Hugo

It becomes free when government withdraws from it. This argument could also be used to abolish the whole criminal justice system. After all, if I kill you, imprisoning me won't bring you back to life. That's based on a negative-welfare outcome. Or we could accept that hurting me is a deterrent to others that might do what I did, and that the threat of hurting me may be enough to stop me doing what I was going to do in the first place. I don't understand how government micromanagement comes into all this. As far as I am aware, any problems under a free market can be dealt with under criminal law (e.g. theft or murder) on a basis that deals with the individuals involved rather than companies and economics. After all, a company can be thousands of individuals, and in a crime that the company "commits" only a handful of those individuals may be complicit, so why punish all the thousands that had nothing to do with it by penalising the company, jeopardising their livelihoods and so forth? Say, for example, we've got a company that's dumping toxic waste in the river and causing children playing in the river downstream to get horrible skin lesions. The act is an act of criminal negligence. So, we find the guy who signed the order to dump the chemicals and we find the guys who actually dumped the chemicals and we make a case against them in front of a jury, in which we try to prove that they knew what they were doing was wrong and would cause injury and their lawyers try to prove the opposite, and those individuals alone are held accountable. Does that not sound fair? All this talk of punishing companies is reminiscent of the leftist tendency to view corporations and business as massive, faceless and inhuman entities when in fact, they are collections of individual human beings just like you or I. To be fair to August, I think this was an original point of his some pages back.

This cannot be so. In a market of voluntary trade, there is no point in law. The idea of law is to protect the weak from the strong, but in a free market the weak are not obliged to have anything to do with the strong, therefore, the laws are redundant. Consider contract law. We have a contract. I break the contract. Now, you could say that you'll go to the government and I'll be punished. However, you could also spread the word that I'm a contract breaker and I'll find it very difficult to deal with others in future. Since I had a contract with you, I'm obviously interested in trade, so for you to do this really hurts me. Define "wrongdoing." What conditions? I have challenged you to provide an example, but you haven't provided any. I want you to actually tell me what you mean. The reason I keep misreading you and talking about macroeconomics and Keynesian economics is because I don't understand what it is you are trying to say. This is an invalid example. You and I are not on a desert island, never will be on a desert island and even if we were on a desert island, would not be concerned with trading fish for coconuts.

McCarthy saw Communism as a threat to his country and his way of life. This is why he attacked it. If more people had thought like him, then somewhere between 50,000,000 and 300,000,000 people would be alive today, people murdered by Communists.

No. I am saying that Marxist-Leninist groups still have enough influence to organise mass rallies even over a decade after the end of Soviet Communism. I did not mean to say that all such rallies, even as of February 2003, were organised by Communists, that was an error. I am not saying that the anti-war movement is inspired by Marxists. The Marxists simply latched on to them as an excuse to stick the knife into their enemies, to whit America and capitalism, and garner some publicity. The Castro apologist who organised one rally was hailed by the New York Times as "one of the grandes dames of the country’s progressive movement" on February 4th, 2003. Nor am I saying that these plots come from Moscow. What I am getting at is that until the USSR lost the Cold War and collapsed, virtually all the world's Marxist-Leninist parties received funding and direction from Moscow. This is why McCarthy pursued Communists with such vigour, because membership in the Communist Party was sedition and treason as the stated goal of the American Communist Party was to subvert and destroy the US Constitution and US Government and to replace it with a dictatorship that would, by inference, be a Moscow satellite.

Except that he cannot buy from you after you do that. You spent your surplus capital paying more for a car from him. Oversimplification, but do you get the point? Buying cheaper goods leaves you with more money. Outsourcing and downsizing has made consumer products so cheap that we can all afford plenty, whereas before a TV or a refrigerator was a luxury item. No, it was caused by mercantilism. The fact is that Spain had gold flowing in from the Americas and the prevalent mercantilist theories taught that capital should stay in your own country, so Spain was closed to free trade. Spain was able to coast along on plundered gold for a while, but when it had all been spent, they had no trade to fall back upon. Refer to your Paul Kennedy. "trade deficit" is a misnomer. It would be more appropriate to call it an "investment surplus" because that is actually what is happening when you are running a deficit: foreigners are investing in your country more than you are investing in theirs. This is why the deficit runners - USA, Britain - are doing much better than the surplus runners - Japan, Russia. Thus to speak of capital "taking flight" as part of outsourcing and trade deficits is complete and utter rubbish. The only capital doing any flying is foreign capital, into your economy. Government can pick winners and losers if it likes economic collapse. Look at MITI. Government should be separated from the economy for the same reason as it is separated from the church. Too much concentration of power which leads to the detriment of all. Government interference in the economy is costing jobs and incomes and making people poorer than they would be under a properly free market. Absolute and total rubbish. All you need is an IPO and you can raise your billions and disperse your risk massively, far better than government could ever do for you.

