Conservatism And Libertarianism Both Have No Dogma

[Bfgrn]

The Betrayal of Adam Smith - Excerpt

It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions. For example, corporate libertarians fervently oppose any restraint on corporate size or power. Smith, on the other hand, opposed any form of economic concentration on the ground that it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital; to produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers; and to optimally allocate society's resources.

Through trade agreements, corporate libertarians press governments to provide absolute protection for the intellectual property rights of corporations. Smith was strongly opposed to trade secrets as contrary to market principles and would have vigorously opposed governments enforcing a person or corporation's claim to the right to monopolize a lifesaving drug or device and to charge whatever the market would bear.

Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards.

Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily as an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.'' Smith never suggested that government should not intervene to set and enforce minimum social, health, worker safety, and environmental standards in the common interest or to protect the poor and nature from the rich. Given that most governments of his day were monarchies, the possibility probably never occurred to him.

The theory of market economics, in contrast to free-market ideology, specifies a number of basic conditions needed for a market to set prices efficiently in the public interest. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the less socially efficient the market system becomes. Most basic is the condition that markets must be competitive. I recall the professor in my elementary economics course using the example of small wheat farmers selling to small grain millers to illustrate the idea of perfect market competition. Today, four companies--Conagra, ADM Milling, Cargill, and Pillsbury--mill nearly 60 percent of all flour produced in the United States, and two of them--Conagra and Cargill--control 50 percent of grain exports.

In the real world of unregulated markets, successful players get larger and, in many instances, use the resulting economic power to drive or buy out weaker players to gain control of even larger shares of the market. In other instances, "competitors" collude through cartels or strategic alliances to increase profits by setting market prices above the level of optimal efficiency. The larger and more collusive individual market players become, the more difficult it is for newcomers and small independent firms to survive, the more monopolisitic and less competitive the market becomes, and the more political power the biggest firms can wield to demand concessions from governments that allow them to externalize even more of their costs to the community.

Given this reality, one might expect the neoliberal economists who claim Smith's tradition as their own to be outspoken in arguing for the need to restrict mergers and acquisitions and break up monopolistic firms to restore market competition. More often, they argue exactly the opposite position--that to "compete" in today's global markets, firms must merge into larger combinations. In other words, they use a theory that assumes small firms to advocate policies that favor large firms.

more

As we have already seen, Smith was scarcely the founder of economic science, a science which existed since the medieval scholastics and, in its modern form, since Richard Cantillon. But what the German economists used to call, in a narrower connection, Das AdamSmithProblem, is much more severe than that. For the problem is not simply that Smith was not the founder of economics.

The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that, even in an age that had fewer citations or footnotes than our own, Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist, acknowledging little or nothing and stealing large chunks, for example, from Cantillon. Far worse was Smith's complete failure to cite or acknowledge his beloved mentor Francis Hutcheson, from whom he derived most of his ideas as well as the organization of his economic and moral philosophy lectures. Smith indeed wrote in a private letter to the University of Glasgow of the 'never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson,' but apparently amnesia conveniently struck Adam Smith when it came time to writing the Wealth of Nations for the general public.

The Adam Smith Myth - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Looks like in all your copying and pasting you couldn't even get that small thing right.

Keep digging Kevin...thanks for more ammo...

Cited in the posted article...

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 – 8 January 1950)[1] was an Austrian-American economist and political scientist. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics

Joseph Schumpeter - Mises Wiki the global repository of classical-liberal thought

Adam Smith is much too humane and democratic to fit the Austrian school of mass destruction.

I often confront Austrian schoolers by asking them to name a country that is run by those theories. But I am wrong...America once listened to the predecessors of the Austrian school...it turn a deep recession into the GREAT DEPRESSION.

What NEVER works is what Herbert Hoover and Andrew Mellon did to bring on the Great Depression... liquidate, and austerity. They listened to the predecessors of the 'Austrian' school. Unless you also believe Medieval blood letting save lives?

Economic Policy Under Hoover

Throughout this decline—which carried real GNP per worker down to a level 40 percent below that which it had attained in 1929, and which saw the unemployment rise to take in more than a quarter of the labor force—the government did not try to prop up aggregate demand. The only expansionary fiscal policy action undertaken was the Veterans’ Bonus, passed over President Hoover’s veto. That aside, the full employment budget surplus did not fall over 1929–33.

The Federal Reserve did not use open market operations to keep the nominal money supply from falling. Instead, its only significant systematic use of open market operations was in the other direction: to raise interest rates and discourage gold outflows after the United Kingdom abandoned the gold standard in the fall of 1931.

