Anarcho-Capitalism, Voluntarism &amp; Alternatives - My Response to @kafkanarchy84; RE: @dannyshine

kafkanarchy84 (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

Thanks for the video!

I think the main disconnect here is that you are viewing Anarcho-Capitalism/Voluntaryism as a system, and I am simply viewing it as the respect of the objective reality of individual self-ownership. I also think you are conflating free trade with the state at times.

Free trade works for me in my life nearly flawlessly every day. Most individuals I know in my day to day life share their resources with those in need freely, want to help others, and want to keep the fruits of their own labor. In this sense, anarchism is here and is working State embedded corporations, banks, and politicians, however, do not help others in this way and are greedy, but this is not how I would define free trade/capitalism.

Regarding the hippies, that was spoken a bit flippantly, I suppose, but I did not mean that "hippies" honestly cheated by the state/having nothing are selfish. I reference, for example, the Bernie Sanders supporter types. These folks don't think twice before advocating the application of violent force to secure resources for themselves.

As for the human dignity quote, you totally mischaracterized it! I feel like it was pretty clear that I meant that the absence of dignity would be slavery, instead of sharing value for value, and acknowledging your fellow human beings' self-ownership, beauty, and dignity. I NEVER SAID MONEY "MAKES FREEDOM!" That is absurd, you are correct, and I never argued that.

If a person acts immorally because of money, it is a character flaw, and not a flaw with money itself. That does not logically stand. Even in the absence of money, I may not want to work to plant my food. However, this is the reality of life. Money does not corrupt. Corruption corrupts. Some work must be done, even if we do not "want" to, to survive.

You have severely misunderstood me here man. The reason I am for Voluntaryism is because I care about folks! :)

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago (edited)

You are welcome!

I think the main disconnect here is that you are viewing Anarcho-Capitalism/Voluntaryism as a system, and I am simply viewing it as the respect of the objective reality of individual self-ownership.

Capitalism is a system, by every definition I know of it. Anarchy isn't really a system, but the capitalist part is. I also don't really think that voluntarism is synonymous with capitalism since it is possible to volunteer without commerce, trade or 'ownership' being involved.

It seems that the philosophical issue of the definition of ownership is more relevant than I thought then.

Free trade works for me in my life nearly flawlessly every day. Most individuals I know in my day to day life share their resources with those in need freely, want to help others, and want to keep the fruits of their own labor. In this sense, anarchism is here and is working State embedded corporations, banks, and politicians, however, do not help others in this way and are greedy, but this is not how I would define free trade/capitalism.

The problem I have tried to point out is that while these approaches might work for some people - just as all economic systems work for some people (including even communism) - the real measure is how they work overall, holistically. In my experience, capitalism does not really attempt to address it's failures to a radical enough degree. I'm sure the empire builders of the world think that capitalism works fine for them too and might even think of themselves as altruistic - such as when Dollar Bill Gates 'gives billions' in toxic vaccines to otherwise relatively healthy children, but there is always another side to the story.. I am not comparing you to an evil empire builder, I am just pointing out that a way of living that involves capitalism cannot be properly tested until it is widely adopted. I totally agree that your approach is better than the mainstream version of it - I just think we can do better still.

I reference, for example, the Bernie Sanders supporter types. These folks don't think twice before advocating the application of violent force to secure resources for themselves.

I see, I don't think these people can correctly be called 'hippies' - I'm not sure what the right word for them is though as I haven't studied them closely enough.

As for the human dignity quote, you totally mischaracterized it! I feel like it was pretty clear that I meant that the absence of dignity would be slavery, instead of sharing value for value, and acknowledging your fellow human beings' self-ownership, beauty, and dignity. I NEVER SAID MONEY "MAKES FREEDOM!" That is absurd, you are correct, and I never argued that.

Fair enough, perhaps a better choice of words would have made the difference. If we talk digital face to digital face, we can prevent these misunderstandings ;)

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finnian (58) · 7 years ago (edited)

I also don't really think that voluntarism is synonymous with capitalism since it is possible to volunteer without commerce, trade or 'ownership' being involved.

I see this more and more these days, and it really bothers me. Voluntarism and Voluntaryists are not called those things because of volunteering. It seems some people are trying to change the definitions of the terms.

This isn't about volunteering.

It is about interactions between humans being voluntary opposed to forced. It is a separation between people who seek to control others and those who do not. I have no desire to control other people for any reason. That makes me a voluntaryist!

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

I do understand that, when I said 'volunteering', that is what I meant. Interactions between people being voluntary IS volunteering, to me - this is a somewhat rare case of differences just being semantic to me.

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finnian (58) · 7 years ago (edited)

I've seen a lot of people on here using the term voluntarist or voluntaryist to mean volunteering to do community work as in feeding the homeless. If you ask them about why they are using that term, they will feign ignorance too. I have never heard of that type of volunteer work being called voluntarism before either.

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Oh, I see, ok - we have inherited a mental boundary around what volunteering is that is quite limited and I can understand why using the word voluntarism to describe such a limited concept of voluntary action would be a trigger.

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kafkanarchy84 (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

I'm sure the empire builders of the world think that capitalism works fine for them too and might even think of themselves as altruistic - such as when Dollar Bill Gates 'gives billions' in toxic vaccines to otherwise relatively healthy children, but there is always another side to the story.. I am not comparing you to an evil empire builder, I am just pointing out that a way of living that involves capitalism cannot be properly tested until it is widely adopted.