I almost forgot this one. Just because Hitler fought against other socialists does not mean he was not one, any more than it would in the fighting between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks or between Cambodia and Vietnam. This is a logical fallacy called "begging the question." You are trying to get us to accept your conclusion as part of your argument towards your conclusion.

You have not refuted it. And, it turns out, extremist Marxist groups still have some influence. Then what Germany are you referring to? Hohenzollern? Pre-unification? You dispute William L. Shirer? Alright, then let's see your evidence and your sources. Oh, sorry, I forgot it was you. Of course, you have none.

First of all, note that Japan's policy of state interference in economics was very different to the US policy, and the US recovered from both the recession and the savings and loans problems just fine. Protectionism is known to be a cause of economic stagnation. It's easy to follow this with logic, let alone examples. It's a "beggar-thy-neighbour" policy, basically designed to make your economy grow at the expense of your trading partners. Of course, foreign states don't take this lying down and invariably introduce their own protectionist measures (or at least, those who haven't grasped the free market). What this means is that you are cutting off imports from them, and they are cutting off imports from you. That translates into less trade, less money, less jobs. Basically, every industry that imports or exports something will be hurt. Bruce Bartlett, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, former Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy Development at the White House, has said: Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, recently published a book entitled "Can Japan Compete?" in which he opines that Japan succeeded in spite of MITI and not because of it. Japan continues with protectionism and state interference to this day and it's why they cannot recover. Exactly... up until recently. Japan was carried on the strength of MacArthur's reforms. After WWII he used his dictatorial powers to break up the zaibatsu, opening up the market to competition, and, most importantly, to reform the tax system to create a very low tax rate and one structured to economic growth. However, MITI was a millstone around the Japanese neck and MacArthur also failed to reform the banking system. These problems eventually caught up to Japan and it was only a matter of time before a problem - like the recession and savings and loans crisis - caused the house of cards to collapse. Well, people have been parading this doomsday scenario since the spinning jenny was invented but ever since then, we seem to have had no growth in unemployment and our real incomes and standards of living keep on rising. In short, it's a red herring. Desktop OSs, yes. However, desktop operating systems are a very small segment of the computer market and overall, Microsoft has a very small penetration. Apparently those efforts aren't working. Wal-Mart is now selling Linux PCs. Dell, the largest PC manufacturer, is selling Linux. All of them! Bill Gates was once the little guy. So was Henry Ford. So was Michael Dell. So was John Rockefeller. So was Donald Trump. Need I continue? That's because you misunderstand the whole economic system. Wealth can be created from nothing so it is entirely possible for new companies (like Amazon.com, for instance) to arise and become successful without felling large companies. IBM still exists and does very well despite the fact that it was "toppled" by Microsoft, does it not? Then tell me of a monopoly that arose from the free market without state encouragement.

