On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 06:26:20PM -0400, Jacob Appelbaum wrote: > > People are greedy, they were and they will. They care about their > > self-interest. It's evolutional. > > This is too one dimensional - people are more than their greed and while > everyone has needs and desires, it's an easy reductionist argument to > simply say greed is the sole defining attribute of a person. > > Furthermore, when you discuss greed, it's unclear to me if you only > include money or property - do you also include power over other people, > even when it comes in direct conflict with wealth?
OK, I would distinguish between self-interest and greediness. The difference between these two terms is that greediness is when your self-interest harm other people. So this pure self-interest we can consider to be natural and not bad (that's why we are living :-) So I mean self-interest in this case. People care about their self-interest and being altruistic can be also considered as their self-interest (because they are internally satisfied with that). Please correct me if I am wrong, English is not my native language and my communication skills are a bit limited. > > As you can see this "entrepreneur's greediness" is transformed to real > > benefits of all people in the society. > > This only follows if they don't build up a killing squid and simply rob > you. The drug cartels in Mexico seem to be a perfect counter example to Of course I mean mutual voluntarily business relationship. > your dream state of a free-market. The free-market in Mexico has managed > to overpower the state in most affairs where they clash. Today, the It's not a real free-market. It's just a corporativism where cartels corrupt the government that should provide a functional legal system, but it does not. An no other reputable free-market legal systems work here. So it lacks a lot of attributes of real free-market society. > Mexican government found over forty bodies with heads cut off. This kind > of reality is often ignored by people arguing for a completely free-market. And this is because of non-functional corrupted monopolized legal system. And there are no other better legal systems / protection agencies there. > > I wouldn't be surprised if those killed were the "competitors" who had > lower prices or higher-quality goods. > > Shall everyone carry their own private armies to protect themselves? No, they just become clients of voluntarily chosen protective agencies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVG1-I1wAoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP4f68Va9kA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0_Jd_MzGCw > Shall everyone pave their own roads? Shall we create a society based > entirely on free-markets and nothing else? What good will a philosophy > degree do for anyone? What good will come from studying humanities? What > is the point of art - is it it only of value in a market? Firstly I am talking about society based on voluntarily decisions. (It does not mean free-markets only). I am talking about a society where anybody can create any kind of voluntary organization (also non-profit, owned by all members, etc). People would do anything they want and they receive money/support because some other people would appreciate their work. If you appreciate work of people who have a philosophy degree or who are studying humanities, don't hesitate to support them (financially or by some other way). But do not force other people to pay them by their taxes if they simply do not want (maybe you love philosophy or arts, but many people not, so do not force them). I have nothing even against the state/government, if there is no coercion and people voluntarily will pay taxes because they really want to have the government's services (of course this is just an utopia). > > > > And now imagine when you put these greedy people to the government :-) > > I hear your point but your statements remind me of someone who is > reacting to living in a "communist" country, thinking the "free-market" > is the solution to *everything* - this is like the hipsters of the US > who think "communism" is the solution to our "free-market" problems. I > don't imagine that the *only* solution is actually to switch from one > extreme to the other! I am primarily talking about voluntary society based on many principles (not only free-market). Only voluntary society can work as a framework for all other communities (including communistic ones). In a free society you can create your own communistic organization with communistic rules and if someone voluntarily decide to become your member, these rules will apply to him (e.g. he will pay you 80% of his monthly salary and you will provide him all social benefits). As you can see, technically no other society can be a framework for all other societies (you cannot build the free voluntary society inside of communistic society in which some things are enforced). > > Sometimes the (largely capitalist) governments of the world balance out > the capitalists in the free-market in the form of regulation. At least in case of economical regulations I can show you that most of them are useless or have absolutely opposite effect. Just write me which economical regulation you are considering to be really right. > Other-times they suppress the violence. Many times, they keep And also they support the violence (especially in case of the US government). > structures, even unjust structures, in place and resist all change - > even positive change. A key problem is that sometimes, often I'd opine, > government regulation is out of hand. another key problem is that > corporations, companies or businesses that maximize for short term > profits cause serious short and long term harm - think Bhopal, India. I admit. But I still think that the governments caused and still cause much more harm in the history than all companies together. Consider the 1st and 2nd World War and all dictatorship countries in these days. So just compare the benefits / disadvantages of our 'great' governments and our 'bad' companies. I am aware that the governments can do a lot of great things, but does it outweight all disadvantages that our governments are able to do? > > I'm not really sold on a solution that ignores the reality of the > starting point - if we built a colony on mars from scratch, some of what > you're saying _might_ make sense to implement as an overnight strategy. > Maybe. I agree that there are lots of good points that come from market > economies - I'm the product of one of the largest and I have seen many > of the benefits first hand. Still, I've watched many of the benefits > slip away and the regulations you criticize often stand at a stopgap > that keeps things afloat. > > If we're starting from scratch, I'm not clear that the goal of society > should be to build little fiefdoms with little to no mutual aid and no > shared points of unity beyond a "free-market" as you've defined it. > > Thankfully, we're not starting from scratch... I completely agree with you in this point. In the current society a migration to the free society is an utopia. It is likely that this kind society can be built just from scratch (maybe Mars or http://www.seasteading.org/ ) But I believe that if ever there will be a better society than this one, it has to be based on voluntary decisions and non-coercion. Pavol -- _______________________________________________________________ [wil...@trip.sk] [http://trip.sk/wilder/] [talker: ttt.sk 5678]
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