor theory of value" does not fit in more creative jobs. However, in our current technological trend, the agency costs and risks becomes larger, due to the overhead costs of compensating workers. An employer does not have the ability to judge one's creative works or methods, thus does not have the ability to find good salary rates for the workers. In labor-intensive industries, however, the agency costs are smaller. Due to the low agency costs in these sectors, the economies of scale are more important. Therefore, sectors involving intensive labor would have larger and more hierarchical firms. The physical ability of the workers in labor-intensive industries do not vary much, so it's easy for managers to estimate an hourly wage. However, in more creative jobs, it's hard to estimate an hourly wage because it's possible, unlike physical strength, for workers to have huge mental differences. This is why in some of the "service sectors," employers would offer "salary compensation" instead of constant wage-rates. But in even more creative jobs, employers would not have the ability to estimate the salaries, since there are too many variables and greater risk. Sharing profits are less likely in more creative sectors, since individuals have different abilities. This is another reason of why the economies of scale will not influence the creative sector as much. Knowledge is abundant. So individuals would specialize in knowledge. It is therefore impossible for employers to know all of the knowledge including his employees, and this raises the principal-agency costs. In the knowledge economy, information, such as software, is available for re-use, so workers do not have to laboriously retype all of his code. This encourages creativity instead of labor. The availability to re-use information would make individuals focus on creating more specialized information. This increased specialization of knowledge will make it even more harder for employers to accurate compensate his workers, since he lacks knowledge which has similar effects of asymmetrical information. Also, because labor intensive industries are not creative, the workers would not find any reason to complain "I know how to do this better than my boss." (At least compared to the more creative sectors.) Contrarily, in the more creative jobs, the workers would always complain to their boss if they work for an employer. For example, since there are many different ways to how to write a computer program or design something, the workers would dispute against their employers, so they would rather work in self-employment to avoid these disputes. Additionally, creativity involves risk. Suppose I want to invest a portion of my wealth in labor intensive industries involving capital goods. The risk is very small, since labor intensive industries produce a constant rate of return. However, if I invest the same amount of wealth to develop an invention, this would be very risky, because the invention might not develop. Therefore, in more creative jobs, people would find it very risky for an entrepreneur to borrow money in order to invest in an invention (since the invention might not develop). Thus, the time-preference distinctions are less important. The distinction between the capital-holders (having long time-preferences) and workers in the creative sector will diminish. Thus, there is an increasing trend towards self-employment in more creative jobs, due to risk. Due to the inelastic demand for creative works compared to labor-intensive capital industries, this increases the risk of creative jobs, thus may cause a moral hazard if creative workers work for an employer. A third reason of why economies of scale are ineffective in creative sectors is because, unlike getting a constant and secure profit from the return on capital from labor-intensive industries; in more creative sectors, capital is very insignificant in determining the successfulness because creativity marginalizes it. In the increasing competitiveness of creativity, workers will be more motivated to innovate under self-employment rather than innovate under employment for others. This is because the agency and overhead costs of estimating compensation for creative inventions are very subjective; self-employed workers will have the opportunity to reap all of the profits of their invention instead of sharing his profit with his employer; and inventing under self-employment would make workers have a greater incentive to keep a trade secret, instead of disclosing it to his employer. In this way, in the creative sector, self-employment would outcompete employment. In the creative sector, workers are all entrepreneurs. Inventors, artists, graphic designers, software developers, and composers, are all taking high risks, since creativity does not depend on labor. Working a hundred times longer or even a thousand times longer in the creative sector, unlike working in non-creative laborious jobs, does not guarantee more profit than working for one hour. Thus, while I do not find supporting either the labor theory of value or self-employment as contradictory, I find that supporting both of these positions as contradictory. Only primitivists would advocate both self-employment and the labor theory of value at the same time. (That is, it is impossible to advocate both the labor theory of value (that is implicitly advocating labor-intensive employment) *and* self-employment at the same time, unless you want to go back to the stone age where there are no economies of scale or division of labor.) Mutualists do not appear to even understand the marginal utility theory. I find the increasing trend of self-employment as a positive thing, as it signifies increasing technological development and more creative, less tedious, jobs. There is also a decreasing trend of the amount of labor that determines the value, as creativity does not depend on labor. So in the age of technological development and the emerging knowledge economy, the labor theory value as a sound explanation of the economy will be obsolete.

The Real Reason Why They Oppose "Capitalism"

2008-11-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

The "mutualists" and the "left-libertarians" oppose using the term "capitalism," not because of the negative denotations or connotations, but because they oppose the exclusive ownership of capital goods.

Francois Tremblay said two statements that conflicted with mutualism:

Capitalists, on the other hand, complain that mutualists don’t believe in perpetual property rights, and use this to dismiss mutualism altogether.

If use/occupancy rules were applied right now, there is no doubt that the whole system of capitalism, based on private owners of the means of production who have no use/occupancy connection with them (including land), would be gone by tomorrow.

However, mutualists do not oppose the "perpetual ownership of the capital goods (or the means of production)." Benjamin Tucker only opposes the perpetual ownership of land. In all other things, however, he opposes the use-and-possession laws. As he wrote in State Socialism and Anarchism

Proudhon scoffed at this distinction between capital and product. He maintained that capital and product are not different kinds of wealth, but simply alternate conditions or functions of the same wealth; that all wealth undergoes an incessant transformation from capital into product and from product back into capital, the process repeating itself interminably; that capital and product are purely social terms [...] But, though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, they aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few. And when the light burst in upon them, they saw that this could be done by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost

Thus, Francois Tremblay's advocacy of implementing the use-and-occupancy laws on all capital goods contradict the mutualists' position, even with Proudhon's.

