What is indisputably valuable and indisputably mine is my life and time. Why is it okay for someone to steal that for a few bucks an hour? How did property get to be more important than the only thing that is indisputably mine? How did money (a fabrication) get to be more important than the only thing that is indisputably mine? The only thing of real and enduring human value.
The free market, as described by Libertarians et al, stacks the deck against the individual worker. It is like a slave market where human life is sold to those who will agree to give up the only really valuable thing any of us can have: life.
Why does a Libertarian say that it is wrong for a society to decide how much a worker should get paid? Why does a Libertarian arbitrarily chose to designate the property owner as the arbiter of value rather that the owner of the human life? They want us then to believe this system creates something fair. Fair? For whom? What kind of person can bear to see his fellow human being suffer for any reason? What kind of person could agree to a system that could deprive others of enjoying this brief adventure that is life and call that freedom?
Freedom for some.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - cindy
I think I missed a point I wanted to make.
None of us will be here that much longer. When you think of your death, a short time hence, can you still feel comfortable making the choices that make? Do you feel okay with choices that excuse and defend circumstances in which some will never really get to taste life?
2 - troll
...how can trained gladiators afford to care?
3 - cindy
Darn...I knew I should have just gone with the 'Let's push all the gladiators into the sea' theme.
Really though, if feminist bulk can manage...
;-)
4 - cindy
er...that would be 'hulk'
How weird that the built-in spelling nazi on my phone just changes what I write.
5 - Frank
Who is this society person? The society person is the powerful leader of the government or its oligarchy. So is it ok to be the slave of the government in the name of society, a government who has a monopoly on violence, or is it better for each individual to decide for themselves who to associate with? History has shown that when you are a slave to a government your life has NO value at all. If you are a slave to a private person you at least have the value that he paid for you. Being a slave to a government in the name of society is worse than being a slave to a private owner. A slave is a slave solely because of the threat of violence. Libertarians abhor violence in all of its forms. To say otherwise is to misunderstand libertanrians.
6 - Dr Dreadful
How did Clavos get into your phone, Cindy?
;-)
7 - Doug Hunter
#5
A pertinent question, the framework which they view the issue through doesn't allow the author and the likeminded to see servitude or slavery to society as such. They can't see it as slavery because in their mind you should willingly want to sacrifice yourself for the greater good (as they deem it of course, not you) without asking anything in return (which would lead back to the system libertarians favor where both sides agree), therefore no coersion/slavery/servitude necessary. Anyone that sees it different must have selfishness/greed/sickness/malignancy no doubt caused by evil capitalist propaganda which requires retraining, destroying, or at least shipped off to the gulag.
8 - Cindy
lol Dr.D, same way his cat Minnie magically made her way onto my writer's page...they are like Anonymous--everywhere!
9 - anarchimedes
c wright mills once said freedom is not the ability to do as we please or choose from prechosen options, but to participate in creating proposals and choosing from them.
i think that is spot on.
the real problem here is how we talk past one another. what a libertard means when they say "freedom" is not the same as you or i or mills.
economic freedom to libertards, especially those of the milton friedman school of thought, see it as the ability to do with what we have however we want regardless of how it affects others.
so if i can legally own social goods and services and own the labor of others who make it for me to profit off of i can do with it as i please. if i am arianna huffington i can own huffington post and sell it to aol for millions of dollars even though it was hundreds of bloggers writing for free that created the "value" of *my* enterprise.
but this doesnt really have anything to do with "freedom." this really is about slavery. i have the right to own you and your labor and do with it as i will. imagine if the equivalent was in politics where due to lifes circumstances many people were compelled to sell their political rights to others in order to "make a living" and that the buyers could use their political rights however they wanted regardless of how it affected others.
economic freedom is as doublespeak for economic slavery. we should aspire to be slave owners. thats what libertards are praising and aspiring to be. slave masters of labor.
10 - adrienrain
Those who need sweatshop labor to make a profit have already failed in business.
11 - Cindy
hmmm, before we get off to a gallop in the wrong direction, I was using the word 'society' in a generic way--as in: all humans live in societies. There was no implication intended that a gov't is required or should control that society. Gov't control is anathema to me, Frank. That is not what this post is about the liberal vs conservative battle for control of the gov't.
I will have to think about the rest of what you both are saying later.
12 - Cindy
Oh the 'you both' I was referring to was Frank and Doug.
13 - Alan Kurtz
Golly, them libertards sound like evil bastards, alright. A true anarchist man of action would shoot them down like rabid dogs, one by one or in a pack, wherever they can be found.
Thank good Blogcritics provides a forum for one impotent group on the American political fringe to demonize another impotent group on the American political fringe. The last thing our country needs is for either of these cliques to become relevant in any way.
14 - Cindy
Adrien, hiya you. :-) Thanks for popping by.
I hope you get to meet Roger and troll.
(I have known Adrien since I was 17. She introduced me to anarchism...something I paid no attention to at the time...we pretty much lived it out without labels.)
15 - Alan Kurtz
And, honestly, hasn't the reflexive LOL (#8) outworn whatever infinitesimal usefulness it may once, eons ago, have possessed? Give it a break.
16 - Les Slater
Frank,
"Libertarians abhor violence in all of its forms."
