Case of capitalism

[burnt]

Ohayoco first I want to say that I 100% understand where you are coming from with your views. I used to view things the exact same way. I thought if only the government made a law about this or that that the world would be a better place. Then I realized that I had been looking for answers in the wrong direction. I was looking for answers in essentially interventionist and socialist policies. It took me a long time to break this conditioning. Most of my friends and family think I've turned into a Republican or something crazy like that (its not true I voted for Obama ). But this isn't about parties or political "isms' its about a system that I think might actually be the answer. The system is freedom. Human freedom of which economic freedom plays a major role. I am not against a state. I am against a state that thinks its role is to control society and economic life to make the world "better". So often state intervention does not make the world better but worse. I can bring up countless examples but it would get really redundant.

What is important, I believe, is that there are laws regarding the amount of children people are allowed (everyone allowed to nominate one 'replacement' for themselves), because those at the bottom of society currently have a tendency to multiply a lot faster than those nearer the top. And there's too many of us all full stop anyway, THAT'S what's unsustainable.

I had this debate with a friend recently. I think that the reason people have more kids then they should has everything to do with development (and in some cases religion again an institution against human freedom). In developed places people naturally have less kids because its most expensive the parents have jobs and lives and just don't have excessive kids. It all has to do with development.

Now whats stopping developing nations from developing? Again Interventionism. I won't go into all the details but the IMF and World bank are a major party to blame. Also now environmentalism is becoming a tool for the Western nations to crush any hope for developing nations to be competitive. The Kyoto protocol is destroying developing nations ability to not only develop but also its destroying their environment. Its a scary truth. More is on the way too. Now I am also an environmentalist but most environmentalists would like to see my head on a pole because I think we are going about environmental policies in 100% the wrong direction.

You have to understand I am not for a system that just leaves people out in the dust when they get fucked with some shitty situation. But in order to understand how freedom and free markets can make the world better for everyone some basic principles and laws need to be understood. It took me a long time to break the conditioning that its the governments job.

Society only exists because human beings willed it too. Society is the result of the division of labor it is the result of human beings relying on each other. When I look at capitalism or free markets I look at it in this context now and not the lies of socialist writers who never proved anything and whose system has only caused excessive human misery. Basically my entire argument is that in a free society more people would be better off. And those who are not (the orphans, the diseased, the very poor) the rest of society would be more equipped to help them by either giving them a job or through charity etc etc. There are so many mechanisms that don't involve taking away our freedom. Whenever freedom is taken away the world as a whole suffers.

More to come. I recommend anyone interested in this stuff check out Ludwig von Mises. He was an economist and political thinker who makes the case better then anyone. There are many other economists and politicians who have influenced my new way of thinking but he is by far the most important and most accurate.

 

[ohayoco]

You believe in no interventions, I believe that some are necessary and others aren't. I believe in the ones that supply what I believe to be human rights (having your most basic needs met- a living wage and a roof over your head), whereas like you I don't believe in ones that are economically driven.

If your zero-intervention system is more efficient... who cares? The things I believe to be human rights are more important.

It worries me how our leaders talk about nothing but 'competitiveness' all day long: "No, we can't conform to the E.U. maximum working hours directive, because then the UK wouldn't be competitive". (Incidentally, this stance was recently ruled illegal- a member state cannot opt-out of health & safety legislation). That's what capitalism does to people, gives an overemphasis on the Great Saviour Perpetual Growth (who doesn't exist) and his Holy Father Money (another made up concept, although this one has some use).

As for the original debate, er capitalism vs communism, I'm not interested personally because they're both as flawed as each other in my eyes. It's been fun sparring with you again Burnt! But now, I shall take my bow, and get into a nice experiment with some exotic plant (catuaba today)

 

[VisualDistortion]

I believe a living wage is a privilage, not a right. You have very opportunity in the world to have one, but you gotta work for it.

 

[burnt]

Human rights would not exist without a society that was based on the division of labor and the benefits of private property. That's why its important.

 

[deedle-doo]

Is there some kind of middle ground or is there a completely different way I am not thinking of? Most of you, deedle doo and ohayoco, brought up essentially interventionist policies. So far from what I gathered you have said that the State should regulate human greed and behavior to make the world a better place. Is that correct?

I think there is a middle ground and it is proven to work. The so-called mixed model economy. Some aspects of the economy (especially natural resources) are public and most are left to the market. Who gets to own a natural resource anyway? The highest bidder? Are you sure this is the person who will take the most care to preserve this natural resource just because they had the most capital?

Norway. The government of Norway owns their oil reserves and all the equipment necessary to profit from it. The profits from the oil sales are put into a trust for all the people of Norway. The people of Norway have about the highest and most consistent standard of living on the planet. (I think they trade back and forth for the #1 spot with Sweden, a similar economy.)

