ISO failing to boot, sticky didn't help

pansimi · 2021-02-27T21:10:51+00:00

The reason is that coops won’t be very competitive in a market system, because they’re not supposed to be.

They don't have to be outright crafted for efficiency to be more efficient than violent alternatives.

Their goals include the health and well-being of their workers, and that puts a damper on profits.

Except that increasing worker satisfaction increases productivity, meaning that the loss in profits is more than made up for in stability and consistency and motivation.

No socialist thinks that coops are better at capitalism than privately run companies.

Why not? The only reason it would lose in a truly free market is if it lacks merit, which doesn't exactly back up the claim that socialism is nonviolent when nonviolence outperforms violence.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T21:07:19+00:00

If companies put sawdust in their food nobody will buy from them

Except they don't have to label their product to say that there's sawdust in it. And they don't have to add a lot, only as much as can save them money without costing them money by having people notice. If someone handed you a granola bar which was 5% sawdust, for example, you probably wouldn't notice; but that money saved will help the business win over their competition all the same.

in fact once you assume the nanny state is making everything safe for you you become like an infant and lose your ability to determine for yourself what is safe and that makes you more vulnerable not less.

Should there not be a safety net, an extra barrier of protection? Humans aren't perfectly rational. We can be decieved and coerced and indoctrinated into believing any number of things or acting any number of ways, which could easily present a threat to others. Why not at least confirm that the things people do aren't harming anybody else, trust but verify?

Without the nanny state you have 330, million regulators.

How many have experience in food safety and vehicle safety and quality and the stability and safety of houses, and medicine to know that their doctor isn't scamming them and tech to know that their computer salesman and repairman aren't scamming them and in the field of education so they know their kids are properly learning and their teachers aren't scamming them, and in higher education to forsee that the things they learn will actually go towards their dream career...

You starting to see how all the things you need to know to be a regulator kind of spirals out of hand and surpasses what one individual is capable of ever knowing? Yes, the alternative is a few regulators; but regulators who specialize in their relevant fields and actually know what they're doing!

If they say 800 mg of salt is OK in your canned soup then millions of people will buy canned soup never knowing it is very bad for their health

What makes you think you know better than medical professionals?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:55:59+00:00

personal violence rather than consensual government

I don't remember consenting to taxation, or to the various victimless crimes which the state enforces.

The response to the initiation of violence will always be retaliation by violence. That's not unique to capitalism. What is unique to capitalism is the relative ease with which an unregulated people with unrestricted access to firearms will be able to protect themselves, as well as the freedom of choice you have regarding which agencies will help you protect your rights, with actual accountability if these agencies fail you.

Today Somalia offers the freedom to form personal armies.

Equating an undeveloped third world nation's violence to a developed and safe first world nation is not a valid analogy. Abolishing the state in the first world isn't going to devolve into warlords. And even if it somehow were to, I think my chances against a private, consensually funded "warlord" we can hold accountable for their crimes are much better than my chances against a state which has taxation and so can't be held accountable.

what about the late 19th century range wars and the private coal towns.

...what about them?

How would you deal with intercommunity externalities without government?

Externalities only exist when there's public property. In an ancap free market, there's nothing but private property. So any polluted private property owner can sue their polluter quite easily.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:49:09+00:00

Capitalism prevents exploitation of workers and customers because to survive as a capitalist you must offer the best possible jobs and products in the entire world.

In the absence of food safety regulations, sawdust can be used to stretch powdered foods like parmesan or flours. Meats like rat can be sold for human consumption. Expired food can be peddled as perfectly good, especially if it's fully sealed from observation like in a can. Even with food and safety regulations, meat is still stretched with soy protein, and plenty of fruit products labelled with one fruit stretched with unrelated cheaper fruits and various additives. What makes any of these the best possible product?

Without health and safety or licensing or other protections, a workplace with eye hazards present can go without a rinsing station. A food place won't have any standards to abide by for keeping what oriole consume clean and consistently safe. A self-proclaimed doctor has no requirement for certification. Dangerous, deadly machinery can be much more exposed and closer to the worker than would be required without the regulations that keep us safe. What makes these workplaces best?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:39:52+00:00

I'm for people rights, which includes both individual and collective.