Then perhaps you will cite some of this "strong evidence." In the meantime I will give you two examples that prove the contrary. FDR's government was constantly meddling in the economy. It made and changed prices, wages, public spending and so forth in an attempt to "tweak" the economy. Prominent economists have argued that this, in fact, was the reason why the Great Depression lasted so long, that the constant meddling by the Federal government paralysed the economy, and industry was afraid to act or invest because the rules changed on a near-weekly basis. In Japan, the economy collapsed in about 1993 and has shown no signs of recovery since. In the 1980s, the CIA were holding meetings about how Japanese economic strength might affect the USA, but just last year they convened a think-tank to ponder how Japanese economic frailty might affect the USA. The reason for this is simple: government micromanagement. The MITI, the Japanese governmental agency responsible for regulating the economy and trade on a per-company basis, has succeeded in discouraging innovation and growth because of its policy of picking "winners" and "losers" rather than letting the market decide. That and Japanese governmental interference in the banking and savings system meant that Japan was unable to recover from the early-90s recession and the savings and loans crisis, and now Japan has no capital left for new investment even though their interest rate has been manipulated to incredible lows. Because of MITI's policy of trade protectionism and insistence upon a trade surplus, Japan literally has no money left in the bank and cannot rebuild her economy as all her capital is tied up overseas. I know you are trying to lead me to say "government" but actually, you will find that the market is quite able to regulate itself in this regard. Consider Microsoft, often held up as a splendid example of monopolistic practices and a reason for anti-trust laws. All that the DoJ has done has affected Microsoft very little, however, consumers are increasingly turning to alternatives in Apple, Linux and others, and Microsoft is finding their market share decreasing in many markets. This is because monopolies cannot exist under capitalism. As a company moves towards market supremacy, it begins to collapse under its own weight. The very large company suffers from bureaucracy and inefficiency, stagnation and lack of innovation, amongst other faults, and these weaknesses open it up to competition. The larger the company becomes, the greater these weaknesses become, and so it is impossible to reach monopoly. The large company becomes a herd of blundering buffalo, quite open to the attacks of much smaller but far more nimble cheetahs. Take another look at the East India Company. It held a government-enforced monopoly but in the 18th and 19th Centuries, the directors of that company freely acknowledged that were it not for government cash and government troops the company would go bankrupt within a month. Yes. Harper is the most right-leaning of our major politicians but he is still more socialist than capitalist. He stands for socialised medicine, when any good capitalist knows that a private healthcare market would deliver better healthcare for less cost. He would cut taxes but he has not promised to cut the sales taxes that hurt the poor, damage the economy and stagnate wealth creation, nor would he help create a free market with a flat-rate income tax. Neither has he promised to separate government and economy, not saying a word about the government's stake in key industries such as power generation or the postal service. No, because I bought the insurance of my own free will so I consented to its use in such a manner. I also have the power to abrogate my own rights. I appreciate your corrections, August, my analogy was probably not the best.

I see no dispute of my allegation that, as of February 2003, all anti-war protests in the US were organised by Communist groups. What has basically happened is that you have been challenged with facts that contradict your notions, but rather than accomodate them and seek any of your own you prefer to ignore them because they shake your confidence in your preconceived world view. It is very intellectually dishonest, and I would urge you to consider the other point of view and acquaint yourself with facts before making rash and prejudiced judgements. Nazi Germany (stop saying Germany, it makes a mockery of the whole discussion) was born of the left, as is plain in pre-1933 Nazi economic theory as put forward by Feder and others. After the Nazis came to power, the evidence is indisputable: they were running a dictatorial command economy. Their beef with the USSR was nothing to do with economics, because they were identical, but it was due to social ideas and racial prejudice. You have not thought about that. $2m in 1936 is worth $26.5m in 2004. That is to start any business. It's a quite staggering sum of capital. Because in Nazi Germany all banks and the monetary system were firmly in state control, it meant that the only the state could start a new business or allow one to be started. It is another example of profoundly anticapitalist economic totalitarianism.

The theory was proven wrong in 1974 when the advent of stagflation proved Keynesian economics wrong, completely refuting his central claim that high unemployment and high inflation could never occur at the same time. Like I said, a theory that doesn't fit the facts is wrong. No, it does not. Any policy that directly violates the rights of the competitor is unfair. In the race, that would be tripping him. In business, it would be theft of his capital. Any policy that directly affects only you is fair. In the race, that would be sprinting harder. In business, it would be lowering your prices. The difference between our ideas stems from the differences in the way we view unfair advantages. In my view, an unfair advantage is only gained when one party violates the fundamental rights of another party - the right to life, the right to property, the right to free speech etc. In yours, an unfair advantage is gained when one party tries harder than the other party. Furthermore, I have only violated your rights when I am the sole agent of violation. If I steal your property, then I am the sole agent and I have violated your rights. If we are competing in business and I slash my prices, and you go bankrupt, I am not the sole agent - all I did was change my own circumstances without directly changing yours. Therefore, your rights remain intact.