I am deeply mistrustful of theoretical economic constructs even if they seem very reasonable on paper. Economics is not Isaac Asimov psycho-history. It has proven to be a poor predictive science. So. . . we need an example of an actual laissez-faire capitalism to rank its sustainability and standard of living against other systems.

 

[amor_fati]

The mixed model has always impressed me. Northern Europe has almost always proven exemplary of what first-world countries should be.


Ideally, corporatism is supposed to be a democratic economic system, but it has always proven otherwise and invariably ends up in the hands of a veritable oligarchy. Since the 50's corporations have been allowed to run rampant and have joined the ranks of the large banking companies in wreaking havoc and seizing power in this country. It didn't just start in the 50's though, the early twentieth century foreshadowed this and its dangers when America was transformed into a consumer-culture in order to satiate the surplus economy. This was obviously put on hold at the advent of the great depression and through WWII, none of which would have been very survivable were it not for the New Deal--a socialist endeavor that regimented the country to finally reclaim accountability for itself.

In the 50's, however, the corporations, along with other interests, sought to milk the country's new-found success for all it was worth, playing on people's most irrational desires. And for a long while, we had some semblance of progress and stability, but the problem was that it was never built to last and never maintained by deliberate collective will; rather, it was characterized by fractured, mobbish impulses.

Personally, I would rather see elected officials laying down the law in corporate boardrooms than see my life in the hands of private business. What good is the efficiency of private business when that efficiency is covertly geared toward profits which are in no way indicative of a collective will toward progress? In capitalism, we're supposed to vote with our dollars, but the gap between the classes is ever-widening and the lower classes are becoming ever more fractured and irrational.

I don't propose communism or even necessarily socialism, but perhaps libertarian sentiments and socialist sentiments are not so mutually exclusive as we tend to think; and perhaps we need more than just reform. Honestly, I simply propose revolution.

 

[ohayoco]

I believe a living wage is a privilage, not a right.

Interesting you picked up on this- yes I was thinking last night how it should be tiered into 'human rights' and 'human privileges'.

The 'rights' would be things like not-being-tortured, and could never be legally lost. But the 'privileges' would be things everyone started off with, but could lose (only for very serious reasons). In reality there's no such thing as a right, they're all priviliges, but these two terms are good for suggesting the difference between 'inalienable' and 'alienable'.

For example, a citizen who rapes children loses his 'privilege' to freedom and is incarcerated (or if I was in charge he'd have the choice of incarceration, or freedom but leaving his dick behind in a hospital's incinerator). Similarly when he comes out I guess he could have lost his right to welfare. Then again, ex-cons are probably the WORST people to have running around frantically trying to earn money to survive. I honestly believe that without the welfare state, crime would rocket. If you're starving, theft loses its immorality as the basic drive for survival kicks in... and for many, murder would become an option. Similar to how criminals are (presumably) more murderous in countries where legal punishments are harsher... if you're facing the death penalty, you're not going to surrender, and you're less likely to leave victims alive and able to identify you. I would imagine. So there's another reason why I think welfare is important.

Yes economic theory isn't exactly scientific... but it could never be. Hence why people still don't agree. Actually, the most scientific thing would be to just emulate the countries that work best. Like good old Norway. And not Guatemala (was it Guatemala?), where water was privatised and the peasants were forced to pay for the rainwater that fell on their roofs!

 

[polytrip]

I believe a living wage is a privilage, not a right.

Interesting you picked up on this- yes I was thinking last night how it should be tiered into 'human rights' and 'human privileges'.

The 'rights' would be things like not-being-tortured, and could never be legally lost. But the 'privileges' would be things everyone started off with, but could lose (only for very serious reasons). In reality there's no such thing as a right, they're all priviliges, but these two terms are good for suggesting the difference between 'inalienable' and 'alienable'.

For example, a citizen who rapes children loses his 'privilege' to freedom and is incarcerated (or if I was in charge he'd have the choice of incarceration, or freedom but leaving his dick behind in a hospital's incinerator). Similarly when he comes out I guess he could have lost his right to welfare. Then again, ex-cons are probably the WORST people to have running around frantically trying to earn money to survive. I honestly believe that without the welfare state, crime would rocket. If you're starving, theft loses its immorality as the basic drive for survival kicks in... and for many, murder would become an option. Similar to how criminals are (presumably) more murderous in countries where legal punishments are harsher... if you're facing the death penalty, you're not going to surrender, and you're less likely to leave victims alive and able to identify you. I would imagine. So there's another reason why I think welfare is important.

Yes economic theory isn't exactly scientific... but it could never be. Hence why people still don't agree. Actually, the most scientific thing would be to just emulate the countries that work best. Like good old Norway. And not Guatemala (was it Guatemala?), where water was privatised and the peasants were forced to pay for the rainwater that fell on their roofs!

