Politics, Society etc.

[alvarezbassist17]

This guy writes some great fuckin articles, if anyone's bored.

Economic Ignorance and Liberal Hypocrisy at Dailykos.com

A liberal named John Sumner, who goes by the pseudonym Devilstower, has weighed into the debate originally inspired by my article "Liberal Delusions about Freedom." Sumner's article, "What Conservatives Mean When They Say 'Libertarian'," which appeared yesterday on the liberal website Dailykos.com, reveals a lot about the liberal mindset as well as the reasons why America today is suffering so many economic woes.

Sumner takes me to task for singing the praises of our American ancestors, who chose a federal government without such statist programs as income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public (i.e., government) schooling, food stamps, corporate bailouts, foreign aid, a central bank, paper money, drug laws, and many, many more.

Sumner thinks that that type of society was absolutely horrible and cites the terrible things that were taking place in the United States in 1880, the year I pointed to in my article "Up from Serfdom." Sumner's response contains all the standard stuff that has long been taught in America's government-approved schools, where Sumner just happens to work as a substitute teacher.

You know, like the stuff that suggests that our American ancestors hated their wives and children, as reflected in their sending them into dangerous factories to work long hours. You know, like the stuff that suggests that liberals love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged while advocates of the free market just love the rich, greedy, and selfish people in life. You know, like the stuff that suggests that without the coercive apparatus of the welfare state, poor people and old people would just be dying in the streets.

As I have long pointed out, the problem with liberals is their dismally poor understanding of economics, and Sumner's article is just the most recent example of this phenomenon.

Permit me to explain why.

In their purported concern for the poor, liberals never ask the important question: What is it that causes wealth and prosperity to come into existence? The only question they ask themselves is, "What is the cause of poverty"?

But the latter is a ridiculous question because poverty has always been the natural state of mankind. Throughout history, most people have been poor.

Thus, the real question is: What are the causes of wealth? What is it that enables societies to break free of the chains of poverty? Why are some societies wealthier than others?

You would think that those would be important questions for a liberal, especially since liberals have long purported to be concerned about the poor.

Alas, those questions are unimportant to liberals. Sumner, not surprisingly, doesn't raise the questions either.

Instead, he points out all the bad things that were taking place in, say 1880, and then concludes that all those statist programs that our American ancestors rejected, and which are so beloved to Sumner, should be embraced. In other words, he's suggesting that the absence of the statist programs is the cause of the bad living conditions in American society that he laments. But his logic and his conclusions are faulty and fallacious.

No one denies that economic conditions were bad for many people in 1880. No question about it. No dispute there.

But in focusing on those bad conditions, Sumner makes a common mistake. He is comparing those conditions to conditions in which we live today or at least to some sort of ideal economic utopia. In doing that, he misses the important point, which is this: What were conditions for ordinary people prior to the Industrial Revolution? Answer: As Hobbes put it, life was nasty, brutish, and short -- that is, much, much worse than it was in 1880 America.

As bad as things were in 1880 America, it was a golden era compared to the pre-industrial age. This point was made as long ago as 1954 in a book entitled Capitalism and the Historians, which was edited by libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek. As Austrian economist Murray Rothbard stated, "Hayek contributed to and edited a series of essays that showed conclusively that the Industrial Revolution in England, spurred by a roughly free-market economy, enormously improved rather than crippled the standard of living of the average consumer and worker in England. In this way, Hayek led the way in shattering one of the most widespread socialist myths about the Industrial Revolution."

So, does that help clarify why I would refer to 1880 as a golden era? Not because of the bad things that were still existing (duh!) but rather because for the first time in history, massive numbers of poor people actually had a decent chance to survive and even prosper. In fact, in the 1880s there are countless stories of poor people actually becoming wealthy people! Imagine that!

And why was this so? That's the critical question, the one that liberals never ask. They just assume that wealth is a given, that there is this big economic pie, and that the state should confiscate the pie and redistribute it in the interests of making everyone have an equal share of the pie. What liberals fail to recognize, however, is that in doing so, they begin a process that ends up condemning people to a life of massive poverty, starvation, famines, and short life spans that characterized the pre-industrial age.

