From: Robbie Lindauer (robblin@thetip.org)
Date: Wed Sep 10 2003 - 17:53:35 MDT
>
> ### Maybe for you. In other words, if I was to ever consider buying
> something from you, I would have to worry that you will default on the
> contract, because, as you admit, you don't care about your word. Well,
> this
> needs to be remembered.
Exactly, if given a choice between fulfilling my contract and saving my
life, I will save my life.
If I were you, I would consider this a universal caveat on monetary
contracts.
>> Ostracism is a form of coercion - "Leave your house OR ELSE".
>
> ### Maybe I used a term which could be interpreted as something else -
> banishment. The sanction in merchant law is not banishment, it is
> avoidance,
> expulsion from the community, but not expropriation. Also, merchant
> law is
> first voluntarily accepted by its users, in contrast to king's law. It
> is
> not coercion.
Exactly. If you take away "king's law" then I'd agree with you,
however, the "king's law" tends to impinge on "merchant law".
You seem to be denying the interaction. You're familiar with the
concept of "State Sponsored Monopoly" right?
In the United States, Land is a state-sponsored monopoly. Banks can
print money (or borrow at randomly low rates) and loan it to other at
ever-increasingly-high amounts and rates. This has the effect of
making the banks the effective owners (eg, holding more than 80% of the
equity position) in "most houses" owned by poor people. The banks are
put in this position whereas individual people are not - making the
competition for real estate unfair.
This system is backed-up by the repossession laws which makes it
outright coercion.
> ### Now, you are saying I am infantile. Well, this makes an exchange of
> arguments somewhat more difficult, doesn't it?
Sorry, I thought you were offering an alternative definition for
"coercion" like you are for "morality".
If you were to give up the terms "Right and wrong" in your discourse,
we would have no further disagreements, clearly.
Simliarly with coercion. If you say it's "bad" but then identify it
completely differently then what's the point of saying it's bad?
In fact, what's the point of saying it's bad since you say "There's no
objective standard of bad."
This amounts, if you ask me, to the simple contradiction:
No things are bad.
Coercion is bad.
You can't have it both ways - either things are bad, or they're not.
> Basically, you apply the word "coercion" to the outcomes of large
> numbers of
> people making decisions without use of fraud or non-contractual use of
> physical force (=the definition of the free market).
I deny the existence of any free markets.
> In this way, the
> previously rather precise term (coercion = the use of non-contractual
> physical force against a person, or threat thereof) becomes rather
> vague, a
> term of abuse, and an expression of dislike.
Governments provide non-contractual physical force necessary to make
any given market "non-free". Occasionally people do it as well.
>>> ### My statement goes "Social goodness is whatever tends to get me
>>> and others most of what I and they want". For most well-informed,
>>> low-emotional persons this will mean absolute (not relative)
>>> economic success under conditions of personal liberty.
>>
>> The project of defining morality by "what most people want" is
>> hopeless and silly, you can see yourself going down that path here.
>
> ### Ah, another put down. Poor little me.
You've already said "There's no objective good and bad."
And then you try to rescue "Except breaking contracts"
Doesn't that "silly" and "hopeless" to you? What interpretation am I
missing?
> ### You have a difficulty envisioning positive-sum interactions. Did
> Elvis
> Presley hurt an inordinate number of people (ignorantly? :-), in the
> course
> of earning his billion dollars?
Maybe, but Sun Records definitely did.
> BTW, since you think that the use of free market, and democracy to
> build a
> morality based on getting people what they want is a silly and hopeless
> project (as you wrote a couple of paragraphs back), do you have
> suggestions
> for alternatives?
Anarchy in the UK!
>>> No Elders of Zion, either.
>>
>> Stop being stupid.
>
> ### Ah, but I can't! :-)
You brought up the Elders of Zion.
>> Is there a Queen of England? A Bank of England? A Barclays? An FMR
>> Corporation?
>>
>> I don't know anything about kabal/illuminati/etc. I do know that the
>> wealthy use their power to keep their power and that has NEVER EVER
>> CHANGED. Has it?
>
> ### They keep trying - but they are losing, century by century, decade
> by
> decade.
You obviously missed this one:
http://www.thetip.org/snptotals.txt
> Today's advanced capitalist societies have a dramatically lower
> level of power concentration and inequality (although some are plagued
> by a
> proliferation of mass special interest groups opposed to long-term
> economic
> growth, like labor unions, or the retired).
False.
> The Queen of England has hardly anything to say outside her castles,
> poor
> lady.
False. Who runs Barclays?
> Don't be so envious and angry at the rich.
Angry, yes. Envious no.
> Relax. They are human, too.
Technically, I would describe them as parasites.
> You
> are not necessarily poorer because somebody gets rich.
Well, if there are two things and I have both, you don't.
If you want one, you've got to take it. I could give it to you, but
then I'd have less. You'd have to trade something, but there's only
the two things.
The earth has a limited amount of fundamental resources - Land, Food,
Energy, human effort, etc. We can re-arrange the distribution of these
items a lot (that's what the global economy IS...) but it doesn't
usually create NET more land, food or human effort.
In fact, in light of the WTO, apparently we are now destroying more
food year after year - you know to satisfy the "supply and demand"
economics.
And yes, there are alternative value economic theories, Marx is the
standard, I like the modifications by Istvan Meszaros.
> Positive-sum games do
> exist.
Ah, like Amway.
Robbie
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