Well, because every state with a very tough legal system has little of a welfare system (it seems that politics and therefore governing is a matter of simple black/white emotions; you're either always a tough guy or always a whimp) the relation between welfare states and crime and tough sentences and crime is obscure. Crime is higher in states that lack a social security net but is this because of this or because of the justice system? I would say that it's because of the lack of social security. Social experiments show that tough punishment is a very effective tool in controlling violence. Internetforums like these for instance, where there is no control on insulting language are proven to have more faul language and ongoing fights then those with a firm moderator.
Basically when it comes to the welfare state i think european countries are an example to the rest of the world while the justice system of the U.S.A have some traits that would be a good example for europeans (i must say though, that the justice system in the USA is on paper very superior in many ways, but totally corrupted in practice). The 'three strikes, you're out' doctrine would be a good example for europe to follow and for america itself to actually practice; if a person cannot be fixed, then at least al the decent people in the world deserve to be protected against them. Giving people another chance while statistics proof it to be a risk sounds humane but it is not; you split the risk of someone being a victim of either innessecary incarceration or a crime that would be committed, evenly between society (that exists of people we have to presume have never done anything to deserve this) and someone who has already commited a serious crime. If someone has to take responsabillity for this painfull situation it's those ( it would be more fair anyway ) who're responsible for it to occur in the first place. They're the one we know, pose a threat to us and we know so because of their own previous deeds.
I also think, but this is another topic, that the voting for judges would be a good example for us in europe to follow. It makes the judges somewhat less almighty.

 

[burnt]

My argument is that shared resources or resources owned by the common meaning everybody leads to the tragedy of the commons. Well known concept. Unsustainable as it gets. Obviously there are natural resources no one owns. The air, or a massive body of water. But my point is that if we respect property rights those whose property is violated by pollution will have a right to settle issues in court. Unlike now where the government sets arbitrary limits on any pollutant and then doesn't enforce when it goes over that limit anyway.

If acid rain lands on your water shed and kills off the fish or whatever, in the communities local lake that community can attack the corporations responsible.

Oh and by the way both Sweden and Norways planned economies are feeling this crisis hard. Lets see if their high standard can hackle the crisis. I forsee cuts in their welfare systems. Same with Europe in general. Its funny because this economic crisis is making it painfully obvious for anyone who understands its causes that the planned economy and mixed managed economy you are all talking about doesn't work either!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hJ2qmuj5BfAfbZ_RGSe1dnePluVw

Another example of failed european interventionism

Mises Daily | Mises Institute

mises.org

There are so many more examples I will only post as needed because its really too many too count. The point is that even the mixed manage economy is unsustainable. It relies on high government spending and taxation. Its more unsustainable! I can explain why but I gotta get to work :shock: more later if people are interested.



Deedle as far as evidence historically of a capitalist free market system working better. The only real evidence is that any country that is more free market is more prosperous. Problem is rarely have there ever been nations that truly embraced the principle of liberty. The U.S. did but often mixed it up with corporatism. The more a nation steers from free markets the more inefficient their economy gets and the more misery their society ensues.

For people that say who cares if its more inefficient at least we have rights. You are missing the point. A productive economy means more of our wants and desires are satisfied (whatever they might be its up to people to decide what they want not a government). That means higher standard of living for everybody. Less poverty less crime less environmental problems. I am not against having rights. Remember the role of government is to protect our rights. If a business interferes with peoples rights to liberty and property that business can be shut down or subject to legal prosecution. That's an intervention but a legal and sensible one. Not what we see today with nationalizing everything.

This is a tough argument becuase like I said the paradigm of today is mixed economy so I was hoping you would say that deedle. Everyone whether on the left or right seems to fall into this pattern. No one embraces liberty in its truest sense because they think it leads to depressions, large scale banking failures, environmental exploitation. All things I am saying are misleading. Intervention and mixed market economies and socialist economies cause all of the above!

 

[polytrip]

Marked propagation is fine, burnt. But you are in a sense promising that a free market will bring benefits. And you cannot proof these statements, exactly because there never has been a totally free market anywhere.
Thing is; you cannot AND promise that a free market will bring all kind of good things AND say that whatever a free market will bring, is good because of it being the result of a free market.
Those two things are as well contradictive as circulatory, wich is quite unique when you think of it.
Let's say that there's a house on fire. Some people will say;'we have to recue those inside the house and extinguish the fire'. Others (the free-market enthousiasts)will say; 'if we try to save those poor bastards and extinguish the fire, those people will stop trying to get out of the building and just sit back and wait for us, therefore we have to do nothing to get the best results'.
My point is, that when you say that, you cannot say afterwards when everybody perished in flames; 'well, doing nothing gave us the best results, because it was their faith to die this way'.
Well, actually you can say that, but if THAT is what you're saying you automaticaly are withdrawing all your earlier promises of milk and honey. Then the argument for doing nothing is no longer that it will lead to the best outcome, wich is the greatest number of survivors, but then your argument is that whatever it will lead you to is the best possible outcome BECAUSSE it is the result of doing nothing.

