As my wife practices Van Halen's "Right Now" on the piano in the other room, and I am feeling rather inspired by the sounds and lyrical power of that song, I decided now would be as good a time as any to clear up what I feel are some naggingly persistent misconceptions about the ideas of market anarchism, Voluntaryism, and Anarcho-Capitalism. I will use these three terms interchangeably in this post (this really isn't much of a simplification, as the terms are basically synonymous), in the interest of not getting lost in unimportant (when it all comes down to it) semantic nuance.
So, with all that out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks.
1. No, market anarchism is not "chaos."
Market anarchism, Voluntaryism, and Anarcho-Capitalism are names for a system of building society based exclusively on individual self-ownership and private property (the definition of legitimate private property being derived from individual self-ownership). This means that the same social order holds individual self-ownership (the private property ethic) to be the ultimate arbiter in cases of conflict.
As such, things like police, security firms, arbitration services, courts, and community ordinances ARE NOT "ruled out." The difference is, according to Anarcho-Capitalism, THEY MUST BE BASED EXCLUSIVELY ON INDIVIDUAL SELF-OWNERSHIP AND PRIVATE PROPERTY. No centralized, coercive government creates and enforces "the law" in any given community. Private property owners in that community do.
The reason for this is that under the current system called "government" laws and rules are created and enforced by a centralized body which claims to "own" vast geographical regions (countries, states, etc) without ever having legitimately acquired said property (through homesteading or some other legitimate means). No, the "governments" of today lay claim to vast geographical regions by scribbling on paper, and then using violence and threats of violence to enforce arbitrary rules in those regions:
Don't collect rainwater! Don't ge gay! Don't possess a plant! Don't make financial transactions without paying us!
Under a market anarchist system, what are considered "violations" are not based merely opinion, but on reality. As self-owning individuals (you possess highest, nature-conferred executive capacity in regard to your mind and body) valuing a minimally violent society, it objectively follows that this "self-ownership" must be respected in view of scarcity and the potential of conflict arising over rivalrous resources. Any system that says a certain class of people are government, and can choose how the rest will or will not use their minds and bodies, engenders conflict, as each individual possesses a unique will, wants, needs, and propensities.
THE ONLY THING THAT IS A TRUE VIOLATION, IS VIOLENCE.
Violence is violating someone. It is drone bombing weddings and funerals--innocent families just trying to survive. It is a cop taking a father away from his family because he was smoking cannabis, while the opinion of the state says that this activity is "wrong." Even if this father was harming no one, and not violating anyone else's self-ownership, the state finds it acceptable to steal him from his children and wife, and put him in a cage. He did not VOLUNTARILY agree to be governed by such a restriction, but was born into a political region called a "country" that criminalizes a plant. His is the victimhood of a kid on a massive playground dominated by an especially cruel bully known as the state.
IMPORTANT POINT: SOME COMMUNITIES OF PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNERS MAY WISH TO BAN CANNABIS. THIS IS TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE IF BASED EXCLUSIVELY ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. Look, I cannot come into your house and just do whatever I want, right? Why? Because it is your private property. It is the same principle at work here. If a group of landowners or joint landowners decide to govern the land they own in this way, it is totally acceptable, because they are not telling other land owners how THEY must act on THEIR property, but are simply dictating what may or may not be done on theirs.
If nature wanted us to be totally homogenous we would have all been a giant flesh blob that agrees with itself on everything. We are not. We are unique individuals with unique wants, desires and needs. As such we must recognize individual self-ownership if we want peace.
If this sounds too confusing please check out this amazing illustrated video on what a private law society would look like, and how needs can be met without a centralized, coercive state:
2. Hierarchies are not anti-thetical to market anarchism, or even anarchism defined loosely.
An-Archy simply means " without ruler." Some people misconstrue this to mean "without hierarchy" due to the shared etymological element "archos" in both words. This is merely a linguistic artifact that should not be stumbled upon. THE DIFFERENCE IS CLEAR: A HIERARCHY CAN BE VOLUNTARY. BEING "RULED" BY SOMEONE IS NEVER VOLUNTARY AS "RULE" REQUIRES THE APPLICATION OF FORCE AGAINST THE RULED.
In other words, I can take painting lessons, or apply for a job voluntarily, and there will still be a hierarchy in place which each party to the voluntary transaction accepts: I know my painting teacher will decide how the class is taught, and that my boss has ultimate say in how his (or her) business is run. There is nothing illegitimate or coercive about these hierarchical relationships as long as the transactions and agreements made therein are completely voluntary and consensual.
Even the different parts of a tree are arranged in a unified, hierarchical structure. And no, nature is not all pissed about it and holding protests against herself.
