/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:33:27 2010 No.988765 [Reply] [Original]

Recommend libertarian literature.

Anything that contains strong anti-state, individualist, pro-individual freedom, totalitarian government, or non-aggression principle themes.

Anything along the lines of 1984, Iron Heel, Heinlein, Morris, EF Russel, Huxley, London, Herbert, Nietzsche, Camus, Cummings, Wilde, etc.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:38:27 2010 No.988781 Jack London was a socialist and The Iron Heel is definitely libertarian.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:39:27 2010 No.988785 You Americans are baffling sometimes.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:39:27 2010 No.988786 Fiction or non-fiction?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:39:27 2010 No.988787 >>988781 Addendum:Orwell was also a socialist so 1984 isn't libertarian either.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:40:27 2010 No.988790 god and state bakunin. all you need maybe some spooner

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 01:41:27 2010 No.988793 hurr libertarian = egotism and naive propertarianism durr get a fucking clue please.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:41:27 2010 No.988794 Lester - Escape From Leviathan: Liberty, Welfare, and Anarchy Reconciled Nozick - Anarchy, State, and Utopia

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:41:27 2010 No.988795 ayn rand

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:43:27 2010 No.988805 Morris, as in William Morris the revolutionary socialist?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:44:27 2010 No.988809 Is there any libertarian fantasy? Seriously.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:45:27 2010 No.988810 File: 38 KB, 285x428, The-Overton-Window-by-Glenn-Beck.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>988809

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:45:27 2010 No.988811

>>988787
>>988781

Both those men were more complex than the modernly meaningless pejorative "socialist" indicates. Anyway, it doesn't matter. See the list of themes broadly considered and definitionally correct as corresponding to libertarianism. London was not an economist, but described how a populist socialist party became totalitarian fascism. Orwell was an individualist and libertarian, as well as a nominal "democratic socialist" and an English nationalist (the same can be said of Wilde, Tucker, and numerous other "socialists" by that era's definitions). 1984 is strongly libertarian themed. To deny this is not serious.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:46:27 2010 No.988816 >>988809 Illuminatus!?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:46:27 2010 No.988819 >>988786 Either >>988785 Not an American

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:49:27 2010 No.988825 >>988811 The Iron Heel was about how capitalism can lead to a corporatist-fascist state. London was definitely not a socialist. 1984 was just opposing big government. Orwell fought with the revolutionary forces in Spain.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:52:27 2010 No.988831

>>988793

libertarianism

Pronunciation:/ˌlɪbəˈtɛːrɪəˌnɪz(ə)m/
noun

an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens

- Oxford English Dictionary

libertarianism
[From Latin liber: free.]

(politics) A doctrine and movement that espouses an individual's right to act in total freedom as long as they do not initiate force against others. Libertarianism is similar to classical liberalism and sometimes verges on anarchism.

- OM Dictionary of Philosophy

In terms of political recommendations, libertarians believe that most, if not all, of the activities currently undertaken by states should be either abandoned or transferred into private hands.
- IEP (http://www.iep.utm.edu/libertar/))

etc.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 01:53:27 2010 No.988834 >>988831 >dictionary okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. good job.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:57:27 2010 No.988841 >>988834 Oxford lexicographers have a better empirical knowledge of the current, emergent, standard definitions of words than you do, tripfag. Please see etymological fallacy, then go away: http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#Etymological

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 01:58:27 2010 No.988843 >>988825 London was a well-known socialist, and I've read Iron Heel. You're missing the point. See OP and the post to which you are purporting to reply.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:00:27 2010 No.988850 Camus is libertarian? Wut. Pretty sure that borderline nihilists don't give a shit about gov't

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:01:27 2010 No.988852 File: 130 KB, 482x650, Fullscreen capture 12162009 72253 PM.bmp.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 02:01:27 2010 No.988854 >>988841 please shut the fuck up if you think this is an issue over the meaning of words.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:03:27 2010 No.988858 >>988850 Camus was a well-known and self-identified individualist libertarian. See The Rebel, An Ethic Superior to Murder, The Self-Deception of the Socialists, Homage to an Exile, Thought at the Meridian, etc.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:05:27 2010 No.988864 >>988854 yawn That's the issue you attempted to bring up, tardtard. >hurr libertarian = egotism and naive propertarianism durr

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 02:07:27 2010 No.988868 >>988864 you are the fucking retard that brought a dictionary to a discussion of the general political idea of liberty and related philosophical currents.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:11:27 2010 No.988875

>>988868
libertarianism is a word, a word that has a standard definition in the English language. You were apparently ignorant of this. Don't be butthurt.

The first citation if from the dictionary. The second is a dictionary of philosophy. The third is a peer-reviewed university encyclopedia of philosophy. I suggest you read the latter's entry linked in the post. It is many pages long and describes the political philosophy of libertarianism in detail.

onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 02:31:27 2010 No.988927

>>988864
since you are likely to make a totally ignorant and smart ass retort that will waste my time, let me save some trouble and take it slowly.

i am obviously aware of the general usage of libertarianism in anglophone circles. however.......you must realize the extent of a pol. philosophy (and in libertarianism in the philosophy of mind and phil of action, it is a general philosophy of agency) also include the terms it uses and the way it frames its issues.
you can of course use the word libertarianism in an indexical function depending on the audience for communication purposes, but this is not what naive american libertarians are doing. they think the way their libertarianism defines the issue of political freedom etc is the only way these issues can be defined and take their position to be soemthing of the "champion of individual freedom" sort. thus we have these dichotomies like individual vs state, private vs public, or even egotist vs altruism, getting thrown about like they are eternal political questions, rather than questions posed within a particular thematic.

anyway, please shut the fuck up.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:40:27 2010 No.988958
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Hahahaha, Libertarianism!

It's cute how there are actual adults who still hate mommy making them go to bed on time so much that they don't think anyone should ever get to tell them what to do, ever, and then pretend this is a political ideal.

Every time the "individual" wins, real people suffer. There's a reason only middle-to-upper class white Americans/Europeans would even consider taking this nonsense seriously.

>>	THE FREE MARKET WILL !FIXITuBSJc Sat Jul 31 02:46:27 2010 No.988984 Stirner.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:53:27 2010 No.989007

>>988958
Utilitarianism went out of fashion something like 300 years ago. Maybe you should read some contemporary stuff?

>>988927
OK, I don't disagree. However, the choice of "thematic" is not arbitrary, as you make it sound. It's chosen because those are the important issues in philosophy, politics, and society today.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:55:27 2010 No.989016 >>989007 >utilitarianism What the fuck are you talking about?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 02:58:27 2010 No.989029 >>989016 Do you need help with what utilitarianism is, or why your position is utilitarian?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:00:27 2010 No.989042 Orwell was no libertarian. He got shot in the neck fighting for the communists in spain. Huxley was in favor of a technocratic authoritarian state Nietzsche? Libertarian? Nigger you serious?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:02:27 2010 No.989053 >>989042 Are you saying Nietzsche was a statist collectivist?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:02:27 2010 No.989054 >>989029 The position advocated in that post (not mine) was not necessarily utilitarian. I repeat: What the fuck are you talking about?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:06:27 2010 No.989068 >>989054 You judged an action on the basis of aggregate suffering caused. That is utilitarianism.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:08:27 2010 No.989075
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>1984, Iron Heel, Heinlein, Morris, EF Russel, Huxley, London, Herbert, Nietzsche, Camus, Cummings, Wilde, etc.
>mfw not one of these books carries a "libertarian" message

Nigga, you high?

Try "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." That's right up Ayn Rand's alley.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:10:27 2010 No.989081 >>988790 Bakunin was hardly in favor of competing feudal oligarchies, ergo, not libertarian.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:10:27 2010 No.989086

>>989068
I don't think that was a statement of calculation. I believe it was stating that libertarians are deluded because they don't seem to catch on to the fact that every time one of their "goals" is accomplished-- financial deregulation, lowered taxes, reduced social programs, etc-- it actually harms the people in the society...well, at least those who aren't already rich, anyways. Libertarianism does not "free" anything except to unbind the hands of the powerful to abuse those who were not fortunate enough to be in advantageous circumstances.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:12:27 2010 No.989098 Goldman, Berkman, Chomsky, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tucker, Proudhon are all true libertarians. Not this free market horse shit that Americans think it is. >>988787 Non state socialists are libertarians.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:13:27 2010 No.989100 >>989098 samefag edit: meant to say free market capitalist horse shit (tucker was a free market anarchist, but anti-capitalism)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:14:27 2010 No.989101 File: 155 KB, 1409x521, SAY NO TO SOCIALISM.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] /lit/, I am ashamed of you. Even /b/ is smart enough to see through the idiotic self-indulgent nonsense that is libertarianism.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:15:27 2010 No.989105 >>989100 >pro-free market >not a capitalist what the fuck am I reading dot jay pee jee. That doesn't even begin to make sense.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:16:27 2010 No.989111 >>989101 I always laugh at that pic. Half the things it mentions are are really bad because of government fuckups.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:17:27 2010 No.989116 >>989086 That's your opinion, and it's demonstrably wrong, but OK.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:21:27 2010 No.989123
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>>989111
>government fuckups

You mean when they had to go underfunded because people whined for tax breaks? Or because the government handed the contract to a company who performed poorly because their only measure of success is their profit margin?

You ignorant little shit. You honestly have no idea how shitty life can be if you think anything in America is really and truly "bad". Look into how the rest of the world lives, producing the crap you Americans consume at a ridiculous pace, and then come tell me about how annoying it is that there are traffic jams.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:23:27 2010 No.989125 >>989116 >demonstrably wrong Oh, this ought to be good. Please, prove hundreds of theoretical and empirical scholarly studies wrong with your talking points and anecdotal evidence.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:24:27 2010 No.989128 >>989123 FCC regulation is straight-forward (completely arbitrary) censorship. Department of agriculture? Enjoy your HFCS. FDA? lol. etc.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:24:27 2010 No.989131 >>989125 >hundreds of theoretical and empirical scholarly studies [Citation needed]

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:26:27 2010 No.989137 >>989123 >You honestly have no idea how shitty life can be if you think anything in America is really and truly "bad". So if it's not as bad as sub-Saharan Africa, there's no reason to make it better? Is that what you're saying?