 

[benzyme]

capitalism seriously needs to be revised, take power away from the big businesses.

just look at what's going on with AIG

It must've been when the railroad industry won the right to legal representation as an individual entity when it all went south.
watch "The Corporation", it's a good documentary on how business rights trump citizens' rights

 

[burnt]

Polytrip but you can show clearly with historical evidence that societies who developed capitalist means or production saw a massive increase in wealth, (for everybody, not always at the same rate and some got richer faster but still overall everyone got wealthier, compare middle ages to 18th century U.S.) standard of living, and freedom. You can also show that societies that went down the path to socialism in many cases collapsed and still are collapsing (russia, nazi germany, cuba, venezuala, the list goes on). China is another good example of a nation who is getting wealthier because they are adopting more capitalist means of production and utilizing less of their old communist ways. But the point is that the closer you get to socialist historically the more those nations lost human rights had an overall worse standard of living and loss of wealth.

There are European nations who do manage good social democracies. I am not going to say they haven't. But they are starting to wake up to the fact that its unsustainable. Especially in the face of this crisis. These historical trends can be explained by how each economic system works.

Benzyme I agree corporations have way too much power and the thing with AIG is a total scam. But my argument is that its not a free market that is causing all this BS but its interventionism. Its a fact if you know the roots of the crisis. It is the direct result of interventionist policies. Interventionist policies will also make it worse and last longer (just like in the great depression). Corporations have the power they do because of the government intervening in the market place.

I can go through how A lead to B which lead to C because it seems that no one sees this crisis they way I do. Everyone is blaming it on capitalism and the free market. I guess it makes sense because thats what the media tells everyone. But really the root cause is central banking and government intervention into the housing market.

Also understand that I don't mean to say a free market means anarcho capitalism. There will always need to be laws to ban certain chemicals or enforce fraud or prevent air pollution. But the fact is these laws and regulations need to based on the idea that they are to protect individual liberty and property. Otherwise you get into the mess we are in now where government regulate business to give their friends in the businesses HUGE advantages over the rest of the market. The list goes on..

 

[benzyme]

agreed

these corporations need to either give returns (with interest) to the taxpayers which keep them afloat, or perish, f*** profit margin. serious restructuring (with banks too) needs to occur because of this ridiculous credit crunch

and the federal reserve is like welfare.. these businesses have been (ab)using it to stay afloat, then pat their executives on the back, like junkies wasting their welfare checks on their habit.

I say some serious boycotting is in order, it probably has more of a potential impact than voting; to facilitate this, the media should do a series of reports on the businesses which are raping the taxpayers. they owe it to us.

 

[Fuego]

im strait with capitalism, it works great, the thing is what the capitalists DO WITH THEIR MONEY that makes the diference. if they put their money towards survival, but after that, helping people and shit and doing cool stuff for the world then its all good, and practically communism in a way, because acting as their own government and excercizing self control they are now able to be whatever system of government they choose. capitalism gives opertunity. it is a gift and a curse. the cure to things or the damnation and destruction of the capitalist.

 

[benzyme]

capitalism is fine, as long as businesses observe "business ethics". they have a responsibility to the people (and environment) which allow them to exist. taxpayers generate the revenue which allows businesses to stay in business, it doesn't grow on corporate trees.

 

[polytrip]

Polytrip but you can show clearly with historical evidence that societies who developed capitalist means or production saw a massive increase in wealth, (for everybody, not always at the same rate and some got richer faster but still overall everyone got wealthier, compare middle ages to 18th century U.S.) standard of living, and freedom. You can also show that societies that went down the path to socialism in many cases collapsed and still are collapsing (russia, nazi germany, cuba, venezuala, the list goes on). China is another good example of a nation who is getting wealthier because they are adopting more capitalist means of production and utilizing less of their old communist ways. But the point is that the closer you get to socialist historically the more those nations lost human rights had an overall worse standard of living and loss of wealth.

There are European nations who do manage good social democracies. I am not going to say they haven't. But they are starting to wake up to the fact that its unsustainable. Especially in the face of this crisis. These historical trends can be explained by how each economic system works.


Benzyme I agree corporations have way too much power and the thing with AIG is a total scam. But my argument is that its not a free market that is causing all this BS but its interventionism. Its a fact if you know the roots of the crisis. It is the direct result of interventionist policies. Interventionist policies will also make it worse and last longer (just like in the great depression). Corporations have the power they do because of the government intervening in the market place.

