IntenseDebate - nothirdsolution

14 years ago @ TheDestinLog.com - Okaloosa defies Unifie... · 0 replies · +1 points

There should be more 'public servants' like this. Good for them.

15 years ago @ no third solution - Michigan Considers Par... · 0 replies · +1 points

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15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 2 replies · +1 points

I find it a tad unsatisfactory to suggest that, for hundreds or thousands of years, mankind lived these idyllic communal lives, until all of a sudden a few people discovered how to harvest plants/vegetables from the land with regularity, thereafter which these producers decided to deny their communal society, their family, etc., in order to become oppressive slaveholders.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 5 replies · +1 points

Err, i didn't say that. In fact I pointed out that there was a state before the capitalists (the feudal states) which facilitated the capitalist mode of production.

Within the context of a state-dominated environment, something which we call "capitalism" arose, which would not have otherwise come to pass. I'll grant you that much. But I still say the State is the root cause. it's the State and its prior usurpations which are the proximate cause of "capitalism", slavery &c.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Can we finally bury th... · 0 replies · +1 points

"Tragedy of Commons", as I understand it, is when the ownership/rights/property is poorly defined, or not at all defined, (e.g., unowned/free-for-all) mismanagement is bound to happen. (A necessary condition.)

As you note, however, "The commons" as a communally-owned resource is not the same thing as an unowned/free-for-all. With regards to "the commons", these things are defined (even if relatively informally) and so the necessary condition for tragedy is lacking.

Now, whether are guilty of extrapolating unfairly, or equivocating, is another question altogether.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 3 replies · +1 points

How the hell is that circular? This is the historical and current reality!

There wouldn't be any state without capitalists and there wouldn't be any capitalists without the state. This model offers no explanation of the genesis of either capitalist or state, merely postulating that they both require the other in order to exist. But this is a distraction. What matters to me is this:

It would not be capitalism anymore.

What would be the name for this? I ask only because I want to sign up for it, right now.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 2 replies · +1 points

The State does not use a propertarian exchange system; in fact the defining characteristic of a State is utter disrespect for anything even resembling voluntary exchange.

There wouldn't be any capitalists to create the state without the state first facilitating the use of capitalist mode of production

This is perfectly circular; perfect nonsense.

One can thus empirically assume that Capitalism needs a state in order to maintain itself

There is no reason why a system based on use/appropriation and "possession" rather than PP, but still utilizing voluntary exchange and commerce, can't exist in the absence of a State.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 2 replies · +1 points

You can bring up "primitive accumulation" until you're blue in the face, but the facts of history seem to suggest that a State (or states or pseudo states) created the beast of capitalist oligopoly, and not the other way around. The contention, of course, is that without an enabling "state" the path taken by "capitalism" or whatever label you want to ascribe to a propertarian exchange system, should've been very, very different. Capitalists didn't create the State, they overthrew it — and in the absence of a State, they should've been powerless to originate one.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 3 replies · +1 points

Even in light of primitive accumulation, one must question how an oppressive "capitalist" oligopoly would come to exist in the absence of a state or pseudo-state.

To put it in context of the time period we were discussing above, I find in Belloc's work (and the other Distributists) detailed accounts of the enclosure of the commons in the UK, etc., and IMO these are decidedly not organic or justifiable on "propertarian" terms. It goes back to a state or pseudo-state.

15 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Oh hey look! More &quo... · 2 replies · +1 points

Yes, "psychopath" is a better word than "bastard." But what I'm getting at then, without offering an endorsement one way or another, is whether the system itself is a dominant strategy. If it is, then I would submit that even eternal vigilance may not be enough to overcome.

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