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:29:27 2010 No.989144

>>989131
And now we know exactly what basis you work from. If you had any connection to Political Science or Economics scholarship you wouldn't even ask me to prove that research to this effect *exists*, because you would have already read it. Whether you agreed with it or not is another issue entirely.

Thank you, that was all I wanted to get you to reveal. I have yet to find a defender of libertarianism whose opinion I am compelled to take seriously because they are schooled in proper research methodology and argumentation.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:30:27 2010 No.989147 >>989137 >implying that more government programs and redistribution of wealth aren't the way to make America better

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:31:27 2010 No.989148 fantasy novels by terry goodkind

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:31:27 2010 No.989150 File: 119 KB, 627x479, economic-freedom-and-income.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>989144 I don't always crush my opponents with hard data that completely disprove their entire agenda, but when I do, I use graphs. Stay trolling my friends.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:32:27 2010 No.989151 I DON'T WANT TO PAY TAXES. I'M A LIBERTARIAN.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:32:27 2010 No.989152

Look into Emerson and Thoreau. Self-Reliance and Civil Disobedience seem to be classical liberalism and individualism in it's most simple form.

Also, since my captcha is "Very Woodhaven" I have to recommend Walden by Henry David Thoreau for obvious reasons.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:35:27 2010 No.989162 File: 53 KB, 479x456, fotos047oj.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>989150 not who you were replying to, but >mfw doesn't know the difference between average and median per capita GDP != median income

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:35:27 2010 No.989163

>>989150
Wow, you're an idiot.

Don't you know that measures of economic freedom assume positive values for things like welfare, small business loans, free education, and enforced competition-- in other words, social justice-- not just non-regulation of business practices?

Jesus christ, if you're going to use data, at least be able to read it correctly.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:39:27 2010 No.989174
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>>989163
>he doesn't know how the Index of Economic Freedom is calculated

Seriously, it takes 5 seconds to google it. It doesn't include any of the crap you mentioned. Though I must say, I like how you sneaked in "enforced competition" into your list so you wouldn't appear like the quasi-fascist type.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:39:27 2010 No.989175

>>989128

>FCC regulation is straight-forward (completely arbitrary) censorship

Um, actually, the FCC ensures that basic infrastructural assets necessary to the rest of the economy (airwaves, phone lines, et cetera) remain interoperable between carriers and reach all areas of the country. The reason for maintaining a wide infrastructural reach by mandate is because there are areas that could not be profitably served by the market, which would economically disadvantage these areas by depriving them of the infrastructural needs the require to conduct basic business.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:42:27 2010 No.989182 >>989174 >LOL UR SO DUM, UR A NAZI Jesus, grow the fuck up.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:45:27 2010 No.989190

>>989174

Again, not who you're replying to, but if you look at the per capita GDP of Columbia as compared to Venezuela's, you would see that the Venezuelan per capita is something like $11,500 and Columbia's is $5,000-something. Also, the Venezuelan economy grows at roughly twice that of Columbia's. So your graph doesn't really prove anything about the effect of regulation on per capita GDP of individual nations. Most of your arguments seem to start from a conclusion for which you then cherry-pick data. Although this is 4chan, so nvm.

captcha: Economic glazed

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:46:27 2010 No.989191

>>989175
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/obscene.html

>>989182
...and there we go! You dispute the scholarly consensus, and I prove you wrong. You try to question the data, and I prove you wrong. What is always the step? Greentext and "grow up" of course.

Don't worry, this is a natural response to cognitive dissonance. Most people will usually side with their convictions instead of the data. Especially when it comes to leftist ideology, it's almost religious in character which makes it even harder to accept. What I suggest is that you learn to recognize the effects of cognitive dissonance, and re-evaluate data, theories, and opinions in an "objective" manner when you detect it.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:47:27 2010 No.989196

>>989163
there is little doubt such studies exist, just as there is little doubt that most in academia are openly hostile to the goals of libertarianism.

indeed such systems probably do have some benefits to the poor, at least while they remain solvent. the problem is the morality of government imposed seizing and redistribution of wealth, the insidious forms of social engineering practiced by many advocates of such systems, and the danger when a people trade individual freedom for the promise of security.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:48:27 2010 No.989200

>>989190
>Most of your arguments seem to start from a conclusion for which you then cherry-pick data.

Yeah, that's why you use all data (as in the graph) in order to minimize noise instead of comparing two wildly different countries. Drugs are not reported in GDP, and Colombia doesn't have gargantuan oil reserves.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:49:27 2010 No.989203 the moon is a harsh mistress a deepness in the sky also atlus shrugged and the fountainhead

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 03:51:27 2010 No.989207 >>989007 >Utilitarianism went out of fashion something like 300 years ago. Maybe you should read some contemporary stuff? LOL go back to school

onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 03:53:27 2010 No.989217

>>989007
i've not made it sound arbitrary. i am simply saying stereotypical libertarians are single tracked and are only capable of thinking things in terms of their simple dichotomies. you've proven me right numerous times in practice, and you are welcome to try again.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:53:27 2010 No.989219

>>989196

For the third time, not who you're replying to, but you do know in economics a tax break or even non-taxation for the use of public infrastructure is accounted for as a public subsidy? So you are advocating for the most massive public subsidy of private enterprise ever--at the expense of those who derive the least profit from the utilization of public infrastructure. Talk about redistribution of wealth!

>>989191

I'm not sure I understand your point about the FCC. Are you saying they are not chartered to perform the functions I outlined?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:56:27 2010 No.989228 >>989219 >Are you saying they are not chartered to perform the functions I outlined? No, but it's not limited to those functions.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:57:27 2010 No.989231

>>989200

Well, but that's my point: your entire graph is incomplete. It takes no account of geopolitics, natural reserves, et cetera. I'm not sure what function it serves, except you want to believe deregulation leads to greater per capita GDP (as DISTINCTLY opposed to median income, which is the more meaningful figure!), so those are the only two factors your chart examines without taking into account what other variables could affect per capita GDP. A more interesting study would examine variables and find similarities between countries on a more detailed level, THEN derive a conclusion. Maybe it would be favorable to your dogma, maybe it wouldn't. But your graph omits more than it includes.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:58:27 2010 No.989235 File: 34 KB, 312x475, The Dispossessed.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:58:27 2010 No.989237 >>989228 Ah. Well, I was pointing out that they have more functions than the sole one you mentioned.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 03:59:27 2010 No.989239 >>989219 I suppose that way of thinking has some use in economics, but for more general purposes I can't except that way of thinking. it implies that wealth belongs to the state or society. call it greed if you must, but I cannot accept that.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:00:27 2010 No.989242

>>989231

Yes, but I don't see your point. Adding natural reserves to the equation would just make the point even harder by removing unfree places with relatively high GDPs per capita like Venezuela and countries in the middle east.

The fact that there are other explanatory factors does not lessen the importance of this one, unless you can completely explain GDP per capita without recourse to freedom.

onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 04:07:27 2010 No.989258

>>989239
and therein lies the rub...the reason why libertarianism is a naive political philosophy is because...it takes certain political views/thematics from a particular band of society as natural and goes on to operate upon them without examining its foundations.

upper middle class and aloof. probably american because of the undereducation of social struggle in that particular education system and society in general.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:08:27 2010 No.989261

>>989242

Well, no: other places with large oil reserves are Norway and the US, for example. So perhaps a more thorough study would conclude that having large oil reserves is more relevant to per capita GDP (as opposed to median income) than regulation or lack thereof. Also, I keep harping on the distinction between per capita GDP and median income because Chile, to name one example, had a precipitous rise in per capita GDP under Pinochet...compounded with the most disastrous drop in median income in the nation's history.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:08:27 2010 No.989262 >>989258 Private property is not an "upper class" (lol, classism in the 21st century) concept.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:10:27 2010 No.989265 >>989262 Who benefits directly from owning property?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:12:27 2010 No.989268 >>989258 you're talking about the American interpretation, which is driven by the interests of the wealthy its genuine original meaning is very different

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:14:27 2010 No.989272

>>989239

Well, no. It's not a question of implying. We the people band together to form a government, and by covenant, we agree to maintain an infrastructure for our mutual benefit--which is largely profit, or wealth-generation if you will, but also social benefits--and maintain that infrastructure so that private business can generate wealth. We continue to jointly own the infrastructure so that no monopoly may be formed by any one private enterprise over the use of that infrastructure to create an anticompetitive atmosphere, and those with the most ability generate the most wealth from the use of said infrastructure...which then must be maintained through levying a tax proportional to the use of the infrastructure. There's no implication that wealth belongs to the state, but rather, that to ensure wealth continues to be privately generated, the infrastructure must be maintained.

It's what's called a "mixed market economy", as opposed to a laissez-faire libertarian state like warlord-ruled Somalia, which has let its infrastructure completely fall apart and can thus generate no wealth--only serve as fodder for competing warlords scrabbling (and shooting) over crumbs,

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:19:27 2010 No.989287 >>989265 People who own property, or who gain by the effects of private property (like economic growth). Both categories include "everybody".

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:20:27 2010 No.989289 File: 783 KB, 982x658, 1278708695218.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>989272

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:22:27 2010 No.989292

>>989272

Libertarians are not necessarily (or even usually) anarchists. Most are minarchists. We recognize the importance of some government, especially when it comes to public goods, contract enforcement, anti-competition issues, etc. Nozick argues for exactly this kind of setup. To go from this type of government to the gargantuan beasts we've got today is a very large leap.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:24:27 2010 No.989296

>>989272
umm, Smith left quite a bit of room for public works, a complete separation of the economy from government would be impossible. (government mints money ect) I have no problem with people paying for the use of public infrastructure, but that is not what we are arguing about

calling Somalia a libertarian state is just silly there can't be liberty without republican/parliamentarian government

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:24:27 2010 No.989298

>>989289

Thanks! :-)

On that note, though, I have to go to bed. It's 3:23AM here, but it's certainly been nice chatting with everyone. I guess those of us with some sense will continue working twice as hard so that libertarians can keep clinging to their fantasies, even while we undo the damage they've done. G'night, y'all.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:29:27 2010 No.989308 >>989298 >>skillfully avoids responding to hole in logic pointed out here >>989292 and >>989296

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:30:27 2010 No.989315 >>989308 Or maybe he went to bed.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 04:31:27 2010 No.989319 >>989315 Socialists don't fucking sleep.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:49:27 2010 No.989519

>>989105

It's Benjamin Tucker's anarchist theories based, if I remember correctly, on Stirner. It's individualist anarchism. Honestly, I'm not well versed in it, but infoshop.org will have answers and essays about it. I do know that Tucker attacked the state, capitalism, and property, but believed in egoism and non-collectivist anarchism.
>>989298

The term "libertarian" has historically been used to describe anarchists (not anarcho-capitalist, because the term is an oxymoron). It would help if the people in this thread would specify whether they are discussing left-anarchist theory or the American idea of what a libertarian is.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:52:27 2010 No.989521

A.1.3 Why is anarchism also called libertarian socialism?