This inaction did not come about because they did not understand the tools of monetary policy. This inaction did not come about because the Federal Reserve was constrained by the necessity of defending the gold standard. The Federal Reserve knew what it was doing: it was letting the private sector handle the Depression in its own fashion. It saw the private sector’s task as the “liquidation” of the American economy. It feared that expansionary monetary policy would impede the necessary private-sector process of readjustment.

Contemplating in retrospect the wreck of his country’s economy and his own presidency, Herbert Hoover wrote bitterly in his memoirs about those who had advised inaction during the downslide:

The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon …felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.… He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.


The Federal Reserve took almost no steps to halt the slide into the Great Depression over 1929–33. Instead, the Federal Reserve acted as if appropriate policy was not to try to avoid the oncoming Great Depression, but to allow it to run its course and “liquidate” the unprofitable portions of the private economy.

In adopting such “liquidationist” policies, the Federal Reserve was merely following the recommendations provided by an economic theory of depressions that was in fact common before the Keynesian Revolution and was held by economists like Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and Joseph Schumpeter.

 

[kaz]

You whine and stamp your feet when someone tries to paint libertarians with the same brush

Lying sack of shit. Show a post I did this. Here's the thread I started I didn't do that.

Definition: Note I said "small government" libertarian. I realize many anarchists call themselves "libertarian." I'm not knocking them and of course they are free to participate, I am just not speaking about anarchy here, I am speaking about those of us who want government minimized, not eliminated.

Sorry you got butt hurt, moron. Here's a tissue, go cry to your mommy and you'll feel better.

 

[bripat9643]

Chomsky on libertarianism and Murray Rothbard
Understanding Power, in which Noam Chomsky discusses the difference between libertarianism and anarchism and comments on the world envisioned by Murray Rothbard:
_____________________________

Man: What's the difference between "libertarian" and "anarchist," exactly?

Chomsky: There's no difference, really. I think they're the same thing. But you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United States is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called "libertarianism" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist—because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"—but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice—it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.

The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though—nobody really takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm a libertarian, I'm against that tax"—but of course, I'm still in favor of the government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that sort of stuff.

Now, there are consistent libertarians, people like Murray Rothbard—and if you just read the world that they describe, it's a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it. This is a world where you don't have roads because you don't see any reason why you should cooperate in building a road that you're not going to use: if you want a road, you get together with a bunch of other people who are going to use that road and you build it, then you charge people to ride on it. If you don't like the pollution from somebody's automobile, you take them to court and you litigate it. Who would want to live in a world like that? It's a world built on hatred.19

The whole thing's not even worth talking about, though. First of all, it couldn't function for a second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something. But this is a special American aberration, it's not really serious.

You're quoting Chomsky for a definition of libertarianism?

I'll bet you don't understand why people ridicule your posts.

 

[Bfgrn]

You whine and stamp your feet when someone tries to paint libertarians with the same brush

Lying sack of shit. Show a post I did this. Here's the thread I started I didn't do that.

Definition: Note I said "small government" libertarian. I realize many anarchists call themselves "libertarian." I'm not knocking them and of course they are free to participate, I am just not speaking about anarchy here, I am speaking about those of us who want government minimized, not eliminated.

Sorry you got butt hurt, moron. Here's a tissue, go cry to your mommy and you'll feel better.

LOL...at least now we know you really are THAT obtuse...

 

[Vigilante]

Just like a Pavlov dog, you boldly display right wing dogma...

And as a moth to a flame, you burn yourself ...again, and again!

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

The Betrayal of Adam Smith - Excerpt

It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions. For example, corporate libertarians fervently oppose any restraint on corporate size or power. Smith, on the other hand, opposed any form of economic concentration on the ground that it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital; to produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers; and to optimally allocate society's resources.

Through trade agreements, corporate libertarians press governments to provide absolute protection for the intellectual property rights of corporations. Smith was strongly opposed to trade secrets as contrary to market principles and would have vigorously opposed governments enforcing a person or corporation's claim to the right to monopolize a lifesaving drug or device and to charge whatever the market would bear.

Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards.

Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily as an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.'' Smith never suggested that government should not intervene to set and enforce minimum social, health, worker safety, and environmental standards in the common interest or to protect the poor and nature from the rich. Given that most governments of his day were monarchies, the possibility probably never occurred to him.

