Re: OT: Politics [Was:Social Contract]
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On Tuesday 02 May 2006 07:03, John O'Hagan <johnohagan@iprimus.com.au>
was heard to say:
> To my
> mind, capitalism is the the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time and
> one of the greatest threats to personal freedom; it makes no sense
> to remove other impediments to liberty but not those protecting
> private ownership (of the means of production)[1], usury and the
> monetary system. These laws are equally as coercive as any tax for
> public health, but much less nobly motivated.
Who said anything about not "repealing the laws..."? And please don't
confuse me with someone who has any agreement with this "monetary
system". The Federal Reserve deserves the same treatment as
the "public schools". Annihilation.
However, even without any laws what so ever, people will use a medium
of exchange, "money", to facilitate and measure the availability of
resources against demand. Someone will utilize this "money" as a
resource itself, buying and selling it, renting it and trading it.
Please don't confuse it with the merchantilism
and "corporate-government mutual aid society" that so many people
have mistaken for capitalism, instead of what capitalism really
is: "a medium of exchange and the division of labor" which is what
you get when people are simply left alone.
> who is to decide who is "productive"? Is a poet productive? Or only
> if her books sell? How about an esoteric researcher? A child with
> Down Syndrome? An athlete? A philosopher? Is mining uranium and
> leaving the waste lying about productive? What about currency
> speculation?
A productive individual is one who creates what is in demand. If I set
up shop selling Linux machines in Redmond, it is very unlikely that I
would be engaged in productive work. It is therefore up to me to do
something else.
Each of these examples you give have beneficial function to someone,
otherwise no one would engage in that effort. Even a poet, dying in
poverty (or pick VanGogh-type painter) did what they did because they
chose to do so.
The worst thing I could do is to tell them that they may not do it,
because somehow I know better than they how to live their life.
The real charity cases, such as a child born with Downs syndrome,
deserves every bit of compassion available. The last thing I would do
is leave that up to bureaucrats for whom they are not a person.
"Currency speculation"? You mean, like government fiat currencies?
Again, that is an opportunity created by coercive government. Might
as well ask me how a "free" society would deal with Enron, since
Enron was trying to build a business on trading government energy and
pollution credits. Without those credits, there would have been no
Enron.
Curt-
- --
September 11th, 2001
The proudest day for gun control and central
planning advocates in American history
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