Many anarchists, seeing the negative nature of the definition of "anarchism," have used other terms to emphasise the inherently positive and constructive aspect of their ideas. The most common terms used are "free socialism," "free communism," "libertarian socialism," and "libertarian communism." For anarchists, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, and anarchism are virtually interchangeable. As Vanzetti put it:

"After all we are socialists as the social-democrats, the socialists, the communists, and the I.W.W. are all Socialists. The difference -- the fundamental one -- between us and all the other is that they are authoritarian while we are libertarian; they believe in a State or Government of their own; we believe in no State or Government." [Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 274]

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:53:27 2010 No.989523

But is this correct? Considering definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, we find:

LIBERTARIAN: one who believes in freedom of action and thought; one who believes in free will.

SOCIALISM: a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

Just taking those two first definitions and fusing them yields:

LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM: a social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

(Although we must add that our usual comments on the lack of political sophistication of dictionaries still holds. We only use these definitions to show that "libertarian" does not imply "free market" capitalism nor "socialism" state ownership. Other dictionaries, obviously, will have different definitions -- particularly for socialism. Those wanting to debate dictionary definitions are free to pursue this unending and politically useless hobby but we will not).

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:55:27 2010 No.989525

However, due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social in New York between 1858 and 1861 while the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. [Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, p. 75 and p. 145] The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind (Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel published the paper Le Libertaire -- The Libertarian -- in France in 1895, for example). Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:56:27 2010 No.989526

The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Later, in Section B, we will discuss why the idea of a "libertarian" capitalism (as desired by the Libertarian Party) is a contradiction in terms.

As we will also explain in Section I, only a libertarian-socialist system of ownership can maximise individual freedom. Needless to say, state ownership -- what is commonly called "socialism" -- is, for anarchists, not socialism at all. In fact, as we will elaborate in Section H, state "socialism" is just a form of capitalism, with no socialist content whatever. As Rudolf Rocker noted, for anarchists, socialism is "not a simple question of a full belly, but a question of culture that would have to enlist the sense of personality and the free initiative of the individual; without freedom it would lead only to a dismal state capitalism which would sacrifice all individual thought and feeling to a fictitious collective interest." [quoted by Colin Ward, "Introduction", Rudolf Rocker, The London Years, p. 1]

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:56:27 2010 No.989527

Given the anarchist pedigree of the word "libertarian," few anarchists are happy to see it stolen by an ideology which shares little with our ideas. In the United States, as Murray Bookchin noted, the "term 'libertarian' itself, to be sure, raises a problem, notably, the specious identification of an anti-authoritarian ideology with a straggling movement for 'pure capitalism' and 'free trade.' This movement never created the word: it appropriated it from the anarchist movement of the [nineteenth] century. And it should be recovered by those anti-authoritarians . . . who try to speak for dominated people as a whole, not for personal egotists who identify freedom with entrepreneurship and profit." Thus anarchists in America should "restore in practice a tradition that has been denatured by" the free-market right. [The Modern Crisis, pp. 154-5] And as we do that, we will continue to call our ideas libertarian socialism.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 07:59:27 2010 No.989530

>>989523

The issue is that the "socialist" part is not enforceable and maintainable without the force of the state.

Also, the etymological arguments for "possession" of "anarchism" and "libertarianism" are the most inane and idiotic things I have ever read. I still don't get why so many people make them. LANGUAGE CHANGES YOU FUCKING NIGGERS aDGHAIFGHA*DF)GUADFGJ

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:02:27 2010 No.989535 >>989530 >The issue is that the "socialist" part is not enforceable and maintainable without the force of the state. It works on the idea that people will voluntarily collaborate and share. It doesn't need enforcement.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:04:27 2010 No.989538 >>989535 Well, yeah. But I won't cooperate. So there goes that idea.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:08:27 2010 No.989546 ITT: products of the American Progressive school system, brainwashed into believing the herd is always right.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:08:27 2010 No.989548

>>989530
Your first point has no basis in anything except a statist mindset. We hold that true socialism is not coerced and is the natural, unexploited expression of the human will.

Language changes, yes, but anarchists still call themselves libertarians (as they have done since the 1850's). The Libertarian party began using it and now there is some confusion over the usage of the term. Language, though it changes, is often imprecise. That is why we must differentiate between big L Libertarians (the retarded American party) and little l libertarians (anarchists).

Also anarchists don't claim ownership of the word, but in the discussion on "libertarianism", I find it more than appropriate to discuss the history of the word and why we continue to use it.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:12:27 2010 No.989554

>>989548
>We hold that true socialism is not coerced and is the natural, unexploited expression of the human will.

OK, but I disagree. You will either have to kill me and everyone else that disagrees (which kind of ruins the whole non-aggression anti-statist thing) or abandon the idea of anarchist socialism.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:16:27 2010 No.989560 >>989546 The American school system is primarily essentialist. And furthermore, they usually teach patriotism and individualism, because those are central values of American culture.

>>	!nstaller!Tr1Pc0dE Sat Jul 31 08:19:27 2010 No.989565 'On Liberty' by John Stuart Mill

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:21:27 2010 No.989569 Wow, no one has said De Sade yet?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:43:27 2010 No.989607 Thomas Carlyle - Sartor Resartus you can forget about everything else...read it first

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 08:51:27 2010 No.989611 >>989560 bzzzt wrong, read Rushdoony's The Messianic Character of American Education. American education is founded on hippy-jesus commune-loving insanity.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 09:06:27 2010 No.989622 >>989611 You'll excuse me if I trust my college education over one book some guy wrote.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 13:47:27 2010 No.989984 >>989560 Or maybe we could try to rationally discuss the matter, like normal human beings.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 13:55:27 2010 No.989998 >>988811 orwell fought in the marxist malitia in spain. the dude was not a libertarian.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 13:57:27 2010 No.990005 >>988811 >1984 is strongly libertarian themed. To deny this is not serious. worst statement itt.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 13:57:27 2010 No.990008 >>989998 it wasn't a marxist militia...there were elements of the left but essentially it was the people vs the fascists (supported by hitler and mussolini) some americans came over too...the abraham lincoln brigade... doesn't sound very socialist

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:05:27 2010 No.990030

>>990008

>"I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags and with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen."

>captcha: first, alone. Creepy as fuck.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:07:27 2010 No.990035

>>990030

>"Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senor' or 'Don' or even 'Ústed'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud."

YEH GAIS NO LIBERTARIAN THEMES HERE Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:08:27 2010 No.990040
File: 24 KB, 524x492, george-orwell-1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>990005
It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called 'abolition of private property' which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group instead of a mass of individuals. Individually, no member of the Party owns anything, except petty personal belongings. Collectively, the Party owns everything in Oceania, because it controls everything, and disposes of the products as it thinks fit.

In the years following the Revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost unopposed, because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization. It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport - everything had been taken away from them: and since these things were no longer private property, it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc, which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.
- George Orwell, 1984

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:08:27 2010 No.990043

>>990035

"Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...So far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine."

tl;dr lrn2 research before you say shit.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:09:27 2010 No.990045 >>990008 same thing. the group were marxists and they were a militia. orwell also feared the idea of capitalism taking over too. he wasn't libertarian. that's pushing it imo. if orwell was a libertarian so was trotsky.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:11:27 2010 No.990049 >>990043 see >>990040 and http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/opinion/essays/storgaard1.html

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:11:27 2010 No.990050 ITT: The American "Libertarian" party gets told by 4chan and retreats to ad hominems...again.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:13:27 2010 No.990055

>>990045
Trotsky expressed some libertarian sentiments, but he was a statist collectivist through and through. Orwell was much more complex. His political views changed over time, and he expressed everything of English nationalism to individualist libertarianism to democratic welfare socialism.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:14:27 2010 No.990058 >>990050 what, where?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:15:27 2010 No.990061 >>990049 I see little more than what has already been said. Am I missing something?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:16:27 2010 No.990065 >>990040 >the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism >the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism >the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism Orwell was a counter-Revolutionary teabagger fucktard.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:18:27 2010 No.990070 >>990061 Yes, that Orwell's political advocacies changed and whether never concrete, unlike what he consistently criticized: totalitarian government, communism, fascism.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:19:27 2010 No.990072 >>990058 See: >>989538 >>989262 >>989191 >>989546

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:21:27 2010 No.990073 >>990072 None of those are ad hominem...

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:22:27 2010 No.990075

i read it; he also complains about the soviet union;

he was not an institutional marxist, even if his politics tended towards the ideological left

there is a difference

for example, the group that kept spain alive for the first year or so were "anarchists". i would say they were closer to libertarians than marxists but who the fuck cars, labels

he was a cool enough dude

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:23:27 2010 No.990078 >>990070 Add capitalism to that motherfucking list, and it's true.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:26:27 2010 No.990089

>>989554
What non-aggression anti-statist thing? You realize there have been revolutionary anarchists for over 150 years, right? The Spanish Civil War had an anarchist army. While some anarchists eschew violence, not all do.

>>989611
>>989622
The American public school system was first created in New York by a protestant religious group to give a basic education to poor kids. They taught them basic literacy, basic mathematics, and some general job skills.