Forcibly supporting the compulsory use-and-occupancy laws on capital goods, however, will distort the rational allocation of resources in the economy. Let us demonstrate the effects of forcing the use-and-occupancy laws on capital.

First, forcing the use-and-occupancy laws on capital is equivalent to forcing others to borrow capital at zero percent interest. This would disrupt the price signals of capital goods, which would cause a misallocation of capital goods in the economy. Forcing the use-and-occupancy laws on capital would disrupt the free price system, as described by the marginal theory of value.

The mutualists do not appear to understand the "marginal theory of value." However, understanding the "marginal theory of value" is a prerequisite for understanding the free price system and the economic calculation problem. Thus, the mutualists do not have a complete understanding of the economic calculation problem.

Forcing the use-and-occupancy laws on capital would have a few of the same effects from the economic calculation problem, as in state-socialism. Unfortunately, Kevin Carson redefined mutualism as a decentralized version of state-socialism.

The self-identified "mutualists" misinterpret their philosophy as opposing the exclusive ownership of all capital goods. Thus, they oppose the term "capitalism" because they oppose the exclusive ownership of capital goods. As shown, forcing the occupancy-and-use laws on capital goods, however, will result in a misallocation of capital goods, which will have a few of the deleterious effects as described by the economic calculation problem.

The "non-mutualist" "left-libertarians" oppose capitalism for a different reason. They claim that the definition of "capitalism" does not equal the free market. The "non-mutualist" "left-libertarians" also oppose the word "capitalism" because since they ally with the "mutualists," they must drop the term "capitalism" in order to communicate effectively with the mutualists. Therefore, the "left-libertarians," who ally with the "mutualists," must, also, abandon the term "capitalism" to keep their alliance with the "mutualists." The self-identified "mutualists" also have a flawed gradualist strategy.

The Demise of Mutualism

2008-11-20T16:19:00.000-08:00

Since I last blogged about my defense of mutualism, I changed my mind and began to oppose mutualism. At first impression, mutualism appears compatible with libertarianism. Mutualists, for instance, do not oppose employment, and support the free market. Also, contrary to common conceptions, mutualists do not even oppose rent and interest, as they only predict that in an anarchic society, rent and interest will fall near zero. Even though these positions held by mutualists seem consistent to the libertarian philosophy, the mutualistic theory, however, has flaws that contradicts the ethics and strategy of libertarianism. My justifications for opposing mutualism include their theory of prices, egalitarianism, Luddite ideology, gradualism, and syndicalism. Although their advocacy for the labor theory of value seems small, this, however, has potential repercussions that undermine the philosophy of libertarianism.

First of all, we will define mutualism. Mutualists support an occupancy and use theory of land. That means, as long as an individual currently uses or possesses land, he has the right to control it. However, once as he gives up using or occupuying land, he does not have the right to control it anymore. Thus, this will make land available for other individuals to use.

This occupancy and use theory of land may seem difficult to implement in a stateless society, but arbitrators can do this job by resolving disputes over occupancy and use. Hence, supporters of mutualism would argue that individuals can voluntarily join a mutualist society with the mutualistic occupancy and use laws, thus not interfering with other societies. Thus, a mutualist society and an anarcho-capitalist society can coexist, because they each respect voluntary associations.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon first developed this theory based on the free market, and he called it mutualism. Proudhon, while supporting the free market in general, opposes the ownership of the means of production, and suggests the occupancy and use theories. Benjamin Tucker, who followed Proudhon's footsteps, begun to diverge from some of Proudhon's ideas. While Proudhon sees employment as exploitative, Spooner and Tucker did not see it that way.

Knowledge Problems

Mutualists are utilitarianists that are not tolerant of some kinds of property rights. Although they highly respect property rights, they are highly intolerant of property that is supposibly "stolen" by capitalists. They claim that they have the right reclaim the "stolen" property. Mutualists want to take over a factory by killing the boss and so they can then "homestead" the factory for all the workers to control.

There are many examples showing there violent behavior: On the Mutualist.org site, there is a statement: "Our ultimate vision is of a society in which the economy is organized around free market exchange between producers, and production is carried out mainly by self-employed artisans and farmers, small producers' cooperatives, worker-controlled large enterprises, and consumers' cooperatives. To the extent that wage labor still exists (which is likely, if we do not coercively suppress it), the removal of statist privileges will result in the worker's natural wage, as Benjamin Tucker put it, being his full product."

Murray Rothbard has written an article about how violent anarcho-communist were about taking over factories. Mutualists are the same, and they claim that they factory is "stolen" property and so they have to right to kill the owner for defense.

However, this raises serious problems. Once all the workers took over the factory, the workers might not have the knowledge to operate nor repair it. Also, the democratic-rule would be unmangeable due to lack of knowledge and also other problems such as the free rider problem. This unmangeability would undermine competition between other firms, which would cause ineffiency and utimately reduce their standard of living.

If they disagree with the current conditions, then why voluntary cooperatives already exist? If they believe that coorperative controlled communes would pay them more, then they should be widely recognized. Coorperatives do not exist in our current society because the workers get paid less than non-collective firm due to their inefficiency. Therefore, the workers are still better off working in a non-collective firm because they get paid more from increased efficiency.