I can go through how A lead to B which lead to C because it seems that no one sees this crisis they way I do. Everyone is blaming it on capitalism and the free market. I guess it makes sense because thats what the media tells everyone. But really the root cause is central banking and government intervention into the housing market.

Also understand that I don't mean to say a free market means anarcho capitalism. There will always need to be laws to ban certain chemicals or enforce fraud or prevent air pollution. But the fact is these laws and regulations need to based on the idea that they are to protect individual liberty and property. Otherwise you get into the mess we are in now where government regulate business to give their friends in the businesses HUGE advantages over the rest of the market. The list goes on..

So the question is then where exactly you draw the line between what you call interventionism and just having a functioning government and justice system. It is ofcourse true that once you have a functioning government it will have the tendency to expand it's powers. I may have agreed with an A-type intervention but before you know it we'l have B and C-type interventions wich we never asked for.
As much as capitalism was hailed a few years ago as if it was some sort of sacred belief, it is being blamed now for everything. You can expect as much severe political mistakes from that as have been made in the 90's. Where social security has been cut to unethical levels in many country's in the name of the invisible hand, now you see the governments supporting car manufacturers. That's like the worst of both worlds.
Anyway, i think the current crisis cannot be blamed to one single thing.
Large scale economics and politics is often a matter of all kind of things going on at the same time that affect eachother. There is a much bigger picture then there is room for in this thread, but to paint a picture a little larger; the US government has been encouraging banks to give loans to people, that where simply too risky, simply because it is known that house-owners vote republican more often. At the same time the economy in the USA has been growing with figures of 3 to 6 % annually for the past 15 years, while average income did not grow this fast, nor did the US population. Therefore the simple cost of living/income ratio has been going in an unfortunate direction wich was masked by that 'easy loans for everyody' policy. Once people are in such levels of debt that it becomes rational to go even deeper in depth because you know you cannot pay back what you have to anyway, than the banks are simply giving away free money while the banks are writing it down in their books as investments. So this is only a little larger view, while in reality it is even more complex and there are many more lines to be drawn. It is never one thing you can atribute everything to.

 

[deedle-doo]

haha, this was in this weeks daily show.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah | Comedy Central


sorry, just for fun. Haven't had time to keep up with the thread so this is all I got for now

 

[ohayoco]

My argument is that shared resources or resources owned by the common meaning everybody leads to the tragedy of the commons. Well known concept. Unsustainable as it gets.

As I say I've bowed out of this argument because I've reached a point where I'd have to go beyond my expertise to attempt to disprove your theory.

But I'm curous about this statement, could you explain it further?

This is my understanding of the 'tragedy of the commons': what scant common land was left after the second world war became used less and less. This was NOT because common ownership doesn't work in a social anarchist society- 'common' land was utilised as much as was allowed by its owners throughout history until WWII. Then life changed and what few rights remained became irrelevent. I think your metaphor is erroneous and misleading, but maybe I'm missing something? I just don't see how you can credibly use this example to justify the privatisation of uniquely different resources. To compare them in this way is oversimplistic.

Each piece of land had certain rights attributed to certain people. The land was privately owned and whatever rights were left depended on the site and were only rights for certain people. For example, owners of certain nearby cottages would have the right to collect firewood. Rights were such as the right to grow crops (rare by that time), or graze cattle (less rare), or fish, or collect firewood, or collect turf, or let your pigs eat the acorns. In the modern world, who's going to bother collecting their own firewood or keeping pigs? Or even growing their own food on a tiny scrap of land (in the few pieces of common land where such rights still existed)? The small proportion of people still wanting to do this would in any case not have access to rights of commons because few properties had such rights. As for everyone else, the division of labour meant that food and fuel were now almost exclusively bought from someone else- people were no longer so autonomous.

Even back in 1649 Winstanley and the Diggers were savagely put down by the elite for daring to farm and live on the common land! Anyone who stood up to the erosion of the rights of the commons faced a similar fate.
However, Winstanley was actually commended by Lord Fairfax, the first judge he faced, in whom he made a longlasting impression.

Common land was not truly common even by those times. It was a poor shadow of what it once was. No land had been truly commonly owned since before the Norman's invaded England, when the despised William the Conqueror proclaimed all land his own. In earlier tribal societies, all land was common. In fact land was not considered property. By 1700 only 25% of land was still commons, and today it is only 2.5%. All the way through til the horrors of the enclosures acts of the industrial revolution, the people were livid- but powerless- as their oppressors systematically stole their land. It is only over the past century that people have forgotten the concept of mutual ownership of land... it took a thousand years of bloody oppression.

