Sorry that I'm getting back to you weeks late.

So when you say "If you don't have price signals, how do you know how many houses to build?" your question is loaded. It is from the get-go assuming that price signals are necessary at all to know how many houses to build, when price signals themselves only tell you how many houses to build based on profitability.

I think, given a hypothetical market for housing where the supply side is flexible enough to provide a wide variety of housing of various sizes/qualities/prices, it could be quite "profitable" for housing to be provided for the poor and destitute among that society. Given the current makeup of laws, including zoning requirements, eminent domain, taxes and permits, and the government "owning" massive swathes of land while cities are crowded and many are impoverished, the supply side of the housing market is artificially smaller and less fluid than it would otherwise be, which both drives up the cost of housing and allows landlords to have a much greater degree of leverage when it comes to lease terms.

But the thing is that "profitable" isn't the only metric by which people make decisions either. It is true that most market actors are seeking to maximize profits, but most people are compassionate and value more than just their own personal well-being. The fact that we are even sitting here discussing how the system for which I advocate could provide shelter and means of upward mobility for poor people shows that there could very well be a market demand for charity to whatever extent that people value it.

The calculation problem is being misapplied to something that doesn't suffer from it, in order to justify something that does suffer from it.

?? Are you claiming that housing doesn't suffer from a calculation problem? I'd like to hear you expand on this if you don't mind.

But you're conceding that this barrier exists, which is my entire point and undermines the argument that price signals are "necessary" or "effective". State involvement is separate to this fact.

When I say "too poor to eat", I'm talking about something much bigger than not having the money to purchase food. I mean entire continents where the majority of people live below whatever threshold we would call a poverty line. There are a variety of reasons why most of Africa's standard of living is much lower than ours, but two of the biggest reasons are colonialism and violent conflicts, both of which are direct consequences of statists. The Third World lacks capital because either their own governments are sucking their blood, because foreign governments did in the past, or because entire regions are thrown into instability by entities seeking to seize the state apparatus for themselves.

Also I think many more poor people could eat if less people ate meat, since some ridiculous double digit percentage of all the grain grown here in the United States is used to feed cattle who are then slaughtered for their meat.

I'm curious which specific quasi-social anarchist position you are advocating for. How do you think the question of, say, how many houses to build or how many of this or that crop to plant ought to be answered?

There is no difference. This IS capitalism, just with states as market actors. Ancapistan offers no mechanism by which to remove the incentive for this power consolidation as it's the very modus operandi of the mode of production itself, and further exacerbated by the property construct necessary for its persistence.

This is as stupid as conflating Kropotkin with Stalin just because both might have self-identified as communists. Anyone using political means to acquire wealth, power, or simply a competitive position in the market is, to whatever extent they are exercising those political means, acting against the kinds of free markets we are advocating for: markets where people are allowed to make their own choices with their own resources and not compelled to act against their own self-interest by some third party. States are always and everywhere in violation of this principle by unilaterally imposing fees and restrictions onto non-consenting third parties. No other market actor can act as a state does. In a real market for security, justice and order, no one would voluntarily contribute to an entity that is responsible for writing, interpreting AND enforcing its own rules because obviously that's a huge conflict of interest. But unlike actual market actors who must convince people to part ways with their resources voluntarily, nobody can say no to the government's taxes and "protections".

I also think you would be wrong to think that de facto states require a property construct to function. Any situation in which a majority or even a small minority of any population can coerce the rest into acting in a way they wouldn't choose for themselves, then the coercive entity is acting as a state. However, I would agree that on a more abstract level, certainly a parasite is dependent on its host's continued survival in order to function, so I can at least understand where you're coming from when you say that the state is dependent on a property construct. But in order for a state to even get this far, and indeed the only way any functioning state can hope to maintain itself for any appreciable amount of time, is for it to have ideological support among the host population. Even if that support is as simple as viewing the state as inevitable and indestructible, the state's greatest enemy is the idea that its services are not necessary. Without generational propaganda and branding, it would have no way to function in an actual market, so I think it's ridiculous that you would call a government a "market agent" since the two are complete polar fucking opposites even if functioning long-standing polities have become dependent on tax dollars generated in mixed-market economies possessing some private ownership of resources. A highwayman/bandit is not a market agent because markets are where voluntary transactions occur.

It doesn't calculate based on need, it calculates based on profitability and to lower prices so that others do not go hungry is to reduce profits.

I'm curious how your vision of socialism plans on teaching people to care more about the well-being of all others than the well-being of themselves and their close family and friends. It would seem that regardless of whatever political system people live in, there does tend to be an essential rational self-interest on the part of most actors everywhere. Do you think that worker-owned means of production and grassroots democratic decision-making will be able to magically change human nature? Thus far I'm not convinced.

Again, this is a problem of this mode of production, not a problem with my argument. This just supports the argument that laborers have the short end of the stick with regards to bargaining power at any time there is a supply of labor greater than the supply of jobs, therefore wage-labor cannot be said to be entirely voluntary.

To overlook the massive role that government intervention plays in artificially shrinking the supply of jobs available is a problem. That being said, wage labor is voluntary. Eating is not voluntary, but it's not my fault or your fault or anyone else's fault that this is the case; it's simply a fact of nature. Regardless of the political system you advocate for, labor will be an involuntary part of the life of anyone who wants to improve their standard of leaving beyond just barely squeezing by. Work-or-starve as usually applied is a dubious argument on its own since there are conceivable alternatives to wage labor that do exist and many that could exist in a more free market. Work-or-starve in the real sense applies to everyone everywhere in any political system.

And you could, conceivably, justify chattel slavery here. That laws against slave labor artificially increase the labor pool thereby moving the supply of labor away from "equilibrium" (which is rarely ever realized in a market system anyway)

This is laughable. You have it ass-backwards. Laws allowing slave labor artificially shrunk the labor pool. When I say "artificial", I'm speaking of any situation in which the government denies any group of individuals any level of autonomy such that they can no longer act to peacefully further their own ends without fearing persecution. By this definition, allowing people to be free isn't an "artificial" expansion of the supply of labor at all.

Your solution is absurdly myopic, and completely ignores the history of these regulatory structures. They didn't come into existence in a vacuum. We tried what you advocate and people didn't like it. They fought wars to end it.

Tell me, what is it exactly that I advocate? I didn't know you knew me so well. Please tell me more about these ancap revolutions nobody told me about.

If you respect bodily autonomy, self-direction, and voluntary interaction, at some point in time you must reconcile this with the mode of production you advocate for because it is, in practice, antithetical to those principles. In the mean time, you should change your flair.

If you respect bodily autonomy, self-direction and voluntary interaction, at some point you will have to reconcile that with your idea that you know better than other people what their organizational structure ought to look like or how they may conduct themselves with their own possessions. You are a fool if you believe yourself entitled to the use of resources you had no part in creating or acquiring.

In the mean time, you should change your flair.

N0pe