But today's workers are impovished due to corruption such as licenses and regulations, not ineffiency in some firms, intrinsically.

It seems that their belief of "homesteading" the factory is based on their economic ignorance.

Interest and Rent

Proudhon and Tucker, however, claim that interest rates exist due to the money monopoly, and rent exists due to the ownership of land. They believed that once the state deregulated the printing of money, and once ownership of land has replaced with the occupancy and use theory, interest and rent will fall to zero. Thus, the mutualists also oppose profit earned interest and rent.

Spooner actively supports interest and argues that lending restrictions causes poverty.

However, Benjamin Tucker, in his essay titled State Socialism and Anarchism, he shattered the myth that mutualists oppose interest:

For, say Proudhon and Warren, if the business of banking were made free to all, more and more persons would enter into it until the competition should become sharp enough to reduce the price of lending money to the labor cost, which statistics show to be less than three-fourths of once per cent.

Tucker said that interest will fall to three-fourths of one percent, not to zero. In an anarchic society, interest rates will indeed fall, since the missing lending restrictions and greater wealth, in the absence of the state, will lead to a lower interest rate.

However, Tucker viewed that the interest rates will equal approximately three-fourths of one percent, not because of inherent interest, but due to the labor costs of operating the interest loans:

... credits of the customers and a charge therefor of less than one per cent., not as interest for the use of capital, but as pay for the labor of running the banks.

As a corollary, Tucker deduced since interest will fall, profits will also fall:

Thus the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up. But this is not all. Down will go profits also. For merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will borrow money of the banks at less than one per cent., buy at low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices of their goods to their customers.

The interest and rent theories of mutualism does, however, contradict with Rothbardian anarchism. The mutualists think that the amount of labor from the lending service determines its rates, but the Austrian theory states that the cumulative time preferences of each lender and borrower determines the rates.

In our Defense of Mutualism, we mentioned that these errors do not seem as significant detriments to libertarianism. We now, however, changed our position and will discuss about how these meager errors will produce significant consequences.

The Labor

The mutualists hold a prediction that the labor paid will eventually fall proportionally to the labor, in an anarchic society. Benjamin Tucker noted:

The abolition of this monopoly would result in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed, and this saving to the laborers who consume these articles would be another step toward securing to the laborer his natural wage, his entire product.

Thus, this confirms that they do not wish to "aggressively implement" the labor theory of value, but they think that the wages will natually fall toward approximately to the amont of labor exerted.

This interpretation of the labor theory of value appears as an approximation of the long-term effects of the marginal theory of value. The greater competition in an anarchic society will let workers receive wages approximately to the labor they exerted.

Flawed economic understanding

However, their advocacy of the labor theory of value over the marginal theory of value presents a problem. Since the mutualists do not understand the marginal theory of value and thus do not understand how the free price mechanism works, they confuse the "economic calculation problem" with assymetrical information. Mutualists misinterpret the economic calculation problem, since understanding the economic calculation problem requires prior knowledge of the marginal theory of value.

Mutualists use their misinterpretation of the "economic calculation problem" as a criticism of corporations. However, the economic calculation problem, as properly understood, does not apply to corporations, though mutualists say it does. The economic calculation problem only applies to the overall allocation of goods in a price system. Corporations have assymetrical information, not the "economic calculation problem." Replacing every occurance of the word "economic calculation problem" with "assymetrical information" in this article would make it correct.

Dismissing the marginal theory of value would greately undermine the mutualist movement. For example, since they oppose the marginal theory of value, mutualists may support syndicalism as a means of achieving a free society, as they try to modify wage rates according to the amount of labor.

The Syndicalism

Many mutualists advocate syndicalism or anarcho-syndicalism as a means of achieving a free society. Kevin Carson and Brad Spangler even support coercive unions.

Voluntary unions, also have disadvantages. While voluntary unions may raise wage rates for the members, it will decrease the wage rates for the non-members. Even if every worker in every industry joined the same exact union, the economy does not have enough money pay every worker high wages. Therefore, it will cause unemployment if every worker joined the union. Many workers will thus decide to leave the union, and receive lower wages, due to threat of unemployment.

The Gradualism

Many mutualists, including Benjamin Tucker and Kevin Carson, showed signs of their advocacy of a gradualist strategy for achieving liberty. Roderick T. Long, Charles Johnson, Brad Spangler, and many of the "thick libertarians" advocate a gradualist strategy, and have mutualist sympathies.

Tucker, in his State Socialism and Anarchism essay, advocated Proudhon's gradualist idea of abolishing the tariff monopoly after abolishing the money monopoly:

Proudhon admitted, however, that to abolish this monopoly before abolishing the money monopoly would be a cruel and disastrous police, first, because the evil of scarcity of money, created by the money monopoly, would be intensified by the flow of money out of the country which would be involved in an excess of imports over exports, and, second, because that fraction of the laborers of the country which is now employed in the protected industries would be turned adrift to face starvation without the benefit of the insatiable demand for labor which a competitive money system would create.

While Kevin Carson, also, sees taxation as theft, he still supports welfare funded by a temporary progressive tax, as a means to achieve a free society, because he believes the labor theory of value and opposes the marginal theory.

The Egalitarianism and Primitivism

The mutualists see workers as having the same preferences, and see that education level does not affect wages relative to the amount of labor exerted. Mutualists thus have an egalitarian idea that all individuals have the same preferences and can have the same education. However, as Rothbard claims, this undermines the individuality of the human and undermines the division of labor.