The theory of market economics, in contrast to free-market ideology, specifies a number of basic conditions needed for a market to set prices efficiently in the public interest. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the less socially efficient the market system becomes. Most basic is the condition that markets must be competitive. I recall the professor in my elementary economics course using the example of small wheat farmers selling to small grain millers to illustrate the idea of perfect market competition. Today, four companies--Conagra, ADM Milling, Cargill, and Pillsbury--mill nearly 60 percent of all flour produced in the United States, and two of them--Conagra and Cargill--control 50 percent of grain exports.

In the real world of unregulated markets, successful players get larger and, in many instances, use the resulting economic power to drive or buy out weaker players to gain control of even larger shares of the market. In other instances, "competitors" collude through cartels or strategic alliances to increase profits by setting market prices above the level of optimal efficiency. The larger and more collusive individual market players become, the more difficult it is for newcomers and small independent firms to survive, the more monopolisitic and less competitive the market becomes, and the more political power the biggest firms can wield to demand concessions from governments that allow them to externalize even more of their costs to the community.

Given this reality, one might expect the neoliberal economists who claim Smith's tradition as their own to be outspoken in arguing for the need to restrict mergers and acquisitions and break up monopolistic firms to restore market competition. More often, they argue exactly the opposite position--that to "compete" in today's global markets, firms must merge into larger combinations. In other words, they use a theory that assumes small firms to advocate policies that favor large firms.

more

As we have already seen, Smith was scarcely the founder of economic science, a science which existed since the medieval scholastics and, in its modern form, since Richard Cantillon. But what the German economists used to call, in a narrower connection, Das AdamSmithProblem, is much more severe than that. For the problem is not simply that Smith was not the founder of economics.

The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that, even in an age that had fewer citations or footnotes than our own, Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist, acknowledging little or nothing and stealing large chunks, for example, from Cantillon. Far worse was Smith's complete failure to cite or acknowledge his beloved mentor Francis Hutcheson, from whom he derived most of his ideas as well as the organization of his economic and moral philosophy lectures. Smith indeed wrote in a private letter to the University of Glasgow of the 'never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson,' but apparently amnesia conveniently struck Adam Smith when it came time to writing the Wealth of Nations for the general public.

The Adam Smith Myth - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Looks like in all your copying and pasting you couldn't even get that small thing right.

Of course, corporate libertarians have to disavow Adam Smith, it destroys their corporate tyranny and people can READ.

The theory of the market economy traces back to the Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the publication of Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. Considered by many to be the most influential economics book ever written, it articulates the powerful and wonderfully democratic ideal of a self-organizing economy that creates an equitable and socially optimal allocation of a society's productive resources through the interaction of small buyers and sellers making decisions based on their individual needs and interests.

Market theory, as articulated by Smith and those who subsequently elaborated on his ideas, developed into an elegant and coherent intellectual construction grounded in carefully articulated assumptions regarding the conditions under which such self-organizing processes would indeed lead to socially optimal outcomes. For example:

• Buyers and sellers must be too small to influence the market price.
• Complete information must be available to all participants and there are no trade secrets.
• Sellers must bear the full cost of the products they sell and pass them on in the sale price.
• Investment capital must remain within national borders and trade between countries must be balanced.
• Savings must invested in the creation of productive capital.

Actually, Smith stole most of his good ideas from Richard Cantillon. So to say that it can be traced back to Smith is to ignore the contributions of Cantillon, the Spanish Scholastics including Juan de Mariana, and many others. To paraphrase Rothbard, Smith merely plagiarized those who came before, and anything new he put forward, like the labor theory of value, turned out to be woefully inaccurate.

I'm not surprised your grasp of economic history is so poor, however.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Syndical Syndrome - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

See how randomly quoting somebody doesn't actually make an argument in and of itself? Regardless, I do find it amusing that you quoted Chomsky in an attempt to make some sort of argument when you referred to me as being brainless for being an anarchist. Irony? Hypocrisy?

Thank you Kevin. Your reply has exposed who and what you really are. You are not for liberty or freedom, you are for creating the ultimate tyranny of robber barons. Here is where your true far right wing corporatism reveals itself. And your idea of freedom is to create a iron fisted hierarchy to rule over the masses. With stated SEVERE punishment for any lowly worker who doesn't submit to total submission. Pining for and embracing of the LEAST free eras in American history, the Gilded Age. Worker freedom to strike is criminalized, yet monopolies would be welcomed.

You are beyond ignorant. You have ZERO understanding of human nature, power and how it manifests. You support the exact same tyranny that these far right wing pea brains support...

Kevin Kennedy and cohorts...

Actually, my reply made only the point that you were a hypocrite for calling anarchists brainless on the one hand, while quoting one to make some sort of point on the other.