To explain why I consider 1880 to be a golden era, especially for the poor, let's consider a modern-day example, one that a good liberal like John Sumner would consider to be a model society: the socialist paradise of North Korea. In that country, everyone is equal in terms of economic condition. The state owns everything, and everyone works for the state. There are no profits, speculators, or entrepreneurs. Greed and selfishness have been stamped out of society. Total government ownership and total government control. Everyone works for the benefit of the collective.

In other words, a liberal dream!

Oh, did I mention that there is also horrific poverty, famine, and starvation in North Korea? Let's assume, just for the sake of argumentation, that each year some 10 percent of the North Korean population is dying from malnutrition or illness.

Now, suppose we asked Sumner to give us his recommendation for ending poverty in North Korea. What would he say? He would say: "Adopt a welfare state and a controlled economy! Create bureaucratic departments, modeled on the IRS and U.S. welfare agencies, whose job it is to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to the poor!"

Do you see the problem though? Sumner would be doing what liberals always do: they assume that there is a pie of wealth to confiscate and redistribute. That's their solution to ending poverty. But he would be missing the obvious point: They already have total socialism in North Korea, which is precisely why there is no pie for Sumner to confiscate and redistribute. Everyone has nothing.

So, obviously the standard liberal statist solution for ending poverty isn't going to work in our North Korea hypothetical. Instead, we have come up with another solution.

Let's try a free-market-oriented solution, similar to the one that our American ancestors adopted and embraced. (I say "oriented" because freedom isn't really freedom when government is permitting people to exercise it.) Let's assume that the North Korea authorities place 60 percent of the land and buildings in North Korea under private ownership. They also enact a law that permits 60 percent of the North Korean populace to engage in any economic enterprise they want, without any permission or interference from the state. The people in that sector will be free to engage in any mutually beneficial exchange with anyone in the world. There will be no income tax, and people will be free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth. There will be no economic regulations whatsoever, including price controls, minimum-wage laws, and anti-speculation laws. There will be no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government welfare plan. No central bank and no paper money; the market will determine the media of exchange. No one will be coerced into helping another person but will be free to do so if he wishes. There will be no restrictions on emigration or immigration.

After 10 years, Sumner and I make a visit to North Korea. We discover that there is now an enormous difference between the liberated sector and the government-owned sector. In the liberated sector, there are no more famines, no more starvation. People's real standard of living is soaring.

That's not to say though that things are easy in the liberated sector. There is still much poverty given that it was only 10 years ago that people had absolutely nothing and were on the verge of starvation. People are having to work long hours in difficult working conditions, and that includes spouses and children. But everyone knows that those conditions are a blessing, compared to what is still happening in the government-controlled sector, where everyone is suffering much more horrific poverty and where 10 percent of the populace continues to die, year after year.

Now, I would call that a golden era, one in which 60 percent of the population was not only being saved but actually prospering.

What would Sumner say in response? He would say, "Why, that's just the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! That's no golden era because the people in the government-owned sector are still suffering and dying. Hornberger must think that all that misery and death is a good thing. And look at how much poverty there still is in the liberated section."

Even worse is what Sumner would propose. Furious over the fact that people in the free-market sector now have more wealth than people in the government-owned sector, he would propose statist programs that would restore government control and ownership over the free-market sector. As a good liberal, what would matter to him is that everyone should be made equal, even if everyone is made equally poor.

Would his criticism leveled at me be valid? Would I really be praising the government-owned sector when I referred to this period as a golden one? Of course not! What I would be praising is that libertarian economic means -- i.e., the free market -- have been used to bring 60 percent of the population out of horrific poverty and given them a chance to survive and even to prosper, especially as the generations progress.

What would be my solution to the bad things still remaining? That's obvious -- I would expand private-property, free-market principles to the 40 percent sector, enabling everyone in North Korean society to experience the benefits of the unhampered market economy.