Bill Gates is not a capitalist though, in the Voluntaryist sense of the word. He leverages state power and violent monopoly.

Free trade is simply nature. The ability to trade and be, freely. This is already happening worldwide, but is suppressed by the state. Any system which would work holistically must always protect the natural law rights of the smallest minority, which is the individual, whose right is self-ownership. I agree it should be allowed to function on a large scale, but regardless of how many engage in free trade, and whether they are able to or not, allowing free trade remains the only moral choice. Anything else would require the application of aggressive force.

I really appreciate that you are an advocate for vaccine injury awareness. I am as well. That is excellent.

As for the hippies, yes, perhaps I was lazy with my word choice there.

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freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

Ancrap is an oxymoron.

Good luck getting morons to read, especially to prove themselves wrong,....

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

hehe.. thanks for the link. I wrote a piece about the oxymoronic nature of the idea here:
https://steemit.com/freedom/@ura-soul/anarcho-capitalism-contradiction-in-terms-oxymoron-or-not-does-anarchy-truly-mean-no-overpowering

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cryptosharon (69) · 7 years ago (edited)

People have been putting me in anarcho-capitalist groups for a year now. I don't know if I have an anarcho-capitalist air about me, or if I just hang out in areas where other anarcho-capitalists usually hang out. But the Ancap scene follows me.

I'll be watching your video for an hour, I'm sure it'll hold some pretty interesting views and arguments...

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Oh ok, maybe they just see that you like anarchist principles and also using money?

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cryptosharon (69) · 7 years ago

Lol, that may be it. I don't have any problem with money except for the fact that it's usually imposed and controlled by parties whom I don't like I don't like authority in general, I prefer being independent of contracts I didn't agree to).

So... maybe I'm ancap, or just anarchist, or Stirnerist, or whatever, I don't tag myself much because it means a compromise to a whole system and they're usually too complex and have too many implications. I'm bound not to like some of these.

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sailormann (48) · 7 years ago

Ancaps tend to be pretty financially engaged especially the ones on this site because of their interest in crypto-currency. Maybe its the "crypto" in your name?

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cryptosharon (69) · 7 years ago

Nah, I mean on other sites where I don't have Crypto in my name. And mm, I like cryptocurrencies. They give me independent financial power. <3

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sailormann (48) · 7 years ago

Interesting post. I think people need to discuss more like this, in order to keep the ideas flowing. That way we can all learn from each other and contribute to the anarchist ideology and make it better!

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revisesociology (73) · 7 years ago

I'll look forward to watching all of these @ some point over the next few days!

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beautybangladesh (49) · 7 years ago

This one is outstanding post.I appreciate your post..

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parsie (44) · 7 years ago

thanks for the video...everybody wants freedom...because freedom brings a happy life

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(https://steemit.com/anarchy/@joesal/the-pareto-problem-and-capitalism)

joesal (45) · 7 years ago (edited)

I am sorry I missed this when it came out.
There are a couple points I would like to make early on. The first is about the definition of capitalism versus the outcome results implied to capitalism in the video.

Nearly everything you have implied as a negative about the results of capitalism come from a social construct of/in capitalism. I think Commerce is the biggest and most repeatedly mentioned one. I don't view the social constructs built within and around capitalism as capitalism at all. That is a form of socialism, often socialism for the elites.

Capitalism is a subjective value exchange, one thing for another without a risk/chance process involved.

Much of the inequality based outcomes you attribute can be attributed to two specific things:
-Market capture by a social construct
-Pareto distributions from chance processes in social constructs

on those grounds I would say much what people are calling problems of capitalism are in fact problems of social constructs.

Once capitalism is localized to owner operators you don't see as much of the problems pointed out by the marxist thinkers of 'absent owners'.

I guess to talk of this as a systems type discussion, we would be talking free trading, adaptive, self programming voluntary nodes that couldn't take over a (social)system or another node. Each node operates independently so you wouldn't see system wide cascade failures (or capture), it's about as systemless as it can get IMO.

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Nearly everything you have implied as a negative about the results of capitalism come from a social construct of/in capitalism. I think Commerce is the biggest and most repeatedly mentioned one. I don't view the social constructs built within and around capitalism as capitalism at all. That is a form of socialism, often socialism for the elites.

I only know of definitions of capitalism that include the concepts of private ownership and trade/commerce. For example, this dictionary definition:

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Commerce and trade are typically noted as synonymous in dictionaries - https://www.wordnik.com/words/trade

While I will happily agree that dictionaries are in no way to be taken as the primary source of definitions for language, I am not aware of definitions that differ from their default position.

You wrote in the linked post:

When I think of capitalism it involves individuals trading equivalent subjective values of services or products.

Is trade not commerce?

The problems, from my perspective, have several origins and key features - but i am sure they extend beyond the aspects of chance and gambling. The key point I made several times is that as soon as territory and ownership are defined, with the capacity for capital to increase - those who 'aren't in the game' will forever be forced to suffer.. Capitalism therefore is wholly unsupportive of any other options - it is therefore a kind of social/economic bully that demands compliance.

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