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I think it would be appropriate now for me to show with a historical timeline that capitalism is NOT natural NOR inevitable, that...

We are a co-operative species more than a competitive one, and that the West evolved through cooperation along social anarchist lines. Privatisation came later, and the transition was one of theft.

Yet people seem to think that societies based on cooperation rather than competition are some hare-brained recent German idea!


A TIMELINE OF THEFT:

PRE-ROMAN: Common ownership of land was once the norm worldwide, first in nomadic culture and continuing with the move to sedentary lifestyles. Conaty (Salford University) explains: ‘In most pre-urban societies worldwide, property ownership developed first in relation to hand-crafted goods and in ‘moveable’ assets such as cattle, sheep, and then in things which can be ‘be destroyed by fire’, such as dwelling houses. The equitable custom and practice of the common ownership of land is rooted in the necessity for collective work by tribes and clans to convert land into productive use for agriculture.’

Private ownership of land as a legal principle develops through the Roman Empire’s conquest and enslavement of land and its inhabitants. These principles spread across Europe and lead to the Saxon feudal system.

856-1018: Danish invaders accommodate the commons and common law, remnants of the earlier Celtic tradition, into the first system of property tax, the Dane-geld.

1066: William the Conqueror inherits a mixed system of private and communal land practices, and uses the Domesday Book in 1068 to establish the legal ownership of land for tax purposes. A compromise is reached- the commons are still managed mutually by the community for the benefit of all, but are now owned in ‘trust’ by the baron or lord, lessee to the king. Half the crop of the entire manor is now due to the lord.

1485- : agricultural prices rise, so Tudor landlords profit by enclosing and claiming the freehold of commons. In 1516 Thomas More’s Utopia laments the forced evictions that replaced serfs with sheep as ‘pernicious abominations’. Unemployment, begging and crime increase significantly.

1538-1541: Henry VIII seizes all land owned by the Church.

1549: an anti-enclosure revolt is quashed using foreign mercenaries. Boundaries are destroyed by ‘levellers’.

1588: The Erection of Cottages Act removes the right of an Englishman to build his house on common land. Prior to the act, if he could raise a roof over his head and have a fire in the hearth between sunrise and sunset, then he could claim the dwelling as his home.

1649: the Diggers occupy common land in protest.

1800-1850: Enclosure Acts remove tens of thousands of people from the countryside and force them into cities, where in the factories they work 16 to 18 hour days. 22.5% (8.4 million acres) of all the land in England and Wales is removed from the commons. The petitioning landlord effectively has a compulsory purchase order of all open fields. Compensation to copyholders is limited. Small freeholders unable to fence their land are forced to sell up. Rural depopulation is massive. The clearances in the Scottish Highlands are the most brutal. The Duchess of Sutherland appropriates 794,000 acres from 15,000 villagers between 1814 and 1820. British troops carry out these evictions; all village buildings are burned and levelled and the fields turned into grazing for sheep tended by English shepherds. In 1750, 80% of the population of England lived in rural areas. By 1840, 74% of these people had left for urban areas. By 1872, the commons of the entire United Kingdom had shrunk to just 2.5 per cent of all land.

1865: John Ruskin and Octavia Hall form the Commons Preservation Society (now the Open Spaces Society). William Morris is a board member.

1869: an uprising in defence of the rural commons, Fakenham, Norfolk. This last rural rebellion in England is quashed by the army, but leads to the statutory end of the enclosure system.

1945- Remaining and relatively insignificant rights of commons become outdated and are exercised less and less.

1965: The Commons Registration Act gives legal protection to remaining commons.

1994: The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act- local authorities no longer have to provide sites for gypsy travellers. Travellers had traditionally camped on commons. By 2008, a third of travellers feel forced to occupy land illegally.

2008: Defra claim that 4% of land in England and Wales is common land, but rights have eroded so significantly that the term ‘common’ is misleading.

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LINKS:

An explanation of common land: Common land - Wikipedia (I have not used Wikipedia as a source)
- - -

The Diggers, 17th century rebels who farmed the common land out of desperation, and were savagely put down for such 'insolence'.
The visionary leader of the Diggers Gerrard Winstanley - Wikipedia:
His writings A Declaration from the Poor oppressed People of England, directed to all that call themselves, or are called Lords of Manors http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/gbi/lawoffree.pdf
Some quotes:

“What is the purport of the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces.” Oliver Cromwell

'The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.' Gerrard Winstanley

'The poorest man has as true a title, as just a right, to land as a rich man.'
Gerrard Winstanley

'The work we are going about is this, to dig up George Hill and the waste ground thereabouts and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows ... that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor.'
Gerrard Winstanley; The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced, April 20, 1649

