The recent election

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  • Wouldn't there be some public property like Yosemite Park, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon? Or, would you just sell it to the highest bidder? Who would be the seller of all the public property we have today? Who would own the rivers, lakes, etc.
    I find it hard to imagine the free market you are suggesting. I'll go read the book.
  • Me too Iggy, it's a pipe dream. Doesn't work, same as utopias and communism, some greedy or lazy bastard always throws a wrench into the plans.
  • edited 11/11/2010 @ 7:16:59 PM
  • Who is going to make the owner of the land do all that? Anarchy and order, by definition can not co-exist.

    Not one of the people in congress is openly for the elimination of government. So Cng (can't you change your name back or forth to something that doesn't have 17 characters?), you shouldn't find any solace in the Pauls victories--they are no more anarchistic than I am.

    We humans are social animals, we form hierarchies by nature. Those hierarchies bring order and order is government. Human nature produces government. It is interesting how you manage to rationalize all the evidence of human history in your pursuit of Utopia.
  • OK, Cng, I'll go and start on the book today. I'm afraid that your solutions still sound very impractical to me. Let's see what the book has to say. I feel like we're talking apples and oranges. In your world, things would just fix themselves because of the new incentive. In my world, the people involved would find ways to twist the interpretation of a court or pay off the judge - just as it happens today - and continue doing bad things to benefit themselves. There are ways to hide today and there will be ways to hide tomorrow.

    I'd like to suggest any book by James Morrow. I've mentioned him before. I've finished a fourth book and am still very entertained by his innovative writing. He has won prizes for his writings. I'm sure these stories will make it into the movies.

    So far, my favorite is "The Last Witchhunter." It's how the Salem witch hunts were justified by the fear and ignorance of the population - but that's only the beginning of a long journey by a woman who vows to overturn the English laws that keep the fear of demons in the minds of the population.
  • Silly rabbit, people could not own private property without a governing body to record and enforce those boundaries. To govern requires government.

    Your, "everyone makes and enforces their own laws on their own property--with all property owned privately" would mean everyone owning property would have unmanageable responsibility.

    What if I owned 1000 feat of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Is the water mine when it enters my property? Could my neighbor upstream divert the river on his property so it doesn't run through mine? You cannot have any hope of organizing resources in anything approaching fair and peaceful without organizing governance.

    Humans only survive by forming social groups with common values and rules. The larger the group the more it needs to diversify (bankers, bakers, light bulb makers, doctors, garbage collectors, etc). To maintain and organize all these millions of occupations requires governance.

    Who owns the sky? Dibs.
  • This will not end by just discussing these abstractions. If you know of a way to do it, Cng, then do it.

    I don't know of any place with a free market economy that is in operation today. There are still a few communist
    countries, quite a few socialist countries, some dictatorships, and mostly democratic governments - kind of following our way of doing things.

    What you are suggesting IS a utopian idea. It's been tried a few times before - Adam Smith wrote the "Wealth of Nations" in 1776.

    It just doesn't work whether it is perfectly installed and thought out or full of corruption - as we have achieved with our government today.

    If you can overthrow this evil government, more power to ya. Talk's cheap. I'm not sure I'm joining the revolution.
  • Yes, Ryan, it does seem to be a broken record, but no one is being mean (OK, I called cn a silly rabbit, I'm sorry!) and us "old and in the way" dudes have time to point out the unworkability of billions of people living on the Earth without complex organization. Cn just calls the organizations private companies, but if all the land owners in a large area set up a court to settle disputes, that is government. Organizing people is governing people--if it isn't governing it isn't organization--it is just a pot luck dinner.

    Freedom is just another word for nothin left to lose.
  • edited 11/15/2010 @ 8:36:01 AM
    So I read Chapter 1 of the Rothbard book. After a few paragraphs, I started to fade. The Liberals allowed themselves to corrupt from within. The Conservatives used all the slogans of the Liberals to fool the population into supporting them and turning the Liberals out. Everything that was in place, got re-written by technocrats in order for them to gain power and reinstall the aristocratic government, etc. I made it to the end of the chapter. I'll try another after I take a long break. The paragraphs are very long-winded and I often lose my way. Maybe I need more coffee.

    I do see what he's trying to say. (I did have another cup of coffee.) The various radical, abolitionist, political groups change into conservatives as they attain power and want to preserve the status quo. (The old absolute power corrupting absolutely argument.)

    He hasn't yet introduced the free market solution to the problem. It seems that the same gain in power of the free market will corrupt it into something else, too. But, I'll wait and see what he says. It's pretty dry.
  • edited 11/15/2010 @ 9:29:40 AM
    Post edited 11/15/2010 @ 9:29:40 AM by Cngevpxhaqrefpber
  • edited 11/15/2010 @ 11:53:16 AM
  • Exactly. In a real free market everything would be free!!!!!!
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