- Capitalism and Alternatives -

It's called 'illusion'

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on August 24, 1999 at 18:37:53:

In Reply to: and finding a rule posted by Gee on August 24, 1999 at 16:55:24:


: something like ; no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation.

SDF: And if I violate your "right," my punishment?

: If there is any rule of human interaction worth observing it is thisn one. We have previously acknowledged that many people dont observe it, and I contend that not observing it has no cause in free trade.

SDF: Nope, you're refusing to recognize that the "force" you so despise is a legitimate commodity under the rules of "free trade". If I want to protect my property, I have to buy force against others who want a share of it. If I'm sufficiently afraid of their force, I will move pre-emptively against it.

See, under capitalism, people are compelled to be entrepreneurs, there's no other way to eat, and people have to eat. (To argue that they would "choose not to," as you do below, is to ignore a basic biological drive.) And the more secure your access to food, the bigger your cushion against starvation. Those without other entrepreneurial talents are consigned to those talents involving the use of "force," however you might want to define it.

: Its concise and if you desire you may change its intent by creating a vast list of just about every activity and calling it 'initiating force'.

SDF: That's YOUR problem. For my argument, I'll quote Ronald Schindler -- "Much of our reasoning has borne out Marx's point that the call for humanity to abandon illusions about the human condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusion." You're still under the illusion that capitalists don't want to commodify "force," that slums, racism, etc. will just "go away," that people can "choose not to" eat, etc., that anarcho-capitalism can be separated from the "corruption" it itself encourages, you want to abandon neither illusion in theory nor in practice, since both comfort you well.

: : SDF: No, force is physical force. Where's the physical force?

: Jail sentence if you dont pay.

SDF: Who's serving time for not lobbying officials? Evidence please? Another illusion? Look, we pay taxes, which you don't agree with, and we get government, which you don't like. But nobody is threatening anybody with a jail term if they don't support a $1.5 billion per year lobbying industry. Indeed, they're trying to regulate the lobbyists out of business for engaging in their form of "free trade," and the lobbyists have managed to commodify government ANYWAY. Free trade triumphs against the State once again, only its main effect is the commodification of government.

: : By the above logic I must pay for food, clothing, and shelter. I don't want to, so obviously someone is forcing me.

: If you dont want to you dont have to and no one puts you in jail for not doing so.

SDF: I want to take food, clothing, and shelter from grocery and department stores and unoccupied buildings, without paying. I need these things for biological survival. Care to initiate force against me? You can always buy a security service on the open market, I'm sure they operate a private jail if there's no public one. They don't need jails in Brazil BTW, they just hire private cops to shoot the homeless people, I guess they have some way of disposing of the stench of corpses before it disrupts the normal flow of commerce...


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