Their ardent alliance with the so-called "green anarchists" implies a Luddite view of technology. The "green anarchists," a less extreme form of "anarcho"-primitivism, opposes the supposed "overpopulation" and opposes innovation.

The Bureaucracy

The mutualists, by no doubt, have an accurate view that bureaucracies will decrease efficiency due to mismanagement. The employment of managers and workers, especially predominant in the modern corporation, obviously has increased overhead and communication costs, and agency problems.

In the corporation, it has several levels of hierarchy. Beginning with the shareholders, they democratically vote for the board of directors. This enables the directors to strategically make decisions for the corporation's policy, while having a limited liability barrier between the shareholders and the directors. The limited liability barrier gives the board of directors an incentive take more risky decisions than the shareholders. They board of directors, then, employ chief executive officer, who strategically manages the corporation's policies. The chief executive officer may hire a president for the daily management for his strategic decisions. The president, may, in turn, hire several vice presidents, who work in more specialized functions, such as marketing, legal compliance, and finance. The vice presidents, in turn, hire senior managers, who follows the decrees set by the vice presidents. The senior managers hire middle-level managers, who work in more specialized areas, such as hiring and firing workers and their supervisors. At the bottom of the hierarchy, the supervisors do not hire or fire the workers, but only obey the commands from the middle-level managers.

We will list the corporate hierarchy: shareholders > board of directors > CEO > president > vice president > senior manager > middle-level manager > supervisor > worker

This hierarchy has a total of nine levels. On each level, the principle-agency cost exists. So in a total of nine levels, the agency costs have propagated into a very large agency cost.

Some useful bureaucracies, such as arbitration, may exist in an anarchic society. The subscribers of an arbitrator have to follow the arbitrator's decisions, which seem authoritarian. Though dispute resolution by a third party has significant communication problems, arbitrators may exist in a free society so that individuals have a third party to resolve disputes.

Conclusion

However, as some may wonder Tucker never identified himself as a mutualist. He still follow the philosophy of Proudhon, so we have some reason to identify them as mutualists. Spooner, however, differs. He never appeared to have influence from Proudhon, and Spooner explicitly supports interest and rent, and advocate the abolishment of lending and rent restrictions. The differences between Proudhon and Tucker demonstrate mutualism as an evolving philosophy. Mutualists do not hold constant positions. For instance, some mutualists, such as Proudhon, thinks that rent and interest will fall to zero. Some Tuckerite anarchists think these will fall near zero.

Rothbardian anarchists should not support mutualism, as this equates package-dealing Rothbardian anarchism with incompatible mutualistic positions. The mutualistic advocacy of syndicalism also undermines the libertarian strategy.

An Ex Post Facto Rationalization to Labeling myself as a "Mutualist"

2008-11-10T15:57:00.001-08:00

Proudhon developed mutualism as an economic theory based on a free market. Mutualists oppose employment, and view that individuals would predominantely work self-employed or in workers' cooperatives. Mutualists also claim that no one should own property, but should instead possess property as long as it remains in use. Proudhon, however, predicts that interest and rent will fall toward zero in a mutualistic society. Mutualists argue that in a mutualistic society, the price of a good tends to equal the proportional amount of labor exerted in production, a theory they call the labor theory of value (LTV).

We will argue mutualism as compatible to a free society, but the differences exist in ideology due to some minor theoretical and preferential disagreements.

In a free society, some competing jurisdictions would actually define the mutualistic possession theories. These possession rules may actually benefit in some areas.

Interest and rent would likely decrease as well, and might even decrease near zero, due to relaxation of loaning restrictions, but interest and rent would still exist. While Proudhon find interest and rent as normatively unoptimal, he declared that he does not want to aggressively suppress rent and interest.

Self-employment and workers' cooperatives

In a free society, individuals would likely prefer self-employment and workers' cooperatives over employment. Self-employment eliminates the costs pertaining to the principal-agent problem in employment. Workers' cooperatives, which also avoids the principal-agent problem, and may arise in response to economics of scale.

We should, however, not view workers' cooperatives as a firm in which workers democratically elects its employers. We should define a workers' cooperative as similar to the modern partnership organization with no employees, where the workers equal the ``partners" of the partnership. Kevin Carson, a mutualist, even appears to define a workers' cooperative in that way too.

The current bureaucratic corporations have a several levels of hierarchy, which implies that the principal-agent problem has multiplied several times throughout its hierarchy. Its three-tier hierarchy, from the CEO to the board of directors, and to the shareholders and the consumers implies the monopolization of corporations by the state.

The cooperative, unlike an employer paying an employee, does not have any hierarchy. Employers do not exist in any cooperative firm, but the workers themselves sell their products, and form a partnership with other workers to increase scale effiencies.

The labor theory of value

In a free society, workers would also gain wealth approximately to their proportional amount of labor, but not according to the labor theory of value as in mutualism. This difference seems minor, and largely theoretical. Many people have different interpretations of the labor theory of value. Benjamin Tucker, appearently, interpreted the labor theory of value as the workers get wages approximately proportional to their amount of labor. Therefore, we see Tucker's definitions of the LTV as exactly compatible with our view of a free society.