It expanded greatly from the late 1800's and has become what it is today: a place of American essentialism and patriotic indoctrination.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:28:27 2010 No.990097

>>990075
Libertarians are anarchists. The group that kept spain alive were the anarcho-syndaclists. They weren't marxist, they were anarchists. There was a marxist faction to the republican army which sometimes fought with the democrats and anarchists and sometimes fought with them.

Captcha: analysis pegged...even it agrees with me

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:29:27 2010 No.990105

>>990078
No it's not. Orwell barely talked about capitalism, and when he did he was never clear as to the definition. He did however consistently criticize collectivism and communism and state control over individual lives. This is what he is famous for, not his economic prescriptions, which were scarce and inconsistent.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:36:27 2010 No.990115 >>990089 Non-aggression =/= pacifism...

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:50:27 2010 No.990148

>>990105

>Orwell barely talked about capitalism, and when he did he was never clear as to the definition.

Um, factually incorrect there, little buddy. As journalist Eric Blair (his real name) he wrote extensively on the effects of capitalism on the poor and disenfranchised (see: Down and Out in Paris and London, published 1933) and how unrestrained capitalism led to British imperialism and foreign interventionism and the rape of the third world (any of his essays on India).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:52:27 2010 No.990150 >>990148 But he never said "OH CAPITALISM IS TO BLAME FOR ALL OF THESE THINGS LET'S START A REVOLUTION!" Seriously try thinking critically for once.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:53:27 2010 No.990152 >>990150 join the dots tard

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:56:27 2010 No.990157 >>990150 4/10 I raged a little.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:58:27 2010 No.990161 classical libertarian thought: Les Chants De Maldoror by Comte De Lautreamont

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 14:59:27 2010 No.990163 >>990115 I realize. Go read some Johann Most and other of the revolutionary anarchists. They advocate propaganda by the deed and a full on class war where those who are opposed are trod under heel.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:01:27 2010 No.990167

>>990150

Well, thinking critically (and ignoring the ad hominem to which you retreat in which you imply that I'm not) I can see that you've backpedaled from your initial statement ("Orwell barely talked about capitalism") to an entirely different one ("Well, fine...but he didn't outright advocate revolution!") I suspect you are arguing dogmatically from the conclusion you want to reach, altering or cherry-picking data as you go along, and not necessarily arguing unbiasedly from the facts and towards wherever the facts may lead you.

I did my post-doc work on Orwell/Blair, and I really must tell you that there is no support for the American "Libertarian" party to be found in his collected writings--unless it's what you WANT to find, and you ignore the bulk of what he wrote that would be construed as standing against the American laissez-faire capitalism version of "Libertarianism" and pick the odd sentence here and there out of context.

The truth is, the American "Libertarian" party is another extreme form of authoritarianism, in which individuals are denied the right of free assembly to form governments or enact community standards against the predations of an unfettered oligarchy.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:04:27 2010 No.990173

>>990167
Didn't you take a little issue with his proposed solution to the problem of homeless men in Down and Out...something like work camps wasn't it? I loved that book, but I found his proposals kind of strange. Maybe I was reading it incorrectly or something.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:06:27 2010 No.990176 File: 41 KB, 604x302, 1279125027726.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>990167

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:10:27 2010 No.990186 >>990173 Dude was also against explaining science to the masses. Everybody has a few brainfarts. >captcha: intentional Engels...I think it can read now

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:11:27 2010 No.990189

>>990173

>something like work camps wasn't it?

I think whenever I first see the phrase "work camp" it bring to mind the image of gulags and concentration camps, ie forced labor, so it's easy to misread because of the modern connotations.

With Orwell, I realized that in 1933 he instead meant subsidized tent cities where the homeless voluntarily receive shelter and are paid for public works projects--generating wealth (rather than printing money), thus putting more real money into the economy without causing undue inflation and providing infrastructure maintenance for existing businesses, thus enabling them to generate wealth as well.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:15:27 2010 No.990196

>>990167
Twas a different anon who replied to you. Orwell barely talked about "capitalism." Indeed he talked about it, was not an economist, and was inconsistent in his economic advocacies. Read the post to which you are attempting to reply.

Orwell's most famous work has clear and unambiguous themes in common with individualist libertarianism. To deny this is not serious.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:17:27 2010 No.990199 File: 18 KB, 307x400, 3042580499_3ee210d4b2_o.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>990163 Johann Most was an authoritarian communist, as were the Spanish "anarchists." Read: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:17:27 2010 No.990201 >>990196 Individualist? Yes. Libertarian? No.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:18:27 2010 No.990202

>>990189
yeah ''work camps'' is perhaps a little harsh. i just can't imagine that if the state would implement what Orwell envisioned, that it would turn out as anything but a prison-type situation. i've been through the homeless shelter/social services rat race for a few years. Nothing is free, if you get what i mean.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:22:27 2010 No.990212

>>990201
Libertarianism is the position advocating individual freedom, individually voluntary human interaction, opposing individually involuntary collectivism and control such as that of the state. Orwell's work unambiguously and famously contains these themes, themes which were famously criticized by collectivist partisans, state socialists, and communists.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:25:27 2010 No.990220 >>990212 Individualist ideas do not solely belong to the domain of Libertarianism just like opposing gun control does not automatically make you a Republican (though people often assume this).

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:29:27 2010 No.990224

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:29:27 2010 No.990226 >>990220 yawn So you're agreeing that Orwell's work famously and unambiguously has themes in common with individualist libertarianism. Greeat. You can go away now. You're wasting my time.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:31:27 2010 No.990231

>>990196
>>988811

You again. What is this

>to deny this is not serious

business? You got a tic or something?

If you mean the 19th and early 20th century version of libertariansim, aka the First-through-Third-International, you could arrive at this conclusion if you read just 1984 and Animal Farm and ignored the bulk of the texts in which leaders who foment a libertarian revolution, using the language of individual liberties, deny individual human (or animal) rights by claiming the rights of the lesser impinge upon the rights of the greater. So you'd really have to put on some spectacular blinders, but you could write a (quickly debunked) thesis on those two texts alone and ignoring the (voluminous) rest of his writing.

But if you mean you find support for the American laissez-faire capitalist "Libertarian" party (which is the diametric opposite of 19th century libertarianism ideologically), then the answer is simply no. I can't get past "what is this I don't even" about such a statement. What is your support for stating that either 1984 or Animal Farm is a treatise in support of laissez faire capitalism?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:32:27 2010 No.990234 >>990226 oh no someone wasted your time on 4chan you're on 4CHAN

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:37:27 2010 No.990242

>>990231
As has already been explained to you, Orwell did not clearly have any economic prescriptions consistent over time. He is famous for and has in common with individualist libertarianism his oppositions - to communism, to fascism, to collectivism, to state control over individual lives. These are the themes of his most famous works.

See Orwell's joint review of Hayek and Zilliacuas on his thought on economics - he didn't see a solution. He agreed that collectivism, that "socialism inevitably leads to despotism." However, he also agreed that "free capitalism leads to monopoly." Thus he did not give a prescription, which was wise considering his ignorance of economics.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:48:27 2010 No.990262 >>990242 >There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:50:27 2010 No.990267

>>990262
it all sounds a bit naieve, but i don't fault him for it. ''right and wrong'' are incongruous with politics in an essential way, of course. but orwell wrote great books and he fought for what he believed in. all in all, i wouldn't attribute to him any nominalism. i don't get the fascination with categorizing authors for their political qualities.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:52:27 2010 No.990269

>>990262
Right, he raises the question, but does not answer it. And he agrees with the arguments against it. What is key, however, from that point is whether the economic arguments are sound from either side (whether logically "socialism inevitably leads to despotism" and/or "free capitalism leads to monopoly.") Thus from there you're left to the arguments of economics. But Orwell is not going with you.

Anyway, the point is made. Orwell's most acclaimed work has famous and unambiguous themes in common with individualist libertarianism. /thread

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:52:27 2010 No.990272

>>990242

>He is famous for and has in common with individualist libertarianism his oppositions - to communism, to fascism, to collectivism, to state control over individual lives. These are the themes of his most famous works.

Post-doc here again. So we agree that he did not support laissez-faire capitalism. Good. Then we agree there is no support in his texts for the modern American "Libertarian" party.

As to the themes of his "most famous works" (and excluding the mountains of essays, diaries, and published investigative or narrative journalism), it could more properly said that he did not dogmatically rail against positions, but rather described a process wherein a libertarian underclass (in the 19th century sense of libertarian) strikes against a hegemonic power using the language of individual liberties, only to itself become the hegemonic power and use the same language of individual liberties to deny the rights of the new underclass, claiming the rights of the underclass would impinge upon the rights of the new hegemons.

We are agreed that his novels are not prescriptive, but you seem not to understand that his novels ARE proscriptive against the abrogation of human rights by a libertarian hegemon: a hegemon claiming the language of individual rights in order to suppress the rights of free assembly and rule by the people for the people against said libertarian hegemons.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:57:27 2010 No.990282 >>990242 Also: economics != political science. It is one factor among many in the formula by which a civilization is governed or chooses to govern itself.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:57:27 2010 No.990283 347817293 THE KING COME DOWN

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 15:59:27 2010 No.990290

>>990272
PhD economist here. Read the post to which you replied. Everything you're saying was addressed already. Orwell did not consistently support any economic prescription whatsoever.

And no I don't agree with your summary of his secondary stuff re "libertarian underclass" and no "libertarian" (the English word) did not mean state socialists, who he focused criticism on most harshly.

Your talk about "libertarian hegemons" is illogical and incoherent. There is no element of proactive physical coercion in individualist libertarianism (Nozick, Lester, DD Friedman, de Jasay, et al.). It is all consent, all individually voluntary. Hegemon doesn't apply. See Gramsci.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:03:27 2010 No.990295 File: 4 KB, 210x203, 1273432674498.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>990290 >PhD >4Chan

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:03:27 2010 No.990298

>>990282
"Political science" is just a bs major, filled with mostly normative and uninteresting piffle. Economics and specifically microeconomics is the study of human action with rigorous and consistent systematic method.