Actually it was much more personal...I was talking about you...

Actually, you just quoted Noam Chomsky. You weren't talking about anybody.

No, I quoted David Korten, and you merely quoted reactionary crap from the Austrian school of mass destruction.

So you admit to having said nothing, and merely copy and pasting something completely irrelevant.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

The Betrayal of Adam Smith - Excerpt

It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions. For example, corporate libertarians fervently oppose any restraint on corporate size or power. Smith, on the other hand, opposed any form of economic concentration on the ground that it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital; to produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers; and to optimally allocate society's resources.

Through trade agreements, corporate libertarians press governments to provide absolute protection for the intellectual property rights of corporations. Smith was strongly opposed to trade secrets as contrary to market principles and would have vigorously opposed governments enforcing a person or corporation's claim to the right to monopolize a lifesaving drug or device and to charge whatever the market would bear.

Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards.

Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily as an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.'' Smith never suggested that government should not intervene to set and enforce minimum social, health, worker safety, and environmental standards in the common interest or to protect the poor and nature from the rich. Given that most governments of his day were monarchies, the possibility probably never occurred to him.

The theory of market economics, in contrast to free-market ideology, specifies a number of basic conditions needed for a market to set prices efficiently in the public interest. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the less socially efficient the market system becomes. Most basic is the condition that markets must be competitive. I recall the professor in my elementary economics course using the example of small wheat farmers selling to small grain millers to illustrate the idea of perfect market competition. Today, four companies--Conagra, ADM Milling, Cargill, and Pillsbury--mill nearly 60 percent of all flour produced in the United States, and two of them--Conagra and Cargill--control 50 percent of grain exports.

In the real world of unregulated markets, successful players get larger and, in many instances, use the resulting economic power to drive or buy out weaker players to gain control of even larger shares of the market. In other instances, "competitors" collude through cartels or strategic alliances to increase profits by setting market prices above the level of optimal efficiency. The larger and more collusive individual market players become, the more difficult it is for newcomers and small independent firms to survive, the more monopolisitic and less competitive the market becomes, and the more political power the biggest firms can wield to demand concessions from governments that allow them to externalize even more of their costs to the community.

Given this reality, one might expect the neoliberal economists who claim Smith's tradition as their own to be outspoken in arguing for the need to restrict mergers and acquisitions and break up monopolistic firms to restore market competition. More often, they argue exactly the opposite position--that to "compete" in today's global markets, firms must merge into larger combinations. In other words, they use a theory that assumes small firms to advocate policies that favor large firms.

more

As we have already seen, Smith was scarcely the founder of economic science, a science which existed since the medieval scholastics and, in its modern form, since Richard Cantillon. But what the German economists used to call, in a narrower connection, Das AdamSmithProblem, is much more severe than that. For the problem is not simply that Smith was not the founder of economics.

The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that, even in an age that had fewer citations or footnotes than our own, Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist, acknowledging little or nothing and stealing large chunks, for example, from Cantillon. Far worse was Smith's complete failure to cite or acknowledge his beloved mentor Francis Hutcheson, from whom he derived most of his ideas as well as the organization of his economic and moral philosophy lectures. Smith indeed wrote in a private letter to the University of Glasgow of the 'never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson,' but apparently amnesia conveniently struck Adam Smith when it came time to writing the Wealth of Nations for the general public.

The Adam Smith Myth - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Looks like in all your copying and pasting you couldn't even get that small thing right.

Keep digging Kevin...thanks for more ammo...

Cited in the posted article...

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 – 8 January 1950)[1] was an Austrian-American economist and political scientist. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics

Joseph Schumpeter - Mises Wiki the global repository of classical-liberal thought

Adam Smith is much too humane and democratic to fit the Austrian school of mass destruction.

I often confront Austrian schoolers by asking them to name a country that is run by those theories. But I am wrong...America once listened to the predecessors of the Austrian school...it turn a deep recession into the GREAT DEPRESSION.

What NEVER works is what Herbert Hoover and Andrew Mellon did to bring on the Great Depression... liquidate, and austerity. They listened to the predecessors of the 'Austrian' school. Unless you also believe Medieval blood letting save lives?

Economic Policy Under Hoover

Throughout this decline—which carried real GNP per worker down to a level 40 percent below that which it had attained in 1929, and which saw the unemployment rise to take in more than a quarter of the labor force—the government did not try to prop up aggregate demand. The only expansionary fiscal policy action undertaken was the Veterans’ Bonus, passed over President Hoover’s veto. That aside, the full employment budget surplus did not fall over 1929–33.