And this is precisely what was going on in the United States throughout the 1800s, notwithstanding the fact that there were a large number of people to whom free-market principles were not being applied, such as the slaves. But for the sector that was liberated, it was the most phenomenal era in history, insofar as living standards were concerned. People were actually going from rags to riches into one, two, or three generations.

The proof of the pudding was the thousands of penniless immigrants who were fleeing the lands of government control and regulation to come to the land of little or no income taxation, regulation, or welfare. They just wanted a chance to make it, all on their own.

Did I mention that 19th-century America was not only the most prosperous nation in history but also the most charitable nation in history? In a land with no income tax and no welfare state, it was voluntary contributions that built the churches, opera houses, museums, and so much more.

So, what was the obvious solution to those Americans who were not permitted to experience the benefits of economic liberty? Expand it to them! What was the solution to the restrictions on liberty still being enacted in the 19th century? Repeal them!

In fact, the best thing Americans could ever do today is enact a constitutional amendment for economic liberty similar to the one our American ancestors enacted for religious liberty: "No law shall be passed respecting the regulation of commerce or abridging the free exercise thereof."

The worst thing that could have ever happened was to return to the old, bankrupt idea of government ownership and control. But that's precisely where liberals took us, with their socialistic welfare state. Gripped by envy and covetousness and unable to control themselves as they saw the enormous wealth coming into existence because of the free market, liberals (or "progressives" as some of them like to call themselves) brought into existence in the 20th century a massive confiscatory and redistributive socialist system, one that has been taking our country down the road to serfdom, impoverishment, and loss of liberty, the road that humanity has traveled throughout the ages.

Liberals have long justified their socialist and interventionist schemes under the pretense of loving the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. And their favorite justification whenever their programs go awry is, "But we have good intentions." But good intentions are irrelevant. All that matters is reality, especially in terms of the immorality and destructiveness that have accompanied socialism and interventionism.

Sumner piously points out that 1880, the year that I used as an example of economic liberty, was characterized by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Of course, that couldn't be true given that the Act wasn't enacted until 1882. (Oh well, what's a couple of years?) But his real point in bringing it up was to imply that the period wasn't really golden because there was an immigration restriction on Chinese immigrants.

But let's use Sumner's example to show the rank hypocrisy with which liberals have long suffered. He complains about a law that excluded Chinese from freely immigrating to America, and rightfully so. Yet, look at what 20th-century liberals have done for decades: They've used immigration controls to exclude not only Chinese but also Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Africans, Haitians, and, well, the poor of just about every country in the world.

Isn't it the liberals -- the lovers of the poor -- under liberal icon Barack Obama who are continuing the building of that fortified fence along our southern border, to keep the poor from coming here and trying to sustain their life through labor? Isn't it the liberals who are conducting those raids on businesses all across the land, rounding up poor people who just want to work and improve the lot of their families, deporting them to their home countries where they can experience a life of hardship and poverty?

In fact, wasn't it under the regime of liberal icon Bill Clinton that U.S. forces were attacking defenseless poor people, including women and children, who had escaped socialist and communist tyranny in Cuba and were trying to make it to the United States? Didn't liberals forcibly repatriate those refugees to Cuba? Oh well, maybe Sumner would argue that is was for their own good, since in Cuba there is free education, free health care, and free everything else in that paternalistic society.

Please, Sumner, remind me again how much you liberals love the poor, because I'm tempted to say that an era in which there is only one group of people who are being excluded is golden compared to the massive numbers of poor people that you liberals have been excluding from our country for decades under the guise of immigration controls.

In fact, would you, as a good, poor-person-loving liberal, explain something to me that I've always had trouble understanding. As you know, the premier icon for you people is Franklin D. Roosevelt. You liberals say that his enactment of Social Security, the crown jewel of the socialistic welfare state, showed how much he loved the poor, needy, and disadvantaged.

Well, if that's the case, would you please explain to me FDR's attitude toward German Jews during the 1930s? Would you please explain to me why he refused to permit them to come to America when Hitler was willing to let them go? Weren't they poor? And while you're at it, can you please explain to me why he refused to let those poor Jews traveling on the SS St. Louis to disembark at Miami Harbor in the infamous "voyage of the damned"?