Anyway, the questions that Orwell comes to are explicitly ones of economics - the question of monopoly. And the arguments against Orwell's economic claim that "free capitalism leads to monopoly" are strong and the consensus of the modern economic profession. See Demsetz, Coase, Vernon Smith, James Buchanan, new institutional economics, etc.

onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:05:27 2010 No.990300

>>989262
...i didn't say it's a specifically upper class concept. that doesn't even make fucking sense. just the mentality of kids who's never touched a drop of critical social theory in their life.

also, sorry to burst your little bubble, but back in the day only the powerful owned any property. it's a regime of power and domination, directly descending from the practice of wolves peeing on the ground to mark territory.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:05:27 2010 No.990302 OP is a champ for making this awesome thread also, alan watts is god tier

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:07:27 2010 No.990305

>>990290
>making it look like economists all failed political philosophy 101

good job dude. explain the consent of original possession, also please distinguish the different conceptions of the criterion of justification as exhibited by the libertarian idea of self ownership vis a vis the idea of just distribution.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:08:27 2010 No.990306
File: 10 KB, 480x297, TyBrax.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:08:27 2010 No.990307 >>990298 >He thinks economics deals with anything approaching a mathematical or otherwise systematically coherent methodology. laughinggirls dot jay pee jee

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:08:27 2010 No.990308 >>990298 >sounding like a retarded positivist >trying to expound social policy fail

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:10:27 2010 No.990310 >>990300 >implying humans evolved from wolves lolno empower nigger

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:12:27 2010 No.990313

>>990290

Real world examples of laissez faire capitalism, however, are rife with coercion and institutional violence. See Pinochet's Chile, which Friedman so strongly advocated. And while I am sorry you disagree with the accepted reading of Orwell's two novels (even outside the context of his entire body of work) there is not much I can do for you there.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:14:27 2010 No.990316 >>990310 i see logic isn't your thing.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:15:27 2010 No.990319 >>988927 It's the other way around actually. Eurofags and other pussy liberals think they own the word then when an american "rightist" identifies himself as a libertarian the immediate reaction is hurr dats our werd. u mad?

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:15:27 2010 No.990320

>>990310

>Completely ignoring what he was saying, which was that dominance hierarchy and the ownership of private property by the ruling group are expressions of our fundamentally territorial and controlling nature, (which we share with the vast majority of animals), and mocked something nobody said.

Or, alternatively, if he really did mean to say that our territorial proclivities are caused by our being the descendants of wolves, he needs to pass seventh-grade biology.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:16:27 2010 No.990323 >>990320 fuck dude 7th grade bio is hardcore shit

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:16:27 2010 No.990324 Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt http://www.nontaxpayer.net/onelessn.html

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:18:27 2010 No.990327

>>990313

The problem I have with deontological libertarianism derived from a non-aggression principle is that it takes a very narrow view of human history. It uses the evils of coercion in order to justify allowing extreme disparities in wealth, but it neglects to mention that all land ownership, and thereby the means of production, and thereby the goods produced, is coercive; the only way for one to make a claim to ownership of land is by the use or threat of use of force, and even when bought from the government -- this is still true. Regardless of rhetoric about the free market, all market activity is based on some level on coercion, meaning that the question is no longer whether or not coercion is justified, but who it should benefit -- those with money; those who manipulate the coercion to their own benefit, or the whole of society that contributes the most utility towards the good of all.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:18:27 2010 No.990328 >>990320 >he needs to pass seventh-grade biology. Haha I know, right? flummox nigger

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:19:27 2010 No.990330

>>990298

Well, while economics does employ metrics, so does phrenology. Economics is more credible than phrenology, but was still regarded until recently as a form of rhetoric (interesting factoid: Adam Smith's first profession? rhetor), and specifically a form of persuasive political speech and a subset of political science. Which, agreed, is not a science, but rather an art like diplomacy. A necessary art.

It's only recently with the advent of the Chicago school that economics increasingly has become the province of obscurantist technocrats seeking the mantle of science and making claims of objectivity and infallibility, just as diplomacy has degenerated to the point where our foreign offices are filled with twenty-somethings running SPSS models of factors affecting GDP while unable to speak a single foreign language, or our university science departments are filled with math illiterates claiming Darwinian evolution has an economic basis--teleological thinking at its worst.

This whole thread is sad and you should feel sad.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:21:27 2010 No.990334

>>990313
Right, because Pinochet was laissez-faire...

No, the degree to which Chile became economically free is the degree to which poverty was reduced and prosperity was increased. The state under Pinochet's administration engaged in unlibertarian actions as all states do, and those actions are quite obviously not endorsed by any libertarian anywhere.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:21:27 2010 No.990335 >>990327 >extreme disparities in wealth this already exists you idiot. Thanks to the Fed's fiat faggotry and the state's relationship with corporations. strawman harder next time

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:23:27 2010 No.990342 >>990335 i think you need to read that post again and pay attention, because you would probably learn something.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:25:27 2010 No.990347 ITT: Libertarians = 0; sanity = over 9000.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:27:27 2010 No.990350 >>990342 private property isnt coercive you worthless pseudo intellectual. keep trying to strawman logic.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:28:27 2010 No.990352 ITT: Libertarians = over 9000; statists = 0.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:31:27 2010 No.990356 >>990327 No, individual private property is not coercive. Anyway, deontologists are a small subset of libertarianism. The central pillars of libertarianism are (1) criticisms of statism and (2) economics and history.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:33:27 2010 No.990359 >>990352 Keep calling everyone who disagrees with you a statist, man. That's really conducive to rational argument.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:33:27 2010 No.990361

>>990334

Let's say I define water as something that runs uphill. I take a glass of water, set a surface on an incline and pour the water. It runs downhill. What do I conclude? Because I've decided that water runs uphill, and my dogma will brook no contradictions, I conclude that this must not be water.

Similarly, I am amused by how quickly laissez-faire dogmatists retreat from the libertarian policies and states they once championed (see the Cato Institute's ringing early endorsements of Somalia) once they see the results and conclude it doesn't look like the utopian individualist paradise they've been promised.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:35:27 2010 No.990365 >>990359 >>990347 But everyone who agrees with libertarians is insane, right? lol butthurt

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:36:27 2010 No.990366

>>990199
Where the fuck do you get the idea that Most was a statist?

most quotes: "Anarchists are socialists because they want the improvement of society, and they are communists because they are convinced that such a transformation of society can only result from the establishment of a commonwealth of property. "

If we hope and even assume that the social question will be answered through communism, and not in this or that country but in the world, any thought of centralization must be a monstrosity.

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 16:36:27 2010 No.990367 >>990350 son i am disappoint.jpg

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:37:27 2010 No.990371

>>990361

Somalia is in the news again. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government in Mogadishu will become a real government with actual power.

The media invariably describe this prospect as a "hope." But it's a strange hope that is accompanied by violence and dread throughout the country. Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming.

As even the CIA factbook admits:

"Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia's service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu's main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security."

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:41:27 2010 No.990390 >>990371 oh, wow.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:43:27 2010 No.990397 >>990361 The average somalian is worth thirty trillion dollars. Your argument is invalid.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:43:27 2010 No.990398

samefagging from the Most quotes above:

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bright/most/socialmonster.html

Read that and tell me he was an authoritarian communist.

As for the article, I am well aware of the failures of the CNT and the statist tendencies of some of the leaders. I don't see anywhere in that article (which I admit is way too long to read at a computer screen, but I will read it in full) that calls them authoritarian communists. Since you seem to know the article so well, point it out for me.

You seem to have a very cursory idea of what anarchism is.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:44:27 2010 No.990400

>>990371
To understand more about the country without a government, turn to The Law of the Somalis, written by Michael van Notten (1933-2002) and edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum, sheds light on the little known Somali law, culture and economic situation. Somalia is often cited as an example of a stateless society where chaos is the "rule" and warlords are aplenty.

The BBC's country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: "Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people."

The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia's telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:46:27 2010 No.990407 File: 38 KB, 380x240, 1272065941199.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>990390 lol u mad

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:47:27 2010 No.990408

>>990361
Uh no. What you're misunderstanding is that economic freedom is explicitly and always noted as a matter of degree. Chileans are better off today for the degree to which the state was laissez-faire. i.e. the degree to which the state did nothing. What Pinochet is rightly criticised for (libertarians and most everyone else) is an example of definitionally unlibertarian, statist intervention in individual human lives.

Somalia is a excellent empirical case for the effects of a relative statelessness. The case is unambiguous - statelessness was better for the welfare of Somalians than statism.

Your complaint is the equivalent of complaining to a engineer about his pointing out that the bond strength of rebars is affected in degrees by temperature.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:47:27 2010 No.990409 >>990400 & happiness levels are?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:47:27 2010 No.990411 >>990371 The population living below 50% of the median income has quadrupled. GDP increase != a rising tide raises all ships. More like a rising tide raises all yachts.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:49:27 2010 No.990417

>>990398
samefag again. I found the meat of what you are talking about. I see some things in here that I don't agree with, but I'll withhold my judgment on the CNT until I'm done with the article and then have the chance to find collaboration with his conclusions. As far as my readings go, the CNT were avowedly anarchist in the early days of the civil war and turned collaborationist towards the end.

Most is still not an authoritarian communist.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:52:27 2010 No.990421

>>990411

Infant mortality went from 152/1000 under the socialist state to 114/1000 under statelessness.

The absolute poverty rate went from 60% to 43%. The population with access to sanitation went from 18% to 26%. Life expectancy increased. Starvation rates decreased. Immunization rates of children increased. Maternal mortality decreased. Healthcare availability increased. The percentage of people with radios, telephones, and TVs increased dramatically. Millions of Somali refugees returned to Somalia.

International trade increased. The services and telecommunications sectors increased. Airfares became cheaper and airports more reliable and new airlines formed. All of these improvements are greater than those experienced by Somalia’s statist neighbors.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10120/better_off_stateless.html

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:52:27 2010 No.990423

>>990400
As for Somalia being lawless, Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who married into the Samaron Clan and lived the last dozen years of his life with them, specifically challenges that portrayal. He explains that Somalia is a country based on customary law. The traditional Somali system of law and politics, he contends, is capable of maintaining a peaceful society and guiding the Somalis to prosperity. Moreover, efforts to re-establish a central government or impose democracy on the people are incompatible with the customary law.