The Federal Reserve did not use open market operations to keep the nominal money supply from falling. Instead, its only significant systematic use of open market operations was in the other direction: to raise interest rates and discourage gold outflows after the United Kingdom abandoned the gold standard in the fall of 1931.

This inaction did not come about because they did not understand the tools of monetary policy. This inaction did not come about because the Federal Reserve was constrained by the necessity of defending the gold standard. The Federal Reserve knew what it was doing: it was letting the private sector handle the Depression in its own fashion. It saw the private sector’s task as the “liquidation” of the American economy. It feared that expansionary monetary policy would impede the necessary private-sector process of readjustment.

Contemplating in retrospect the wreck of his country’s economy and his own presidency, Herbert Hoover wrote bitterly in his memoirs about those who had advised inaction during the downslide:

The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon …felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.… He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.


The Federal Reserve took almost no steps to halt the slide into the Great Depression over 1929–33. Instead, the Federal Reserve acted as if appropriate policy was not to try to avoid the oncoming Great Depression, but to allow it to run its course and “liquidate” the unprofitable portions of the private economy.

In adopting such “liquidationist” policies, the Federal Reserve was merely following the recommendations provided by an economic theory of depressions that was in fact common before the Keynesian Revolution and was held by economists like Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and Joseph Schumpeter.

Except that everybody knows that Herbert Hoover was no supporter of free markets, including Calvin Coolidge who called his Secretary of Commerce "Wonderboy" because of his never-ending desire to intervene somewhere in the economy.

Quick who said the following in 1926, Herbert Hoover or FDR:

"The very essence of great production is high wages and low prices, because it depends upon a widening... consumption, only to be obtained from the purchasing-power of high real wages and increased standards of living."

No fair Googling. Another question, was it FDR or Hoover who setup the Reconstruction Finance Corporation?

It's well known that Hoover spent his entire career in government wanting to intervene in the economy, and when the Depression hit he did everything he could think of to prop up wages and so on, just as FDR did. The simple fact is that Hoover was the original New Dealer, even if FDR took Hoover's ideas and multiplied them.

"We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the Whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started." - Rexford Tugwell

As for the period prior to the Depression being "Austrian," please. The existence of the Federal Reserve, who caused a boom in the 1920's leading to an inevitable bust that turned into the Great Depression, precludes the notion that anybody was following Austrian prescriptions.

 

[orogenicman]

I surmise you don't know where that line is.

Drawing a line on people's property rights constitutes aggression.

I suspect you are confusing aggression with something else, like the law. Property rights are not open-ended: never have been nor should they be.

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Not supporting your extraordinary claim with facts is just lame. Try again.

You want me to support my opinion with facts? I might as well ask you to support your statement that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. You can only do so by resorting to your opinion. Regardless, individuals own their own bodies, because there is no other logical choice, and private property flows from the idea of self-ownership. So if I am the sole owner of my body, it must constitute aggression for somebody to tell me how I must then use my body. Drug laws, for example, constitute aggression against an individual's property right in themselves.

Yes, when having a discussion, it is, in fact, useful to present facts to support a claim. And yes, even opinions should, when possible, be supported by the facts. You didn't know this? Huh. My statement was that property rights are not open-ended, as demonstrated by the legal concept of eminent domain. Ever hear of it? As to your absurd argument that if someone tells you what to do with your body they are committing an act of aggression, do you consider it an act of aggression when your doctor tells you to lose weight? The entire premise of your argument comes down to your suggestion that a person's body is considered to be property. Sorry, that 19th century concept just doesn't hold water in the 21st century. Try again.

 

[orogenicman]

I suspect you are confusing aggression with something else, like the law. Property rights are not open-ended: never have been nor should they be.

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Give me examples? Almost all property laws are local ordinances.

You're thinking of property in narrow terms. One can say that an individual has a property right in their own body, for example, so a law that says we can't smoke marijuana is a violation of everybody's property right in their own body. But we might also say that local laws that forbid smoking in restaurants or bars are violations of the property rights of the owners of the restaurant or bar.

Except that none of your examples are examples of property rights, much less the law violating property rights.

Of course they are. That you think of property rights in only narrow terms doesn't change the fact.

That you consider a human body to be property doesn't change the fact that it is not.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Drawing a line on people's property rights constitutes aggression.

I suspect you are confusing aggression with something else, like the law. Property rights are not open-ended: never have been nor should they be.

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Not supporting your extraordinary claim with facts is just lame. Try again.