3. You can't have everything based on contracts and private property (individual self-ownership)! That would be a legalistic, complicated mess, and not feasible or practical at all!
Well, to those making this claim I say this: have you looked around at the world as it exists today? Nearly everything is a series of contracts and liabilities. Businesses operate smoothly within convoluted spider webs of legal partnerships and agreements. This big picture would boggle the mind of anyone when the whole vast and diverse web of human interaction is examined from a distance. How on earth could all of these billions of individuals work together without completely annihilating one another?
The world is still chugging along, and has not become (at least ubiquitously) a Mad Max wasteland. How much better to remove the violent and illegitimate actor (the state) from these fantasticly intermingled spiderwebs of human societal and economic transaction?
Instead of dropping bombs on infants, caging people for plants, and stealing money from billions under threat of violence (taxation), maybe we could actually be civilized and bring back the reality of human individual self-ownership as something society recognizes as the ultimate and foundational principle by which to live. This is not me asking that society conform to my personal opinion, but me asking that society conform to reality itself.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
impressive writing.. thanks for trying to spread the radical idea of voluntary exchange 👍
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So "radical," right ;)
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I appreciate your view on this. I am not one for labels, I have lived my life without asking permission of government and learned the rules in order to truly operate in the grey area. Thanks for your post, it makes my life choices not only my own. I am in good company.
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Thanks for this clarification. I'm not really a theory guy so the labels tend to confuse me. I'm mostly a "let's come to a consensus about a general direction we want to move in and what we can do right now and then play it by ear" kind of guy but it's good to know the general distinctions between different branches, especially this one which seems to be prevalent on steemit.
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Establishing an ethical foundation really is the key to figuring out how best to resolve disputes and avoid conflict. That's why theory is so important, and why I'm right there with @kafkanarchy84 on this. Once you have your ethics down and logically consistent, the "what we can do right now" tends to fall into place, though not necessarily always. :D
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The reason I don't focus much on theory is that there are always assumptions about human nature in the theory and in the process of reaching whatever our end goal is, we will indefinitely discover a different kind of human nature that correlates to the changing situation, we may not even recognize ourselves by that point. It's one thing to use history to guess about what we will look like, it's another to see it play out.
Some things I don't understand about this though is, if everything is based around privately property, who decides what belongs to who? What happens if I don't have the right to any land, couldn't it be considered violent to deny me the right to farm and build a house somewhere? @kafkaanarchy84 @anarcho-Andrei
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This is why theory is important: there are ethical ways to acquire property. You don't have a right to any land, the same way you don't have a right to have anything in the first place. You can acquire things through your own effort, and this is how property is justly acquired. In the case of land, this would require you to homestead it. Homesteading, basically, is altering a plot of land from its state of nature through your efforts. Through the process of, say, cultivating a plot of land into a small farm and building a house on it, you've homesteaded it. You have demonstrated and executed your exclusive use of that plot, thereby establishing your ownership of it. That ownership is just/ethical because you haven't used coercion against another individual to acquire it. You haven't violated anyone's bodily or property ownership.
This assumes that the land is unowned. Unowned is exactly what it sounds like: no one has homesteaded it and claimed it as theirs. If the area you move to has no unowned land, as would be the case in essentially any metropolitan area, there is no ethical way to homestead any land. The next best method is to engage in exchange with the owners of the land that has already been homesteaded. This can happen any number of ways, from renting a property from the owner, to purchasing the property and land claim from the homesteader.
The key is to avoid the use of coercion. Not having something is not coercion; you have no right of possession to anything except your body, and this is as a consequence of being born with it and having exclusive access to it.
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What discourages the hoarding and exploitation of land though? and what motivation would those who wish to control others have to not use coercion and violence? I don't want to equate the concept of ownership with greed but isn't it possible that they reinforce each other?
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How does one hoard land if one has to pay for its upkeep? A lot of the land grabbing we can see around us currently is due in large part to the monopoly of government on conflict resolution. They decide who gets what, and they can subsidize some at the expense of others. Consider how much effort it takes to actually secure your house against trespassers absent a socialized police force. How much would you have to spend in order to make sure your home was safe from intruders? The costs would actually be less, but individuals would have to pay them out of their own pockets; it wouldn't be taxes providing for them.
As for what motivation would disincent people from using coercion and violence? Simple. It's the same concept as to why it's not profitable to be a shit-tier human on Steemit, except with guns. Without a monopoly on decision making, individuals alone present little threat, and the threat they do pose is restricted by their access to resources. How terrifying would the US military be if they had to fund everything through what would essentially be bake sales? Who would willingly contribute to it knowing the numerous immoral acts it has engaged in?
