Limits of State Power
POSTED BY: SergeantX
UPDATED: Sunday, December 14, 2025 21:53
VIEWED: 37205
PAGE 11 of 36
They're all hip-shots actually, save for the ones I quote with proper credit, they're just whatever verbal snarkery came to mind at the moment and made it into text; as a rule, I type EXACTLY how I would talk to someone or a group of someones were they in the same room with me, makes it a little more personal, yanno ?
And yer welcome to swipe any quote of anything I've ever written if it amuses, entertains or otherwise has any use for you - imma anarchist, and thus one couldn't print my opinion of copyright law in a family magazine, that for damn sure - information is valueless if never shared.
Never needed a book tho, from all accounts I was born with a penchant for cynical smartassery, hell, the first complete sentence I ever spoke to my kindergarten teacher was to ask her "Why should I listen to someone who has nothing better to do than babysit everyone else's brats ?"
This did NOT endear me to the local educational system and it's personnel, one might imagine.
Of course, you can't appreciate the full affect of that level of snarkery till you realize it was comin from a puny shrimp of a kid who dressed like a damn Libertine - think I jest ?
Imagine being LECTURED by that kid, yes ?
-F
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Quote:Sarge, you've asked a lot of questions and I've answered a lot of questions. I'm not sure that I left any UNaswered, and this is a long thread... way too long for me to go digging back and parsing all of it. So if you would kindly re-ask the questions you feel I've dodged on, I'll do my best to answer them.
OK, Signym, I'll skip the question of the thread... since you clearly have no intention of answering my questions, I'll take it as a concession that your position (that under socialism neither wealth nor government would decide the issues in question) was essentially contradictory
Quote:In another thread I mentioned the Mafia and the Yakuza as examples of corporations which exist even in the face of government prohibition and punishment. But I don't have to go to that extreme. Large businesses are very much in the position of saying 'take it or leave it' and to the person that means 'take it or starve'... and, they're broken. That is not a free choice; the huge imbalance of power between the two parties precludes meaningful negotiation. Do you think people would choose to work in slave-like, starvation conditions if they had other options? Do you think this is the future they would freely choose for their children? Do you think that people would choose a system in which 500 people own half the world while a fourth of the world starves even tho they work harder than donkeys? And since I've have traced, over and over again, the process by which monopolization inevitably takes over any semblance of Adam Smith-style capitalism, and provided at least a dozen examples of it, I think I've made a good case for how capitalism eventually takes away people's economic freedom and replaces it with economic coercion.
Easy now, don't hurt yourself! So, where are these examples exactly?... when a corporation wants to break you they don't send goons squads
I sat down one day and thought about how power: what it was and how many ways people can get screwed. Power is the ability to get people to act with you... and often, against their own interests. HOW can you get people to act with you? Most obviously, you can stand over them with a whip, spear, sword, gun, or nuke... whatever the technology of the day... and threaten them with pain or death. But even better if you can convince people you've got something vital - like god on your side. I can point to dozens of theologies in which people gave up their prosperity, their judgment, their children, and even their lives, to hold up the foundations of heaven or some such silly nonsense. And then there is economic coercion: you have a monopoly over something they really DO need- it could be water, oil, food, or jobs- and thus you have the economic whip hand. Best if you can do all three. Divide the population between the haves and have-nots. Convince everyone that the system is the best possible and that any deficiency must be THEIR fault. Control communication so that no other message is heard. Weed-whack the few strays with violence when necessary.
Quote:Not really, 'cause I already know the answer
This brings up a couple of good points. First off, you ever wonder how we got to the point that your health care, and implicitly your very health, came under the control of your employer?
Quote:Yes, I know
Ask anyone who's self-employed how much health insurance really costs. It's not pretty.
Quote:What mean this 'we', Kimosabe? The insurance companies are screwing over ... well, everyone. But before the insurance companies it was doctors and their monopolistic practices which drove up healthcare costs by limiting the number of slots in medical school. This is very much a self-regulated industry doing what it does best: being profitable and making sure it stays that way.
We've driven health care price inflation to the point where the only way it is affordable is by joining a large group plan.
Quote:[/
The thing is, there are precious few good reasons for harming someone.
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Quote:This is exactly what I've been arguing for. One of the things talked about was the elimination of any business-form except worker-controlled cooperatives of various sorts. I've gotten into very detailed discussions with Fletch2 about the two currently-successful cooperatives: Mondragon (which is a consortium of Spanish cooperatives) and Carl Zeiss. That is the reason why, in my ideal government (such as it is) each bureau operates under a self-elected Board, for example. And even then, I would make sure there is no "unitary executive" in ANY business form: no President, no CEO, no Chair of the Board.
Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%.[citation needed] Factories were run through worker committees; agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes.[citation needed] Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. In some places, money was entirely eliminated, to be replaced with vouchers.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So if you would kindly re-ask the questions you feel I've dodged on, I'll do my best to answer them.
Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX
I was thinking about this in the other thread: You agreed with me, that government shouldn't be able to determine where we live, what we do for a living, whom we marry, or how many kids we can have. But I think you'd also say that those things shouldn't be determined by how much money we have, that kids shouldn't have to go without because their parents are poor, that poor people shouldn't be excluded from nice schools and nice neighborhoods due to lack of money, that we shouldn't be denied a career of our choice due to lack of money.
Well, how do those work for everyone at the same time? What if everyone (or, more realistically, way more than is practical) want's to live in a beach house in Souther Cal? If money isn't at issue, surely every parent will want their children to go to the very best schools, the very best doctors, and have the best daycare. Obviously, everyone can't have everything. The question is, if wealth isn't the determining factor, and government isn't making these selections, who makes the call?
