Nostr Web Client

It is not anti capitalist based on any libertarian definition of capitalism I have ever encountered. Konkin's own words:

“Where the State divides and conquers its opposition, Libertarianism unites and liberates. Where the State beclouds, Libertarianism clarifies; where the State conceals, Libertarianism uncovers; where the State pardons, Libertarianism accuses.

Libertarianism elaborates an entire philosophy from one simple premise: initiatory violence or its threat (coercion) is wrong (immoral, evil, bad, supremely impractical, etc) and is forbidden; nothing else is.

Libertarianism, as developed to this point, discovered the problem and defined the solution: the State vs the Market. The Market is the sum of all voluntary human action. If one acts non-coercively, one is part of the Market. Thus did Economics become part of Libertarianism.”

“Libertarianism investigated the nature of man to explain his rights deriving from non-coercion. It immediately followed that man (woman, child, Martian, etc.) had an absolute right to this life and other property – and no other.

All theft is violence initiation, either the use of force to take property away involuntarily or to prevent receipt of goods or return of payment for those goods which were freely transferred by agreement.”

The State has laundered authoritarian & socialist policies under capitalist structures/labels, but that doesn't make capitalism the problem. And calling what is clearly an anti-athoritarian branch of libertarianism, a leftwing movement, really makes no sense given the authoritarian nature of basically all leftwing movements.

Those who claim to oppose heirarchy seem to only be people at the bottom who want to tear down those above them so that they can then violently insert themselves into positions of dominance. Look at the stupid defund the police movement where a bunch of leftists wanted to be given the police budget. They didn't want to end the subjugation of taxation that funds the police, they just want to be the collectors of the spoils. They want to exist in a heirarchy living at the expense of & above everyone else. They want others to be their slaves so they don't have to work.

frozear 2y ago

I oppose hierarchy and I'm not at the bottom. I oppose hierarchy and I don't want to violently insert myself into positions of dominance. I want to see police, as we know them now, to be defunded and I don't want that money. If you think that of everyone then that betrays how you think, which is not an Agorist POV.

Again, i don't give a shit what you think. You might even be right. I am saying you're not an Agorist, you are an AnCap. People who are AnCap are totally free to use Counter-Economics as tactics.

I've made my point, and I doubt you're going to go back and change your twitter handle.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Jeff Swann 2y ago

I don't think your "point" makes much sense. I am an ancap, but I'm also an agorist. I was aware of attempts to characterize agorism as leftwing, but I have never thought it mattered or made much sense at all. If you support property rights then you support hierarchy in one form or another. If someone can own a business & productive machinery, & they can hire people who would be less productive without access to said machinery, then there are inevitably going to be employer/employee relationships. The employees benefit from guarateed pay & no risk of owning & having to properly manage expensive capital. Owning expensive capital will be far more risky in the future because just saving will be far more profitable on average as sound money appreciates. To say employer/employee hierarchies won't exist is to suggest there are no differences in tolerance for risk, which is just delusional. And the ancap definition of capitalism is free enterprise. Capitalism is just the natural state of trade without govt. Your opposition to the word or the way ancaps use it is just a semantic issue. Most agorists are ancaps. If you aren't then it's probably because you are inconsistent & confused by some lingering socialist bullshit in your belief system.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

This all started because you were butthurt about me attacking city life, but it actually sounds like you are exactly the sort of person I was describing. You don't seem to know what sort of risk is involved with running a business which is generally an indication of a poor understanding of how most things work.

frozear 2y ago

It was bad enough that you capitalists had to sully the word Anarchist in the first place with the term Anarcho-Capitalism, now you're trying to make the word Agorism without meaning as well.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Why don't you just stick to calling yourself a commie? No hierarchy is communist nonsense.

frozear 2y ago

No gods; no masters

Jeff Swann 2y ago

Reality is bigger than you, & reality created you. Reality is God. Those who deny reality wind up destroyed by it.

Selling your labor to an employer does not make him your master. You are free to sell your labor elsewhere at any time. If your knowledge & skill are highly valued you get to set the terms. I basically only accept work when it's stuff that interests me.

But "no gods; no masters" sounds perfectly compatible with the purer conceptions of communism. Communism only doesn't work because collective decision making doesn't scale. And because hierarchies in knowledge & skill & as a result of differing risk tolerances & different levels of ability to motivate & organize people are natural & inevitable with free trade. Once you accept that voluntary hierarchies will exist & decisions have to be made by individuals, then you're an ancap.

nobody 2y ago

Big brain points. Very nice.

frozear 2y ago

An anarchist with any authority tries to undermine his or her own authority. The best example is a teacher-student. The successful teacher removes his or her authority by bringing the student up to their level. An agorist entrepreneur would take the role of the teacher to the employees because of his anarchist principles. The goal is to empower and improve the freedom of the individuals in the community, not shackle and subjugate.