Maybe, but forgive me if I doubt. The system you defend needs violence to survive. Abhorrence is often just a convenient facilitation of denying a reality which one doesn't care to investigate too deeply, especially when the denier gains materially from that reality.
17 - Doug Hunter
#16
Does anything that qualifies as a 'system' not? A system will respond with violence to an aggressive threat or it will not remain a system for very long. In the absense of a 'system' someone who is willing to be violent will fill the vacuum unless you're still believing the fairytale that with enough indoctrination the entire population to the man can become absolute pacifists. (it only takes 1 to screw the whole thing up and there's 7 billion of us and counting)
18 - Les Slater
Doug,
So you agree with me and not Frank?
19 - Ruvy
Perhaps, Cindy, this is what you were really getting at.
"Start by admitting, From cradle to tomb
It isn't that a long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
It's only a Cabaret, old chum
And I love a Cabaret!"
20 - John
Many libertarians believe in a concept called "self ownership" which identifies one's own body as a piece of property, which can only be legitimately owned by that person. Any other situation is classified as slavery. Living in a society which recognizes a right to own material things other than your body, which are referred to as "property" is considered to be something necessary to exercise self ownership, and therefore not be a slave to others. The "free market" (a situation in which the state does not interfere with the market) could be considered necessary in this picture because government intervention is thought to create economic inefficiency which creates poverty. This puts people in a position where they are dependent on charity, government assistance, or need to deny other people's freedom by stealing from them. Did my explanation help?
21 - Les Slater
But John, this 'free' society has never existed in history. It's an illusion, or more accurately, a construct of those who need to obscure the real social relations in existing societies. It really boils down to an acceptance of the violence needed to maintain such societies. The abhorrence of violent coercion is nothing but a smokescreen. It's Utopian but very convenient in defending society as it really exists.
22 - Les Slater
They offer a never attainable Utopia and always have the excuse that some evil is preventing this dream. In the meantime they spew reactionary defenses of the necessity of the real system's violence in defending itself.
23 - anarchimedes
markets are antithetical to freedom so its always interesting to hear libertards talk about unfettered or "free markets."
the problem with marketheism is the exclusion of externalities. in markets there are buyers and sellers. they are the only ones included in market transactions. the problem is that economic transactions often include more than immediate buyers and sellers. and if freedom is the ability to participating in decision-making on matters that affect us by directly coming up with proposals and choosing accordingly then that by default rules out markets.
markets and freedom doesnt mix.
worse, when markets reign anti-democracy follows. look at our electoral system in the us for a prime example. in markets you vote with your dollars and the more dollars you have the more votes you have. this means the rich can "vote" many more times than the poor, thus distorting the outcomes. when private contributions to political campaigns are permitted the rich can flood the election and pretty much ensure their interests will be more closely catered to. so much so that political science has a theory for it: the investment theory of party competition.
since we are individuals belonging to a social species and since freedom is the ability to participate in formulating options to the degree we are affected (ie if a decision doesnt affect me i have no say, or if a decision affects you more than me you have more say) and choosing accordingly then any social system we build must be tailored to accomodate participatory democracy. markets dont fit the bill.
libertarians are wrong on what freedom is and their preferred institutions dont even deliver what they want.
ps: the best way to shut a libertard down is to ask them for one example of a developed economy with a small government. they wont find a single example because free markets are so inefficient and ineffective that government intervention is necessary to build and sustain (hince the need for property rights, zoning laws, subsidies and bailouts) economies. the issue is not whether we should have small or big governments but whose side the governments are on. the issue is not whether we should have planned economies or not but how they are planned: by a class of coordinators or by workers and consumers via councils and a participatory democratic process?
24 - Doug Hunter
#22
Violence is preferable to slavery, except to those doing the enslaving. No 'Utopia' here, just real world pragmatism and a system that attempts to allow each person freedom as far as they can take it. Your freedom ends when it starts requiring me to participate.
It's interesting though that your #22 is something that from my perspective seems more fitting to you than I. The 'some evil preventing the dream' usually being capitalism, class warfare, human nature, that thing that happened to Stalin et al that resulted in you know... a few tens of millions murdered and imprisoned... little stuff like that.
I've described very little on this site that could be viewed as Utopian, I'm under no illusion that everyone is going to see the world my way and become little Doug Hunter's. The good thing about my 'Utopia' is you don't have to. In fact, you don't have to participate at all and are welcome to do as you please with the likeminded so long as you return the favor and not try and force my participation. That is libertarianism and that's the most pragmatic compromise I've found. If you got something better please speak up... otherwise you're advocating domination, slavery, and in the end the very violence you claim to oppose.
25 - Joseph Cotto
Question: Which kind of sociopolitical theory would be a more "libertine" alternative to classical liberalism (AKA free enterprise)?
Socialism? Fascism? Communism? Marxism? Trotskyism? Leninism? Sandinism? Totalitarianism?
Before any of my leftist readers spill their Flavor Aid, it would be wise to remember that the options which I listed above are the only truly possible replacements for the capitalist system at this current point in time. Each of these ideologies were started in the name of serving the "common good", and all ended in dismal failure, though not without tremendous bloodshed.
So, yes, I would gladly say that the system we have now aptly upholds the core principles of "freedom", and that most anything other than it almost certainly shall not.