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People don't necessarily have to keep up the land, what if they just buy it as a commodity that they could potentially make money or trade of in some other way that benefits them? It still seems like it would make way to a class of landowners and a class of tenants who would be subservient to them.
I am trying to understand because, at the very least, this all sounds a little bit better than what we have now, I just don't see how it would be sustainable coming from where we are coming.
As of now (and you are welcome to try and convince me otherwise, as I said, I'm more focused on what I can do to make the situation better right now), I see more potential in the idea that land belongs to no one, not a state, not an individual. Couple this with a return to a more tribal way of living where consensus is built within communities and then a similar consensus built between communities. I think these communities are already being formed now, as we speak and they're ability to solve problems efficiently would be pretty obvious if they weren't always the victims of coercion.
I think it's really impossible to come up with any substantial system or non-system that could really be sustainable if we don't first foster a culture of cooperation and interdependence and change the overall mentality from scarcity to abundance.
I am happy to learn more about your ideas though, the earlier we can find consensus with others the better :-D
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If land belongs to no one - that is, no one can claim exclusive use - who gets to use a particular plot for what end?
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As for purchasing land as a commodity, how would you prevent trespassers from attempting to utilize your land and homestead it in violation of your property ownership? You'd have to expend resources to secure it, which is in effect the upkeep of that land. Maintaining large tracts of land absent a socialized enforcement agency like government is costly (though cheaper than the funds used to that purpose currently) and it would have to be paid by the individual attempting to maintain that land as a commodity. Excluding people from unused land just to hoard it is a financially losing proposition except in the very long term, and one would have to be unimaginably wealth in order to maintain that claim over time.
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I would propose that in the case of land the correct property theory is that of the Individualist anarchists. They asserted that the only true title to land is 'use and possession.' That is, to rightly own land, you must be in possession of it. For example, you must be living on it, keeping it up etc. This would also follow for businesses. You can only own a business insofar as you must actively manage its day to day operations. This would prevent absentee ownership, or direction of operations from afar. However, it would leave ample room for incentive to work and accumulate wealth - up to a point. This would also solve the problem of vast and unaccountable hierarchies.
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Yes!
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:) I like that approach, too. Usually this kind of really specific groundwork has to be laid out painstakingly for the sake of difficult folks who think they can control and own other human beings. Thanks for the comment.
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Great piece.
We don't hate rules, we love rules. We just believe the best rules are written by the people with the most incentive to write good ones.
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That sums it up nicely.
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Why am I an anarchist? Because I love order. You nailed it.
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Nicely Written. Yes it's all about self-determination and basic morality.
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This could very well be a part of a possible voluntarist manifesto. Great writing man! Upped and resteemd!
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I've always been frustrated that the general public associates "anarchy" with chaos.
I would say that true chaos is when you have a government that changes laws and regulations every fucking minute of the day .
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Couldn't agree more.
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Today is Freedom Day, or Juneteenth, in America, the day blacks celebrate finding out they had been freed by Abraham Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation - two years after the speech.
I will point out that government is an agreement. You govern yourself all the time, every day, even at the point of a gun. Guns exist, and groups with guns exist. Before guns, sticks, and after guns, who knows?
Coercion will always be a part of human society, as long as humans run society. It is much of the basis for our interactions, because we are basically coercive thugs. You may be less so, and some of us may agree to be less so.
We don't need other group's permission to form groups.
Steemit is based on a debt based currency, votes, which are castable at will by curators and deliver wealth to content creator's accounts - or prevent others from doing that, in the form of a downvote.
Steemit is a plutocracy in which 99% of the rewards of creation and curation go to 1% of the accounts. Tomorrow HF19 goes into effect, and will cease squaring the power of wealth in votes. The best estimate I have seen is that 93% of rewards will go to 7% of accounts.
This is not an egalitarian system, and it likely never will be. It is potential however, to be free of coercion, if only votes were apportioned equal power. Today Steemit is controlled by wealth alone, and guns don't matter.
The concentration of wealth inequitably is inherently unjust. While the post market economy is coming, we need a better system than this in the meantime.
Anybody agree that we need a platform that allows votes to be equal in disbursing wealth?
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I do not think that vote value should be independznt of the amount of steem power you hold. In the end, that would mean that there is no reason to hold sp. We would all cash out, seeing steemprice plunge to a mere fraction of what it is today, and a vote would be reduced to the same meaningless value as a like on youtube.
In a fair society, your wealth is the result of your contributions to that society.
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"I do not think that vote value should be independznt of the amount of steem power you hold. In the end, that would mean that there is no reason to hold sp."
