hence why I prefer a capitalist dictatorship.
One where there is a strict police force protecting the people from the slaves, but then an absolute free market (to some extent, there are certain sectors of the economy that would be cheaper nationalized then privatized, but for the most part it should be free)

However from what I have read on Jennifer Government, it sounds like an ideal government.

@ putin

I figure that you have an angle with this one, but I'm curious to find out what it is. So here goes. What's the black market if not a form of capitalism and that's usually the first thing that pops up when there is no government regulation? Trading of any kind connotes capitalism. It would seem to me that only dumbest of capitalists would rely totally on the government to safeguard their property. That money does allow them to buy security through weaponry and private security firms.

@Crazy Angilcan, the black market only exists because of government regulation, if there was no government regulation there would be no black market because why by something illegally when you can by it legally?

"My dream job is being the puppet master of some dictator (who is just a figurehead pretending to call all the shots, but its actually me who is doing so)"

Since I would be the dictator in this case, I'm not sure I would feel comfortable with that...

My comment about puppet masters was directed at fesces

How would you resolve disputes between capitalists about property and contracts? By whoever has the bigger guns? Or whoever privately owns the courts? How would you protect/enforce intellectual property rights? Generally speaking capitalists want to do whatever they can to suppress 'black markets' because people are ripping off their products and selling them for cheaper prices. Who were the biggest opponents of trading pirated music and websites like Napster? The record companies and certain musicians.

For people who have to rely on freight, who is going to build the roads so you can move your product? Who is going to protect the seas so you can ship your oil and other essential commodities? How are you going to establish a credit and monetary system?

How are you going to have any small businesses if they all have to hire private security and personal armies to protect themselves from robbery? Since the anarcho capitalists always claim that under their "pure" capitalism businesses would be small and monopolies wouldn't exist, this whole scheme seems hard to fathom.

I'm playing 3 lived games so I'm a bit distracted but my ideas are pretty much any rand but the the state is eliminated, as well as a few things like the elimination. Of weapons

Certainly its the businesses on one side that want to supress black marketeers, yet still the governments on the other side would like to supress them too. It seems a little over simplified to say that the only objection to black markets is that they rip off big businesses. I wouldn't even consider that the primary reason, since I'm not in a field that is in any way threatened by such activity. It seems to me that he most serious concerns would be that black marketeers are selling items that aren't regulated in any way. What recouse does the consumer have if their penicillin tablets were laced with heroin?

I'd consider the black marketeers themselves to be anarco-capitalists. I agree that industry benefits from the infrastructure that governments provide. That industry benefitting from the infrastructure though not capitalism. In a communist socitey wouldn't industries benefit from the same advances in infrastructure. I'm not really taking a side here, just trying to get where you are coming from on this.

I think we differ in the opinion that capitalism fails completely without a government. Trade would undoubtedly still go on in localized places as it always has. Infrastructure make capitalism possible on a grand scale but it seems that it does so for communism as well. One is reduced to local markets and the other is reduced to local communes.

"What recouse does the consumer have if their penicillin tablets were laced with heroin? "

We were talking about the concerns/interests of business. Business doesn't give a damn about protecting consumers. I agree that selling unsafe products would be yet another flaw in the nightmare that would be "anarcho-capitalism", but capitalism can and often does operate just fine by selling low quality, hazardous and unsafe products.

As for your argument that socialism also requires infrastructure, I don't see the relevance. Yes all economic systems require some means of providing public goods and infrastructure. My point is that capitalism cannot escape this requirement, it can't rely on the market to provide these essential public goods like enforcing contracts, building roads, protecting property. I never argued that "benefiting from infrastructure" = capitalism or is somehow only a practice of capitalism.

"Trade would undoubtedly still go on in localized places as it always has. Infrastructure make capitalism possible on a grand scale but it seems that it does so for communism as well. "

How would you enforce contracts or resolve property disputes without government, even on a local level?

Putin, I dare you to visit your fellow slavs in Poland and talk down Milton Friedman. If you're feeling super tough you could even talk down Margaret Thatcher, but you might not walk out under your own steam.

Ah socialists, always so 'free', with other peoples money...

"Since I would be the dictator in this case, I'm not sure I would feel comfortable with that..."
Really? You get all the fame and glory of being a first class dictator and I'm the one doing all the work in the background.

