The freedom to be a monarch is not a freedom I care about protecting.
Your right to use violence to occupy land and oppress all the users of that land is not a ‘natural right’. It is not the result of some ‘non-aggression principle’.
You libertarians claim to be against the social contract, but the very core of your political philosophy is the right of individuals to become monarchs.
Things Capitalists do:
- Use violence to claim sole control over a given area
- Create a Command Economy inside of the land/property they control: They tell which worker should do what and what they will get.
- Use ‘divine’ or ‘natural’ rights to justify their access to the property. (Alternate Scenario: They cite the ‘voluntary’ nature of society and ‘bootstraps’ as the source of their property rights)
- Oppress laborers
Things Monarchs do:
- Use violence to claim sole control over a given area
- Create a Command Economy inside of the land/property they control: They tell which citizen should do what and what they will get.
- Use ‘divine’ or ‘natural’ rights to justify their access to the property.
- Oppress citizens
I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
Capitalists are Monarchs.
Reblogging myself because fuck you
The corporate manager or owner is a sociopath
Capitalism is a disease—a raging infection that causes its hosts to become sociopaths.
When I lived in Hong Kong, where I worked as a correspondent for Business Week magazine back in the mid-1990s, my wife Joyce and I adopted a baby boy from a local Hong Kong orphanage. For the first six months, under the terms of the adoption process, we had Jed living with us in a foster-care arrangement, which required us to take him to regular visits to Queen Mary Hospital’s toddler clinic. There we often met a British couple who at the same time as us had adopted two boys, both with physical disabilities—one affecting his walking, and the other his vision. The man was someone I knew professionally—a major figure in the international investment banking industry who worked for a large British bank. I knew he had been centrally involved in lucrative deals in Southeast Asia that had financed some poorly planned infrastructure projects that were displacing and destroying the lives of tens of thousands of poor people, and that he had actually been indicted in one country for having misled the government there about the risks involved in the loans. But here he was, with his two adopted kids, just a model father: loving, patient and kind.
I was struck by this man’s ability to segment his personality into two discrete halves—a caring human being, and a profit-maximizing monster.
But over the years, I’ve come to realize that he didn’t realize he was a monster, for this is really the marvel of capitalism: its ability to treat as a virtue the ruthless pursuit of profit.
Corporate tycoons and managers have for several centuries now wreaked havoc on workers, and on the environment, yet because they also control the government, the schools and the media, we have, especially here in America, come to celebrate their sociopathy. “It’s just business,” we say, as millions of people are laid off when sales are down, or when some investment bank or leveraged buyout house arranges for a takeover of some enterprise and promptly tosses half the workforce out on the sidewalk. “It’s just business,” we say, when a bank tosses thousands of people out of their homes because, laid off from their jobs, they’re late in making a few mortgage payments. (This, by the way, is where capitalism differs from communism or state capitalism. In countries where the state and economy are centrally run, few people speak glowingly of the maximum leaders of society as being virtuous or fulfilling their proper role. By and large they are resented or hated.)
(Source: thiscantbehappening.net)
Why is Capitalism Exploitive?
For anarchists, capitalism is marked by the exploitation of labour by capital. While this is most famously expressed by Proudhon’s “property is theft,” this perspective can be found in all forms of anarchism. For Bakunin, capitalism was marked by an “economic relationship between the exploiter and exploited” as it meant the few have “the power and right to live by exploiting the labour of someone else, the right to exploit the labour of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.” [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 183] This means that when a worker “sells his labour to an employee … some part of the value of his produce will be unjustly taken by the employer.” [Kropotkin, Anarchism and Anarchist-Communism, p. 52]
At the root this criticism is based, ironically enough, on the capitalist defence of private property as the product of labour. As noted in section B.4.2, Locke defended private property in terms of labour yet allowed that labour to be sold to others. This allowed the buyers of labour (capitalists and landlords) to appropriate the product of other people’s labour (wage workers and tenants) and so, in the words of dissident economist David Ellerman, “capitalist production, i.e. production based on the employment contract denies workers the right to the (positive and negative) fruit of their labour. Yet people’s right to the fruits of their labour has always been the natural basis for private property appropriation. Thus capitalist production, far from being founded on private property, in fact denies the natural basis for private property appropriation.” [The Democratic worker-owned firm, p. 59] This was expressed by Proudhon in the following way:
“Whoever labours becomes a proprietor — this is an inevitable deduction from the principles of political economy and jurisprudence. And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, — I mean proprietor of the value his creates, and by which the master alone profits … The labourer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he was produced.” [What is Property?, pp. 123-4]
The average CEO pay of companies in the S&P 500 Index rose to $12.94 million in 2011.[1] Overall, the average level of CEO pay in the S&P 500 Index increased 13.9 percent in 2011, following a 22.8 percent increase in CEO pay in 2010.