That completely ignores the value of Steem as an investment. Steem as a currency is based on the success of the Steemit platform. What grows that platform increases the value of Steem, regardless of it's value in curation.
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The value of anything is driven by thecdemand for it. The demand for something is driven by its use, and sometimes in the short run by speculation. Right now the only use for steem, is that it can be converted into sp, which gives you power in this community. Sure here and there you find someone on this website offering something for steem, but practically all its value lies in its abimity to give you power in the community. And im not only talking curation rewards for yourself, but the ability to reward good content with more power in the community.
Of in the future you get a network of goods and service suppliers who accept steem, only than will it have any other value.
I understand your point about equality and all, but go and take a look through the commenting dection here and on youtube. Which is the most productive of good meaningful conversation? That effect is created in part by the kbowledge that simply posting insults at someone else could hurt your account if as much as one whale where to flqg you. Something you do not get with equal voting power for all.
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I disagree that you would not get civility without inequity. I think that possibly offending people that can upvote you is just as powerful a mechanism as any based on downvotes.
The difference is that downvotes can also be used simply to cause harm. Upvotes can't do that.
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You mistate value. Value is not merely a reflection of demand, but relative to demand and supply.
Steem can be converted to BTC. Steem has value outside BTC, or Steemit, in myriad ways that are beyond this discussion. However, in the basic sense, Steemit is the justification and creator of the value of Steem.
That value is not only that it can be disbursed through voting, but that Steemit is incentivized, which makes it the only supply of incentivized social media platforms at present, and there is a demand for this. As long as Steemit is the sole supplier of this market, it will create value in Steem. This is a far greater driver of value in Steem than voting. It is not that Steem only has value as incentivizing votes, but rather that as votes incentivize creation and curation, the underlying currency gains value.
Competition in this market is coming. This matters because the silly games that Steemit potentiates to concentrate wealth are widely and rightly perceived as unfair, and people like fairness.
Platforms that are more fair will succeed at Steemit's expense, should Steemit not rectify this problem. This is the supply side of value, because as Steemit fails, Steem will fall in value.
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I supposed supply and demand was implied when I wrote demand. I agree that both are important, and right now, supply is being held low, because many authors choose to keep the steem which they earn. I would guess that the amount of steem which is for sale outside of steemit is fairly small compared to the amount of steempower.
That being said, I agree with you that perhaps better systems which are perceived as more fair might exist.
I am following you since this exchange: it would be interesting if you could write a slightly more elaborate post (as a stand alone post) on how you see equal voting power work for the good of steemit, and how you think people will feel motivated to keep their steempower in such a system.
Because that is what makes it incentivized, the fact that you can be rewarded for good content. If everybody dumps their SP, because they don't need it for their vote weights, and new users don't buy, because they don't need it to increase their voteweight, I believe the value of steem will crash. If 1 steem has a value of 0.00000154$, no-one will feel more incentivized than by a like on youtube.
It's great discussing here though. THis kind of discussions would have gone to the stage of a shouting match 3 posts ago on other social media.
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"THis kind of discussions would have gone to the stage of a shouting match 3 posts ago on other social media."
And THAT is why I care a great deal about Steemit. I very much believe in the power of conversations like we are having to expand understanding, and create a foundation on which is built a better world.
Apparently all my doom-saying on HF19 is FUD, and I could not be gladder about that. I'll have to continue to watch over time to ensure that things are actually more fair, but that seems presently to be the common perception.
This will be the most important test: author rewards diversification. Author rewards are the vast majority of all rewards on Steemit, and, because of how wealth impacted votes, were concentrated in a mere handful of accounts before now. If that number increases dramatically, I might even completely accede that the problem of perception of unfairness is gone.
Not likely, but conceivable.
Thanks for the follow! I hope I am worthy of your attention.
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Amen.
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Please speak for yourself, here. In my experience this is not true, and anyway, if you do believe this, why would any government work? I mean, it's always going to be comprised of thugs. Thugs to govern thugs?
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"Government is like fire, a fearful master, and a terrible servant." - Geo. Washington
"Let the people be armed." - Thos. Jefferson
I could go on, but the point is made.
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I am not a coercive thug. Are you?
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God, I hope not.
TBQH, the sum of human interaction is incalculable, and we prolly apply various pressures unconsciously in our intercourse. I can consider coercion to be limited to physical threats, or expand the definition to include implied threats of social unacceptability, or financial manipulations.
Viewed in that light, an honest person might find that it is not whether we are coercive, but to what degree.