"My comment about puppet masters was directed at fesces"
I love how noone can spell my name. At least this time it wasn't spelled feces...
Anyway, your point about the world being run by figureheads is bullshit, politics doesn't work that way (unfortunately)

"ow would you resolve disputes between capitalists about property and contracts? By whoever has the bigger guns? Or whoever privately owns the courts? How would you protect/enforce intellectual property rights? Generally speaking capitalists want to do whatever they can to suppress 'black markets' because people are ripping off their products and selling them for cheaper prices. Who were the biggest opponents of trading pirated music and websites like Napster? The record companies and certain musicians.

For people who have to rely on freight, who is going to build the roads so you can move your product? Who is going to protect the seas so you can ship your oil and other essential commodities? How are you going to establish a credit and monetary system?

How are you going to have any small businesses if they all have to hire private security and personal armies to protect themselves from robbery? Since the anarcho capitalists always claim that under their "pure" capitalism businesses would be small and monopolies wouldn't exist, this whole scheme seems hard to fathom."
Your points are the reasons why I think an oligarchic government is necessary for capitalism to thrive.

"Certainly its the businesses on one side that want to supress black marketeers, yet still the governments on the other side would like to supress them too. It seems a little over simplified to say that the only objection to black markets is that they rip off big businesses. I wouldn't even consider that the primary reason, since I'm not in a field that is in any way threatened by such activity. It seems to me that he most serious concerns would be that black marketeers are selling items that aren't regulated in any way. What recouse does the consumer have if their penicillin tablets were laced with heroin?

I'd consider the black marketeers themselves to be anarco-capitalists. I agree that industry benefits from the infrastructure that governments provide. That industry benefitting from the infrastructure though not capitalism. In a communist socitey wouldn't industries benefit from the same advances in infrastructure. I'm not really taking a side here, just trying to get where you are coming from on this.

I think we differ in the opinion that capitalism fails completely without a government. Trade would undoubtedly still go on in localized places as it always has. Infrastructure make capitalism possible on a grand scale but it seems that it does so for communism as well. One is reduced to local markets and the other is reduced to local communes."
I agree with this post, allthough when the market is reduces locally, its not long a grand scale market that makes capitalism so great. There are no longer choices in consumerism as only a handful of goods could be produced. The lack of choice in the market would make it incredibly easy to form oligarchys as there would be no choice and the income desparity between the upper and lower classes would be greater.
Then there is the point that in smaller communities, certain technological growth that is found in capitalism would die, cars would be to expensive to produce and become obsolete, 90% of computer parts are produced in China and Africa, and it would be extremely expensive to produce them in America for example.

lack of government would bring an end to capitalism.

"I'm playing 3 lived games so I'm a bit distracted but my ideas are pretty much any rand but the the state is eliminated, as well as a few things like the elimination. Of weapons"
But if there is no government to enforce the elimination of weapons whats to stop me from making my own?

"We were talking about the concerns/interests of business. Business doesn't give a damn about protecting consumers."
BULLSHIT! The consumer is necessary for them to make a profit, a bad reputation is the worst thing a business can get. Why did the stock of Toyota shoot down after the recall? Why did the stock of BP shoot down after the gulf spill? Why is 50% of budgets spent on advertising? Because companies need to look good in the eyes of the consumer if they have any hopes of making profit.

"As for your argument that socialism also requires infrastructure, I don't see the relevance. Yes all economic systems require some means of providing public goods and infrastructure. My point is that capitalism cannot escape this requirement, it can't rely on the market to provide these essential public goods like enforcing contracts, building roads, protecting property. I never argued that "benefiting from infrastructure" = capitalism or is somehow only a practice of capitalism."
agree

"How would you enforce contracts or resolve property disputes without government, even on a local level?"
Hired mussel...