The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500 Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011 from 343 times in 2010.[2] Back in 1980, the average large company CEO only received 42 times the average worker’s pay.[3]
CEOs supposedly deserve all this money for increasing shareholder value. However, while the average CEO pay increased 13.9 percent at S&P 500 Index companies in 2011, the S&P 500 Index ended the year at the same level as it started.
This double-digit increase in average CEO pay for the second consecutive year shows just how disconnected the top 1 percent is from the 99 percent. In 2011, average wages increased just 2.8 percent and average worker pay totaled $34,053.[4]
Both workers and shareholders have suffered over the previous decade. On Dec. 31, 2010, the S&P 500 Index closed 19 percent below its high on March 24, 2000. U.S. median household income fell $3,719 between 2000 and 2010.[5]
Runaway CEO pay is one reason why income inequality is growing in the United States. A Congressional Budget Office report found that inequality has risen dramatically, with the top 1 percent receiving most of the income growth between 1979 and 2007.[6]
What’s more, a new study by economist Emmanuel Saez at the University of California shows that in 2010—the first year of the economy’s recovery from the Great Recession—the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the growth in income.[7]
reblogging this from myself because fuck you.
The average CEO pay of companies in the S&P 500 Index rose to $12.94 million in 2011.[1] Overall, the average level of CEO pay in the S&P 500 Index increased 13.9 percent in 2011, following a 22.8 percent increase in CEO pay in 2010.
The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500 Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011 from 343 times in 2010.[2] Back in 1980, the average large company CEO only received 42 times the average worker’s pay.[3]
CEOs supposedly deserve all this money for increasing shareholder value. However, while the average CEO pay increased 13.9 percent at S&P 500 Index companies in 2011, the S&P 500 Index ended the year at the same level as it started.
This double-digit increase in average CEO pay for the second consecutive year shows just how disconnected the top 1 percent is from the 99 percent. In 2011, average wages increased just 2.8 percent and average worker pay totaled $34,053.[4]
Both workers and shareholders have suffered over the previous decade. On Dec. 31, 2010, the S&P 500 Index closed 19 percent below its high on March 24, 2000. U.S. median household income fell $3,719 between 2000 and 2010.[5]
Runaway CEO pay is one reason why income inequality is growing in the United States. A Congressional Budget Office report found that inequality has risen dramatically, with the top 1 percent receiving most of the income growth between 1979 and 2007.[6]
What’s more, a new study by economist Emmanuel Saez at the University of California shows that in 2010—the first year of the economy’s recovery from the Great Recession—the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the growth in income.[7]
Free the Market, Abolish the Wage System
Under capitalism — as opposed to a freed market — the state makes the means of production artificially scarce and expensive for workers, and raises the threshold of comfortable subsistence, so that workers are artificially dependent on wage labor.
The state enforces artificial property rights and artificial scarcities, like so-called “intellectual property” (the source of the $150 markup on Nike sneakers that cost $5 to produce) and absentee title to vacant and unimproved land. It organizes the economy into oligopoly cartels, with “sticky” prices (probably a 20% price markup in most industries) and enormously inefficient and high-overhead production methods. It enforces entry barriers to self-employment by inflating the capital outlays required for production, through such things as “safety” codes that criminalize the use of ordinary household capital goods and zoning laws that criminalize household microenterprises. It impedes comfortable subsistence by promoting real estate bubbles and criminalizing competition from vernacular building techniques.
Economic exploitation is possible only when competition from the possibility of self-employment is closed off and wage employment is the only game in town. Just as the British state colluded with employers in the Enclosures to obstruct access to natural opportunities, modern employers under corporate capitalism use the state to enclose natural opportunities as a source of rent. The overall effect is to increase the share of needs that must be met through wage employment rather than self-employment or the informal and household sector, and to inflate the number of people seeking employment relative to available jobs. Hence, workers are forced to compete for jobs in a buyer’s market.
In a freed market, with all these artificial property rights and artificial scarcities removed, the situation would be reversed. Many people on the margin would leave wage employment altogether, each household would require fewer wage-workers to bring in cash income, those engaged in wage employment would have to work fewer hours to supplement their self-provisioning in the informal economy, and millions of people would retire earlier. Employers would find themselves forced to compete for labor, instead of the other way around, and workers would have the material means to step away from the bargaining table and live off their own resources while awaiting offers more to their liking.
In short, the state is the friend of employers and the enemy of labor. A freed market means liberation from the wage system.
In free market capitalism, does that market decide which letters we capitalize?
MIT researchers predicted the death of capitalism—in 1972.
Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth.
Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.