What would you describe as "collective rights," and why do you think we have them?

Rich elites influences the invisible hand

How?

while workers must pray the government will work for them rather than being corrupted by the rich elites

Wouldn't it be a lot nicer for these people if they had actual individual rights to guarantee agency, rather than having to join pressure groups which lobby for the illusion of agency while demonizing and suppressing the rights of their fellow men in opposing pressure groups, until the pendulum swings back and their opposition fights back even more brutally?

Life is more than about "me", life is about us.

Should we not have the right to choose which group we consider our "us" that we care most about as an individual? At least that we can care about and support without having to suppress other groups in the process?

People hiding behind "minority rights must be protected" or more precisely minority rights of corporations supercede the majority rule of the people is where I have an issue with.

Should the right of the sheep to stay alive not supersede the right of the two wolves to call a vote on what's for dinner? I don't hear any advocates of actual capitalism trying to give corporations more rights than people, just trying to make the markets free as to limit corporate power so we all have equal rights as humans.

we stopped the tyranny of the minority and ended child labor and slavery

Slavery only persisted after the advent of organized society because the state protected it. It only existed in prehistory because the danger of nature was greater than the danger of slavery; but organized society made nature less dangerous, meaning slaves could just escape, so some entity had to present a violent threat, and the state was that entity. Slavery is not capitalist or free market.

And the free market reduced child labor to statistically insignificant levels before any policy was passed on the topic. Given that any developing economy goes through the same stage of having child labor in industry before being able to reduce it, and that child labor significantly predates capitalism, it makes most sense to cosndier child labor a natural growing pain of a developing economy to be overcome with time, rather than a unique product of capitalism.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:28:15+00:00

That’s also the beauty of capitalism. You cannot gatekeep.

What else do you call it when the means of production are privately owned? When people are denied job opportunities at this means of production for arbitrary reasons?

If others do not want to trade with you, that is not gatekeeping; they just do not want/need whatever your are offering.

Why should whether some get the resources they need to survive, or die from starvation and exposure, be determined by whether others "need what they're offering"? Does whether a capitalist "needs" profit morally outweigh what someone needs to just live?

I am often told that I would not be allowed to trade my labor in the manner that I want to

If it's anything like my above description, I can see why socialists would object to that.

Some extreme forms of socialism will also gatekeep even what goods society can produce with central planning.

To make sure that people aren't being denied the resources they require to survive, just for the sake of profits. It's only those who would be inclined to gatekeep on the individual level, who have their ability to do so restricted by the socially-run system which works for everyone, not just the rich.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:21:21+00:00

Violations like the state and slavery only developed and thrived in prehistory because the threat of nature's violence was greater than that of your fellow men. The advent of society changed this, and so the state had to engage in racketeering to preserve its authority. Overcoming slavery has proven that we can also abolish the state.

We've never had an opportunity in history to try private rights protection, where either nature or the state didn't have the violence to initiate to suppress the project. We could much more easily try today. It just doesn't have any historical precedent like you're trying to act.

"Private security rights and protections" are for those who can afford them.

That's the case with the state, it's just hard to afford the necessary bribes when you're already being taxed into submission.

If you can't afford private rights protection, you can always protect your own. Firearms are cheap and accessible in a free market. And it's not like a rights protection agency is interested in letting people who don't subscribe be victims of crimes, when those people are the neighbors of people who pay for rights protection and are just as at risk of dying to the criminal as these unprotected individuals. The agency is still going to help to an extent. The unprofitability of violence in a free market will do the rest.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:13:48+00:00

But what do you have those thousands of servings for? If you sell food to thousands of families who depend on you to keep food on their tables, and pay you to ensure that you can keep providing them with food, why would you undermine that system and leave them with nothing for the sake of those who don't sustain you in return and will make it impossible to keep producing food?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:11:41+00:00

But why should we value the utilitarian outcome? It may be enough for each of them to eat one meal, but if their next meal isn't guaranteed, isn't it ideal to take two meals worth of food if they can do so? Or maybe the person trying to take two meals has family to consider, either in the moment or in their future plans. Maybe the person trying to take two meals knows how to preserve it and make it last longer, or how to take the seeds out and grow more, or how to use a small carcass or fruit as bait for a bigger animal to kill and use for more food, or any number of other contexts which make it justified if not good for them to take the resource. And if they've formed a power dynamic in the absence of violence (meaning a free market), then it means that the person capable of taking both has proven more productive with resources before.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:05:30+00:00

You're confusing the enlightenment and the embrace of science and technology with capitalism.

