Comments on Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: A Strategic Green-Libertarian Alliance

As a boomer on the cusp of old age, still full of ...

2008-05-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

As a boomer on the cusp of old age, still full of the sentiment of the 60s, if no longer the ideologies, who has of late flirted,with anarchocapitalism--albeit reservedly--I must admit you've piqued my interest. I have come to hate the state more strongly than ever with bile aplenty left over for the human resource fascism that grips working life in America. I will be reading here for a while.

David Tomlin,Only one or two? How about half the ...

2006-05-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

David Tomlin,

Only one or two? How about half the writers at Mises.Org and just about any random writer for the ASI Blog?

This is a great idea.One potential problem, though...

2006-05-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

This is a great idea.

One potential problem, though: I am a former Green. I left the party due to its drift from decentralized "anrchism" to a more stifling socialism. Socialism is celebrated in the GP, and even those (who are numerous) who don't identify themselves as socialists are sometimes frightened to say so. There is SOME hostility to the LP among the more radical-left Greens. I heard the LP called "anti-labor" which is about the lowest insult imaginable from a Green.

As a Libertarian I have far less in common with th...

2006-04-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

As a Libertarian I have far less in common with the Democratic Party then I do the Green's. If I am understanding of the Greens political platform they also have few beliefs in line with the current Democratic party. With that said I'm aware of few Greens' that actually even know what is in the party platform.
One major stumbling hurdle in all this is the consequences of having a government controlled economy. A micromanaged hurdle that is regulated to assure compliance.

If we put more emphasis on user fees for airlines ...

2006-04-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

If we put more emphasis on user fees for airlines and toll roads, less people will be able to afford to travel. Wouldn't this restrict business? (jahlbor)

Wild Pegasus: "#3 is going to cause problems with ...

2006-04-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

Wild Pegasus: "#3 is going to cause problems with federal highways. It's going to increase prices on a lot of basic goods."

Since #3 entails the elimination of federal and state gas taxes, you need to balance whatever effects you think the tolls will have with the effects of correspondingly lower prices at the pump. In any case, though, "raising prices on basic goods" isn't an argument against ending subsidies. If you can't make the basic case that subsidies are economically destructive then no platform that's libertarian at all is going to work well for you.

Wild Pegasus: "#5 is a sure-fire loser. People will rightly claim that the loss of patents and drug protections will lead to less research and slower advancement in healthcare. People want free healthcare, not bad healthcare."

Then you point out that #5 will decimate drug prices (which is rather a hot issue these days), and you contest the idiot notion that gigantic pharmaceutial companies are the only or even the best way to do drug research.

Wild Pegasus: "#7 will lead to screams for tort reform. Juries are, generally, grossly incompetent at complex litigation. Finding norms will be difficult without the guidance of legislatures. And you're right back to regulation."

I don't understand this argument. Are you claiming that legislatures or appointed bureaucrats are better at fairly settling complicated cases than juries? Using ex ante regulation rather than case-by-case judgment, no less? Or are you just claiming that people blame juries while not holding regulators to the same standards?

If it's the former, why are you claiming that? If it's the latter, why isn't the solution to educate people about the failings of bureaucrats and legislators?

Kevin,

How about something on the prison-industrial complex? Or, for that matter, the good old military-industrial complex?

Also, broadly speaking, do you think that the sort of alliance you envision should only focus on undermining state capitalism, or do you think that you're just fleshing out the point on state capitalism that would be part of a broader set of principles for action? After all, I can think of a number of other common points (abortion on demand, abolishing the death penalty, decriminalizing prostitution, a principled anti-war/anti-imperial stance, etc.) that would seem like obvious candidates for a shared platform between left Libertarians, anti-statist Greens, and anti-statist Democrats.

I'm very curious to see a name or two of the 'kind...

2006-04-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

I'm very curious to see a name or two of the 'kind of libertarian who identifies on a visceral level with big business as the victimized party in modern society, and indentifies "free market" advocacy with a zeal for defending beleagured, pitiful corporate interests against the looming tyranny of welfare mothers . . .'