@ fasces
Its not run by figureheads i'm only saying that elected officials are pawns, pawns with power but pawns none the less, of other people that frankly are above government

anarchy i think is the last and mostly unachievable step that we should work to make possible until then we will remain the same until one of two things happens
giant war
or nothing
after the war there is chance of the emergence of philosopher kings because if something like a world war happens we really don't have much chance and those who emerge with power will be those that ae he best suited for it and if they don't become corrupt we may have good system rulesd by those that don't want power but have it because of burden

yeah we need government.

what happens if i piss off my neighbor and he wants to kill me.

what do i do? without a govt i guess i have to run away or kill him instead. that's not a nice world.

and if you say "well there is a company that provides police services"

well what if i am poor and cannot afford their services? i just get killed.

no thanks.

i'm amazed at how much of a no-brainer this is and how often people seem to be attracted to it.

like yeah, no one loooves government but i definitely don't looove every fucking man for himself.

jesus christ. that would be a nightmare of the highest order. the only solace you would find would be in extended family units, which...

oh whoops i've slipped back into gov't,

which reminds me: Anarchy is impossible. all examples that "have been tried" have government.

even if it's, say, 15 people living together, with kind of an agreement to be anarchists and love each other and not fuck it up. the government then is their agreement, they live under its rules.

"BULLSHIT! The consumer is necessary for them to make a profit, a bad reputation is the worst thing a business can get. Why did the stock of Toyota shoot down after the recall? Why did the stock of BP shoot down after the gulf spill? Why is 50% of budgets spent on advertising? "

Money is spent on advertising to mislead the public into thinking the crap these companies are selling isn't terrible for people and the environment. Why do companies spend so much money lobbying government to eliminate or block regulations on them that would protect consumers and public health? Why did cigarette companies deny they were knowingly selling people addictive cancerous products? What explains the smashing success of the junk food industry? Why did BP cut corners to begin with that resulted in the oil spill?

They spent money on advertising to make people believe they weren't a terrible, unscrupulous company, even though they are. The same thing is going on with the banks right now. They're trying to sell people this crap that they weren't responsible for the financial collapse. That it's not their fault they gambled away people's pensions, etc.

Industry lobbyists spend tons of money trying to dupe people into believing their dumping mass amounts of Co2 in the atmosphere won't have any harmful effects. They did the same thing in the 80s with acid rain, saying it was no big deal and/or wasn't caused by their pollution. How many years did it take government to implement basic safety regulations on the automobile industry? If it was up to the auto companies we would have never even have seatbelts now.

Bad reputations have had no impact on the profits of evil corporations like Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Chevron (how many have they killed in Nigeria?), Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart, Pfizer, Nestle - (heck, Nestle sells contaminated infant formula to poor countries, how are their profits these days?). Pharmaseuticals routinely rush their products without proper safety tests, because they care oh so much about dangerous side effects.

There's a book that answeres every question and settles every debate here:

David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

Summarize it for us, I'm not reading a book to win an e-debate on extreme libertarianism.

e-debate, lol

No, Putin, read the book. It's good, and it's short. Or at least just pick a chapter with an interesting title and read two or three pages.

"For people who have to rely on freight, who is going to build the roads so you can move your product? Who is going to protect the seas so you can ship your oil and other essential commodities? How are you going to establish a credit and monetary system?
"
Simple. All people will have a chip in the brain which will help them make the best decisions for the good of society. Thus some people will have a chip in the brain which will tell them build and maintain roads, while others will have a chip which will tell them to be doctors and so forth. There will not be any need for police or armies because the chips will stop people from being violent. The chip will be connected to a central computer which will reallocate people when necessary to ensure perfect harmony between consumption and production. Utopia :-P

im with putin man i have too much to do read *another* book.

gotta finish "Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria 1945-1965" by the party tonight. lmao.

btw though if you want to define govt as no person or persons being in charge, then you could maybe argue that if a computer governed us then it would anarchy.

but something tells me you would reject this notion.
lol.

@Thucydides: you are 100% correct. It pisses me off how many people think anarchy would be awesome simply because its anarchy.

"Money is spent on advertising to mislead the public into thinking the crap these companies are selling isn't terrible for people and the environment."
Exactly, if they didn't care about their reputations of selling reliable products, they wont invest so much in advertising.

"Why do companies spend so much money lobbying government to eliminate or block regulations on them that would protect consumers and public health?"
You have no evidence that proves that companies have spent money on bribing officials to eliminate regulations. Its illegal and (despite what Michael Moore thinks) doesn't happen frequently otherwise there would be a lot more people in jail for this.

The fact is most of these 'regulations' are just tax increases on specific goods and it makes sense that companies want to avoid them.

"Why did cigarette companies deny they were knowingly selling people addictive cancerous products"
They didn't, their advertising campaigns (when it was legal) just talked about how cool it was to smoke, it might have been different in America, but in Canada it has always been illegal to lie in adds.