You want me to support my opinion with facts? I might as well ask you to support your statement that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. You can only do so by resorting to your opinion. Regardless, individuals own their own bodies, because there is no other logical choice, and private property flows from the idea of self-ownership. So if I am the sole owner of my body, it must constitute aggression for somebody to tell me how I must then use my body. Drug laws, for example, constitute aggression against an individual's property right in themselves.

Yes, when having a discussion, it is, in fact, useful to present facts to support a claim. And yes, even opinions should, when possible, be supported by the facts. You didn't know this? Huh. My statement was that property rights are not open-ended, as demonstrated by the legal concept of eminent domain. Ever hear of it? As to your absurd argument that if someone tells you what to do with your body they are committing an act of aggression, do you consider it an act of aggression when your doctor tells you to lose weight? The entire premise of your argument comes down to your suggestion that a person's body is considered to be property. Sorry, that 19th century concept just doesn't hold water in the 21st century. Try again.

You also claimed that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. Prove it.

Regardless, no, it is not an act of aggression for a doctor to tell a patient to lose weight. It would, however, be an act of aggression for that doctor to force that patient to eat what the doctor thinks is proper under threat of violence. If you're going to make analogies, try to make them analogous.

Going back to the earlier point: Prove that the concept of self-ownership doesn't hold water today.

Moving on, again, I have a few questions: If self-ownership is nonsense, then who owns your body? If self-ownership is nonsense, then how does a person own anything? You've said that property rights shouldn't be open-ended, but are you saying that property rights shouldn't exist at all or do you draw a line somewhere? If so, where and how?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Give me examples? Almost all property laws are local ordinances.

You're thinking of property in narrow terms. One can say that an individual has a property right in their own body, for example, so a law that says we can't smoke marijuana is a violation of everybody's property right in their own body. But we might also say that local laws that forbid smoking in restaurants or bars are violations of the property rights of the owners of the restaurant or bar.

Except that none of your examples are examples of property rights, much less the law violating property rights.

Of course they are. That you think of property rights in only narrow terms doesn't change the fact.

That you consider a human body to be property doesn't change the fact that it is not.

Why isn't it? If it's not property then what is it; by what right does anybody, including the government or "the people," exert control over anybody else's body?

 

[Bfgrn]

Thank you Kevin. Your reply has exposed who and what you really are. You are not for liberty or freedom, you are for creating the ultimate tyranny of robber barons. Here is where your true far right wing corporatism reveals itself. And your idea of freedom is to create a iron fisted hierarchy to rule over the masses. With stated SEVERE punishment for any lowly worker who doesn't submit to total submission. Pining for and embracing of the LEAST free eras in American history, the Gilded Age. Worker freedom to strike is criminalized, yet monopolies would be welcomed.

You are beyond ignorant. You have ZERO understanding of human nature, power and how it manifests. You support the exact same tyranny that these far right wing pea brains support...

Kevin Kennedy and cohorts...

Actually, my reply made only the point that you were a hypocrite for calling anarchists brainless on the one hand, while quoting one to make some sort of point on the other.

Actually it was much more personal...I was talking about you...

Actually, you just quoted Noam Chomsky. You weren't talking about anybody.

No, I quoted David Korten, and you merely quoted reactionary crap from the Austrian school of mass destruction.

So you admit to having said nothing, and merely copy and pasting something completely irrelevant.

I see that when confronted with facts, you are unable to do anything but punt. Ironic that your reply is to a post that is 100% my writing.

I will REPEAT it for you...

Thank you Kevin. Your reply has exposed who and what you really are. You are not for liberty or freedom, you are for creating the ultimate tyranny of robber barons. Here is where your true far right wing corporatism reveals itself. And your idea of freedom is to create a iron fisted hierarchy to rule over the masses. With stated SEVERE punishment for any lowly worker who doesn't submit to total submission. Pining for and embracing of the LEAST free eras in American history, the Gilded Age. Worker freedom to strike is criminalized, yet monopolies would be welcomed.

You are beyond ignorant. You have ZERO understanding of human nature, power and how it manifests. You support the exact same tyranny that these far right wing pea brains support...

Kevin Kennedy and cohorts...

 

[bripat9643]

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Give me examples? Almost all property laws are local ordinances.

You're thinking of property in narrow terms. One can say that an individual has a property right in their own body, for example, so a law that says we can't smoke marijuana is a violation of everybody's property right in their own body. But we might also say that local laws that forbid smoking in restaurants or bars are violations of the property rights of the owners of the restaurant or bar.

Except that none of your examples are examples of property rights, much less the law violating property rights.

Of course they are. That you think of property rights in only narrow terms doesn't change the fact.