Anarchism is an ideology of mutual aid and community cooperation; capitalism is an ideology of domination and surplus extraction. How you can hyphenate those two words together then change the word to Agorism a little while later makes no sense.

Again, believe whatever you want but words have to mean something. Make up your own words. Anarchism and Agorism already mean something. You can read all about it.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

All the people I know who actually understand the world around them are starving for people who actually give a shit & who actually want to learn. Any intelligent ancap knows that there is more value to be gained in trading & working with an equal than with those who are less knowledgable.

There is no exploitation in a natural & healthy capitalist system. Employers often educate people, that's why previous job experience makes an employee more valuable. But lets focus on exploitation. If you hire me to come to your house & clean & fold your clothes, you privide the washer & dryer & detergent & electricity & the dirty clothes, & then you pay me for my labor. I am being paid to transform a pile of dirty clothes into clean folded laundry. You do not owe me any portion of the output at the end, they are still your clothes. You do not owe me your washer & dryer or any other part of the means of production. There is no exploitation involved, you provided all inputs & then paid me for my contribution to the end result. That is how any factory works too. The only exploitation is in taxation, and in govt incentivized debt that makes it difficult to save & get ahead, and in govt regulations that destroy job options & make employees compete for jobs rather than having employers have to compete for employees.

frozear 2y ago

I've had several decades of hearing capitalist propaganda and so have you because you repeat it so very well.

You're talking about the early stages when its person to person. As the hierarchy develops the gap when the original descendants ascend themselves to a higher class. You end up with mortgage-holders, financiers, worthless heirs and landlords.

How do you account for the fact that the richest 100 people have as much wealth and power as the bottom 2.5 billion?

These hierarchies and class systems are what the left is against. I am libertarian-left; I am not a communist because don't think the ends justify the means. You can't get liberty through tyranny.

Again, its okay to believe whatever you want. You might even be right. However, whatever you believe is not Anarchism and it isn't Agorism. We can have vigorous discussion all day but it's disingenuous when you try to nullify an entire ideology by changing the name and claiming it as your own.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

The pareto principle always applies. There will always be outliers. The only problem today is that many of the outliers are "cantillionaires" who got rich via political protections & fiat money creation rather than by creating value for others.

But what power does Saylor's Bitcoin give him over you & your life & your Bitcoin? If he cannot devalue the money you hold to enrich himself then he isn't harming you. If I build 1000 houses and rent them to people, why would people rent them from me unless they prefer my houses above all other options? Why didn't they build their own?

In a healthy free market the amount of value that belongs to someone else has nothing to do with you. People do not get rich at the expense of others, they only get rich to the benefit of others. If I earn 1000 Bitcoin then I have created far more than 1000 Bitcoin worth of value in the lives of other people. And it was those people who decided for themselves that what I had to sell would improve their life more than the money they voluntarily parted with to aquire my goods or services. If each individual isn't able to decide for themselves what makes their own lives better, then who is? There is no fairer way of determining the merit of a person's contribution to society than by free trade & sound money.

frozear 2y ago

I agree with a lot of what you said here. Except there's no way in hell you're going to build 1000 houses. You couldn't even build that in 10 lifetimes.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

The number really isn't the point, but there are already companies 3d printing concrete houses in just a few days. What is impossible today might just be normal tomorrow.

frozear 2y ago

The number is important because there's no way someone can say "I built 1000 houses" unless they were exploiting the labor of others. It should take no more than 5-10 houses to teach all your employees to be full partners in house building or start house building businesses of their own.

Jeff Swann 2y ago

If I am building a house to sell & you are a plumber who I have hired to do the plumbing in many of the houses I have built, why would you want to be a partner? As a plumber you get paid whatever we agree to as soon as your part of the job is done. You make your money on your labor & by buying plumbing parts cheaper than I can get them thanks to your relationships with plumbing parts producers.

If instead you were a partner in the overall construction of the house then you would have to hand over money in the building process & you don't get paid until the house sells. If there is a downturn in the housing market preventing the house from being purchased you might lose money. Not everyone wants to be a partner.

If I design some new part for a 3d printer & a bunch of 3d printer makers want to include my part in their printers, I just want to sell them my part & get paid immediately. I don't want whether I get paid for work I've already done to depend on other people's sales & business decisions & whether they market their stuff right or run their company well. I don't want to have to argue with "partners" about what is the best course of action. I don't care if my part adds more profit to their 3d printer making business than I collect myself. In fact, I kinda hope it does, that means the income I make is something I am more likely able to rely on.

But I do think it is entirely possible that in the not too distant future, a single person may be able to own the equipment needed to build a house by themselves in just a few days. So basically either way you are wrong.

Again, the problem with the left is that they don't actually know how anything works.

frozear 2y ago

Well at least we can agree that removing the state will be better for humanity.

I just hope it can help us rid ourselves of class hierarchy, too.

If you try to use Counter-Economic tactics I'll take that as a win.