Quote:
I suppose having your family juggle on a street-corner, or banging out belt-buckles from tin-cans, or prostitution, or scavenging garbage dumps is a better alternative?
Well, I wouldn't recommend the prostitution bit, but yeah, the other options sound better than the horrific, slave-like conditions you describe.
Quote:
... the capitalism that YOU argue for doesn't exist now
That's true to a point. There's much that's broken about the current situation. I think can we can agree that corporations have too much power. The manipulate our society, herding us into their "human resource" pens, convincing us that the only option is to live life as their property (employee), pushing us into debt and onto the consumer treadmill. You call this "economic power" and imagine that it is something separate from the coercive power of government.
But, as rue pointed out, economic power is completely dependent on government. The power represented by the numbers in their ledgers completely evaporates without a proactive government to support it. And I'm not talking merely protecting property rights. Government has expanded incrementally in ways that subtly, and not so subtly, push people into serving the interests of the power-hungry. Our education system, our tax code, medical regulation, our foreign policy - pretty much every damned thing the government does - runs through the filter that asks "is it good for business?"
And the really frustrating thing is, every time someone dares to complain about it, the corporations say "boo!" and scare everyone into creating more government. Kinda like their doing right now.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:And both- the slave-like conditions working for "the man" AND the slave-like conditions working for yourself- are CREATED BY capitalism.
Well, I wouldn't recommend the prostitution bit, but yeah, the other options sound better than the horrific, slave-like conditions you describe.
Quote:I disagree.
economic power is completely dependent on government.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Had more to say, but it seemed like a separate post.
I've mentioned it before, but I think that our society is currently caught in the crossfire between between those who see government as the problem, and those who see it as the solution. And those who seek to control us are having a party, at our expense, in the midst of the confusion.
But even as I type that, I'm considering that you might not necessarily say that "government is the solution". It seems like maybe you have something else in mind, thus my questions. It's not entirely clear to me whether you see state socialism as the goal or not, but you do seem to see it as the next step.
In lots of ways, I see how pure socialism could be better than the mixed bag we're currently slogging through. But what really bothers about socialism is that it seems like the ultimate form of democracy. And putting it bluntly, majority rule democracy scares the bejeezus out of me because I'm almost never in the majority. So the notion of having every damned thing decided by the majority (without a massive change in societal values) sounds like a living hell to me.
So, that's really just sort of background behind my question above. The flip side of that might be "How do you protect the minority if the majority is in control of every aspect of life?"
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Ideally, government as I envision is not the government of today. But as of this moment, I see capitalism/ monopolism as a greater threat than government as both are currently constituted. The reason is that our government has a feedback loop to the popular will built in which is THE VOTE. It is the single-most powerful concept devised by the FF. There is NO SUCH feedback built into corporatism/ monopolism. They can play one nation against another... and there ain't nothin' you can do about it.
Quote:That's a pretty big "if". But I suppose you protect the minority the same way that you protect the majority under capitalism today: you don't.
But what really bothers about socialism is that it seems like the ultimate form of democracy... "How do you protect the minority if the majority is in control of every aspect of life?"
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Sarg,
Unable to post all weekend, & time is short now. But your points are valid all up through this thread. I'm sorry that I can't help the debate.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
you don't.
Alrighty then. That pretty much takes care of any lingering doubts I may have had. Thanks for your honesty.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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And now... to your questions!
Quote:Let me toss out some ways in which this can be done without the government sticking its nose into every aspect of your life, from the immediately do-able to the more theoretical.
I was thinking about this in the other thread: You agreed with me, that government shouldn't be able to determine where we live, what we do for a living, whom we marry, or how many kids we can have. But I think you'd also say that those things shouldn't be determined by how much money we have, that kids shouldn't have to go without because their parents are poor, that poor people shouldn't be excluded from nice schools and nice neighborhoods due to lack of money, that we shouldn't be denied a career of our choice due to lack of money. Well, how do those work for everyone at the same time? What if everyone (or, more realistically, way more than is practical) want's to live in a beach house in Souther Cal? If money isn't at issue, surely every parent will want their children to go to the very best schools, the very best doctors, and have the best daycare. Obviously, everyone can't have everything. The question is, if wealth isn't the determining factor, and government isn't making these selections, who makes the call?
The first is plain-old European-style democratic socialism: A mixed economy with wealth redistribution and some partly socialized aspects (health care, utilities, transportation, media, communication) which ensures that people don't fall below a certain minimum. The exact mechanisms vary from nation to nation, but no-one can say that Europeans are "told" where to live, who to marry, which jobs to take, or how many children to have. In fact, in those aspects I think Europeans are FREER than we are because they seem to have more viable choices. There are income differences, but not anywhere near as great as the USA.
Then we could get to more theoretical changes which would require radical restructuring: an economy of cooperatives, for example. A educational meritocracy. A direct-democracy government. (One of the good things about direct democracy: if you had to vote personally on very single friggin' law, there would be a damn sight fewer of them proposed!) AFA protecting the "rights" of the minority: WHICH rights are you interested in protecting? After all murderers are a minority... but I'm sure you're not talking about protecting THEIR rights. So are you talking about economic rights... the right to not participate economically? (eg not pay tax nor be told to wear your seatbelt bc otherwise you drive up the cost of health care?) Civil liberties? I can imagine tax-exempt "opt out" communities- like the Mennonites, for example. Your economic ties - both obligations and benefits- would be reduced or eliminated for example- while still retaining full civil rights. Or maybe you have a "Class X" tax and benefits rating: you pay only limited taxes, but if you get in an accident, or become disabled, or when you retire ... you're on your own.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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