I dunno, but I am deeply invested in allowing people to run their own lives, races, and mouths. Like you, I am not interested in any form of bullying, and find people that tend to the practices of confrontation and intimidation both unpleasant and, in the long run, void of most profound beneficence.
It is that latter quality I find most attractive in myself, and in people. Kindness is rivaled only by humility in how I value others, and desire to exhibit myself.
I earnestly hope your question doesn't imply I am!
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Haha. Not at all. If I am not mistaken, you said it in your comment above. "We are coercive thugs."
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There are already platforms that do this: Facebook, Youtube, etc. Want to guess how much your vote is worth, as well as everyone else's? You guessed it.
Concentration of wealth is not unjust. Wealth inequality is only unjust if that wealth is the result of actual coercion, and no, withholding work from someone is not coercion. Working to keep yourself from starving is not coercion; that's the state of nature. This is true offline as it is on Steemit. Nothing on Steemit is built on coercion.
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Inequity in wealth is only unjust if it results from coercion, or results in coercion. FTFY
There are myriad posts on Steemit complaining about how wealth is being used to oppress. It's not news, and neither my opinion, but a simple fact.
Other platforms mentioned do not deliver wealth through votes. Zero is not some. They are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. Competing platforms will soon exist. Thimk.
Nature is unjust.
Just read the posts of @krnel to see how linking wealth to votes is working out. Hint: it's not.
This kills the Steemit.
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No, there are a myriad of posts on Steemit that mistake what oppression is. Steemit is an entirely voluntary system, and all interactions are consensual on here.
Those platforms aren't irrelevant to the discussion, as they illustrate why wealth distribution is not egalitarian, nor should it be. Disincenting people from investing more time and effort will almost certainly result in a race to the bottom, with less quality and less engagement. This is one of the reasons socialism and communism are doomed to fail; equal outcomes for unequal inputs always results in a net negative.
If nature is unjust, why are you arguing for so-called justice? Why the push for egalitarianism?
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I seek justice precisely because I am not merely an animal.
You correctly point out the likely results of Steemit continuing to allow financial concentration of power in the hands of very few accounts. Isn't that exactly what happened last July?
What happened last July is proof that Steemit is voluntary, as people quit volunteering. They left. In droves. That's why HF19. HF19 will likely improve the situation by orders of magnitude, as currently 99% of rewards inure to 1% of accounts, and this (best estimate I have seen) will change to 93% of rewards will inure to 7% of accounts.
When automation does all work, as is coming, will you still advocate inequity?
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Unless and until automation can draw creatively from the world around it to produce literature and art, it won't do all the work. Secondly, automation does not preclude ownership, so as long as people exist, inequality will continue to be a thing. No two human beings are equal, and no individual is equal to himself at any two given points during a single day.
Exactly. The platform is voluntary. Ergo, there is no oppression here. Your sense of justice is strange and warped. You can't violate the laws of reality, and the reality is that people aren't equal. They're not equivalent, interchangeable units.
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Why does literature and art necessitate work? Food, shelter, communications and transport require work, and all are potentially automatible. Art is just fun.
If you're arguing for a world in which the owners of the robots ride golden escalators, while mere plebs live on Soylent Green, it is clear why you yearn for such a world. Once the market is no longer necessary, neither is wealth. The post market economy is coming.
While people are not interchangable, their rights are. You have no more right to open your mouth than I, regardless of our relative wealth. That is a reality Steemit has failed to mirror, and has cost Steemit already, and will cost Steemit further, until Steemit fixes this failure.
You claim that because participation is voluntary that oppression cannot occur. This is patently false. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
It is not I that am some malformed intellectual creature because I argue for fairness. People may not be equivalent units, but people have a plethora of common features and needs, and are equally endowed with rights.
We are not the same, but we are equal.
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Art is work. It's the expenditure of time and effort, as well as scarce resources. There is no such thing as a post-market economy. I'm not arguing that the owners of robots will be some magnificently wealthy 1%ers, so you can drop that strawman in a field somewhere. However, as robots will be owned until they become sentient (and likely surpass us as the next form of life on this planet), they will be property, and they will be owned, which means private property, and thus the market, will never disappear. This is the same nonsense that post-scarcity folks try to peddle.
The only right you have is against aggression. The only universal right every individual has it to have their consent respected. That's it. Voluntary interactions - exchanges that honor that consent - are not coercion, and they are not oppression.
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Here you have a good explanation of the core of your view of anarchy. In everything we understand, there is no difference in opinion. @kafkanarchy84
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Let's make basic question here:
On what basis do you claim ownership of land? The earth is not the property of anyone, how you can dare to steal a part of her?!?