"to help, or at least to do no harm" can be found ...

2006-04-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

"to help, or at least to do no harm" can be found in Hippocrates' "Epidemics"..

"first, do no harm" never appears in the oath (which some say he may not have written).

Apologies for sharing my miseducation. I have so much more to unlearn.

Kevin- I'm one of those people Anonymous said wou...

2006-04-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Kevin- I'm one of those people Anonymous said would have a problem with #7, as in, the Hippocratic Oath should apply to the planet, etc....first, do no harm. The earth would survive fine (be better off) without us but we can't survive without it, et. al., and fuck 'em if they don't get it. By that I mean, corporations who have no respect for it or the people living near their toxic waste dumps. Even if "local juries" awarded victims some sort of settlement, and after years of appeals and faux bankruptcies actually got something from these lawyer-heavy wankers, what value can be placed on a life taken by some rare form of cancer or ecosytem devastated by their raping of it? I happen to greatly admire ecologists, the scientists who get that we are stewards only and should leave the place at least unharmed, if not in better shape, in our passing. I for one have no problem with deferring to their judgement, before the harm is done, not afterwards.

I have been reading this site for a few weeks and ...

2006-04-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

I have been reading this site for a few weeks and find it very interesting. I am not real familar with mutualism. Please email me or comment with some book recommendations.(my profile has my email listed)

KC, although I agree about using agricultural wast...

2006-04-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

KC, although I agree about using agricultural waste in general, e.g. for producer gas, that's not the economic issue involved in (say) switching Idaho potato production to butanol (ersatz petrol).

At present I understand that petrol and/or diesel is the major cost in commercial potato production, and is increasing. That means that some land suitable for potato production has fallen out of use, and/or the sale price to the farmers has dropped considerably.

In these special but not unusual circumstances, it could well make sense to use the EEI process to get butanol from potatoes, substituting for other fuel, since the cash cost would be low - it would be an opportunity cost from potatoes not being sold, or a cost from bringing unused land into production.

The situation would be very different for (say) an Arkansas maize grower. Such a person would not necessarily have land to bring back into production, or would have better things to do with his harvest (like sell it).

Although I have heard that in the early days of the US Civil War, midwestern maize growers could no longer transport their harvests to markets down the Mississippi and couldn't use railways as an alternative, so they resorted to burning it as household fuel.

It occurs to me that the Axis powers' fate might have been very different if they had only had this ersatz petrol. It's even plausible alternative history, if the Italians had started making the natives supply them with feedstock for the older, less efficient process as a response to League of Nations sanctions over Abyssinia.

With that, the best Italian forces wouldn't have been rendered helpless in Abyssinia in 1941, and Axis forces in North Africa wouldn't have been at the end of a long fuel supply line in 1940-1942 (it was practical to airlift other consumables).

And then there might have been ersatz petrol production in place close behind the eastern front, and there might have been enough reserves to carry the 1944 Ardennes offensive to a successful conclusion...

In case anyone is interested, I started thinking of all this when I looked at the logistics problems of dominant air power in H.G.Wells's "The Shape Of Things To Come".

Kevin,I've assigned this post as the reading for F...

2006-04-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Kevin,

I've assigned this post as the reading for Friday for my Great Ideas class, so we'll see how it looks to 18 year old honors students. I'll keep you posted.

#3 is going to cause problems with federal highway...

2006-04-19T01:19:00.000-07:00

#3 is going to cause problems with federal highways. It's going to increase prices on a lot of basic goods.

Either the tolls will be more than offset by the other tax cuts and increases in economic productivity resulting, or it will be more expensive and expose the real cost of shifting goods around the US, leading to more decentralised organisation. You've taken the position of all things being equal and not taking other changes into account.

People will rightly claim that the loss of patents and drug protections will lead to less research and slower advancement in healthcare.

They'll be wrong though. Patents make sure drug companies can make far more money than they should, and pay far too much attention to making patentable drugs rather than better ones.