That you consider a human body to be property doesn't change the fact that it is not.

The fact is your body is your property. If it isn't, then the concept of property is nonsensical.

 

[bripat9643]

Drawing a line on people's property rights constitutes aggression.

I suspect you are confusing aggression with something else, like the law. Property rights are not open-ended: never have been nor should they be.

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Not supporting your extraordinary claim with facts is just lame. Try again.

You want me to support my opinion with facts? I might as well ask you to support your statement that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. You can only do so by resorting to your opinion. Regardless, individuals own their own bodies, because there is no other logical choice, and private property flows from the idea of self-ownership. So if I am the sole owner of my body, it must constitute aggression for somebody to tell me how I must then use my body. Drug laws, for example, constitute aggression against an individual's property right in themselves.

Yes, when having a discussion, it is, in fact, useful to present facts to support a claim. And yes, even opinions should, when possible, be supported by the facts. You didn't know this? Huh. My statement was that property rights are not open-ended, as demonstrated by the legal concept of eminent domain. Ever hear of it?

Hmmmm . . . wrong. Eminent Domain is a violation of your rights. Whoever said there was anything valid about it? Legal concepts are one thing. RIghts are another.

As to your absurd argument that if someone tells you what to do with your body they are committing an act of aggression, do you consider it an act of aggression when your doctor tells you to lose weight?

Since he didn't make that claim, you're just knocking down a straw man.

The entire premise of your argument comes down to your suggestion that a person's body is considered to be property. Sorry, that 19th century concept just doesn't hold water in the 21st century. Try again.

Most concepts of rights come from the 18th century, so they must be all wrong, eh? Does the First Amendment hold water in the 21st century? Valid concepts do not become obsolete. That argument is just a cheap leftwing ploy.

 

[orogenicman]

Give me examples? Almost all property laws are local ordinances.

You're thinking of property in narrow terms. One can say that an individual has a property right in their own body, for example, so a law that says we can't smoke marijuana is a violation of everybody's property right in their own body. But we might also say that local laws that forbid smoking in restaurants or bars are violations of the property rights of the owners of the restaurant or bar.

Except that none of your examples are examples of property rights, much less the law violating property rights.

Of course they are. That you think of property rights in only narrow terms doesn't change the fact.

That you consider a human body to be property doesn't change the fact that it is not.

The fact is your body is your property. If it isn't, then the concept of property is nonsensical.

Property can be bought and sold. The human body cannot legally or ethically be bought and sold, and thus is not property. You 19th centurions really should get up to speed; Clue - this is the 21st century.

 

[orogenicman]

I suspect you are confusing aggression with something else, like the law. Property rights are not open-ended: never have been nor should they be.

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Not supporting your extraordinary claim with facts is just lame. Try again.

You want me to support my opinion with facts? I might as well ask you to support your statement that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. You can only do so by resorting to your opinion. Regardless, individuals own their own bodies, because there is no other logical choice, and private property flows from the idea of self-ownership. So if I am the sole owner of my body, it must constitute aggression for somebody to tell me how I must then use my body. Drug laws, for example, constitute aggression against an individual's property right in themselves.

Yes, when having a discussion, it is, in fact, useful to present facts to support a claim. And yes, even opinions should, when possible, be supported by the facts. You didn't know this? Huh. My statement was that property rights are not open-ended, as demonstrated by the legal concept of eminent domain. Ever hear of it?

Hmmmm . . . wrong. Eminent Domain is a violation of your rights. Whoever said there was anything valid about it? Legal concepts are one thing. RIghts are another.

As to your absurd argument that if someone tells you what to do with your body they are committing an act of aggression, do you consider it an act of aggression when your doctor tells you to lose weight?

Since he didn't make that claim, you're just knocking down a straw man.

The entire premise of your argument comes down to your suggestion that a person's body is considered to be property. Sorry, that 19th century concept just doesn't hold water in the 21st century. Try again.

Most concepts of rights come from the 18th century, so they must be all wrong, eh? Does the First Amendment hold water in the 21st century? Valid concepts do not become obsolete. That argument is just a cheap leftwing ploy.

Eminent Domain (The right of the government to take private property and convert it into public use. The Fifth Amendment provides that the government may only exercise this right if they provide just compensation to the property owners. see, e.g. Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. 458 US 419 (1982).) is entirely legal, as indicated by numerous Supreme Court rulings.

As for the gentleman's premise, using your logic, human slavery is still entirely legal and moral. Since that is not the case neither here in the states nor anywhere else, non-sequitur.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Actually, my reply made only the point that you were a hypocrite for calling anarchists brainless on the one hand, while quoting one to make some sort of point on the other.