By the way I am now sitting on the piece of land with your house and claim it for me. You are not going to force me away, are you?
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I certainly will force you away if I do not wish you to be there. Can I come to the restaurant where you are dining and steal your food after you've paid?
I own my body. Thus, I own the fruits of the labor of this body. If I homestead or acquire land with this body legitimately, it is mine.
Without a system based on the objective reality of self-ownership, chaos ensues.
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But when I don't accept this government-made rules?
Don't forget that "homesteading" is a legal construct that is only existent in a few countries. I certainly have never voluntarily agreed to that!!
And again - how can you legitimately acquire land if the land is something that cannot be owned? The earth is owned by no one! Only governments claim that they own it!
To force your view of land ownership on me is the same as what governments do. Where is the difference then? In that case I prefer government who can (at least theoretically) be hold accountable and changed.
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Excellent. I'll be at your house tonight to use your stuff, and sleep there. You don't own it, right?
The difference is that the government makes rules not based on the reality of self-ownership. If I am not on my property, I cannot force my rules on you, of course.
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I did not agree to your POV, so you don't have the right to put me under your rules.
On what basis do you claim ownership of land? The earth is not the property of anyone, how you can dare to steal a part of her?!?
Don't forget that "homesteading" is a legal construct that is only existent in a few countries. I certainly have never voluntarily agreed to that!!
And again - how can you legitimately acquire land if the land is something that cannot be owned? The earth is owned by no one! Only governments claim that they own it!
please answer those basics
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My friend, you are completely misunderstanding what I am saying here. I have no right to put you "under my rules."
However, if you come to my house, and barge in, I have total nature-conferred right to defend myself. You disagree? I do not have the nature-conferred right to defend my body?
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My friend, you either are not able to react to my questiosn or are will fully ignoring them. So lets make it very very easy, one question at a time:
On which basis do you put your claim on land that I should respect, if I do not agree with your government-induced "homesteading" legal fiction.
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If I, for example, use my body to build a cabin on unowned land, absent a government, you have no nature-conferred right to enter said cabin without invitation.
The reason for this is that you have no right to enter my body, or to aggress against my body. My cabin is a product of my body's labor expended over time. To claim you may also own the cabin is to claim ownership of the labor and time required to build it.
If you disagree with this, logically speaking, I do not need to request permission to enter your house, even if you do not wish me to.
Now I have answered. And now, I would like you to answer my question before we proceed. May I, at any time I wish, even if you do not wish me to, enter your house?
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The issue is not about 'owning the earth' or not. The fact is that as physical creatures we must occupy the earth and its fruits to survive. In some cases, conflicts may arise when two or more desire the same portion. Homesteading, and voluntarism are principles whose function is to provide a fair and equal mechanism whereby property may be legitimately acquired and exchanged without resort simply to 'might makes right.' These principles are being offered for acceptance, no one can force another to agree with them. However, it is hoped that if they have any value, they will be accepted toward a less chaotic and violent future
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I have learned a thing: if they can take it away, it was never really yours.
The rest is grace.
"The past is history. The future's a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present." Eleanore Roosevelt.
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I can take away your life...
But please now answer my questions. The stated goal of your post was to clear away misconceptions, so please do clear away mine.
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Yeah, you can end my life. What you cannot do is take away the life I have lived. This is the difference. My life lived I do own.
As to the rest of your questions, I agree with you. The way one governs themselves is government. If two people agree to govern themselves according to some rule, they form a mutual government. Government is nothing more than an agreement.
I am not aware of any misconceptions that may be obscuring your vision.
caveat: I am merely a fellow commenter, not the OP
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I personally favor ancap philosophy (capitalism as defined by Rothbard, Hoppe, and the like) for political and economic issues, but I don’t think that’s required to be a voluntaryist.
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Voluntaryism is just the simple recognition that all legitimate human interaction is voluntary.
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Congratulations @kafkanarchy84! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
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Love to read this. I wrote article about anarchy week ago https://steemit.com/anarchy/@cmoljoe/anarchy-and-voluntaryism-are-our-only-solutions
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https://steemit.com/freedom/@cmoljoe/road-to-freedom-series-2-the-myth-of-authority
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Uhhhhhh...the capitalist lass in your dystopia is the ruling class as they dictate what you do.
They dictate where you can live, as they own the land.
They dictate who can travel, as they own the roads.
They dictate who can eat, as they own the shops that sell.
They dictate who is imprisoned or killed, as they have the security/police in their pocket.
None of that is voluntary.
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Not talking about the state. I am not sure you understood what I was saying there in that quote. The state is definitely not a voluntaryist entity, but some hierarchies, such as in my employment and painting class example, are. Cheers!