Alright, but this is really going to hurt, and you can't say you were not fairly warned. I even told you the traps I was laying for you in advance. Well, let's see. Here's John Perazzo's article from Frontpage Magazine. An excerpt: Here's an article by Marc Cooper in Toronto's Now magazine. Another excerpt: Here's an interview with David Corn, defending his article in the L.A. Weekly. Another excerpt: And there are plenty more. Ah. So what you are talking about is not socialism, but neo-socialism, perhaps better named statist democratic capitalism. What you call "capitalist" is actually called "mercantilist." There are many key differences, namely that mercantilism does not believe in free trade and instead believes in maximising exports and minimising imports, that mercantilism generally allows the state to control key industries such as precious metals and armaments, that mercantilism forbids social mobility and concentrates wealth in families rather than in classes and uses punitive state laws to keep the peasantry in their place. Capitalism does not share any of these values. There are more differences, but that's enough for now. No, marriage is a social contract. Society is much harder to define. Alright, I'll respond with quotes from the most definitive historical text on Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer's superlative The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. p. 283-284 p. 357 p. 357 p. 360 p. 361So... economic dictatorship, Four Year Plans, price controls, wage controls, import/export restrictions, nationalising businesses, closing businesses... and you think Nazi Germany was capitalist? You, sir, are an ass.

Good. I am happy that I am not in the company of socialists like Harper, Martin and Layton. Their ideas are backward-thinking anyway. Maybe because he had a career in mind, and the Canadian political climate is such that a U of C teacher is more respected.

Sadly, I don't believe such a thing has ever been tried. The post-Revolutionary American government is probably the closest, but even that has wisps of mercantilism about it. Hopefully we shall be able to progress towards it. Movements like the Austrian School and the Mises Institute will probably be instrumental.

Indeed. Up until the collapse of the USSR, virtually all Western Marxist-Leninist parties were funded and controlled by Moscow and were little more than espionage agencies. Furthermore, consider that as of February 2003, all but one of the anti-Iraq-war protests were organised by the Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist organisation that has openly supported Kim Jong-Il. The one that was not was organised by United For Peace and Justice, co-chaired by Leslie Cagan, a self-confessed and longtime Castro admirer. Not at all. Democracy is political freedom and political choice, capitalism is economic freedom and economic choice. Democracy allows you to choose your government and dispose of them if they are not to your liking, capitalism allows you to choose your employer and your suppliers and to reject them if they are not to your liking. When? Capitalism was born in America and Britain, the first and best of democracies. I challenge you to find me a totalitarian, capitalist state. I should warn you that I am setting you up for a fall. If you reply, "Pinochet", I shall tell you that his economy was mercantilist as he concentrated wealth in certain groups and discouraged social mobility. If you reply, "Hitler", I shall tell you that the Nazi German economy was a command economy like that of the USSR. Hitler wasted no time in breaking big business to his will. Any other examples you can think of will meet a similar fate. I thought socialism was supposed to be a transition from capitalism to communism? Marx and Lenin never rejected violence and terror, in fact, they endorsed it, as did virtually all communist thinkers. Well documented, eh? I'd ask you for some of these documents but from our earlier conversations I know I can expect the man in the moon to fly down and sell me bushels of dayglo-orange tomatoes before I can expect you to provide a shred of proof for anything you say.

Your elitism is showing. I don't see how. You will have to explain how you see that in more detail. That's affirming the consequent. It was once thought that absolute monarchy was the best form of government, and it existed, but it's existence does not prove that it was the best form of government. The theory of which you speak, like the theory of a non-heliocentric solar system, does not fit the empirical facts and has never been proven true. In fact, it has been repeatedly proven wrong. Therefore, the theory is wrong.

It depends upon whether or not it would legislate them out of a job, doesn't it?