The labor theory of value presumes that in a free society, the all goods and services will cost approximately the amount of labor it took to produce, plus the value of all the the raw materials the product composes. This generally seems correct, since workers will compete with each other so the amount of labor evens out. This evening-out process makes workers get compensated approximately proportional to their labor, so the products that the workers made generally reflect the cost of raw materials plus the amount of labor. Contrary to some Austrian propaganda, the labor theory of value appears roughly correct in a static economy, meaning an economy with no growth, except a minor glitch in its labor valuation of natural resource extraction.

The original definition of LTV has an inaccurate theory on the pricing of natural resources. A famous example involves the diamond-water paradox. The LTV says that, in a free society, diamonds price more expensive than water because it takes more labor to drill a diamond than get water. However, it does not explain why some rare minerals cost very cheap.

The Austrian School believes in the marginal theory of value (MTV), a theory of prices based on supply and demand. Both the labor theory of value and the marginal theory of value, however, function as abstractions. The MTV also does not apply to the real world, but only an approximation. Since the marginal theory bases on rational choice theory, where the agent orders his preferences which does not change throughout time, it does not accurately explain some things such as how assymetrical information influences prices, just like how the LTV does not accurately explain the prices of some rare minerals.

We should not, however, see LTV and and the MTV as two competing theories of value. We should see these as different explanations of valuation. The LTV describes the optimal price allocation in a static economy, while the MTV describes the physics of how the prices of goods and services adjust in responce to the abundance or the scarcity of natural resources.

Conclusion

Mutualism, an economic system, can exist in a free society. We can disregard the theoretical tics---the labor theory of value, and the theory of rent and interest---from mutualism, because these have no application in real life and these function as predictions, not implementations. With regards to the possession theory of property---yes, some jurisdictions may actually enforce these rules, and may actually benefit some. But we accept the mutualistic prediction that self-employment and workers' cooperatives would predominate in a free society.

Innovation Without Patents

2008-11-10T15:53:00.002-08:00

Libertarians see that in a free society, individuals would have more incentives to innovate, because of greater wealth and leizure time. From the absense of intellectual property in a free society, inventors would have more incentives to invent, due to decreased risk of inventing an already patented product. But supporters of intellectual property, however, see it as helpful to promote invention, even that it contradicts the non-aggression principle. Yes, because ``it's impossible to enforce morality," individuals will still advocate IP for pragmatic reasons. Even if some proponents of IP see it as immoral, they cannot help it so they still support it. We will, in response to them, thus argue that even in the absence of intellectual property, alternative systems that rewards the inventor exists in a free society.

The classical argument and criticisms

Let us start with the classical IP argument:

If the state does not reward the inventor for his inventions, then the inventor would not invent it in the first place.
Inventions always produce more good than non-invention, even at the cost of intellectual protectionism.
This is because the consumer wish to buy the invented good over others, even at a higher price from patent monopolies.

We will criticize some bad consequences of intellectual property. If two individuals made the same invention, then one will get sued. Therefore, individuals do not have much incentive to develop a new product, since the state may sue him for something already invented.

This happens often in software patents. The open source developers do not have much incentives to develop software anymore because they do not want to take the risk of getting sued, for developing software that someone else already patented.

Patent laws, also, result in firms having a monopoly over that idea. This would increase the mismanagement of many firms, and the monopoly firms tend to display bureaucratic tendencies.

Patents also forbid the improvement of many inventions over the entire patent term. Since statistics have shown that over 90% of all innovations improve an existing invention, eliminating patent laws might increase innovation.

Criticisms, however, do not entirely refute the proponents, since the proponents may think that the benefits overweigh the costs, advocating criticisms may not entirely make proponents deny their idea. Even if we have one thousand criticisms about the disadvantages of IP, the proponents may still think the benefits of IP outweigh the costs. We, therefore, will suggest better alternatives to intellectual property, instead of criticisms of IP, so the proponents of IP would have something better.

Utilizing creative destruction

Creative destruction means the destruction of some firms or sectors by innovation. As new firms with innovations enter the market, this destroys the old firms. As new firms with new innovations outcompete the old firms, the old firms will fail and the new firm would predominate. This process, even in the destruction of old firms, benefits the economy.

The classical entrepreneurial method

Entrepreneurs can utilize the creative destruction process to take rewards from their invention. As an inventor thoughts of an idea that may outcompete old firms, he forms a businesses to manufacture his invention, he could profit from it. But even temporary, some tiny inventions would profit a huge sum to the inventor, due to a high population demand for his invention.

But suppose, if an invention takes a long time to develop, and he cannot reap much profit even of high population demand, he has plenty of alternative methods to get even more profit.

Selling shorts

One example of how the inventor can profit from his invention comes from the stock market. Once an invention has released, we can imagine a large number of old businesses to fail, massive bankruptcies, and liquidation. But an inventor can exploit these business failures to profit from them. An inventor can utilize a strategy called short-selling.

The basic method goes something like this: An inventor first sell stocks that he does not own from the businesses that will fail from his invention. Then inventor establishes his own business but his idea spread quickly and other firms used his idea also. Eventually, the businesses will eventually outcompete the old businesses. Finally, after all of the old businesses failed, the inventor buys back these stocks from the failing businesses at a lower price. This would make the inventor profit at the difference of the price of the stock at the beginning and the lower price.

Though the bureaucratic corporations would not exist as much in a free society, the stock market will still exist. The inventor can leverage the stock market to profit from his invention, at almost any sector that has stocks.