"What explains the smashing success of the junk food industry?"
It tastes good, I am fully aware that it is bad for you and that the main reason I have put on 20 pounds this year is because of how much junk food I am eating. But its not going to stop me. Most people are aware of the health affects (at least in Canada), same goes for smoking and still do it.

"Industry lobbyists spend tons of money trying to dupe people into believing their dumping mass amounts of Co2 in the atmosphere won't have any harmful effects."
Not in Canada or any country that signed the Kyoto protocol.

"They did the same thing in the 80s with acid rain, saying it was no big deal and/or wasn't caused by their pollution."
Not in Canada,

America probably has advertising regulations making it illegal to lie in advertisements. Any smart country does...

"If it was up to the auto companies we would have never even have seatbelts now. "
Really? So when Ford put millions into researching safer cars in the 50's they did it because they wanted to get around safty protocols?
And in 1955 when that same research team developed the seat belt and every car of theirs in 1956 was released with a seat belt they did that because they didn't want people to wear seat belts...
Ford has been using seat belts since 1956 in every one of their cars, and it wasn't until the 60's that the US government mandated that every car needed a seat belt.

"Bad reputations have had no impact on the profits of evil corporations like Coca-Cola"
Since when does coke have a bad rep?

"Monsanto"
Not consumer goods, not up to consumers

"Chevron"
The people they have killed tried to destroy their wells...

"Dow Chemical"
Again not consumer goods.

"Nike, Walmart"
They have bad reputations because they are big companies. Its the anti-monopoly people who hate them.

Walmart's bad rep is from bankrupting its competitors, which I don't see a problem with.

"Pfizer"
Don't know enough about this company.

"Nestle - (heck, Nestle sells contaminated infant formula to poor countries, how are their profits these days?)"
No they don't.

"Pharmaseuticals routinely rush their products without proper safety tests, because they care oh so much about dangerous side effects. "
The USSR did the same thing but for different reasons. All of modern day science has had the problem of rushing their research, but its not because of capitalism, its because of the pressure on scientists to release data quickly to beat other scientists to it. This happened/is happening in USSR, China, everywhere.

As for specifically Pharmaseuticals, its not because they don't care about side effects, its that they need to get the pills on the market as soon as possible.
For influenza vaccines for example, they have just a few weeks to collect data and develop a good vaccine before the government forces them to put it on the market at the beginning of the flu season. But naturally because corporations are the root of all evil it has to be them, and not the beloved governments that cause rushing products to get them on the market early.

"Simple. All people will have a chip in the brain which will help them make the best decisions for the good of society. Thus some people will have a chip in the brain which will tell them build and maintain roads, while others will have a chip which will tell them to be doctors and so forth. There will not be any need for police or armies because the chips will stop people from being violent. The chip will be connected to a central computer which will reallocate people when necessary to ensure perfect harmony between consumption and production. Utopia :-P
"
Isn't that governemnt? Which is what we are trying to aviod?

btw though if you want to define govt as no person or persons being in charge, then you could maybe argue that if a computer governed us then it would anarchy.

but something tells me you would reject this notion.
lol."
A computer would have to be programmed, so in esence its the programmer who is in charge.

Also I am not reading a book for an e-debate either

wait dude fasces youre wrong about all those companies, let me help you out.

dow makes consumer goods in that they refine chemicals used in like plastics and fertilizers bleaches and all that jazz.

monsanto makes seeds that make our food, and makes round-up,

chevron profits from poor people who see no oil money that is right under their feet. they dont *necessarily* break the law but they could at least try a little harder to give, say, the Ogoni of Nigeria some of the wealth (or Shell or whoever's there)

Nike and Walmart are criticized not just for the shit you said, also for exploiting workers, encouraging sweathshop-ism, destroying the environment, yeah.

pfizer makes drugs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer#Nigeria
and many more! :DDD

nestle.

well idk about nestle. lol.

and btw the comp thing would work if the computer was like, intelligent. because then you could no more say the programmer runs the govt than you could say obama's mom (or grandmother or whoever raised him) runs the USA

you see what i mean? if it can change itself then it is autonomous, even if it has original influences. not perfect, but, as the analogy shows, neither is a human being autonomous.

Maybe instead of a central computer it would be more like distributed computing?