Actually it was much more personal...I was talking about you...

Actually, you just quoted Noam Chomsky. You weren't talking about anybody.

No, I quoted David Korten, and you merely quoted reactionary crap from the Austrian school of mass destruction.

So you admit to having said nothing, and merely copy and pasting something completely irrelevant.

I see that when confronted with facts, you are unable to do anything but punt. Ironic that your reply is to a post that is 100% my writing.

I will REPEAT it for you...

Thank you Kevin. Your reply has exposed who and what you really are. You are not for liberty or freedom, you are for creating the ultimate tyranny of robber barons. Here is where your true far right wing corporatism reveals itself. And your idea of freedom is to create a iron fisted hierarchy to rule over the masses. With stated SEVERE punishment for any lowly worker who doesn't submit to total submission. Pining for and embracing of the LEAST free eras in American history, the Gilded Age. Worker freedom to strike is criminalized, yet monopolies would be welcomed.

You are beyond ignorant. You have ZERO understanding of human nature, power and how it manifests. You support the exact same tyranny that these far right wing pea brains support...

Kevin Kennedy and cohorts...

When you actually post something of substance I'll respond to it. "You're evil and want to turn people into serfs" doesn't make the cut. Perhaps you should stick to copying and pasting what others have to say.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

You're thinking of property in narrow terms. One can say that an individual has a property right in their own body, for example, so a law that says we can't smoke marijuana is a violation of everybody's property right in their own body. But we might also say that local laws that forbid smoking in restaurants or bars are violations of the property rights of the owners of the restaurant or bar.

Except that none of your examples are examples of property rights, much less the law violating property rights.

Of course they are. That you think of property rights in only narrow terms doesn't change the fact.

That you consider a human body to be property doesn't change the fact that it is not.

The fact is your body is your property. If it isn't, then the concept of property is nonsensical.

Property can be bought and sold. The human body cannot legally or ethically be bought and sold, and thus is not property. You 19th centurions really should get up to speed; Clue - this is the 21st century.

Of course it is. Do you not work for a living? Are you not then selling your labor, an extension of the property right in your own body?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Where the law violates property rights the law is aggression.

Not supporting your extraordinary claim with facts is just lame. Try again.

You want me to support my opinion with facts? I might as well ask you to support your statement that property rights shouldn't be open-ended. You can only do so by resorting to your opinion. Regardless, individuals own their own bodies, because there is no other logical choice, and private property flows from the idea of self-ownership. So if I am the sole owner of my body, it must constitute aggression for somebody to tell me how I must then use my body. Drug laws, for example, constitute aggression against an individual's property right in themselves.

Yes, when having a discussion, it is, in fact, useful to present facts to support a claim. And yes, even opinions should, when possible, be supported by the facts. You didn't know this? Huh. My statement was that property rights are not open-ended, as demonstrated by the legal concept of eminent domain. Ever hear of it?

Hmmmm . . . wrong. Eminent Domain is a violation of your rights. Whoever said there was anything valid about it? Legal concepts are one thing. RIghts are another.

As to your absurd argument that if someone tells you what to do with your body they are committing an act of aggression, do you consider it an act of aggression when your doctor tells you to lose weight?

Since he didn't make that claim, you're just knocking down a straw man.

The entire premise of your argument comes down to your suggestion that a person's body is considered to be property. Sorry, that 19th century concept just doesn't hold water in the 21st century. Try again.

Most concepts of rights come from the 18th century, so they must be all wrong, eh? Does the First Amendment hold water in the 21st century? Valid concepts do not become obsolete. That argument is just a cheap leftwing ploy.

Eminent Domain (The right of the government to take private property and convert it into public use. The Fifth Amendment provides that the government may only exercise this right if they provide just compensation to the property owners. see, e.g. Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. 458 US 419 (1982).) is entirely legal, as indicated by numerous Supreme Court rulings.

As for the gentleman's premise, using your logic, human slavery is still entirely legal and moral. Since that is not the case neither here in the states nor anywhere else, non-sequitur.

You're not very good at making analogies or following logic, apparently. Slavery is an act of aggression whereby one individual violently aggresses against the property right another individual has in their own body. Slavery is a violation of the idea of self-ownership, in other words. As for eminent domain, even if it were constitutional that says nothing about whether or not it constitutes aggression. Slavery was also constitutional in the beginning, and yet it was still aggression.

I note, however, that you failed to respond to either of my previous posts attempting to clarify your views.