>From: "Mark J. Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>On Mon, 7 May 2001, Travis Bemann wrote:
>
> > Anarchism (not that "anarcho"capitalism shit, which really isn't
> > anarchism) is socialist, [...]
>
>Obviously. Property requires a government to enforce it (anything less is
>barbarism). But who said he was an "anarcho"capitalist?
How so?
It's not quite so obvious to me.
My idea of the concept of property is that most people on this planet find
it worthwhile to label things as his, hers, theirs, ours, mine, public,
private, or whatever other forms of ownership you can define. No government
is necessary to establish the idea or defend the concept of private
property.
All it takes to be able to enforce it is a number of like-minded individuals
to agree that the property in question belongs to this or that certain
person or business entity. That group of people is NOT a loose form of
government, but the local peers. Societal norms, and conventions won't
disappear if government were to suddendly go away(like that's the biggest
pipe dream of all), but they would certainly be refined, and adjusted for
each locale.
Even in the days before foreigners set foot on American soil, the
Indians(yes, I know they may not have been the first ones here) had no need
for the concept of property, as it seemed ludicrous to them to think one
could own the very land that sustained their lives, BUT they did defend
their local hunting grounds, grazing lands, territory, etc... and the other
indian tribes in the area usually respected those boundaries, and they even
engaged in trade, and no such concept of "government" had even occured to
them at that point. Sure each tribe probably had its own rules, and elders
for guidance, and some probably even were oppressed by the elders of the
tribe, but that's a part of human nature we're still trying to overcome.
It's thinking like that above that keeps the human race stagnant in the
middle ages. We may have computers and cars, and all sorts of fancy
technology, but that, to me, is no indicator of advancement of the species.
We're not far removed from a sharpened stone tied to a stick today. Maybe
some day, we'll have no need for money, or capitalist systems, and maybe
we'll move past a need for a controlling authority to keep those with too
much monkey DNA, from harming those advancing past their evolutionary
ancestors, but right now, it seems that most people today are addicted to
the idea that government is necessary, and money is the solution, and not
the cause of their problems.
I don't think that "money" or "capitalism" is the problem here. I think
it's the tendency for people to seek out power, and the tendency of those
without to think they can do nothing about what their oppressors are doing
to them, that makes some people hate the idea of capitalism. The concept is
not the problem, it's the way people think it's supposed to work, and when
it doesn't seem to be working to the ideal, let's abandon the whole idea,
instead of addressing the reasons why it isn't working. I'm not going to
address the multi-faceted, nested reasoning I have come up with, I'm just
trying to show that it's not the property that is guilty of the crime, it's
the mind of the person who used the property to commit the crime, who is to
blame.
Capitalism is not "bad", it's just not being put to it's "highest and best
use" at the moment, and I don't think it has been, since governments decided
to stick their fingers into the "free-market" millenia ago...
Mikus
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