- Capitalism and Alternatives -

service = another 'invisible hand'

Posted by: bill on October 25, 1999 at 22:24:08:

In Reply to: service posted by Gee on October 25, 1999 at 18:24:47:


: Laissez faire and regime are contradictions in terms. where are the laissez faire countries anyway? What is military capitalist? Name some of these countries and lets think about those swipes.

Perhaps laissez-faire should be applied to the behavior of large corpoations and their ability to manipulate their (and other) governments. Your ideal laissez-faire country may be as difficult to find as a socialists ideal "socialist" country. But if nearly every country in the world doesn't operate under the broad term "Capitalist", I'd like you to provide a better label - and why.

: : Fact but it is like putting a bandaid on a cancer Gee.

: A strange analogy.

Why strange? If one believes that private ownership of the means of production, the natural tendency toward monopoly with Trade Uber Alles, the "natural need" to wring the maximum amount of profit (surplus labor) from a workforce, (let alone such arbitrary decisions by factory owners too move operations leaving workers and communities high and dry) etc.


: : However Gee there are penalties for employing your time in this way, you dont get to lie up and rent videos, enjoy a few jars with your mates etc. while your attempting you change things.

: Did you expect other poeple to service your desires any more than whomever you help has any right to expect you to service their needs?

It is not so much a matter of "rights" and "expectations" as a matter of perceived injustice and arbitrary power that results in inequity. This annoys me. Charity IS a bandaid.

:To be true to this there would hav to be the equivalent of 'make it comfy for charitable folk charities'

So?


: : Well altruism only goes so far.

: Your getting toward my point.

I doubt it.


: : because it's not their individual responsibility, the state shouldnt be able to shrug of it's obligations to those it governs.

: Now you are a subject to be governed? I thought you liked Proudhon? If it isnt an individual responsibility then how can it possibly be a 'social' responsibility? Who would actually be responsible?

I realize the question is to Lark,...but it's just possible that "the governed" (in a true democracy) Could Be the State in which individual responsibility becomes collective responsibility (versus No responsibility).


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