Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[a500lbgorilla]

just watch the first 15 seconds... and then all of the rest of his lectures.

[Renton]

I'll be honest. I don't even know what this sentence means.

And is this with a gov't or without? Because if it's without a gov't, we're looping way back around to one of my original points. Solve one problem over here in the market place, create others over here against marauders and theives.

Free market interest is simply a state where banks or whomever can lend at whatever rates they need to in order to cover their bets. Additionally, they would need to insure their deposits by private means, and thus would be financially accountable for the risks they take with depositors' money.

Free market currency is a state where banks or whomever can issue their own brand of legal tender and trade with others. Or it could be a cryptocurrency. Or it could be a government fiat currency where the gov't doesn't have the authority to inflate it whenever they want. Anything but the current system.

French revolution, though?

What we see is all there is. Just because you can't think of one, doesn't mean their isn't one. Just because you can't think of how the Free Market might fail, doesn't mean it can't.

Yes, armed rebellion is one of the rare ways in which governments-run-amok receive comeuppance. My point is that the self-accountability is not, nor has it ever been, an important component of modern government. It is built in to market activity though. Also, I'm not sure we have the same standards for what constitutes a market failure. Maybe you could make a post about some situations that you would consider to be market failures, real or hypothetical.

I read a really great comment in a reddit thread that helps highlight what I don't like about the way you make your cases, Renton. Your beliefs are always so crystalline and absolute. This is how it would be. That you believe things about the free market and its consequences which are obvious. That people just need to be convinced of the viability of stateless police forces and justice systems. That the state is overwhelmingly sociopathic and dolling out maximal damage to all it governs...

Look, the farther you get into anarcho-capitalism, the farther you have to wander into theory land. That's just the way it is when proposals become farther and farther removed from current reality. That's why I have low interest in talking about strictly stateless society in this thread. The positions that I have absolute confidence in are demonstrable woes of state policy and boons of free enterprise. There is no theory necessary to prove that stepped-on currency is bad for us. There are no logical leaps required to prove that >95% of price control regulations hurt more people than they help. There's every reason to believe that individual liberties are nearly universally good and coercive acts nearly universally wrong.

I never said that the state is overwhelmingly sociopathic. I said that it is a mechanism that attracts sociopathic alphas into a position that they're able to cause maximum damage. Evil-doers are a pretty tiny percentage of the population regardless if there is a state or not, and their lack of empathy for others all but ensures that they'll thrive. The only difference is that arbitrary authority allows them to leverage their mayhem on a larger scale than would be otherwise possible, and the state usually shields them from much of the liability for their behavior. Police officers are an excellent example of this.

[CoccoBill]

I never said that the state is overwhelmingly sociopathic. I said that it is a mechanism that attracts sociopathic alphas into a position that they're able to cause maximum damage. Evil-doers are a pretty tiny percentage of the population regardless if there is a state or not, and their lack of empathy for others all but ensures that they'll thrive. The only difference is that arbitrary authority allows them to leverage their mayhem on a larger scale than would be otherwise possible, and the state usually shields them from much of the liability for their behavior. Police officers are an excellent example of this.

I tend to think no "evil" or "good" exists in the traditional sense. Pretty much all sane, whatever that means, people tend to want good things for the people they care about, and are indifferent to a varying degree to all others. From what I've read there's no strong genetic component to this, it's mostly all caused by social factors, such as poverty, inequality, personal tragedy.

I'd argue that looking into the actions and aims of everyone, you would see they're working towards what they think is "good" and just, according to their own moral frame of reference. Terrorists are trying to avenge their loved ones and fight the (perceived or real) oppression. Hitler was trying to make the world better according to his own set of ideals that we're (need I say it?) obviously twisted. The circle of friends you care about may vary people to people, but it seems our tribal past makes this circle usually pretty small, from tens to hundreds of people, out of the 7 billion.

If you're not related to someone, not born in the same country/state/city/neighborhood, share the same core beliefs or root for the same causes or soccer teams, chances are they don't give a shit about you. They may not be actively trying to harm you, but might do that in a blink of an eye if they feel you're threatening their circle, or at least won't necessarily lift a finger even if they see you being wronged. There's no evil, just indifference and conflicting goals. My point being, potential evil-doers aren't a tiny percentage of the population, but the vast majority, arguably everyone.