Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[Renton]

Selfish people are going to cause mayhem regardless of the economic system. I don't want to give the idea that an unfettered free market world would be devoid of evil. I just don't think private evil can go unchecked nearly as easily as public evil can. It's something I've brought up before. The state attracts sociopaths to positions where they could cause vastly more damage than would even be imaginable in the private sector.

Pretty much any time I make an economic argument, I'm doing so from a purely comparative perspective. For strategy A to be preferable to strategy B, it needs only to improve expected value. It does not need to maximize it. That's why I really hate the word "utopia" that is often pejoratively ascribed to my arguments. I spend a lot of time in this thread talking about far-future hypothetical free states, but that is mainly to plant seeds of doubt about statist principles in general. I'm in no way advocating the wholesale dismantlement of governments overnight. I believe incremental is the way to go, and that should be consistent with the rillian worldview of not over-relying on basic economic theory. I believe the feedback of incrementally weakening the state will lead the human race in the right direction. To that end, I believe it is quite likely that representative democracies were a necessary stepping stone from monarchies to whatever comes next.

I rail hard against socialism because I believe it to be oddly reactionary. Oddly because reactionary is a typical pejorative that is ascribed to libertarian views. Socialism has already been tried many times and it failed at nearly every conceivable scale. And yet we continue to see the tired-bordering-on-desperate claims that maybe this time it will be good. "The problem is we need better leaders." "We need campaign finance reform." "We have to eliminate the corruption in our democracy." Blah blah blah. I've never seen a decent economic argument for socialism. I'm not talking about the 'it's debatable' type stuff. The arguments fail on the most basic accepted axioms.

I'm rambling but here's an example:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41...forum-1539134/

Starting with post #22, a guy thinks everyone should have free drinking water and it is barbaric to think otherwise. I reply with the most basic economic argument and I get this absurd response on post #24:

You should at least realise that subjecting everything on earth, especially things we need to survive, to 'basic economics' is a contentious viewpoint, and not present it as if it's common sense. You really think that all the people who don't want a price on water don't understand the econ101 benefits of the idea?

This is the type of completely-missing-the-point idea that has infected the left. Claims to know basic economics, doesn't care because feelings.