You see, I'm having a difficult time understanding why a man who purports to love the poor would do that to poor Jews. And I'm also having a difficult time understanding why you liberals would extol a man who did that sort of thing to poor Jews.

Please provide me with your best explanation on this, because I'm tempted to conclude that Roosevelt's Social Security plan had nothing to do with any purported love of the poor but instead everything to do with the love of power and with making as many people dependent on the federal government as possible.

Oh, and while you are at it, would you explain to me something about FDR's protégé, the liberal icon Lyndon Johnson, who brought Medicare and Medicaid into existence because of his purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged? LBJ, as I hope you know, killed some million Vietnamese people, most of whom were poor, in an illegal war that was based on nothing but lies. He also sent some 58,000 of my generation to their deaths in Vietnam, many of whom were poor because that's who they were drafting to fight in that war.

Would you be so kind as to reconcile that one for me, because I'm getting real tempted to conclude that LBJ's Medicare and Medicaid plans were nothing more than a political power grab designed to put more Americans under the yoke of federal power and dependency?

While we're on the subject, I also have a question about liberal icon Bill Clinton, another purported lover of the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. During the entire 8 years he was in office, he killed hundred of thousands of Iraqi children with the brutal sanctions that he enforced against that country. His U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, another liberal icon, said that those deaths were worth the attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power.

That's always been difficult for me to swallow. How can the deaths of poor, innocent children ever be worth a political goal such as regime change, especially given that Saddam had once been the partner of the U.S. government?

Of course, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the vicious attack by liberal icon Janet Reno (and Bill Clinton) on the poor people inside the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, including innocent children, given that today is the 17th anniversary of that horrific slaughter.

Oh, one final thing, Sumner. Please don't lump conservatives with libertarians, especially since there ain't a dime's worth of difference between liberals and conservatives. Both of you are statist to the core, and both of you are lovers of big government, big spending, big debt, and big inflation. And both of you are taking our nation down the road to serfdom, bankruptcy, and moral debauchery.

The only solution to the woes that you statists, both liberals and conservatives, have foisted onto our nation lies with libertarianism. Our American ancestors discovered the truth, and lots of Americans are now re-discovering it, which is precisely why you statists are so terrified.




Goldman Sachs and Federal Fraud

Commentators are debating whether the Justice Department will be able to prove its civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs. Unfortunately, they're missing the point. The Justice Department didn't bring its suit with the aim of proving that the company committed fraud. It brought its suit to get a massive amount of money for the federal government in a pretrial settlement of the case.

Here's how the racket works. The government knows that its litigation will cost Goldman Sachs millions of dollars in litigation costs, including attorney's fees, deposition expenses, bad public relations, and loss of revenues. So, the government calculates that the company will be willing to settle for a large amount of money to save itself from all that aggravation. The government accepts the settlement. The Justice Department lawyers celebrate that they've "won" the case. Federal officials, ever more desperate for more revenues to pay for their out-of-control spending, are exultant over the "free" monies that have been deposited into the government's coffers.

Many years ago, I was a young lawyer practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, Texas. One of my clients was the owner of a local trucking company. One day, he got served with a notice from the State of Texas assessing him with an enormous fine. The fine, the notice stated, represented the amount of extra burden that my client's trucking business was placing on the roads and highways of the state. The state was claiming that because the trucking industry used the state's roads and highways more than other people, it was more responsible for their maintenance costs.

I told my client that the state's claim was ridiculous. The state collects gasoline taxes to cover such maintenance costs. When trucking companies purchase gasoline, they're paying what the legislative branch has determined to be an appropriate amount. I advised my client to fight the lawsuit in that it was nothing more than extortion.

But there was one big problem with my advice. I don't recall the exact amount that the state was demanding, but let's say it was $200,000, which would have been an extremely large sum for my client, a small trucking company. The problem was that the state was offering to settle its proposed lawsuit for, say, $25,000.