Then you will have to tell me what you mean by "extreme freedom." I believe that extreme freedom is both optimally efficient and optimally fair. What I mean by extreme freedom is that each individual be free to do exactly as he wants, with his thought and speech, his person and his property, and that necessarily infers that this freedom includes the obligation not to interfere with the freedom of others. First of all, I contest the assumption that you have attempted to smuggle into that excerpt - that state action in the economy can be beneficial. I don't believe it can, at least, not as beneficial as noninterference would be. Secondly, you have answered you own question. "Participant behaviour" is not interference. The participation from those outside the economy - the state - is interference. Here's an analogy. We have two runners in a race. Those runners may behave as they will to try and affect the outcome, so far as it does not interfere with the ability of the other runner to attempt to affect the outcome. That's the nature of their competition. However, it would not be fair or just for a non-participant to attempt to affect the outcome of the race, say, by moving one runner's starting blocks ahead of the other's. The outcome of such a race would be unfair and would not reflect the true abilities of the runners. Both efficiency and fairness underly my position. Efficiency, since the free market provides the best and the most for the least cost, and fairness, because I believe that a man has the right to retain and enjoy what he does and what he produces. Your definition of "fairness" would appear to include depriving individuals of their rightful possessions in order to give them to individuals who do not own them, did not earn them and have no right to them. In private practice, that is called "theft." Ah. So what you are saying is that anti-trust law is based not upon incorrect empirical evidence but upon a flawed theory. Anti-trust laws are basically designed to protect us from a situation that cannot exist. You proceed with a false premise: that such a practice (you imply that it would arise from state interference) does or could exist. Once you prove your premise has merit I shall debate that point. Otherwise you might as well ask me, what if the sun exploded tomorrow? Prove it can realistically happen and we'll discuss it. Until then it's a waste of time.

Let's make certain that the free market couldn't provide those benefits at less cost. I'm not certain of that at all. A lot of 20-35-year-old Americans who are in good health just don't want to spend the money on health insurance. They figure if the worst happens they'll pick up the tab, but in the meantime they'd rather have a nicer car. The poor in America get healthcare coverage. While they may moan about it, the quality of care is still better than anything you can get in Canada. It's their choice. In America, the healthcare consumer has choice. In Canada, the healthcare consumer has absolutely no choice. You pay, whether you need it or use it or not. I would say that the free market can accredit itself better than the government can. I believe that publications such as Consumer Guide offer much better information on, say, car safety, than government standards and regulations. According to the the government, every car on the market is safe. According to Consumer Guide, some cars are safer than others, and they can tell you which ones.

I'd keep quiet about right-wing conspiracy theories if I were you. It's pretty common knowledge that the history of the leftist movement is a Moscow-centrist and Soviet-funded attempt at sedition that has, unsurprisingly, lost its way since the source was destroyed. As August correctly says, the left has had to evolve. The new left, embodied by Layton or even by a new-wave socialist like Solzenitzyn, has had to come to terms with democracy and with the free market. They now accept the democratic-capitalist organisation of the equal triumvirate of state, economy and culture, with the crucial caveat that they wish the state to be far more powerful and influential than either economy or culture. In this they show a disturbing ignorance for history, never seeming to realise that greater power invested in the state means greater misery, suffering and death for the people. The changing face of the left has had to happen in reaction to reality. Marxism has died, faced with the undeniable reality that capitalism succeeded in all the fields that Marxism wanted to succeed in, whereas Marxism had become a dismal failure. One can expect this realisation to continue in the future, as the reformed left realises that the free market and a free culture achieve far more social good than their statist ideals ever could.

Oh? Explain the strengths of Pol Pot's Cambodia, please. By what right? Unless they are hiding it under the floorboards that simply isn't true. The money of the rich goes back into the economy. Don't you ever wonder where banks get the money to give people mortgages and loans to start businesses?