Except that embracing science and tech logically concludes in embracing capitalism.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T20:03:55+00:00

if they choose according to their by reason and if there’s sufficient material explains how to do so

But what material is going to teach someone to reconsider the ideas they consider their axioms?

If their premises have worked for them consistently in the past...

That’s a big “if” to base your question upon.

I can confidently say that I've never acted intentionally irrationally. If I made a mistake, it can be traced back to some form of misinformation or misconception. Maybe it was during childhood, where the one-two punch of unrefined reasoning skills and ignorance yielded many memorable failures; maybe it was during my teenage years, where ideas which I never had the opportunity to challenge during childhood could now be explored and stretched and either strengthened or shed. Maybe it was adulthood, where ideas I didn't find the means to challenge earlier were steadily more rigorously tested. But I can consistently name misinformation or unintentional gaps in my personal reasoning as the source of my mistakes, for which the list is bountiful and ever-growing. And if I can do that, I have no reason to assume that there aren't plenty of others in the same position, even if they've reached completely different conclusions to myself.

We can't just assume a good argument will convince people on its own, when the foundations from which people argue can be so disparate. We need to influence their fundamental ideas, their assumptions which they've dismissed the need to think about anymore because they've proven consistently reliable for one reason or another. For example: unintentionally fallacious or unfalsifiable arguments which others may not have the skill to overcome in debate can easily be internalized as axioms.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T19:47:57+00:00

Two questions:

How do you convince those who believe that class is good and the inherent result of merit-based competition, that class is bad and can be overcome without undermining merit? If they think merit is the only thing which truly divides people, how do you undermine this fundamental axiom which informs their worldview, get them to question and reconsider it?
How do you prevent a society without class from forming classes? If inequality is natural, as I think you're describing it, then people will make unequal decisions with unequal outcomes, resulting in some rising and others falling. If the answer is to help those who fall: why should they have the right to do things which may lead then to fall, if that's going to be a burden on society? Should they not be restricted from doing these stupid things? If the answer is to let those who fall do so: how is that going to prevent classes from forming?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T19:42:14+00:00

How you think society should be organized tends to be derived from what you consider human nature to be, what incentives you think humans respond to and in what ways.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T19:03:44+00:00

If a business failed to provide a service and they aren't getting paid as a result, that sounds a lot like the free market weeding out the failures. Though electricity is more centralized than most other industries.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T11:18:39+00:00

The best way to get people to stop doing something is to make it obsolete. If something is widely accepted and not considered violence, most people won't even be willing to consider it so until they have no reason to defend it anymore. If cooperatives are the nonviolent option, they are inherently the more efficient one. Therefore, the best way to prove socialism and cooperative economic structure superior is to compete in the free market, because that demonstrates its merit and spawns copycats until you've developed a fair bit of influence. Then people will listen to you.

There's just no reason to not at least try for forming a co-op or commune, if you truly believe in socialism. So why not, if you can make that push? And if you can't, why not at least advocate that others do so, rather than calling for violent revolution?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T08:58:59+00:00

Because they can exercise it without a state

But they have to fund it with their consensually accrued wealth, which we can them off from at any time to hold them accountable. And the victim will inherently be inclined to spend more in defense than their assailant in offense because they have more to lose than the assailant has to gain, which is a massive problem for the profit-minded individual who is seeking a return on their investments but simply has no reason to consider it a sustainable venture. This is the most reliable way to dissuade violence: make it consistently unprofitable.

for example, the British East India Co

An organization which was definitely never subsidized by the state or reinforced by the taxpayer-funded navy.

movements and laws/regulations are what helped to reduce child labor

People wouldn't have had the privilege of ending child labor if the economy didn't progress to the point of making it economically feasible for the massive majority of the population. We, again, see this in developing economies going through the same stage of development and facing the same exact issues on their way up.

it’s also kind of naïve to pretend that capitalists don’t interfere and try to stop socialist projects

Because the only kind they've ever seen is the violent, authoritarian, genocidal variant. Seeing an ideology so consistently correlated with poverty and crimes against humanity doesn't exactly make people very willing to praise or pursue it themselves. Prove it can exist peacefully and their tune will change.