So, my client was in a quandary -- whether to pay the $25,000 and get rid of the suit or fight the state on principle and possibly end up losing $200,000. My client chose to settle the suit. The state received a "free" $25,000, plus all the other settlement money that was being paid by other trucking companies that had received the same notice.

In the Goldman Sachs case, government regulations and regulators failed to prevent what they now claim is civil fraud. If economic regulations and government regulators can't prevent such things from happening, especially in one of the largest financial companies in the world, then what good are they? Isn't that the purported purpose of regulations and regulators?

The feds aren't going after Goldman Sachs on criminal charges of fraud, which would fall within the ambit of proper governmental powers. Instead, they're only going after the company on civil charges of fraud. They're seeking money, not jail time.

What's that all about? If investors have been defrauded, why can't they sue for their damages? Why shouldn't they, not the government, receive the money for damages they've allegedly suffered? What business does the government have suing for civil damages? It hasn't suffered any injury.

It's all about money. As the deficit becomes larger and larger, we can expect to see the federal government desperately looking for more ways to extract money from private businesses. Look at the record fine they just levied against Toyota -- $16.4 billion, an amount that Toyota has agreed to pay rather than incur expensive litigation. No doubt federal officials are celebrating this large amount of "free" money that will soon be deposited into their coffers. And don't forget: all those automobile regulations and regulators failed to prevent the Toyota accelerator problems from occurring.

The real fraud is the whole idea of a regulated economy. When public officials assumed the power to regulate economic activity many decades ago, they expressly represented that it would protect people from bad things happening to them. That representation was false and fraudulent. Regulations and regulators don't protect people. They simply lull people into thinking that the government is taking care of them. The regulated economy simply provides the government with another means of legally stealing or extorting money from the private sector to satisfy the ever-voracious financial needs of a bankrupt government.

[alvarezbassist17]

A Time for Change

[Nailec]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=524_1273510578

havent listen to what he says, but damn this video is moving. as if we made mother earth lose a lot of blood

[alvarezbassist17]

Yeah, it's pretty messed up, especially since BP portrays itself as the most "green" oil company out there, they donated the most money by far to Obama, and got an environmental exemption from his administration this year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html

Maybe if they weren't wasting all of their money on this wind energy bullshit they could afford to keep up their oil rigs.

[alvarezbassist17]

Nailec, you absolutely have got to read this article, it's truly great:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=822

[E-Money]

A Time for Change

Looks like a good candidate.  If Republicans don't take back either the house or senate in November, America will never be the same.   

[alvarezbassist17]

yeah, I agree, it's some scary shit.  We don't just need republicans though, I'm so beyond sick of all of the george bushes and sarah palins out there.  I mean sure, they're marginally better than democrats, but with so many of them it's the same kind of left-leaning violation of genuine conservative principles, just in a different way, i.e. foreign interventionism, a different set of subsidies, trying to defend from the politically correct bullshit in the wrong way, and my personal pet peeve, violation of free market principles.  I've been a huge fan of Peter Schiff since well before he even announced, his commentary on global economic conditions and his explanations for them are second to none.  If you tend to lean to the right, I would definitely look him up on Youtube or europac.net if you want truly non-biased, really interesting free market economic education.

[alvarezbassist17]

Dr. Paul's pretty pissed about the Senate not passing the audit the fed amendment, and rightfully so:

Ron Paul ~ Unhappy About The Senate Vote on the Vitter Amendment to Audit the Fed

[Nailec]

alvarez i promiste to read that article. but are you srsly saying that green energy is somehow responsible for the explosion? dou you really think bp couldnt afford to check their platform? or do you think they would have checked it if they had some more money?

or am i not getting any sarcasm?

i hope so

btw: if you want me to read an article it would be awesome if you could sum it up in 3 sentences or so. it makes it for me a lot easier to understand harder englisch texts if i read them with some kind of expectation towards the context etc.

