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GreenWaffle wrote: Happy birthday to waffle

AxeD wrote:What happened to wub actually? Did I miss something?

Genevieve wrote:

Agent 47 wrote:wots that

Completely anti-state and completely pro-market.

<3

Phigure wrote:i dont really see how anyone living in today's world can advocate the free market. just look at the terrible inequality of wealth/income (and the power that comes with it), an inequality that's still increasing and shows no signs of slowing down. corporations are more profitable than ever before, yet workers and the average person have received none of that. obviously we don't live in a true free market, but it's not aspects of socialism, communism, etc or even neoliberalism that are at fault. how can you blame anything BUT the free market principles at work?

the free market is a disaster. the great irony about people singing the praises of the free market is that there has never been a real free market in a developed society. the only free markets that exist are in the 3rd world, and that's a big reason why the 3rd world looks like it does.

not to mention that proponents of free markets fail to take account all of the massive externalities that come about. and i'm not just talking about environmental disasters like pollution and the catastrophic climate change we're about to face because of unchecked capitalism, etc, but the systemic risks that a free market introduces. its an inherently unstable system, every few years theres "business cycles" and every few business cycles there's major economic disasters where the entire thing would go to shit if corporations didnt get bailed out by the taxpayer. these are already bad enough in modern mixed states with some sort of regulation and monetary policy to attempt to counterbalance these cycles, imagine how bad things would be in a true free market.

chomsky has a good example of how markets don't really help to increase your choice, but restrict it: the free market gives you a ford or BMW, but it's not going to give you public transport like a metro system. markets only encourage individual consumption. only commodities can truly succeed, things like vaccines or cures for diseases aren't profitable enough to justify their research and production (they can only sell you a cure once, in a free market you'd probably just get treatments that you have to buy until youre dead)

even if we say "okay, let's go with free markets" and ignore all their negative effects and shortcomings, there's still an obvious limit in terms of scale. do you think we ever would've made it to space / the moon in the last century had governments not taken up the task? there's a lot of things that are just too risky and not profitable enough for any business to undertake. we probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now because the internet (and computers themselves) grew as a government funded research project

tl;dr:

jags wrote:1) In response to the free market ideas you're talking about, I think Bill Maher explains the idea pretty well in this video, minus the snarkiness. I support a capitalist market but there has to be laws and regulations imo, otherwise the strongest will take advantage of everyone else. Skip to 2:56, the part about the meat inspectors. I don't think the earlier part of the video really applies to your ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55zDEBNqfk4

jags wrote:Also, I don't think you really got my point about the drug market. Don't get too hung up on the black market thing. All I was saying was that in the absence of a state having a monopoly on the use of force, you'll basically have, well, anarchy. This will happen in a black market, but it would also happen in a "legal" market that has no regulations and lacks a proper government and police force to uphold laws and common decency. My point wasn't about black markets, it was about the monopoly on violence.

jags wrote:2) "People saw no mutual benefit in creating chaos, so they didn't." Well, I'm not totally sold that it wasn't chaotic and that people weren't regularly murdered, but if it really was as good as you say, I still think it would have descended into chaos eventually. Also we live in a very different world today. It's much more densely populated and there is more mass communication/media. I think it was easier back then to let communities handle law enforcement.

jags wrote:3) A lot of your arguments seem to boil down to "look at the problems in the current system. my system wouldn't have these problems. therefore, my system is better." E.g. - "There's another thing wrong with your argumentation; public law is already corrupt" and "This Mafioso considers the current situation of prohibition a wetdream because he's able to operate his violent cartel more effecticely". You seem dangerously close to creating a false choice between the current system and anarcho-capitalism. Obviously there are other ways to ameliorate these problems that don't involve the abolition of the state. I'm sure you already know enough about them, I don't need to explain them.

jags wrote:4) "What has existed, is statist society. If we were to apply the logic of your argument properly, patriarchy would then have been created by statist society since that has been the predominent model for the past 2000 years." - This is very problematic logic imo. We haven't really had a strong statist model for the past 200 years. Sure, there have been de jure states, but they didn't necessarily have a monopoly on violence (everywhere) until maybe the last 200 or so years (wild west?). And that's when we've seen patriarchy begin to reverse. Sure there are areas, particularly cities like Rome, where there may have been proper and effective police forces, but the amount of land that has been essentially ungoverned throughout history is enormous compared to the small amount of land that was governed. And as you point out, many police forces today are still not completely effective.

magma wrote: I'm eating Cantaloupe and it's making me very happy indeed.

Genevieve wrote:Yeah I get that, but just letting it die down would be a waste too and I myself just ignore "off topic" posts and stick to the topic of the thread. I'm not that fuzzed with discussions being stuck to one place and I think other people can too. If a mod were to move them to their own, then fair play (though I know they're not around now). And dunno, I don't think I should take the sole reponsibility for the derailing, it's not like I'm just posting random chunks of text like BM does. I was asked what anarcho-capitalism meant and then people debated me, so I debate back.

Tbh, the best debates on DSF have always come about organically.

scspkr99 wrote:

Genevieve wrote:Yeah I get that, but just letting it die down would be a waste too and I myself just ignore "off topic" posts and stick to the topic of the thread. I'm not that fuzzed with discussions being stuck to one place and I think other people can too. If a mod were to move them to their own, then fair play (though I know they're not around now). And dunno, I don't think I should take the sole reponsibility for the derailing, it's not like I'm just posting random chunks of text like BM does. I was asked what anarcho-capitalism meant and then people debated me, so I debate back.

Tbh, the best debates on DSF have always come about organically.

Agree with most of this and I don't consider it a derail I just wonder that stuff that's actually pretty interesting gets lost in this thread. I agree about the organic debates as well.

OGLemon wrote:okay, if there really is a mod, you can move the dicussion here viewtopic.php?f=7&t=287504