Suppose an inventor, named Alice, invented a widget, called widget-A, and she keeps it secret. Alice eventually detects that widget-A would eventually outcompete widget-B, manufactured at some other firm, firm-B. As Alice reasonably believes that firm-B will go bankrupt as she releases his invention, she plans to profit from firm-B's bankruptcy.

Alice tries to profit from her invention, by selling shorts. She first borrows stock, and then sells the stock to firm-B. She starts her own firm, firm-A, to manufacture widget-A. But soon, other firms quickly used her invention and also manufactured her idea. She had only profited very little before other firms used her idea too. But she could also profit more until firm-B goes bankrupt.

Eventually, as almost every firm manufactured a widget-A from Alice's idea, firm-B that manufactures widget-B goes bankrupt. During this bankruptcy, the stocks from firm-B fell. She then buy the undervalued stocks from firm-B back, and she profit from this difference enormously.

Hacking the free price system

Every innovation, no matter how diminutive or how ineffectual, influences the free price system. If one invention enters the market, the amount of other products will probably diminish. This happens because in order to manufacture the new invention, it needs raw materials. Manufacturing the invention increases the demand of raw materials, which will reduce the demand of raw materials to make other products. Because manufacturing an innovation changes the supply and demand for other products composed of the same raw materials, one can profit by noticing this difference.

The method goes something like this. Whenever a firm manufactures a widget greater or less than it used to, it displays changes in the price system. The inventor can profit from these changes from buying and selling futures contracts, or contracts guaranteeing buying or selling a thing at some time in the future.

Suppose an inventor, named Bob, manufactures a widget that no other firm has invented. He can buy futures contracts of some other product that uses the same raw material before he releases his invention and then sell these later at a higher price.

Suppose Bob invented a new type of machine that processes milk faster and cheaper. Thus, Bob predicts that the demand for milk will increase in the future, since the cost of milk will decrease due to cheaper machinery. Conversely, the demand for yogurt and cheese, which made from the same raw material, milk, will decrease; since its prices will rise in response to increased raw milk demand.

Bob can buy yogurt and cheese first and store them at his storage tank, and promise futures contracts and sell them later at a slightly higher price. Bob will then start his own business, hoping that his invention will not spread to his competitors. Bob earns profit. However, his competitors eventually finds out his design of his machine, so he does not earn profits anymore. However, he still has yogurt and cheese stored at his storage tank, and plans to sell them at a higher price for profit.

This demonstrates that in addition to trade secrets, he can also use futures contracts to buy cheese and yogurt at low prices before high demand of milk and sell cheese and yogurt at a higher price when people highly demand milk.

This illustrates that inventors can perform a variety of things to benefit.

Contract monopoly

Bob can also agree with futures contracts to only sell from his own firm at a lower price, before he releases his invention. Then, when he releases his invention, he establishes his own firm but many others still buy from his firm because he agreed with futures contracts forcing others to buy from his firm. Therefore, Bob will profit similar to a state-granted patent monopoly, but enforced by futures contracts before he releases his invention.

Suppose that Bob has made a machine that publishes books at a cheaper cost. Before he releases his design of his machine to his competitors, he promises a futures contract with authors who agree to publish 10 books only from his version of the machine from now on. Bob can release his design of his machine to as many competitors as he wants to, but according to the promise of the futures contract, the authors still has to publish 10 books from his version of the machine, due to the futures contract promises.

We can also apply this kind of strategy to reward entrepreneurs by further exploiting the free price system. Suppose Alice invented a machine that manufactures chairs at a cheaper price. She should promise other firms to bulk-buy her cheaply manufactured price at the future, so she would earn a profit. However, she could also exploit others, such as the lumber industry, since her invention increased wood, to further profit from the free price system.

Trade secrets

Suppose an inventor discovers a new method for making software. He will sell programmers who want to use he method by selling them a trade secret. It agrees that all of his customers will not release his method. However, suppose the inventor has one hundred customers. He, however, cannot track which one released his trade secret, so he do not know which to sue.

He could, however, offer ``guards" to track that his customers, for sure, does not release his method for making software. Yes, the inventor sees it as expensive, but some inventions, he might see it as worth it. For instance, if he invented a method that will increase efficiency by one hundred times, he could license his trade secret to only a few large firms at a high price, and keeping guards to track that his licensees do not release his method.

Advanced innovation incentives

Using advanced technology, the inventor of the trade secret do not need to employ one guard to monitor every licensee. He could, alternatively, mount small wireless video cameras on each licensee's forehead, to see if one licensee released his trade secret. Thus, he does not need to employ any guards to keep track of them, since the video cameras record all of the licensee's actions 24/7. If the inventor finds out that a licensee released his trade secret, he could search the recorded video camera and seek evidence suggesting which licensee spread his trade secret, to sue him.

This seems intrusive to the privacy of the licensees, but the inventor can solve it by agreeing a privacy policy, which he promises to not let others look at the video camera's history unless the trade secret has spread.

Suppose that some innovations cannot possibly preserve as a trade secret, such as a method of combing hair, since consumers will notice that invention.

That would also enforce it by trade secrets, giving video cameras on all of the consumers to not spread.

Also, voluntary cities can set its own trade secret technologies, which can prevent communication to outsiders.

Conclusion

Utilizing short selling and futures contracts as an incentive to invent can gain huge profits. To use these methods, however, imply that the inventor must not release his invention to the market and let others reap the profits first. He must do some market transactions before he releases his idea to the market, in order to profit. Short selling and using future contracts appear similar to exploiting the market from ``inside knowledge," which means that the inventor has ``inside knowledge" of how the market would react to his invention, and then exploiting the stock market for profit.