Van Notten distinguishes between the four meanings of the word "law" — statutory, contractual, customary, and natural law. The common misunderstanding is that legitimate rules only come from formally established entities and that therefore a country without a legislature is lawless. Refuting that misunderstanding, van Notten explains that a perfectly orderly and peaceful country can exist when people respect property rights and honor their contracts. While natural laws denote peace, liberty, and friendly relations, statutory laws represent commands. Statutory laws reflect the preferences of legislators, who impose "morality" on those they govern and regulate their ability to voluntarily enter into contracts. This, according to van Notten, is wrong from the standpoint of both morality and law.

Customary laws develop in a country like Somalia in the absence of a central legislating body. Rules "emerge spontaneously as people go about their daily business and try to solve the problems that occasionally arise in it without upsetting the patterns of cooperation on which they so heavily depend" (Van Notten, 15: 2005). Van Notten contends that the Somali customary law closely follows the natural law and therefore should be preserved.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:53:27 2010 No.990427 >>990411 >relative indicators That's because ALL ships did rise. See absolute indicators. Would you rather the poor were even poorer if the rich were less rich?

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:55:27 2010 No.990432

>>990408

_Unravelling Somalia_, Catherine Besteman:

>"Acts of genocide are normally committed by state agents, for example by soldiers in the employ of the national military or by militias who have the support of those who hold state power. Somalia is a rare case in which genocidal acts were carried out by militias in the utter absence of a governing state structure. While Somalia’s dictator, Siyad Barre, orchestrated massacres of his political opponents during his final years in power, local “warlords” in charge of private militias continued the strategy following Barre’s fall from power and the collapse of a governing structure. Somalia’s collapse was defined by clan-aligned militias battling each other for power in local and regional arenas, with the unarmed population of the Jubba Valley becoming a particular target of violence and abuse by opposed militias." [continues]

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:56:27 2010 No.990434

>>990432

[cont'd.]

>"During the peak of the violence, an Oxfam official called the valley “one big graveyard.” While Somalis throughout the country suffered grievously during the peak years of civil war, residents in the Jubba Valley received particularly harsh treatment by militias because of several factors: 1) in the early years of the war, militias of competing warlords battled back and forth across the Valley for territorial control, each side attacking civilians; 2) identified as racial minorities of slave ancestry within Somalia, most Jubba Valley residents held weak ties to Somali clans that were easily broken in the midst of war, which meant that armed clans did not come to their defense; 3) as sedentary peasant farmers tied to the land for their subsistence, Valley residents were easily targeted by mobile militias; 4) as food producers, Valley residents were killed so other Somalis could claim their land and their harvests; 5) as an unarmed population, Valley residents were defenseless. Genocidal acts in the valley took the form of mass killings, abduction and involuntary marriage of local women by militia members, and the deliberate starvation of entire communities by the seizure of food supplies."

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:56:27 2010 No.990435 >>990423 This. Anyone who is going to talk about post-state Somalia needs to read van Notten. Also, Leeson.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:58:27 2010 No.990437

>>990423

The extended family is the core of Somali society. Families descended from common great grandparent form a jilib, the basic independent jural unit, and a number of jilibs in turn form a clan. Each family, jilib, and clan has its own judge, whose role is to facilitate the handling of disputes by deciding where the liability lies and what compensation should be paid. For example if a man is murdered, the murderer's clan gives the victim's clan one hundred camels (the blood price). Verdicts are widely discussed, and a judge who does not base his decision on norms prevailing in the community is unlikely to be asked to settle further disputes. Thus while a judge may form his own principles, his customers will decide his competence as a judge.

The family of the successful plaintiff can resort to self-help to enforce a payment, or the court can order the men of the community to do so. Every clansman is insured by his jilib. For instance, if A violates B's right and it is held that A should pay compensation to B, A's jilib will provide the compensation. Hence the jilib functions as "a safety net, venture capital, protection, and insurance" (Van Notten, 74: 2005).

If a clan member constantly violates others' rights and his jilib repeatedly pays compensation, the jilib can expel him. On the other hand, there is nothing to stop someone from leaving his jilib and joining another, if it will have him, or setting up his own. A person without a jilib is unthinkable, an outlaw, because he is not insured against liabilities he might incur toward others. Hence he loses all protection of the law.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 16:59:27 2010 No.990438 >>990427 >doesn't understand inflation

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:00:27 2010 No.990444

>>990434

[cont'd.]

"Militias massacred groups of villagers who defied their efforts to exert control in the valley. Several villages, for example, lost all their men in such acts. Militias forcibly divorced young Somali Bantu women from their husbands in order to abduct them into involuntary marriages, specifically in order to ensure their children (whose identities follow the patrilineage) were members of the militia clans rather than Somali Bantus."

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:01:27 2010 No.990445

>>990432
>>990434

Anecdotes and truisms.

Consult any of the academic literature on the absolute measures of human welfare in Somalia. This is not a debatable point - Somalians were better off under relative statelessness than under the socialist state.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WHV-4PW05BG-1&_user=10&_cover
Date=12/31/2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&am
p;_searchStrId=1417471764&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_u
rlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5f098027e304ef8bb65bf129f10fe0f4

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V8F-4SHMCBM-1&_user=10&_origU
di=B6WHV-4PW05BG-1&_fmt=high&_coverDate=09/30/2008&_rdoc=1&_orig=article&_acct=C
000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=fb0fb80286ed4dd59e102d254c23b548

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:01:27 2010 No.990447

>>990437

Decisions are enforced and oaths taken in ways that may seem unsophisticated or odd, yet they are the custom and must be respected. If, for instance, the defendant refuses to comply with the verdict without appealing his case to a higher court, he can be tied to a tree covered with black ants until he agrees. When evidence is sketchy or lacking, several types of oaths are available. A strong oath is one that is repeated fifty times. Another type is a divorce oath. If a man testifies under divorce oath and it is later found that his testimony was false, his marriage becomes null and void.

Independent extended families being the basic social and economic unit does have its weaknesses. While clansmen are under no obligation to share their wealth with other clans, they must share it to a significant extent within the clan. Van Notten notes this as a drawback and states that the "law makes clansmen somewhat a prisoner of their clan." Since individuals differ in their productivity, it is inevitable that some family members will benefit from more successful members. In addition, as a way of promoting internal cohesion, extended families may foment animosity against other families. Van Notten also writes that foreigners are not recognized under Somali law unless they marry into a clan or come under the protection of a Somali patron.

This has important economic implications. For example, because land cannot be sold outside the clan, foreigners would generally be prohibited from purchasing it. One way to work with this might be land leasing, which is possible under customary law. Somali elders suggested to Van Notten that a group of foreign investors could form their own 'clan' on a leased territory and develop it, say for a free port, on a land-lease basis.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:02:27 2010 No.990448

>>990444

[cont'd.]

"Discrimination against and dispossession of Jubba Valley villagers has long been a theme in Somalia, and the instability and food insecurity made the farmers targets for horrible levels of persecution, which included murder, rape, torture, the routine looting of their food reserves and harvests, and forced labor. They were also caught in the crossfire, particularly as one front of the war shifted back and forth across the river valley as the Rahanweyn battled in from the east, took over the valley, then lost it again to the Darood from the west of the valley. Each time villagers suffered pillaging by fleeing militias and attacks from incoming militias. They are also economic refugees; some fled because the continual looting of their food and dispossession of their farmland resulted in starvation."

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:02:27 2010 No.990449
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>>990444
Compared to under the Somalian state, conflict was isolated and sporadic, confined when it did occur to pockets of small-scale rivalry. And key to expanding peace was expanding commerce and free markets. People were sending remits when there was a government too. The government was not helping things. See also Somaliland, where there is still no functioning government capable of taxation, and yet non-government and voluntary actors have drastically improved the quality of life and reduced violence there.

>“Most depictions of Somalia grossly exaggerate the extent of violence. In reality, fewer people die from armed conflict in some parts of Somalia than do in neighboring countries that have governments. In these areas security is better today than it was under government (UNDP 2001). About the same number of annual deaths in Somalia are due to childbirth as are attributable to war—roughly four percent of the total (UNDP/World Bank 2003: 16). And these deaths are combatants, not civilians. “Atrocities against civilians are now almost of unheard of” (Menkhaus 2004: 30). This is comparable to percentage of deaths due to homicide in middle-income countries such as Mexico.”

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10120/better_off_stateless.html

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:03:27 2010 No.990452

>>990447

An important discussion centers around democracy. In 1960, when the British and Italian colonizers withdrew from Somalia, they formed the government of the Republic of Somalia as a democratic entity. Nine years later, the country was under a dictatorship. Through these events, according to van Notten, many Somalis realized that they could return to their traditional form of governance founded on independent clans.

Nevertheless, since 1991, the United Nations has made efforts to promote the establishment of a democratic government in Somalia. Van Notten strongly argues that such government is incompatible with the Somali customary law, which prizes life, liberty, and property. He asserts that democracy is not even a viable option:

"When the electorate is composed of close-knit tribal, religious, linguistic or ethnic communities, the people invariably vote, not on the merits of any issue, but for the party of their own community. The community with the greatest numbers wins the election, and the minority parties then put rebellion and secession at the top of their political agenda. That is nothing but a recipe for chaos." (van Notten, 127; 2005)

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:03:27 2010 No.990453

>>990448

[cont'd]

"Peace has been hard to negotiate because of the number of local and clan based groups competing for power, the continual rejection by militia leaders of internationally-mediated new governments, the persistent disregard of peace treaties by political actors, and the desire by Ethiopia and the U.S. to contain the consolidation of power over southern Somalia by the Union of Islamic Courts. Periods of peace are punctuated by moments of violence, and it remains difficult to claim that Somalia’s war has unequivocally ended."

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:03:27 2010 No.990454

This whole argument just goes to show that most American Libertarians are just rednecks in disguise. And some are rednecks that got through 4 chapters of an Ayn Rand novel.

I suppose that my ideology falls somewhere between libertarian socialism and corporatism. I believe in an unregulated market for most non-essential material goods and services, but not for any industry which is tied too directly to a country's well-being, I think collective ownership is best. Banking, Energy, Pharmaceuticals, Housing, and Healthcare come to mind.