[alvarezbassist17]

Oh no, it's just the height of irony that they're supposedly the "beyond petroleum," self-hating, Democrat-supporting, earth friendly oil company and it turns out that they're the ones with lax safety standards.  I'm not saying that green energy is responsible, I'm just saying that it's a complete waste of resources that could have gone towards a safer facility or what have you.  I'm all for trying to develop solar energy and biofuels, but not devoting all of our resources to using technology that is a net drain, such as wind energy, current solar technology and ethanol.  That just slows down humanity's progress and starves people in third world countries whose energy either becomes too expensive, or just doesn't come about at all.

That article is about central planning and communal thievery vs. free markets and free association.  It's essentially explaining that no matter the intent behind central economic planning, all it ends up being is stealing from one person to give to another with no net gain for society.  It goes on to explain that socialism and communism never lead to greater standards of living for a people as a whole.  He talks about how capitalism channels human nature into something that benefits everyone and doesn't allow anyone to steal or screw people over and achieve any kind of long-term success.

You have to go into it with the realization of what capitalism genuinely is: a system where nobody has any government-given advantages, only having the ability to satisfy others to achieve success.  Not this bastard child of capitalism and socialism (corporatism) that has been the US since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Corporations taking advantage of society and its resources, using government decrees to do so, is not free market capitalism in the least.

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

Corey, I'd love to sit in a room for several hours and just listen to you talk.

inb4 gay

[alvarezbassist17]

Haha thanks brah, I'm down, and I'm also open to other forms of oral stimulation as well

Tell that to my friends though, they all hate how I rant on and on about politics, but shit is just sooo fucked up now and people have had their principles so mixed up by the constant liberal guilt-trip barrage from the media that (and I hope that this isn't as narcissistic as it sounds) I feel like it's kinda my duty to get all of my facts and philosophy straight myself so I can thoroughly and coherently explain what I feel is truly the most compassionate and just form of society.  Mostly because I really don't think that Libertarian theory is given anywhere near the justice it deserves.  Not to say that I'm necessarily smarter than anyone, I just think that it's a point of view that's either entirely misrepresented or completely left out of damn near every political discussion these days.

But hey, if you wanna listen to me talk for a couple minutes, I got on to this radio show that I listen to the other day to talk about the Federal Reserve, kind of relating to the topic of that long ass essay that I wrote for school that I posted a couple pages back.  Here's a link to it, my call starts at 18:10

http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/MINNEAPOLIS-MN/KTLK-FM/LEWIS050710_2nd%20Hr%20The%20Fed.mp3?CPROG=PCAST&MARKET=MINNEAPOLIS-MN&NG_FORMAT=talk&SITE_ID=3359&STATION_ID=KTLK-FM&PCAST_AUTHOR=100.3_KTLK-FM&PCAST_CAT=talk&PCAST_TITLE=Jason_Lewis_on_100.3_KTLK-FM

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

Tell that to my friends though, they all hate how I rant on and on about politics

The reason people do that is because they either have no opinions themselves, they're too afraid to look at the world in a realistic manner or they're so enveloped in the mind numbing media bullshit that they just don't think they have any reason to care. Which sucks. I have this problem with my friends as well and it's really frustrating because it's not like I'm trying to force anyone into my opinion or anything, what I DO try and do though is get them to either open their eyes to other possibilities or try to get them to actually pay attention to what's happening in the world. I don't give a shit wether or not someone agrees with me, but when people just completely shut out the things that matter in the world just because it's scary, I get rather pissed off.

[alvarezbassist17]

Yeah, and what's even worse is they have the same attitude as the majority of our legislators.  Do you tend to classify yourself in any sort of political philosophy?  Doesn't really matter if you do or don't, just out of curiosity.

Did you listen to that shit?  You should check out if Jason Lewis is broadcast in your area, he's the shit, total breath of fresh air in the field of punditry.

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

I don't claim to know enough about ANY political philosophy to belong to one, but I do quite like the idea of communal anarchism. But I don't see how that could be applied to the population we have today.

And I did listen to your part and a bit afterward. I'll probably listen to the whole thing later tonight. The guy seemed pretty interesting.