That's tax freedom day, for the average person, roughly 6 months into the year. Income taxes are a very small part of the deal. Let's say you pay 20% income tax. Then, if you live in Ontario, you pay 15% sales tax on whatever you spend the remainder on. With those two taxes alone, the government is taking 32 cents from every dollar you make. That does not even take into account user fees for government services, higher taxes on certain products (gasoline, cigarettes, etc), capital gains taxes, taxes on savings, etc. Consider, too, that while the rich pay more income taxes, taxation like sales tax, car license plate fees, gasoline taxes and so forth all take a much larger percentage of the income of the poor than of the rich. For instance, a vehicle license plate costs $78 to renew, where I live, no matter how rich the owner of the vehicle. To the minimum wage worker, that's a big chunk of cash. To a doctor making $115,000 per year, that's pocket change. That would only be true if the healthcare provision of the US and Canada were comparable. Since the US system is far superior, one can only conclude that Canada is not spending enough and this is the only reason for the difference in spending levels. Let me make an analogy to your argument. You buy a 21" TV for $200. I buy a 50" TV for $2000. According to you, this proves that your TV is better than mine. I've nothing to say in response to this beyond what August has said. To believe the only measure of the value of an education is how it is accredited by the government is absurd.

Maybe if around 50% of their income was not taxed, the far better performing private school system would be more attainable for Canadians. As it is, because of heavy taxation and government interference in the economy which stagnates the wealth-creation process, most are forced to use the underachieving public school system. Those that can afford private school are still paying for the public education system. This would be akin to shopping at Zellers, and being forced to pay whatever you paid them to Wal-Mart without receiving anything in return. Just? I think not. The clear fact is that, in every arena where state-run industry and private industry have competed (education, healthcare, power generation), private industry has been able to deliver a better product at a cheaper price. If the state is able to provide something like healthcare or education, based on historical precedent we can say it is an absolute certainty that the free market would provide it cheaper and better.

Human rights should include property rights, basically, that what I own and what I have earnt belongs to me, that I have the sole right to decide what to do with it, and nobody can take it away without my express consent. Interference in the economy violates that right. The products of a company belong to that company and they may dispose of them however they wish, at least that should be their right. However, state economic interference holds that a company (and, by inference, a person) does not have the right to do as he pleases with his own possessions, and that the state is the only correct agency for deciding what happens with other people's possessions. A gross over-simplification, but essentially correct. You are doubtless aware that between 3000BC and 1700AD, the life of the average human being did not change. No matter if he lived in a civilization of 3000BC or one over four-and-a-half-thousand years later, the average citizen could expect to spend his life toiling on the land, often going hungry, seeing a good portion of his children die, enjoying a bare minimum of creature comforts, suffering disease, squalor and often endemic war, having no civil rights, no police to protect him, and dying at around 40-45 years of age. Since capitalism reared its head, the rate of change in the welfare of the average citizen has been absolutely incredible. Consider that your lifestyle is better than the most wealthy of citizens 100 years ago, and probably better than the wealthy had it 50 years ago. You'll live to 78 years of age, you'll have to work no more than 40 hours a week, there's a mere 2% chance you'll work on the land, you'll get a new car every few years, you have a nice TV with cable, a computer and internet access, and enough technological appliances (microwave oven, dishwasher, laundry machines) to take the work of a whole household of servants. Correct. Wages will rise and fall of their own accord, because labour is a market like any other. A labour glut lowers wages, a labour shortage raises them. Engineers get paid a lot more than telemarketers because the market demands more engineers than are available. Attempting to interfere in that market will damage the system to the detriment of all. As I cited earlier in this thread, the Employment Policies Institute in the USA has found that, when minimum wage was raised $1.00 in 1996-1997, the first $0.50 of that raise alone cost 645,000 jobs, the majority of which were held by blacks, working mothers and teenagers. Perhaps you'll quote me where I said that. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Yes, and before the corporations got there starvation was the only option. What you propose is punishing companies who gave third-world workers an alternative to starvation. If you propose raising wages in these "sweatshops" be aware that this will make the situation worse. It was tried before. In the 19th Century, British popular opinion decried the wages being paid to workers in the African colonies. They raised them, under public pressure, but because of the increased overheads a lot of the African workers had to be fired. This created higher wages for a few, unemployment for many. Then, to compound the problem, rural farmers heard of the great wages being offered in the cities, closed their farms and headed to the towns. They couldn't get work either. The cities were filled with angry, unemployed mobs and the farms went idle. Food shortages and famine followed. So, what you are proposing is to punish those who bettered the lives of third-world workers, and push those workers back into starvation, and you do this all in their name. Is "hypocrisy" a term you are familiar with?