And do we really have to worry about lowering taxes if we just end costly American imperialism and defense spending? I'm all about crippling the government, but I want to cripple them by turning them into a slave and not a master -- not abolishing them completely.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:04:27 2010 No.990455 >>990438 >Somalia >absolute indicators >inflation facepalm

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:04:27 2010 No.990456

>>990453

[cont'd.]

"It seems that acts of genocide in the Jubba Valley have ended, however, at least for now, having been replaced by regimes of forced labor maintained by threats to life and limb against farmers who remained or returned after fleeing if they refuse to comply with demands of armed militia. Under the current political dispensation, the Bantu of the Valley have lost their land and do not enjoy any political rights."

And there's your coercion. Which apparently is great for GDP.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:04:27 2010 No.990457 >>990199 http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/history/spain/caplan.html a response to caplan's article.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 17:05:27 2010 No.990458 i'm sorry to inform you of this, but to normal people not all states are the same. only to batshit libertarians is soviet russia similarly evil as the european union or the fed reserve.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:06:27 2010 No.990461 >>990454 1. What specifically itt this thread shows this? 2. I'm a libertarian and an economist.. and not an American.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:09:27 2010 No.990471 >>990435 Sweet Jesus, is THIS who you're quoting!? http://www.isil.org/resources/fnn/2002nov/van-notten-obit.html TROLOLOLOLO Now I know you can't be serious. 0/10

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:12:27 2010 No.990480
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>>990457
Seen it. That internet page is a terrible response. Doesn't even address the historical cases emphasized in Caplan's article, merely points out (somewhat accurately) that not all the CNT fags were that bad, and then attempts to psychologize Caplan based on "class interests" and finally ends in the same rant against "free markets" you can read by any left-anarchist who doesn't understand economics or historiography. Anyway, read Caplan's article first.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:15:27 2010 No.990487 >>990471 Right, because he actually married into a Somali clan and lived there for over a decade, during which time he produced extensive and widely cited anthropological work. Anyway, genetic fallacy.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:17:27 2010 No.990492

>>988787

I'm not entirely sure that criticism holds water. Orwell was indeed a socialist, but 1984 is very clearly a warning against the excesses of such a system and is extremely opposed to the idea that the state is more important than the individual. And whatever your stripe of libertarianism, that's a fundamental aspect.

Turning to the broader theme here, Somalia is an interesting case, and I believe it generally and broadly supports anarchy as a system, but we have to remember that the anarchy of a blackout is not the same as that of a society which chooses that path. The successes are far more interesting than the failures, precisely because they have emerged so imperfectly and in such a scenario. Despite this, many of Somalia's industries function better than those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

See also: Icelandic Commonwealth 930-1262

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:21:27 2010 No.990499 >>990458 good thing "normal people" are stupid. enjoy your hivemind you should check out The Road to Serfdom sometime

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:21:27 2010 No.990501

>>990480
I'll print both and read them when I have some time. I'm an anarchist and a history major. I'm skeptical of anarchist responses to academic articles because of the tendency to attack values instead of arguments. Was Caplan's article ever published in an academic journal? If not, this makes me skeptical of his conclusions and interpretation.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:21:27 2010 No.990503 I wish all the right wing libs went to Somalia. Maybe the evil socialist American regime can convert it to a detention camp for Randtards.

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 17:21:27 2010 No.990504 >>990499 LOL ok

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:23:27 2010 No.990507 This is getting old.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:24:27 2010 No.990511

>>990452
Van Notten contends that the argument that a central government is a prerequisite for making treaties with foreign government agencies is flawed because the Somalis have long dealt with foreign governments and their agencies on a clan-by-clan basis. A common ministry of foreign affairs would pose a grave danger because it would undermine the customary law. He suggests that clans sharing a common interest could appoint a private company as their common agent. Van Notten and MacCallum further dispute that a central government is needed to provide "public" services. They propose the establishment of freeports, land-leasing, and commercial insurance companies. Certain sectors such as telecommunications have been thriving in Somalia's free market and government regulation could only hinder their growth.

Questions arise as to rampageous warlords when discussing a country without a central government. Van Notten explains that warlords exist because of the efforts to form a central government, not because of its absence:

"A democratic government has every power to exert dominion over people. To fend off the possibility of being dominated, each clan tries to capture the power of that government before it can become a threat. Those clans that didn't share in the spoils of political power would realize their chances of becoming part of the ruling alliance were nil. Therefore, they would rebel and try to secede. That would prompt the ruling clans to use every means to suppress these centrifugal forces… in the end all clans would fight with one another." (van Notten, 136; 2005)

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:25:27 2010 No.990518

>>990511
He thus asserts that efforts by the United Nations are not only futile, but also harmful to the Somalis.

Van Notten calls for documentation of clan law systems to facilitate doing business with foreigners, especially, on a nationwide scale. He argues that by compiling all the major jurisprudence under Somali law, the customary law will more readily evolve into a coherent body of common law. But if each clan is only bound by its own rules and custom, and if the Somalis so far never felt the need for the "merger of clan law systems," why would compiling rules of all different clans be necessary? Moreover, it is unclear how such a task can effectively be undertaken when the customary law evolves constantly, and clans have a nomadic character.

The book does not contain information regarding the Somali presidential election in 2004, which took place in Kenya. Efforts to construct a formal government continue but they appear to be in vain, inspiring hope in UN bureaucrats and the news media, but only fear and loathing in Mogadishu and the rest of the country.

Yumi Kim studied law in London, where she now works in financial services.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:26:27 2010 No.990521 >>990499 >insert xkcd about sheeple Really...just...fuck off. You are not special. You are not significantly more intelligent than everybody else.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:27:27 2010 No.990524 >>988825 I never read it but have you read Jennifer Government?

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:27:27 2010 No.990526

>>990501
Caplan is an extremely widely-cited, Princeton-educated, tenured economist. His article has been published in a number of libertarian publications and I believe in one Polish journal, but no, this is not the kind of thing that is generally published in journals and Caplan is a professional economist, not a historian.

However, you are engaging in genetic fallacy either way. Read the articles. Caplan's is meticulously cited.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:29:27 2010 No.990534 >>990521 Then why is it the so called "experts" continue to make the same exact mistakes? Have you seen the way most developed countries' economies operate? They're a dysfunctional mess.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:34:27 2010 No.990547 You're talking to the other guy, right?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:39:27 2010 No.990558 Is alan watts a libertarian, OP?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:41:27 2010 No.990563 Has anybody recommended some reading comprehension guides to OP yet? He needs it.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:42:27 2010 No.990566 >>990148 I like that book because it informed me more about poverty and how, if you give money to a beggar, give him something good ($20 at a minimum) or keep walking. What will a homeless guy hope to get with one dollar?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:42:27 2010 No.990567 >>990558 No he's a buddhist.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:44:27 2010 No.990573

>>990526
I know Harvard educated, tenured historians whose conclusions I find abhorrent. You seem to be falling prey to the fallacy you accuse me of by defending him based on his education. One of the beautiful things about academia is the ability to criticize. Half of my term papers in college thus far are based on revision of previous held beliefs, or at least include a thorough criticism of my sources.

The reason I rely on scholarly publications is because of the peer review system. I am not an expert on the Spanish Civil War. My focus is the post Civil War labor in the U.S. and social history. Thus knowing that at least three experts in the field of the Spanish Civil War have read and agreed that his conclusions are meritorious, I am able to accept his conclusions as being worth my time. I stopped reading popular history years ago because of this. I love Zinn and Chomsky, but I can't just assume they are working in a scholarly vein if they are put out by Penguin books.

And while I am familiar with Said's criticism of the "you aren't an expert, you don't count" argument, there is some validity to it. An historian learns proper historiography and historical methods in grad school. An economist probably doesn't. If David Montgomery wrote an internet article discussing economic theories, I would treat it the same way. I don't see anything wrong with this approach.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:44:27 2010 No.990574 >>990566 That's assuming you're the only one giving him money. If multiple people give him a dollar or two, he can get a pack of smokes or some Mad Dog.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:47:27 2010 No.990587

>>990487

No, I just think it's awesome that one brave Dutch libertarian pierced the veil of global reporting and reached his own set of highly selective facts, along the way concluding that reports of genocide were "exaggerated"--by liberal media elites, no doubt. So let's all ignore the fact that Somalia's lawless economy is now based in largely on slave and conscripted labor enforced by warring libertarian kleptocrats, because a Dutch libertarian has his own privileged set of facts that allow him to see this as a media exaggeration, and there is a circle-jerk of self-publishers who will parrot him ad nauseam.

How did you even get to this thread? Was the holocaust denier one full?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:49:27 2010 No.990593 >>990574 True, but I still try to abide by that advice

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:49:27 2010 No.990594 >>990573 >I love Zinn and Chomsky aaand close tab

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:53:27 2010 No.990608

>>990594
Zinn's academic work is highly respected. His People's History is a good primer for delving into better revisionist work.

Chomsky is entertaining and, at times, his criticisms are fantastic. His linguistics work is also highly respected.

Way to ad hominem

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 17:54:27 2010 No.990613 >>990558 Yes, Alan Watts was one of the founding members of the Libertarian Party.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:04:27 2010 No.990640

From the US Dept of Labor:

_Somalia_

_Incidence and Nature of Child Labor_

"Although instability in the country complicates the gathering of statistics, UNICEF estimated that 41.9 percent of children ages 5 to 14 years were working in Somalia in 1999. Formal employment of children is rare, with the vast majority of working children engaged in herding, agriculture, and domestic service. A 2002 World Bank study observed urban-rural differences in working children’s employment relationships. Self-employment and casual labor were more often observed in urban areas, while unpaid farm labor was the primary form observed in rural areas. Children are also conscripted by armed Somali militias and used for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Boys as young as 14 or 15 have participated in combat and many belong to gangs who raid indiscriminately. Trafficking networks exist that transport children to South Africa and promote their commercial sexual exploitation."

http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/somalia.htm

Wow! Everyone's employed! Libertarian paradise!

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:04:27 2010 No.990642

>>990573
>I love Zinn and Chomsky

Well, I can see why you'd hate Harvard historians then...