However, the study also noted that unlimited economic growth was possible, if governments forged policies and invested in technologies to regulate the expansion of humanity’s ecological footprint. Prominent economists disagreed with the report’s methodology and conclusions. Yale’s Henry Wallich opposed active intervention, declaring that limiting economic growth too soon would be “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”
Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 with the business-as-usual scenario. He found the predictions nearly matched the facts. “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” he says. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.”
Police across the country are increasingly using extreme violence against occupiers. The weekly SF Bay Guardian recently revealed that Oakland police have received numerous complaints of excessive force. In a complaint from Oct. 25, an occupier says that “officers found a person alone, beat him, and broke his knee.” A complaint from a Jan. 7 march says that a police officer kneed an occupier in the back “causing his spine to break.” In New York City, media reports that an occupier’s rib was broken on the six-month anniversary of OWS. When the wounded occupier began having a seizure, she was denied medical attention while a crowd watched in horror. When occupiers from across the middle of America gathered in St. Louis, Missouri for the Occupy the Midwest regional summit, they too were also brutally beat back. Tazers were used, a dozen arrests were made, and several occupiers were led away with their faces covered in blood.
In the following eyewitness account, an occupier describes how it feels to be in confronted by extreme police brutality:
“For those that have never witnessed police violence, I want to make something clear. Nothing about this situation followed the prescription of an arrest – this media image of a “You are under arrest. You have the right…” is not what happens in real life. A friend said it best, what happened Thursday night was some gangsta shit. It was angry, vicious people jumping unarmed protesters and bystanders. It was an attack. It was intentional brutality. They did not follow any procedure of kettling, “less lethal” tactics, etc. Their actions were directly targeting individuals and beating the shit out of them. It was so fucked up.
I am traumatized. I am having flashbacks, and the more I try to make the motions of my mundane life the more vivid they become. Work, school, friendly conversations all seem completely devoid of meaning. All I can do is tell the story of my experience and force the people I surround myself with to question the society we participate in. I am so fucking angry.”
Read the whole story at https://antistatestl.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/a-personal-account-of-the-…
Capitalist efficiency is not desirable
Economically, sweatshops are efficient. They get the most out of a worker, while paying them the least. They get the “most bang per buck”. But is that type of efficiency desirable?
Ethically, there are plenty of reasons to not support sweatshops, due to worker exploitation and human rights issues. But economically, it’s not desirable either.
Things are produced because people want/need them. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs predicts (rather accurately) what we would buy given limited income. If the workers have close to no money, then they will have to spend most of their income on necessities. Thus, the aggregate demand for other products will decrease. As demand for these other products decreases, workers will be laid off and industries will shut down, further reducing consumption of ‘wants’. This will spiral into disaster.
But I’m not arguing for minimum wage or other pro-worker regulations (though this argument could be used in favor of such regulations). Even those regulations fail (see: the current recession and every other recession). The problem is that the Capitalists dictate the economy. The workers need to own the means of production, increasing the disposable income of each worker and thus allowing many industries to thrive. This will also reduce worker exploitation because most workers do not have the desire to put themselves in exploitative circumstances.
incase you missed this the first time around.
Capitalist efficiency is not desirable
Economically, sweatshops are efficient. They get the most out of a worker, while paying them the least. They get the “most bang per buck”. But is that type of efficiency desirable?
Ethically, there are plenty of reasons to not support sweatshops, due to worker exploitation and human rights issues. But economically, it’s not desirable either.
Things are produced because people want/need them. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs predicts (rather accurately) what we would buy given limited income. If the workers have close to no money, then they will have to spend most of their income on necessities. Thus, the aggregate demand for other products will decrease. As demand for these other products decreases, workers will be laid off and industries will shut down, further reducing consumption of ‘wants’. This will spiral into disaster.
But I’m not arguing for minimum wage or other pro-worker regulations (though this argument could be used in favor of such regulations). Even those regulations fail (see: the current recession and every other recession). The problem is that the Capitalists dictate the economy. The workers need to own the means of production, increasing the disposable income of each worker and thus allowing many industries to thrive. This will also reduce worker exploitation because most workers do not have the desire to put themselves in exploitative circumstances.
Libertarians need to stop picking and choosing what is caused by capitalism and what is caused by ‘evil statism’.
You can’t take all the problems of capitalism and blame them on the government, and then take all the positives of capitalism and give credit the free market.
As TheNoobYorker pointed out, Libertarians do not have a monopoly on human rights, and they certainly don’t have a monopoly on ‘successful’ economics.
Capitalism is not perfection. Income Inequality is not solely caused by government. Worker exploitation isn’t a result of ‘evil regulations’, it’s a result of capitalism. When workers don’t control the fruits of their own labor and the means of production, they will be exploited.
You can’t just wish away the problems of society and blame them on government. That’s not how society works.