But there you go, the problem with making changes is that people carry around so many economic fallacies, which politicians and corporate interests exploit.

Some comments:#1's "bottom-up" tax cutting may not...

2006-04-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

Some comments:

#1's "bottom-up" tax cutting may not be the best bottom-up. Income tax brackets are not the best measure of the poorest taxpayers, since they still suffer excise tax, tariffs, payroll tax and corporate income tax. It may be better to go after those first.

#3 is going to cause problems with federal highways. It's going to increase prices on a lot of basic goods.

#5 is a sure-fire loser. People will rightly claim that the loss of patents and drug protections will lead to less research and slower advancement in healthcare. People want free healthcare, not bad healthcare.

#7 will lead to screams for tort reform. Juries are, generally, grossly incompetent at complex litigation. Finding norms will be difficult without the guidance of legislatures. And you're right back to regulation.

#9...LETS is crank stuff. Drop it.

This is most emphatically not a "60%" platform. Almost no one knows what any of this stuff is. It doesn't address the fundamental idea in America that regulation is both necessary and good.

- Josh

The I.W.W.'s Alexis Buss has a regular column on i...

2006-04-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

The I.W.W.'s Alexis Buss has a regular column on it in the Industrial Worker. Just Google "Alexis Buss" "minority unionism," and you'll get a bunch of material.

" and all legal restrictions on minority unionism ...

2006-04-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

" and all legal restrictions on minority unionism in workplaces without a certified union;"

Hey, just out of curiosity, could someone explain or point me in the direction of a place where I Could find out what legal restrictions there are on minority unionism?

Dain,I'm not sure where I stand on the fine points...

2006-04-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

Dain,

I'm not sure where I stand on the fine points of animal rights, but I certainly wouldn't have any problem with local juries intervening to stop egregious acts of cruelty or neglect.

PML,

I've seen so many blanket dismissals of biofuels as unfeasible, and for the most part they seem to assume a centralized production and distribution network. But processing waste on-site to supplement one's fuel supply might be a different matter entirely. It's much like the critics of wind power who automatically assume generation on giant wind farms rather than at the point of consumption.

colorless,

State judges in the first half of the 19th century drastically lowered common law standards for liability in order to promote commercial growth. Horwitz's The Transformation of American Law is an excellent source on this.

can you explain #7 a bit more? ("restore the commo...

2006-04-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

can you explain #7 a bit more? ("restore the common law of liability to its full vigor...")

how would that work, practically? how has common law been over-ridden by the state? etc...

The big problem here in Australia is the way that ...

2006-04-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

The big problem here in Australia is the way that everything has to be channelled through formal political structures to have any chance of being effective. That means that any small-g green sentiment has to go through an official large-g Green party - but that has absorbed a left wing ethos and mindset about political options.

Apart from the greenness, it is a socialist party and not open to other policy options. It rules out ipso facto the sort of green yet right wing and small-c conservative thinking that showed up in Chesterton and Belloc.

Any pressures that way will simply be diverted around and, via Australia's electoral system, flow through to direct support of Labor (sic) Party political representation and agendas.

I occasionally have a look at wikipedia's biofuel page to keep track of new developments.

This has just led me to David Ramey's butanol (butyl alcohol" site via wikipedia's butanol page.

This looks very promising to me, particularly for small to medium scale downstream agricultural co-operative production. For instance, I recently heard that in Idaho potato farming's largest single production cost is fuel for equipment; they would be well placed to benefit from this, if it worked.

I emailed to enquire further, but I haven't heard back yet. Anyway, it strikes me as a useful starting point for common action between small-g greens and mutualists. You could perform current tests with commercially available butanol.

I think that those who fear that people left to th...

2006-04-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

I think that those who fear that people left to their own devices will pollute and kill animals won't be on board. Sure, the pollution problem may indeed be solved by common law measures, but the animal protection ideal is a toughy for the decentralist crowd.
It's a splendid idea, and I think the Middlebury Institute style greens will dig it. Another great post.

-Dain