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Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:02:11 -0300

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange…are for control and coercion. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.”

— Walter Williams

show all 6 comentários

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:56:45 -0300

Alexandre Hannud Abdo

aleabdo@hubzilla.com.br

So is the so called "free" market, which depends on brute force of the government, and the military as it must also promote international submission to compensate for national inequalities, to guarantee the privilege of the elite owner class to control property both inherited and, more critically, obtained from cumulative advantage.

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:09:57 -0300

Max Kostikov

kostikov@zotum.net

@Alexandre Hannud Abdo
Nikolai Berdyaev

By nature, people are not equal; equality can only be achieved by violence, and it will always be a "lower level" alignment. To level the poor with the rich is only possible by taking away the rich's wealth. To level the weak with the strong is possible only by depriving the strong of his strength. It is possible to level a stupid person with a smart one only by turning intelligence from an advantage into a disadvantage.
A society of equality is a society of poor, weak and stupid people based on violence.

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 19:01:23 -0300

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum)

parlehaakon@hub.volse.no

The trouble with Socratic dialogue like Berdyaev is that Socrates argued in absolutes, in binaries, either because that is how he thought, or because that is how he thought his audience thought. We do not have to accept that premise, we can argue using scalars, i.e. the weak is not completely weak and the strong are not completely strong - it makes for a more nuanced dialogue in my opinion.

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 19:14:44 -0300

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

@Alexandre Hannud Abdo I'm not sure what question you started to ask, but all the things that distracted you from finishing the question don't sound very free market to me. They sound more like "the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government."

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 07:48:57 -0300

Alexandre Hannud Abdo

aleabdo@hubzilla.com.br

I'm just saying that the absolute defense of private property with the market as its organizing principle also leads to unfairness and requires violence to be sustainable, as does an absolute planned economy.

This has also nothing to do with people being equal or imposing equality. It's simply recognizing that cumulative advantage, rentism, inheritance and other forms of unfair advantage are autonomous consequences of unconstrained markets and make them go hand in hand with violence and oppression as overpowered elites will spontaneously emerge interested in preserving and expanding their power.

Also, the idea that you can only reduce the gap between the weak and the strong by making the strong weaker is mistaken. I could just point to the whole of biology for counter examples, but it's easy to find them in history and in our day to day lives as well. Things are of course also not as simple as "we're only stronger when our fellows are just as strong", but there's plenty of room in between, plenty of ways we can become stronger by making the weaker stronger, and ways that the total strength can be greater when the stronger share some of their strength to reduce the gap with the weak.

I like to think that society is life and thus no less complex than life, and life's optimized solutions to these problems are way more elaborate than free markets or planned economies. These are oversimplifications born out of specific social and philosophical contexts, and have proven to be incomplete ideas that cannot solve the problems they address, yet have both contributed something useful.

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 02:12:32 -0300

Cyborg 2-A ✅

wago@libertious.com

I think the US system is good, I can't think of anything better. I've lived in places where there's no EPA, no Health Department, no public schools, and so on. It's a free market, anyone can start a car mechanic business in the street in front of their house and line the street with a dozen junk cars they use for parts. For example. Nobody is breathing down restaurant owner's backs telling them to keep varmints and pests out and make their employees wash their hands. It's a Liberterian dream come true in many respects.