'Every day poor people are forced to work for fourpence a day, though corn is dear. And yet the tithing priest stops their mouth and tells them that ‘inward satisfaction of mind’ was meant by the declaration ‘the Poor shall inherit the earth’. I tell you, the Scripture is to be really and materially fulfilled. You jeer at the name ‘Leveller’; I tell you Jesus Christ is the Head Leveller.'
Gerrard Winstanley; ibid

- - -
Community Land Trusts- buying back the stolen land

http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk

I strongly recommend reading this history of common land:

http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk/documents/history_and_background.pdf

- - -
The sad fate of the gypsy travellers, their way of life destroyed by the theft of the commons: http://www.gypsy-traveller.org/sites-homelessness/

The Travellers' situation

"I like living in a caravan,
am I such a terrible thing.
I dare to be different.
Now that is a terrible thing".

http://tash.gn.apc.org/INDEX.htm

Check out his photo archive of the original hippy travellers, through to rave and the second summer of love, and the pictures of the police surveilling and oppressing them wherever they went.

- - -
Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960, W.H.G.Armytage, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1961

 

[burnt]

Oyahoco you bring up some of the greatest misconceptions about capitalism there is. Which is good because I can explain. Socialist writers utilize the arguments all the time.

Here is what Mises had to say

"If land is not owned by anybody, although legal formalism may call it public property, it is used without any regard to the disadvantages resulting. Those who are in a position to appropriate to themselves the returns — lumber and game of the forests, fish of the water areas, and mineral deposits of the subsoil — do not bother about the later effects of their mode of exploitation. For them, erosion of the soil, depletion of the exhaustible resources and other impairments of the future utilization are external costs not entering into their calculation of input and output. They cut down trees without any regard for fresh shoots or reforestation. In hunting and fishing, they do not shrink from methods preventing the repopulation of the hunting and fishing grounds."

If you want to understand the tragedy of the commons read to original article.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/162/3859/1243.pdf

The type of oppression you are talking about over common land is exactly the type of government bullshit I am talking about. Taking all this land and telling people "you can't own it" that's the opposite of capitalism and liberal philosophy where anyone can own land. In socialist society everyone owns it and thats what I am saying can lead to a tragedy of the commons like situation.

I think it would be appropriate now for me to show with a historical timeline that capitalism is NOT natural NOR inevitable, that...

We are a co-operative species more than a competitive one, and that the West evolved through cooperation along social anarchist lines. Privatisation came later, and the transition was one of theft.

Yet people seem to think that societies based on cooperation rather than competition are some hare-brained recent German idea!

This is the greatest socialist writer myth about capitalism and I want to address it. Again I will refer to the works of Ludwig von mises cause he covered this better then anyone. I refer to you this chapter in a book he wrote in the 1930's (I think) called Socialism.

Mises Institute

With the help of our extraordinary supporters, the Mises Institute is the world's leading supporter of the ideas of liberty and the Austrian School of

mises.org

The book is long but amazing. It refutes all forms of socialism in a way that I have never been able to see anyone counter argue against. At least effectively and directly. But this particular chapter deals with the idea that socialism is inevitable in social evolution and smacks it down hard. The rest of the book is really worth looking at if you want to understand why everything going on the world now is headed in the wrong direction.

I will summarize my take on the misconception of what you say above. For society to exist we need cooperation either by violence (forced) or by mutual agreement among many things. The division of labor also makes society possible especially our modern civilizations. Division of labor increases production and makes it possible for people to do things besides look for food. So in order to maximize benefits from the divisions of labor society would be better off the more productive it was. Socialism is less productive then capitalism and will always take away freedom. Capitalism requires cooperation to function it requires peace to function to say otherwise is a misconception. Businessmen and consumers alike must agree on many things for the system to work not no just for the whole but for themselves as well as the whole. They must also interact and trade and cooperate. Competition is merely a mechanism by which capitalism is capable of reaching maximum social benefit via increased productive capability. It doesn't turn everyone against each other. So the idea that socialism is more inevitable then capitalism means that we should regress socially and evolutionarily into more primitive and less productive means of production in order to progress makes no sense. The argument that socialism is inevitable for society to progress holds no water when looked in the proper light.

Note I am quite baked and might have just rambeled on about something and have no real clue what I wrote :d :d :d

So the question is then where exactly you draw the line between what you call interventionism and just having a functioning government and justice system. It is ofcourse true that once you have a functioning government it will have the tendency to expand it's powers. I may have agreed with an A-type intervention but before you know it we'l have B and C-type interventions wich we never asked for.
As much as capitalism was hailed a few years ago as if it was some sort of sacred belief, it is being blamed now for everything. You can expect as much severe political mistakes from that as have been made in the 90's. Where social security has been cut to unethical levels in many country's in the name of the invisible hand, now you see the governments supporting car manufacturers. That's like the worst of both worlds.
Anyway, i think the current crisis cannot be blamed to one single thing.