Post-positivist degrees of objectivity >>> attempting to embrace your biases and metanarrative BS. Objectivity matters. Fuck Zinn. Also, Chomsky is not taken seriously for good reason (outside linguistics).

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:07:27 2010 No.990653

From the United Nations:

Somalis still face extreme poverty and underdevelopment. They consistently rank among the lowest in the world on key indicators of human development, life expectancy, per capita income, malnutrition and infant mortality.

Somalis also suffer widespread human rights violations, including: murder, rape, looting and destruction of property, child soldiering, kidnapping, discrimination against minorities, torture, female genital mutilation, unlawful arrest and detention, and denial of due process.

Severe and chronic drought, as well as flooding, combined with insecurity, frequently disrupt farming.

The prolonged combination of these factors has eroded food security and livelihood capacities, impeded recovery and rendered many areas inaccessible to aid agencies.

Malnutrition rates in some areas remain at humanitarian crisis levels, which are considered 'normal' for Somalia.

The deterioration of traditional livelihoods has forced thousands to migrate to urban areas in search of employment. Conditions they meet there are only marginally better.

http://www.un.org/depts/ocha/cap/somalia.html

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:07:27 2010 No.990654 >>990642 >thinks empirical accuracy is somehow contradictory to normativity in history u r stoopid

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:08:27 2010 No.990656 ITT: semantics and their traumatizing effects on the 15 year old mind

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:09:27 2010 No.990659
File: 23 KB, 524x469, 1260959621488 (2).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>990640

libertarian: Somalia was made extremely poor and violent by decades of state interventionism. By all comprehensive economic data and many anthropological accounts on the ground, it improved significantly from that very low starting point during the period when it was relatively stateless.

statist: you're saying stateless Somalia was a libertarian utopia paradise. why don't you move there? NATION-STATE LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT HEARTLESS BOURGEOIS ATHIEST!!

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:11:27 2010 No.990664 >>990659 how old are you

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:11:27 2010 No.990668

>>990654
It's necessarily contradictory when you're talking about "history" as such. Subjectivity is unavoidable, but there is a stark difference between what serious historians do - try to recognize their biases and minimize them when relaying "historical events" vs. what historicists do - try to hide their biases under the guise of "history." If you want to do normative, that is absolutely fine, but the intellectually honest will be explicit about it. They will not call it "history."

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:17:27 2010 No.990686

>>990659

>and many anthropological accounts on the ground

Right. That would be your non-peer-reviewed Dutch friend, contradicting all the credible accounts on the ground describing Somalia as a haven for slave labor, abductions, extra-judicial executions et al?

No offense, because you've given me no indication that you're a racist or anti-semite one way or the other, but the modus operandi here seems identical to that perpetrated by the white separatist movement in the united states. They, too, have a select bookshelf of non-peer-reviewed authors with highly selective "science" backing theories of racial superiority or anecdotal "anthropological" narratives supporting their beliefs. And within that narrow circle-jerk, they all affirm one another and decry a biased world that denies their "truth."

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:18:27 2010 No.990691

>>990668
that's not really the fucking point. the point is to challenge entrenched normative notions through historical education and that is necessarily normative.

also, >implying selective presentation of facts isn't a normative context
>having no grasp of the relationship between normative and positive aspects of history.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:23:27 2010 No.990711 >>990686 No, that would be the peer-reviewd articles in Law Development Review, the Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Comparative Economics, Public Choice, Journal of Economic Behavior, Journal of Sustainable Development, etc.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:27:27 2010 No.990726

>>990711
if you actually think the somalia case of statism is anywhere comparable to the modern managerial welfare state. i have to tell you that no matter how well reviewed your anthro articles are, they are pretty fucking useless in support of your point.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:28:27 2010 No.990729

>>990642
>>990642
The belief that any history is truly objective is laughable at best. While most of the best historians practice self-effacement, it isn't possible. Our biases tend to show through. The only way to rid history of that is to simply state facts. Historians don't do this. It is part of the discipline to interpret data, letters, articles, etc into something that makes sense. Thus, a proper historian asks a question and then answers it.

Also, Zinn isn't hated by the historic community. He has some widely quoted, highly acclaimed academic books. To say he hasn't been taken seriously is rather naive.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:31:27 2010 No.990737 "Exports are up! Life-expectancy is up! Selling children to foreign perverts is the best idea we ever had! High-fives for everyone!"

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:32:27 2010 No.990740

>>990711

>Law Development Review

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=somalia+site:www.bepress.com/ldr/&ie
=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

"Your search - somalia site:www.bepress.com/ldr/ - did not match any documents."

I guess the liberal conspiracy took them down.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:33:27 2010 No.990748

>>990691
No, it is not necessarily normative. When describing events in history, one aspires to objectivity, not normativity. To do it ass-backwards is as silly as the postmodern critique of natural science (you know, because the content of physics is androcentric and represents class etc. etc.). There is history and there is interpretation. Based on how you're trying to argue here, I can say pretty safely I have a better understanding of the "positive aspects of history" than you, anon.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:34:27 2010 No.990752 >>990748 YOU OBVIOUSLY ADHERE TO FACTUAL ACCURACY WHILE ALSO ACKNOWLEDGING THE NECESSARY NORMATIVITY OF YOUR PRESENTATION AND HISTORY-TELLING. please go back to school.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:36:27 2010 No.990757 >>990740 http://www.bepress.com/ldr/vol2/iss1/art4/?sending=10683

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:37:27 2010 No.990762 >>990752 No that's not "obvious" and the two notions are necessarily contradictory. See any of the major criticisms of Zinn's joke of a book, for example. Also, u mad.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:39:27 2010 No.990770

>>990711

>Journal of Legal Studies

Their paper on Somalia is actually put out by "The Independent Institute", a Ron Paul-endorsed think tank. It doesn't touch on issues of security or lawlessness at all, and the section you cite as "on the ground anthropological studies" is, as shown in the footnotes, just a long quotation from your non-peer-reviewed Dutch friend.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:40:27 2010 No.990774 >>990748 The discipline of history is interpreting historical and assimilation of that data. You are obviously far removed from the history department at any university. I'd like to see a book that you consider proper history.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:41:27 2010 No.990775

>>990762
more liek, u r stoopid. fyi, every word describing human society and its concepts has a normative dimension. this is not because it's in these words or things' nature to be normative, but because the process of understanding and ingestion for the reader is necessarily normative. normativity is a performative process, kind of like depth perception to the faculty of sight.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:41:27 2010 No.990776 >>990770 Is the Journal of Legal Studies not a peer-reviewed journal? Are you aware of the numerous other articles? Why are you bothering to try to reply?

>>	onionring !Rrxa7zePwI Sat Jul 31 18:43:27 2010 No.990782 the most interesting thing in this thread is that every libertarian guy seems to cite a guy from george mason

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:46:27 2010 No.990793

>>990774
>>990775

All history (and all science for that matter) has an intersubjective dimension. And all human perception is subjective. Absolute objectivity in anything is impossible. The question is whether you are going to aspire in relaying history or scientific research or whatever to systematcially recognizing and minimizing your own normative/subjective biases or whether you are going to aspire to maximize objectivity.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 18:48:27 2010 No.990795 >>990782 GMU is cutting edge, economic department-wise. It has produced a number of Nobel laureates in recent years, most notable Vernon Smith (founder of laboratory experimental economics) and James Buchanan (co-founder of public choice economics).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:03:27 2010 No.990833 >>990711 >Journal of Comparative Economics A journal so biased it's "Impact Factor" is negligible, meaning it's practically un-citeable outside of the circle jerk.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:05:27 2010 No.990843

>>990793
i'm sorry, but you are still working with your naive dichotomy of objectivity vs normativity, and you are now moving the goalpost as well. i have merely said you need to acknowledge the normative aspect of history and be responsible for it. this is what zinn is doing.

oh i'm sorry, you were just doing a simple strawman. carry on

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:06:27 2010 No.990845

>>990795

>gets all its money from the Olin Foundation, Coors Foundation, Barre Seid Foundation, all heavily caveated on starting a right wing "law and economics" department, run by the notoriously discredited and possibly soon-to-be-indicted FH Buckley on charges of fraud in the attempted hostile takeover of a small midwestern college in order to steal its accreditation.

Nice crowd you run with there.

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:07:27 2010 No.990848

>>990762
Have you read reviews for La Guardia in Congress? I believe it won an AHA prize. A People's History cherry picked facts (and isn't properly notated) so it is ineligible for consideration as an academic text. The approach it takes, though, is the reason it's used as one of the text books in history classrooms, supplemented with other articles and books on the same subject.

>>990793
In my own research, I strive for as much objectivity as I can muster, but that is because I am a radical and the tendency to go that way is strong. So I remove "me" as much as I can. There are some historians who believe that history should have an objective basis and that it should serve humanity instead of relaying facts.

The Harvard professor I've mentioned before and I have this conversation quite a bit. What is the purpose of history? At this moment, I feel that it should have relevance today. It should serve as an explanation of something (if the Somalia debate in this thread relied more on history, for example, I believe they could find some of the underlying causes in the imperialism of western powers combined with corrupt government and dozens of other problems instead of relying on one big thing). I also believe that good history is nuanced enough to necessarily rely on more than one explanation. Occom's razor may be useful, but I find it to be too one dimensional.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:11:27 2010 No.990858 >>990711 >Public Choice An editorial board comprised entirely of advocates for the "Austrian school" of economics. Still circle-jerkin' it.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:14:27 2010 No.990869 >>990711 >Journal of Economic Behavior Same article as in >>990770, the one citing your Dutch friend whose claims fly in the face of every other on-the-ground report. Still jerkin'...

Anonymous Sat Jul 31 19:18:27 2010 No.990880

>>990711

>Journal of Sustainable Development

"The argument is not that Somalia’s current situation is ideal. The country remains mired in a state of underdevelopment and suffers from a host of other problems. The main point is that given the set of feasible institutional arrangements facing Somali citizens, the argument can be made that no central government is preferable to the purely exploitative state which has existed for most of the country’s history. Of course, a productive and effective state would be better still."

Last sentence is the important one: finally someone gets it right. I suppose this makes them immoral statists, though.

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