[alvarezbassist17]

Yeah, I've read a bit about anarchist communism, but I am a huge proponent of private property rights for a whole lot of reasons, but the overarching reason is that people are a lot more liable to protect and preserve for the future resources that are exclusively theirs.

I kind of fluctuate between Constitutional Libertarianism and Market Anarchism, I really like the idea of how the United States would be if the Constitution wasn't essentially Washington's toilet paper, because I think in and of itself it is nearly a perfect document for restraining government... except for the fact that it didn't.  So that's a problem that I don't personally know how one can treat, and why I sometimes drift towards Market anarchism because the lack of government means the lack of government growth altogether.  There would be privately, voluntarily supported security organizations and courts that would be able to be kept in check by people being able to immediately cut off their funding if need be.  But the age-old question that I don't think anyone has come up with a good answer for is how does one give a monopoly of force to the government and expect it to stay within its own boundaries?  The United States Constitution seems like it was more than capable of doing the job, but they've managed to completely circumvent it in every single facet of the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_anarchism

[wax]

[Necrocetaceanbeastiality]

Lolwut.

And Corey, I meant Collectivist Anarchism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivist_anarchism

[alvarezbassist17]

Yeah, like I was saying, I really don't understand how you could have a system without enforced private property rights work in an optimal way for everyone because contrary to popular belief, resources are actually preserved far more equitably and effectively when they are not collectivized, just because of human nature.  I mean it's definitely shitty, but it's the principle that people are more likely to leave garbage at a community camp ground or natives are more likely to over hunt or over fish a property that isn't specifically owned by someone.  Same reason private wildlife preserves have greater security along with greater effectiveness.  When it's in a specific person's specific interest to preserve a property for the long run is when genuine scarcity of resources is realized and they are preserved to best be used to benefit someone's interest.  

I dunno, I also don't think that having wealth collectivized is a good thing, or even really necessary, because truly in this day and age, global wealth is in a sense already collectivized.  We're all the same race of people, all working towards essentially the same thing: a better life.  That's where the beauty of the unhampered free market truly arises; people all have the inherent need to survive, and the want to make a better life themselves.  Having a society where no particular group has a political advantage, and no one can simply take something from somebody who earned it without using political advantage, force or fraud "forces" people to have to benefit their fellow man in order to benefit themselves.  This kind of sounds bad in and of itself, but when you add capital, which (by Austrian definition) is anything that gives one the ability to produce more than he could with just his bare hands, it becomes very easy for one to produce more than he could possibly consume.  As an example of how productive someone can be in this day and age, even just look at someone flipping burgers at McDonald's.  Because of all of the capital at his disposal, that one person can clearly put out more hamburgers than he can consume, so instead of trading hamburgers for something specific he might need, his wages are paid in an intermediary, money.  Obviously this is simplified, but you see the principle, in terms of the vast amount he can now produce rather than he could with just his bare hands and a fire, he should have an equal abundance of savings (in the form of money rather than hamburgers or what someone might trade for hamburgers, i.e. money again) with which he can raise his standard of living.  In my mind what has been lost in society, among other things, is this purchasing power that he should now yield, because of insane taxation and insane monetary devaluation.  So now, because of political bullshit, people have to work so much harder than they rightfully should, and it's all been done in the name of some perverted form of collectivism (not really in the revolutionary sense like you were saying, though).  It's the same principle behind multi-million dollar CEO salaries, they make decisions that can make or lose millions for a company, so his skill set, his output, is worth the multiple millions of dollars that the company and its shareholders might not have had without his input.  Where you start running into problems is when you have organizations that aren't voluntarily funded paying ridiculous salaries that, because they aren't voluntarily funded, society may never know whether the funding was worth it.  Kind of a little tangent there, but it's just the key to all of that is private property rights, because I think trying to adjudicate and distribute collective property is inherently politicized and wouldn't lead to the necessary best use of capital that a market free of politicized intervention inherently provides.

[alvarezbassist17]

haha i knew i recognized that hair.  They could totally be brothers.