- Capitalism and Alternatives -

markets don't control the producers they manipulate the market to control consumers.

Posted by: LARK on April 19, 1999 at 18:46:42:

In Reply to: where? posted by Gee on April 15, 1999 at 12:14:45:

: Land has always been the most difficult are for all political persuasions to deal with. Its true that lands needs working to create usefulness. Ive never seen a god way of dealing with the issue either. Having under state control has been done, and we know what happens, having it under some kind of Red Daathy style style local democratic control sounds vaigly feasible, but it seems to be just small scale statism. You may be interested in a small offshoot of libertarians called geolibertarians.

I know about the geolibertarians they want a kind of socialism in land and know where else or something dont they? I'm not sure about the control of land either because it could be quite tyrannical taking it away from the people who work it even if destroying the owner mentality is a good thing in the long term, a better thing than allowing it to remain, but in Spain during their anarchist revolution they took as big a bit of land as any individual could actually work themselves without waste or employing others and granted it to the individualists which I thought was a good idea.

: You dont have to buy one, I know a fellow who still gets great pleasure from PCs and has a pentium 75, he just ignores new software. If people rush out to buy the new stuff fine, its a choice.

Yeah but your ignoring the jist of my point EG markets don't control the producers they manipulate the market to control consumers. I've no problem with smiths capitalism but I've never seen it materialise and I thik it's a bit religious to assume it ever will.

: We can call it greed if you want, provided it means the same thing. That is, each person is an individual (even if that person seems similar to others), each person has specific values (family, friends, hobbies etc etc) which that person will wish to pursue.

That sounds like identity which is the kind of individualism I support but I'll disagree when you get on to the fact that to realise/maintain these values people must make others subordinate to themselves and force them into the poverty bracket of society.

: A manager, good or bad, cant close the door on you once youve started work. ive know both types and whilst a good manager is better for working, neither of them can lock the door on you and force you to do what you dont want to.

That's a bit utopian Gee, the boss makes me go and buy him cigarettes and his lunch, makes my brother, also an employee, get him the newspapers. If either of us refuse A) he'll have it in for us in the future B) he could fire us because of an Any Other Business clause in our contract. The contract was none negotiable and if I didnt accept it I'd still be unemployed, that's just in case you raise that whole choice matter again.

: I dont recall accusing *you* of historical revisionism, nor is stating that some 'businesspeople' are second raters who rely on brute inititiations of force of state, revisionism.

Gee did you not make a general post as to how, say, the DSA where no better than Hitler etc.? You where saying that the real capitalism the libertarian one you like has never existed, well if socialists say oh well Russia etc. isnt real socialism it's supposed to cut it so the same goes for any talk about the real true capitalism.

: : That's just a bit utopian, as a threat to their interests existing competitors will "deal with you" no matter how much energy etc. you apply, or money and influence you apply for that matter.

: Weve discussed before how a company cannot indefinately 'deal' with competitors without ending up bankrupt.

Yeah but that's if the competitor has as much capital etc. as them if I set up a business to compete with say McD's, I'd be using government grants for a start, they could wipe me out easily by employing their economics of scale and the barriers to entry in their market both constructed and natural.


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