The fallacies of anarchy as a viable system?

The problem with corporate profits, is that they're limitless, and they usually squeeze that profit from their own employees with subtle threats (like don't take too much vacation, work extra time for free, etc). Those profits normally go the the top dogs only. I prefer anything over corporations that are too big to fail (seemingly all of them these days). In short, yeah, corporate profits are massively unfair to the workers that actually generate the profit, through THEIR work.

 

Have you cpnsidered that the problem here might not be greed, but that the government intervenes in the economy?

 

I think this picture sump up my objections to anarchy as a political system:

 

No, I've not but I've heard it from the right quite often. When you ask how much profit is enough? The answer is usually 'there can never be enough profit'. When you ask how much is enough for laborers/workers? The same people say 'as little as possible'. I call that greed, plain and simple. Corporations 'must make as much profit as possible, first, and foremost'. That often means cheap labor, and maximum work from the employees, and of course, maximum bonuses and profits for the stuffed shirts. Greed is the problem, no doubt.

 

Given one definition, anarchy is not even a system. Given a second, it is inevitable because other systems are not sustainable.

 

I'll just quote Thomas Sowell's The "Greed" Fallacy for you, which says more about it than I ever could.

"In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by "greed." Today there are adults -- including educated adults -- who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives' salaries as being due to "greed." Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates' -- but this greed would not increase my income by one cent.

If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of their own desires -- whether "greedy" or not -- but because of what other people are willing to pay them. The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much? One popular explanation is that executive salaries are set by boards of directors who are spending the stockholders' money and do not care that they are overpaying a CEO, who may be the one responsible for putting them on the board of directors in the first place. It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases.

What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders. In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation's profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want. If people who are capable of being outstanding executives were a dime a dozen, nobody would pay eleven cents a dozen for them.

Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money. All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it -- and those few individuals who could probably couldn't grow orchids or train horses. In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people's specialties.

The idea that everything must "justify itself before the bar of reason" goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world. Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything "justify itself before the bar of reason" means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don't have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing. It means demanding that ignorance override knowledge. The ignorant are not just some separate group of people. As Will Rogers said, everybody is ignorant, but just about different things. Should computer experts tell brain surgeons how to do their job? Or horse trainers tell either of them what to do? One of the reasons why central planning sounds so good, but has failed so badly that even socialist and communist governments finally abandoned the idea by the end of the 20th century, is that nobody knows enough to second guess everybody else.

Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of "greed" and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. There have been more than a dozen investigations of oil companies over the years, and none of them has turned up the collusion that is supposed to be responsible for high gas prices. Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their "greed"? Or could it all be supply and demand -- a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like "greed"?"

 

straight from the Communist Manifesto

 

From my perspective it's just a way of conducting oneself. Viewing it as a model of government is misleading.

"How much profit is enough?" - however much or little you can derive through voluntary means.

"How much is enough for laborers/workers?" - however much or little you can derive through voluntary means.

 

Supply and demand, is not the same as greed (and for no other reason except 'maximizing profits'). 'Supply and demand' might be a genuine reflection of what the phrase implies. 'Maximizing profits' is another thing altogether. Not the same.

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Straight from British royalty?

 

Well, there ya go. Maximum returns for the wealthy 'investors', and minimal returns for the ones actually doing the work and trying to make an honest living. I appreciate the post.

 

Point being, that greed doesn't explain anything at all in economics.

 

No? I humbly disagree.

 

Yep, if it's derived through voluntary association I'm not concerned with such things.

I take it you agree with me on this, but disagree over what counts as voluntary. Fair enough. There's no objective ought when it comes to such things, think what you like. I would however like a description of what exactly you see as involuntary and why, and how you're going to fix the situation instead of perpetually relying on state redistribution.

 

Yes, I bet you do.

If there's a foot race, and I say "I want to win the race", does that explain how I won it? No it did not. And in a similar manner, stating someone is greedy doesn't explain how they got their money.

 

I always thought that the Utopian brand of anarchy was an ideal to aim for without ever actually having the expectation to achieve such. The ideal isn't so bad, a world without the need of external controls based upon the idea that people would treat each other in a manner that would not require said controls. Every other form of anarchy is only a temporary situation to shift from one form of government to another.

 

It's not all that difficult, in my opinion. Low/poor pay need and healthy returns need stand in opposition to each other (in fact, I believe that they could compliment and enhance each other). The popularity of doing 'business' with a company that (in addition to providing said service to said patron) COULD certainly grow simply because the morality (or whatever you want to call it) COULD further encourage these patrons to WANT to do business with a company that cares about such things, as opposed to this 'Walmart' style of profiteering that goes on so feverishly these days. Selling products born of child labor for one, turn me off. Consequently, I try to never shop in a Walmart that sells Chinese made child labor products (at a fantastic markup). I know I can't stop that these days because almost literally 'everything here is made in China'. That said though, I CHOOSE to personally boycott a pioneer (if you will) of that industry. I'll choose to do the same whenever else possible (and sometimes there simply isn't another choice except to buy China's crap), but I start out with that measure, and proceed as best I can. If I know of an American alternative (and big conglomerate corporate alternative), I'll choose it instead, although admittedly, that's tough to do.
The point is, the same mentality COULD be applied to those that CHOOSE to pay so poorly. High profit doesn't HAVE to include poor pay and the manipulation of the poorly paid employee such that the employee has such a tough time even surviving the simple costs of living. I personally despise huge corporate conglomerates and do any small thing I can to not use their product or services as much as possible. It CAN be done of people developed some moral base to them but, admittedly again, the fat cats will continue to rape and pilfer because 'they can' so easily.

 

Our entire society is based, almost exclusively, on greed. Surely, you don't need a magnifying glass to see that, do you? Occasionally, there are exceptions but, large scale success depends on greed, and how to be more greedy. Look at any major corporation that continues to grow and expand (versus paying their own people well). Pick any one.

 

The tribal societies in Somalia are not the ones responsible for all the death and chaos you hear about in the news, the state forces in Mogadishu are. The Somali tribes are actually frequent victims of the central government in Mogadishu.

 

Unlike statist ideology, which rests on the assumption that people are too venal and corrupt to govern themselves, but not so venal and corrupt that they can't be trusted to govern others. Try explaining that one for me.

Well, anarchists are not generally opposed to "government", so I'm not sure what the problem is with forming an opposition group.

And what about self-government? Or governments based on voluntary compacts? Why would those be inconsistent with anarchist philosophy?

 

Because anarchy means "Without government". All of those things are a government.

So, if it is a government, then it is not an anarchy.

 

The ability of every individual to defend their rights and to obtain justice.

 

No, it means "without rulers", from the Greek "archon": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/archon

 

How is that any different than the current system?

 

And, yet, one could argue that Thomas Jefferson, a man you quote, was about as close to an anarchist as has ever occupied the White House.

Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.

[video=youtube;QcWaCsvpikQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcWaCsvpikQ[/video]

 

Then you have a lot in common with anarchists like George Orwell and Lysander Spooner.