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So you're saying that private ownership of industries doesn't exist?
That people can't hire private entities to police for them?
That they don't have the right to refuse basic services?
This is why I don't take "an"caps seriously as not only do they do no real life activism or coupes but they also seem to be unwilling to accept that a powerful capitalist is nothing less than a state, and because of how capitalism works there will always develop powerful capitalists.
The painting class is only voluntary if economic pressures don't force you to work there, earning way less than you produce, as otherwise you will literally die in a few days.
Hierarchy is not bad per-se, I agree, but hierarchy in capitalist is ruling, as you do not elect or simply follow the more experienced, but rather you're forced to follow the one with more power/wealth and what they decide.
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Not saying any of that. It seems like you missed where I am coming from in this post.
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Yes, exactly, and this is why I don't take "an"caps seriously, as I said before.
If I start out, earn good money, and then begin to buy all the land around me and rent it out, making even more money, expanding every month, then I leverage my property over residents saying they have to go out into the wild and starve unless they pay for me,meanwhile the only jobs around are owned by me, as I own all nearby property, are they not enslaved?
If I use that wealth to build a large long fence around a large population, then restricting the free movement of goods and building of roads, am I not the aggressor? Am I not acting essentially as a state does, but simply more openly for profit (or maybe even just my political goals)?
Honest question, do you understand the cost-per-good structure of the market, where if you purchase more of a product it will usually be cheaper?
Do you not understand how this creates monopolies and mega-corporations like we have today?
Do you not know the history on how these entities turned America, land of the mostly free, entire a corporate-fascist nightmare by beefing up the state and turning them into their puppet? They only used the state as it gives them a way to seem less driven by money. A capitalist can do the exact same, and they would.
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If you did all that stuff you mentioned in a free market absent a coercive, centralized state you would starve to death. The very people from which you might endeavor to "buy all the land" would refuse to do business with someone who would destroy them.
Also, as land is consumed, the price rises exponentially. The moment you "buy all of it" you have made everyone around you rich.
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In what way is it meaningfully different from a centralized state? The US government started fairly innocent, then some capitalists made money and changed that, slowly making their grasp wider. What makes you think a capitalist can't do that on their own?
Why would you refuse, especially if you were being economically raped? If I, the capitalist, owns the roads, and refuse to let you use them unless you sell me your home so I can rent it back to you, how exactly are you going to refuse if I already bought your neighbors or the surrounding area and you're fenced in from building other roads as a result?
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Great article, I completely agree.
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Very interesting steem thank you🌺 Did you do that drawing? It's awesome
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Thanks. No, it is not my drawing. I found it on Morguefile.com. Great place to find royality free images. I like it, too.
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I thought it went well with led zeppelin 😜
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:)
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https://steemit.com/philosophy/@hyacinthus/all-that-is-in-the-language-is-in-nature-but-not-everything-that-exists-in-nature-is-in-the-language
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As a humble suggestion. I would propose that in the case of land the correct property theory is that of the Individualist anarchists (Tucker, Spooner etc.)They asserted that the only true title to land is 'use and possession.' (Interestingly this is also the title to our own body). That is, to rightly own land, you must be in possession of it. For example, you must be living on it, keeping it up etc. This would also follow for businesses. You can only own a business insofar as you must actively manage its day to day operations. This would prevent absentee ownership, or direction of operations from afar. However, it would leave ample room for incentive to work and accumulate wealth - up to a point. This would also solve the problem of vast and unaccountable hierarchies.
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https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@babzbreezy/hello-steemit-an-introduction-of-myself
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Hello. You really should not spam other people's comment threads. Welcome to Steemit, all the same.
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I mean, that's nice and all, but it also seems to fly squarely in the face of human nature, or to insist on ignoring it to make an ideological point.
A few problems:
1> Acutally living in such a world would be a nightmare. Imagine a world where there were no overarching sets of laws, standards, a system in which traveling across state, county, city, neighborhood, even property lines means constantly entering and leaving fluctuating sets of laws. Perhaps here your marriage to a man is recognized, move into an apartment two streets over and you can't co-sign because the apartment owner doesn't like gay marriage, go to the next city over to a hospital and your husband can make medical choices on your behalf, get transferred to a specialist in the next county and now they can't, have to move a few hundred miles away for a great job and now you are a reviled sinner and your employer fires you upon finding out and nobody in town will hire you or serve you. And they only resource you'd have against such situations would be to try and find an area sympathetic enough to your homosexuality that you could buy property and encourage other gays to move there and do the same forming a gay mini nation where you can ensure you are treated with basic decency. Of course that is assuming the home owners in that area don't see what you are trying to do and set a gay quota, refusing to sell to additional gays beyond a certain point. You can think of a thousand other scenarios, but such a world would be hell for any demographic other than the dominant one in the culture.
