I'm glad to learn that there are two other Republicans running for the Republican nomination in the Indiana 2nd District: Joe Roush and Luke Puckett. As a supporter of free markets and someone having been born in South Bend, I hope either one of these men gets the nomination and then wins the election. As a decent person, I hope Tony Zirkle loses. He should go join a party more in line with his fundamental beliefs. There is no room for him in the GOP.
In a side note, my last comments on this idiot Zirkle got the attention of the leader of the group Zirkle spoke to. Bill White is a good example of why evil ideas like those of Karl Marx should be kept out of the hands of 13 year olds.
8 comments:
A libertarian socialist
On an unrelated matter, read some Errico Malatesta and Mikhail Bakunin.
Can't be a libertarian socialist. A libertarian by definition supports free markets. A libertarian socialist is a Democrat/liberal-Leftist or an anarchosocialist. I have always found anarchosocialism to be a contradiction in terms. Socialism must be imposed by a powerful state, since man's natural state does not lead him to socialism. Socialism is a top-down process, and anarchy posits there is no arche, or foundation, so bottom-up processes are not allowed in anarchism. Anarchy as a lack of government? Again, no government, no socialism. Socialism must be imposed. Socialism is force. Free exchange is what is natural and is not imposed. Though I'm no anarchist (close, but no cigar), a lack of government coincides better with a free market system, where there is a lack of government control there as well.
I've heard of Bakunin, but not of Malatesta.
ls
Look up Libertarianism. You will find that the term is much more broadly defined than you give the philosophy credit. Socialism without a State = Mutualism. It is immoral to deny one group resources and give another group an abundance of the same resources. We needed shared property, and not/NEVER in State ownership of property, but mutual ownership on the local level.
I've been a libertarian for a long time now. A libertarian socialist is a contradiction in terms, or the term "libertarian" has no meaning. You can't just give words any meaning you chose and expect them to continue to have meaning. If something can mean just anything and embrace its own opposite, then it has no meaning at all. Thus, you cannot be a libertarian socialist.
I can see the problem in your assumptions right away. You assume that there must be someone distributing things, and that therefore things are unevenly distributed. The fact is most things, in free systems especially, are not given but accumulated. Besides, if there is something that is mine to give, why is it immoral for me to distribute something any way I choose? Why must I rely on someone else's judgement rather than my own?
I believe in natural distribution. When that occurs, you will naturally have a power law distribution, with a few having much and a middle number have a median amount, and many having less. This results in a self-organizing emergent system of mutual benefit to all elements of the system. In systems that are more egalitarian, the poor are poorer than in those systems that are less egalitarian in a more natural, free market fashion.
Socialism requires the state, because nobody is going to voluntarily live under socialism. It goes against human nature. And if you bring up primitive tribes, let me just say that there is no idea more false than Rousseau's noble savage. Utopia is not an option.
ls
Joseph Déjacque first used the word libertarian. Look him up. Your meaning of libertarian is far from the original meaning. Socialism on a small scale has historically worked. Socialism on a large scale works when these small groups of social structures work together. Most of Europe lives voluntarily under socialism. No one is going bankrupt over health care, unlike in the US.
Once again you assume I want a State at all. I don't want a State, I want local controls. The State is a fairly new construct that seeks to control the people. Socialism does not to seek control, but seeks to help people through co-existence, no survival of the fittest.
Be that as it may, the modern American use of the term excludes socialism. I prefer the term classical liberal or free market liberal in any case. The latter term makes it clear what economic system -- the only natural, moral system ever -- I am talking about.
You bring up Europe, but those systems are going bankrupt and are undergoing market reforms to try to recover. They have been disasters, with places like France having 20% unemployment when it was most socialist.
Without a state you cannot have the authority you need to abolish private property. To even attempt to abolish private property is to try to force people to cease being social animals at all. Every species that is descended from lobe-finned fishes is territorial, so you are asking people to go against something that is so basic to our nature that it resides in our fish brains. Not going to happen. Not without force. Thus anarchosocialism is a contradiction. Anarchy may have had its origins in such an ideology, but that only goes to further prove its untenability.
The fact is that as human societies became more complex, new forms of governance arose -- the nation-state being the latest incarnation. As societies complexify further -- which they will, as we are ever-more interconnected -- new forms of governance will develop. But hierarchy and governance will never go away, as they are parts of our being a social mammal. You are asking people to no longer be people in any fundamental sense, and that's not going to happen. And to try to make people do so is immoral. As societies have become more complex, we have learned to cooperate more and more. Survival of the fittest is a more accurate description of primitivism than it is of more complex societies like the U.S., where cooperation is more the rule. And that is thanks in great part to free markets. Socialism, on the other hand, has always sought control. It is based on an incorrect theory of how the world works. The world is not a static pie that must be divided up properly and which is falling apart. The world is actually generative, growing, and creative and produces more and more complex opportunities for people. But only if they are free to do so. Socialism denies that freedom. It denies that freedom is inherent in the world. It is a deeply, fundamentally wrong understanding of the world at large, and of humans in particular. Learn about self-organization, complexity, emergence, chaos and bios theory, evolution, and information theory if you want to learn how the world actually is.
ls
Because Americans define a word, it must be right. Key word, Right. I disagree with you, however, the last statement caught my attention. '. . . self-organization, complexity, emergence, chaos and bios theory, evolution, and information theory . . .' I gave you some names to search, give me some names.
No, I just acknowledge that words can and do change meanings. However, the fact that libertarian comes from the Latin "liber" meaning "free" suggests to me at least that it should have never been associated with socialism, even if a socialist coined the term. "Liberal" too has the completely opposite meaning in the U.S. as in Europe. Please note that I showed preference for the European uses of "liberal," so you shouldn't be accusing me of thinking that just because Americans use a term a certain way, it must be the right way. I'm making a far more nuanced argument than that.
You might want to start off with a few popularizers:
John Casti's "Complexification"
Jeremy Campbell's "Grammatical Man"
John Holland's "Emergence"
Frederick Turner's "The Culture of Hope"
J.T. Fraser's "Time, Conflict, and Human Values"
Brian Goodwin's "How the Leopard Changed Its Spots"
Stuart Kauffman
Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate"
Michael Polyani's "The Logic of Liberty"
Ilya Prigogine
Charles Seife's "Decoding the Universe"
Brian Skyrm's "Evolution of the Social Contract"
Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics"
For more scholarly work:
Fuchs, Christian. “Co-Operation and Self-Organization” tripleC 1(1) 2003 at tripleC
Hector Sabelli's "Bios"
Norbert Weiner's "Cybernetics"
You might also consider:
Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"
David Friedman makes the argument for anarchocapitalism, if you're interested.
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