Good question. And your right that the crisis cannot be blamed on one single things. Its a few things. But they stem from the same philosophy interventionism and keynsian economics. In the 90's the federal reserve (U.S. central bank) cut interests rates which made money "cheap" to borrow. So this naturally creates an atmopshere condusive to risky investment. Then around that time the government (Clinton and Bush were in on this) decided they wanted everyone in America to own their own home. So they repealed certain laws and made it really easy for people to lend and borrow money. They also backed an organization to buy all these bad loans (fannie and freddie owned about half of all these bad loans and was backed by the government its a government sponsered enterprise). This is how the bubble was created. It was built on cheap fiat money, active government encouragement of subprime lending via fannie freddie among other mechanisms, and ignoring fraud (deregulating).

But yea about drawing the line between interventionism and functioning government is good point. Because often people just throw around the term regulation but of course its such a broad term its pretty much meaningless to say I am for or against regulation. Being a liberal (19th and early 20th century use of the word meaning wanting freedom, now the word has been totally distorted to mean something totally different) I prefer to think of these problems in the context of the role of government. The role of government to me is to protect liberty and property. Many laws fit within this view. Such as laws against theft, fraud, murder, discrimination, pollution etc. But things like bailouts, central banks, fiat money, subsidies, welfare, income taxes are all forms of intervention that I oppose for some simple reasons. They make things worse economically and socially so they don't do the job they are intended to do. Secondly one intervention tends to lead to another and another like you said.

Large scale economics and politics is often a matter of all kind of things going on at the same time that affect eachother. There is a much bigger picture then there is room for in this thread, but to paint a picture a little larger; the US government has been encouraging banks to give loans to people, that where simply too risky, simply because it is known that house-owners vote republican more often. At the same time the economy in the USA has been growing with figures of 3 to 6 % annually for the past 15 years, while average income did not grow this fast, nor did the US population. Therefore the simple cost of living/income ratio has been going in an unfortunate direction wich was masked by that 'easy loans for everyody' policy. Once people are in such levels of debt that it becomes rational to go even deeper in depth because you know you cannot pay back what you have to anyway, than the banks are simply giving away free money while the banks are writing it down in their books as investments. So this is only a little larger view, while in reality it is even more complex and there are many more lines to be drawn. It is never one thing you can atribute everything to.

You nailed it.

 

[ohayoco]

I wasn't using all that as an argument for socialism, stop implying that my arguments are socialist, McCarthy!
I'm a Pro-technology Green, Minarchist, Libertarian Social Anarchist. Or something. As capitalist as socialist as anarchist. I only care about what works, without leaving any member of society out of the loop.

The blurb I wrote about cooperation rather than competition wasn't explained properly. Firstly, I wasn't talking about socialism. It was meant to be an allusion to an overly competitive society (the USA) being unhealthier than a more cooperative society (Norway).

What that research actually showed to me (I wrote a dissertation on it once), was that this is how society works best:

In a pre-industrial society:
Peasants each farm their own food. They are reasonably autonomous and enjoy a libertarian way of life. However, there is also a 'reserve' of common land which is farmed by all as an insurance policy. If one peasant's crops fails, then they are given a necessary share of the common crop. Most people do NOT take advantage of such kindness, and there is ample research to prove this. In any case, the community as a whole decides how to distribute the crop, and it's obvious if anyone is taking the piss. Land is POSSESSED, not OWNED. You can't leave a field unproductive because you own it- if you weren't using that resource, someone else who needs it can use it instead. Tell me that isn't better than aristocrats claiming enormous areas for themselves, just for their own hunting, or sheep, when others could be using that land themselves?

In an industrial society:
Obviously there is no going back to that way of life. But what was once the commons, is in this society the welfare state. People are expected to go about their lives without help (ideally in a libertarian society that we have yet to realise), but there is a small pool of money from everyone's labours that is held as insurance for those who fail economically, to fulfil their most basic human needs until they are able to get on their feet again. Because we must share the world- it is not one person's to own above anothers. Money is now shared instead of land for convenience.

Next week I'll post the first draft of my 'practical utopia' in that old thread, for discussion and criticism. I need time to read your sources, but I feel that we've reached an ideological loggerhead... on whether our society should be one where some people are left to starve as a necessary evil in the name of efficiency, or one where there is compassion shown towards the least fortunate and a safety net to give security to all.

Just tell me... in your society, what happens to a person who loses their job and has their house repossessed? I just can't see your society stopping some unfortunate people from starving to death on the streets. And you can't say "well no one will ever lose their job" or "well no-one's house would ever be repossessed" because that would be a copout and an erroneous one at that. People are always going to fall on hard times.