2> Recourse against those who do cause harm would be difficult if not impossible. Say someone does bash your window in with a brick. What can you do? Well if they are a member of your homeowner's group that all agree to follow certain rules, perhaps you can level consequences against them, but what if they arent? To what authority do you then appeal for recompense? What if someone lives upstream from your community and is horribly polluting your water, but their actions are accepted, even approved of by the community they are part of as their industry benefits the community. What if that community neither needs nor wants your trade/partnership/business, and doesn't care how mad you are? To whom to you appeal with no larger governing body?
3>The Rise of tribes and warlords would be inevitable. At some point the gays would get tired of getting kicked around, town A would get real tired of being poisoned by town B, without larger governmental recourse the choices would be to either suck it up and deal with the status quo, or find some way to force satisfaction from the offending party. Violence would erupt, privately paid for police forces used to protect your community interest would evolve seemlessly into armies, and towns/communities/regions would no doubt erupt into war, with regional warlords absorbing territory.
4> What we have now is, in a sense, anarchy-capitalism. What we are looking at in our world right now, as of this moment, is the current state in a long and complicated series of systems and arrangements that primitive man has made to create greater security and prosperity for themselves. Rules that groups have agreed to live under, leadership and authority that rises naturally among pack animals taken and codified. Any system of anarcho-capitalism that did manage to strike a healthy and prosperous balance would have to essentially evolve something that is functionally the same as government.
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Thanks for your comment. I think maybe reading a little more about what market anarchism actually is might help to clear up some of your concerns.
The world is already like this now, isn't it? I can have CBD oil in Colorado, and then be put in a cage in Kansas if I take it there. I can run around naked in my house, but not in yours. Society is already loosely based on private property, just with a cancerous, coercive state heaped on top of it, perverting those ideas via the application of force against non-violent individuals.
I would encourage you to watch the video above in the post explaining private law society. How this would work ( and already does in so many ways) is covered there.
This is categorically false, as the bedrock and non-negotiable foundation of anarcho-capitalism is the axiomatic reality of self-ownership, and by extension, the Non-Agression Principle, which states that all legitimate human interaction is consensual. Government is based foundationally upon coercion. These two systems are diametrically opposed, by definition.
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1: That first part did not at all address the concern of the hypothetical minority traversing an unpredictable and diffulct landscape of hostile laws. Your reply that that already happens as things are now does nothing to address how infinitely worse it would be under your proposed arrangement.
2: I will watch that when I get home and see if it is some new take on law enforcement and anarchy that I've never heard before.
3: I disagree. Well I mean I agree that coercion is a major part of our actual reality, what I disagree with is that it is even remotely possible to create any kind of stable and prosperous system that did not involve coercion. My statement was that a system of government and coercive laws is what a species or originally private and free creatures have come up with due to the stability and prosperity it affords, and that any anarchic system would eventually have to adopt that model or fall into an inoperable mess.
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I don't find the chaos currently engulfing the world stable or prosperous. And no, rulers and violent people "came up" with applying force to rule. The second part, "...any anarchic system would eventually have to adopt that model or fall into an inoperable mess," is an assertion. You would have to substantiate it to make it a valid argument.
You'll have to have an open mind and understand that the philosophy is not a pacificistic one, either, as self-defense is necessary for self-preservation and a nature conferred capacity as a result of individual self-ownership.
Here's the video again.
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Your self defense is another man's aggression, and chasing long chains of incrementally escalating agression to find out who was the true aggressor and who was acting defensivly is a fool's errand. The world is full of places where such a question is beyond untangling.
In any event, I'm unlikly to change your mind, and that's fine, but this seems to me to fly directly in the face of everything we know about human nature.
I would only caution you against assuming that a person not seeing things your way means they lack an open, clear, or clever mind.
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Actually it has a very clear definition. You've made another assertion, but until you substantiate it, or ask how I define self-defense, this conversation will not be fruitful, I'm afraid.
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Many things with very clear definitions on paper aren't nearly so clear in the real world, even assuming that men are angels and pride/anger/tribalism won't skew or twist their opinion on matters.....which of course it will.
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We are talking fairly well-defined concepts. You keep moving the goalposts here. Thanks for the exchange.
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You are not @papa-pepper, my friend.
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I am flagging this comment because of the deceptively similar user name. Nothing personal, but I feel it is a bit dishonest. If I am misunderstanding this please let me know, and I will remove the flag.
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