Most importantly, an inventor can use a combination of stock market, futures contracts, trade secrets and the classical entrepreneurial method to profit big. In addition, some types of ``innovation insurance" deters some risks from the inventor. He can get help from innovation consulting firms which help him decide how to optimally exploit the stock market, futures contracts, trade secrets, and the classical entrepreneurial method.

Flaws of GDP, Factors of Inflation, and Velocity of Money

2008-11-10T15:43:00.000-08:00

What the GDP measures

GDP (Gross Domestic Production) measures the total money used to purchase newly produced, finished goods during a year. The GDP, however, does not measure the money used to purchase used-goods.

A commonly cited refutation of GDP involves the breaking window fallacy. Breaking and repairing windows increase expenditure, which increase GDP, even it harms individual. Breaking windows forces an individual's money to spend repairing instead of using the opportunity costs things that the individual actually desire.

GDP, additionally, does not measure economic distribution. Some individuals may have a poor standard of living or also unemployed, even if the aggregate GDP compares greater than other nations. This seems true for highly corporate-capitalist economies, in which the CEOs of the corporations steals almost all of the income from others.

GDP, also does not measure the underground economy.

A more important refutation deals with the GDP measure on production without any consumption. However, production and consumption overlap, so the GDP has to judge whether production or consumption occured in its fuzzy circumstances. Volunteer work, increases both production and consumption, because the individual find it psychically pleasing to do this work. Some individuals may enjoy producing open source software, so they consider producing open source software as also consumption. For instance, individuals may use open source software as consumption since he learns how to code software better by programming open source software, but open source software has a side-effect of production. In order to measure production, the state has to arbitrarily define which products constitute production, and which products do not. But as some activities fits in between production and consumption and does not have a distinction, the state can have the power to manipulate measurement to artificially increase GDP by defining a wider variety of products as productive processes.

Taxation, may even increase GDP, since individuals must work harder to pay these taxes. If we subtract government spending from the GDPs of the Nordic states, these GDPs will literally halve.

The mainstream media commonly speaks propaganda that deals with ``growth rate" as fast or slow. We cannot judge whether an economy grows fast or slow only by its ``growth rate." Underdeveloped economies have a potentially much higher growth rate than more developed economies. As the amount of technology stays the same level in all economies, the underdeveloped economy grow faster by accumulating technology. The underdeveloped economy would grow fast not because its economy ``grows," but its economy catching-up from previous state inhibition of growth.

The growth rate of the underdeveloped economy would eventually decrease as its economy catches up with the developed economy, due to diminishing returns.

Cultural influences to GDP

Differences in culture, knowlege, and preferences of individuals may have a greater impact on GDP level. Individual ignorance, religion, and other cultural preferences like the birth rate may have a greater impact on GDP than economic.

On health care issues, the Western individual may eat much processed food, which may increase the prevelance of certain diseases. These, however, raises health care spending, which, in turn, increases overall GDP. Should individuals eat healthy, the overall GDP would decrease, as the level of health care expenditure decreases.

The pharmeceutical and psychiatry industries may increase the GDP by a lot. These industries defraud its consumers to take expensive medication, which have no beneficial use to them. As many individuals spend a great deal of money on medication, the GDP may increase by much.

Cultural traditions may also impact GDP. Holiday tranditions such as Christmas, may have a larger impact on individual spending, and may also increase GDP. Spending time in churches may increase GDP due to greater spending. If the population does not believe in religion, the GDP would decrease due to lesser consumption.

We should use birth rate as another factor. The greater the birth rate increase, the lower the per capital GDP, even if the aggregate GDP did not change. As the state records the children born to mothers in a census, the higher the birth rate, the greater the population, which would make the per capita GDP decrease.

Other factors of price increases

An increase in the price of oil, in fact, may increase the culminative prices of all goods, even in the case in which the total money supply stays constant.

The oil price increases the opportunity costs of oil consumption, which produces a net deficit of oil utilization, and also the the underutilization higher-order machinery, such as cars, that consumes oil. This underutilization of goods and services that uses oil, due to increased costs, would result in a net decrease in gross production. Since the proportion of gross production compared to money supply decreases (or the velocity of money), the overpricing of oil would result in apparent price increases through all goods and services in the economy.

We should take caution not to interpret the above paragraph as the Keynesian idea of ``cost push inflation." Their theory sets the false assumption that even if gross production stays constant, the culminative prices will increase. Our theory, however, depends on the decreases in the gross production relating to oil.

In order to demonstrate more fully why decreases in gross production would cause price increases, let us set a clearer example: If it suddenly costs several times more to produce all kinds of goods, such as food, clothing, and services, the gross production of the economy decreases. If the money supply stays constant, the ratio of goods over the supply of money would decrease, hence would result in culminative price increases.

Our former example sets an increase in the price of oil as the factor of raising the costs of production of several goods in the economy. An increase in oil would increase transportation costs, which would, in turn, raise the costs of food redistribution, and also many other goods transported throughout the economy.

This idea elaborated in the above paragraph does not contrast Austrian economics. In fact, Austrian economists well know that a decrease in GDP, while the supply of money stays constant, will raise the prices throughout the economy. We just modified this idea with the assumption that an increase in oil price results in a decrease in GDP.