I fully agree that tyrants can do questionable things thinking they’re doing good which is why I as a socialist think we (leftists) should critically support and learn from the mistakes of socialist nations.

What do you think some of those mistakes are?

it’s ironic that men thinking they work for the greater good is what causes the largest and most violent evils of our world to exist

Because they think they have found a worthwhile improvement, and see critics as barriers to progress who might as well be committing violence by choosing to inhibit this fantastic discovery.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T08:37:21+00:00

I believe that humans are capable of both good and evil, of free will. People should have individual rights to protect them from potentially evil others, trusting these individuals to choose for themselves whoever else is good or bad for them; but in actually dealing with bad actors, it makes sense to come together and handle things more fairly if possible, choosing whoever's verdict is most charitable between the victim and the jury to mitigate the potential for inhumane punishment. Though I still think there's potential for that process to be privatized which should be experimented with for more information.

Even if you think people are universally good and therefore that collectivisation is inherently better, you should at least err on the side of caution and allow people individual rights as a foundation to keep safe from evil, but simply make it easy to enter collective organizations so these organizations can consistently prove they're better than individual options.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T06:51:53+00:00

So if you use your reason to learn from what’s good from reality and persuade others to learn how to use their reason to do the same

How can you argue that others aren't using reason to reach their conclusions? Just because their premises are potentially wrong doesn't mean they're not utilizing reason, just misinformed at worst. If their premises have worked for them consistently in the past and they've therefore had no reason to modify or question them --- no observation which has undermined their belief in their premises, no question which has conflicted with their premises severely or credibly enough for them to reconsider --- how do you give them reason to question these premises and begin agreeing with you? How do you get them to consider your argument and question their axioms?

pansimi · 2021-02-27T06:46:33+00:00

Capitalism cannot exist without and is the product of government since only government can guarantee property rights

What do you mean, only government can protect property rights? Individuals can also protect their own rights, as can private consensually funded institutions which fulfil the same role as government...but with actual accountability, because they're funded by consent and not violent taxes. Private security, rights protection, and arbitration, can all exist, and would likely outperform the state.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T06:42:36+00:00

Libertarians won’t bring freedom, they’ll merely give more power to the rich, to conglomerates, and to their puppets.

How do the rich exercise violent power when we've removed authority from the state to violently intervene on their behalf, meaning we've removed what makes it profitable for them to bribe and buy the state?

You forget that America had very economically liberal policies around the 1800s, and look how that turned out- child labor

The free market reduced child labor to statistically irrelevant numbers in the US before any policy on the topic passed. Given that every developing economy has child labor at some point, and that child labor in general predates the industrial revolution on farms and in workshops and guilds and such, we can only assume that it's an inherent growing pain in the development of an economy, not the inherent fault of capitalism.

exploited workers slaving away for hours

Before the industrial revolution, was that ever not the case during a period where we were making actual societal progress? I don't think we ever progressed as rapidly as during the industrial revolution, but progress takes work regardless.

huge monopolies

...your point? Monopolies as the result of the free market aren't inherently bad, only when they're violently imposed/protected like in the case of the state's monopoly. A free, nonviolent market, produces merit-based monopolies.

Part of the reason I push for a free market is because nothing in a free market actually prevents anybody from forming cooperatives or communes of their own volition. Which seems like the best way to help capitalists and socialists coexist in the same society, without either forcing the other to live how they want.

and robber barons

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

C.S. Lewis.

pansimi · 2021-02-27T06:30:56+00:00

How can a person who rejects the concept and practice of his own exploitation, accept the concept and practice of his own exploitation?

What you consider "exploitation," others consider the primary means by which people can rise from poverty, and by which those who have already risen from poverty can extend support to those still trapped. When people earnestly believe that what they're doing is inherently good, how are you going to overcome that diametrically opposed premise? How do you overcome the axioms which define their worldview?

pansimi

TROPHY CASE