But the reverse can happen too---an increase in oil prices can also increase GDP. If the demand of oil does not change much according to the prices of oil, also known as the idea of ``low elasticity of demand," then it may result in an increase in GDP, and hence decreases in prices throughout the economy.

The velocity of money

The strength of the currency, in addition to gross production, also depends on its velocity. We define the velocity of money as the total flow of money divided by its population size in a specified period of time. Different definitions exist for the velocity of money, and we should not use other statistics for the velocity of money. Other sources define the ``velocity of money" differently from us, such as the GDP divided by money supply.

We should not, however, equate the velocity of money as the gross production divided by money supply. These two unrelated units do not correlate with each other. The velocity of money may increase without any increase in GDP. For example, the velocity of money increases if individuals sell more used goods, which the GDP does not take account. An increase in the velocity of money would cause price decreases in the economy, since the demand of money increase relative to the demand of goods. A fortiori, selling more used goods, would result in a net decrease of prices in the economy, since it would increase the velocity of money while the GDP stays constant.

The velocity of money, may influence the general price level. Assume that all of the economic production halted. This causes the GDP to equal zero. But individuals would still use money to exchange used goods. This encourages the demand of money, which make the currency have a ``value" caused by a demand of used goods.

The velocity of money, however, may have no effect on the general price level. Suppose two people, Alice and Bob, prepare to deal with transactions. Alice possesses 10 ounces of gold. Bob possesses a tractor also worth 10 ounces of gold. Imagine that Alice wanted to purchase Bob's tractor for 10 ounces of gold. However, after Alice purchased it, Bob wants to reclaim his tractor by purchasing his tractor back from Alice. Now, as Alice has her 10 ounces of gold and Bob has his tractor back, this situation remains the same as the original case. However, the velocity of money has just increased by 20 ounces of gold, since Alice and Bob transferred gold twice. If Bob sold his tractor and repurchased it again, for the second time, the velocity of money would increase by 40 ounces of gold, even if both Alice and Bob now possess the same stuff as in the beginning. New imagine that Alice and Bob did the same transaction for the third, fourth, and up to an infinite number of times. They would both still, would have the same possessions, but the velocity of money has just increased tremendously. This shows that, even if the velocity of money increased multiple times, it may still have no influence other prices. Therefore, we should not consider that the velocity of money only influences the general price level.

So as we have shown above, in certain cases, the velocity do have an effect on the general price level, but in other cases, it does not have any effect at all. So, specifically, what influences the general price level besides inflation and GDP?

Answer: The proportion of money used for used-goods compared to the proportion of money used in new goods. We will show two examples of how the proportion of money used in used-goods would cause a change in the general price level (or the strength of the currency) without any change in GDP or money supply. We will show that ``recessions" and taxation can also cause an impact on the strength of the currency.

During a ``recession," the prices in the economy may decrease depite the fact that the money supply simutaneously increases. We explain this by citing the massive amounts of business liquidations during a ``recession." As liquidations involve selling business assets and thus increase the velocity of money, an increased amount of liquidation would make the currency appear stronger during a ``recession."

Many factors that influences GDP also influence the strength of the currency. High taxes, may also strenghten the currency since the GDP includes government spending as a component. An increase in savings may strengthen the currency since savings lowers the velocity of money.

The growing parasite

According to various Internet statistics, these suggest that the rate of monetary expansion in the United States exceed over 15% per year. Many observers, however, see the rate of monetary expansion as much lower.

Many countries measure its GDP according to the international dollar. International organizations set the current international dollar as equivalent to one Federal Reserve note. As the rate of monetary expansion exceeds over 15% per year, the international dollar, equivalently, loses its strength about 87% per year. Because many countries measure their GDP using the international dollar that expands 15% per year, their nominal GDPs should also increase by 15% per year, to retain a constant real GDP.

However, as we see it, the nominal GDPs in most countries do not, however, increase by 15% per year. This signifies that their GDP has decreased over the years.

To give a summary to which nations have a increasing or decreasing GDP, we test it by using this: every nation that has a nominal GDP ``growth" rate less than 15% has a decreasing GDP.

The parasite has gained tremendous momentum of leeching off an increasing 15% of income from working man annually, thus demonstrates the impossibility of reversing that trend by working within the system.

A Primer on GDP

As Kevin Carson argued, GDP includes the cost of repairing the windows.

GDP is the measure of the output of a country. The equation for GDP is: C + I + G + (X-M)

The "C" in the equation also includes the costs of repairing a broken window. In order to have the money to pay, individuals have to work harder.

The "I" also includes malinvestment from expansion.

GDP includes the cost of government theft: taxation. GDP is the income of individuals before tax. To exclude the theft that increases the GDP, the "G" in the equation must be removed. The government spending should be substracted because individuals work harder to compensate the theft by government.

GDP increases if exports increase, and decrease if imports increase. This should be reversed. Individuals would have greater purchasing power to buy the imports if imports exceed exports. So (X-M) should be turned to (M-X).

FSK uses the median household income to estimate the GDP. He should have left out the government spending portion of the GDP and reverse the exports and imports. Besides his fallacy of using the inaccurate GDP to measure the economy, his use of "median annual income" is flawed because it is actually the median household income.

The "median household income" is inaccurate because the average number of individuals per household has became smaller.

For example, there were 108,209 households in 2006 and 94,312 households in 1900. This is an increase of 15%.

However, the population has increased from 248,709,873 to 281,421,906, which is 13.1%.