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Nothing absurd about it. A corporation is just a business structure that allows many people involved to act as a single entity. Without the existence of the state and its legal framework, regulations, and taxation, corporations would not exist because there would be no reason for them to exist - no advantage in dealing with the state as a corporation rather than a collection of individuals.
Even more absurd now after your explanation. You really believe that the only reason that corporations exist is because of tax laws and regulations? People have been always banding together to increase their productivity (or a chance of survival). Corporations/cooperatives are way older than any state. You are simply misinformed.
Last edited by pocalujmniewdupe; 08-24-2014 at 12:01 AM..
Even more absurd now after your explanation. You really believe that the only reason that corporations exist is because of tax laws and regulations? People have been always banding together to increase their productivity (or a chance of survival). Corporations/cooperatives are way older than any state. You are simply misinformed.
Well the word corporation has a specific meaning. That meaning does vary a bit from one country to another, and varies a bit more if we're talking about modern usage vs. historical. The meaning varies a lot if we are comparing modern usage to say, Roman usage.
I am using the word in the modern sense alone, since the thread is discussing a modern subject.
The action of people acting in concert for mutual benefit is indeed older than any state - but that is not a corporation, even in the Roman sense. Corporations are and have always been the product of the state, because the state provides the legal framework in which corporations have their definition.
Well the word corporation has a specific meaning. That meaning does vary a bit from one country to another, and varies a bit more if we're talking about modern usage vs. historical. The meaning varies a lot if we are comparing modern usage to say, Roman usage.
I am using the word in the modern sense alone, since the thread is discussing a modern subject.
The action of people acting in concert for mutual benefit is indeed older than any state - but that is not a corporation, even in the Roman sense. Corporations are and have always been the product of the state, because the state provides the legal framework in which corporations have their definition.
Absolutely amazing the things liberals know that just ain't true. It is sad when you actually have to argue to support known facts such as the fact corporations are a product of the state.
Well the word corporation has a specific meaning. That meaning does vary a bit from one country to another, and varies a bit more if we're talking about modern usage vs. historical. The meaning varies a lot if we are comparing modern usage to say, Roman usage.
I am using the word in the modern sense alone, since the thread is discussing a modern subject.
The action of people acting in concert for mutual benefit is indeed older than any state - but that is not a corporation, even in the Roman sense. Corporations are and have always been the product of the state, because the state provides the legal framework in which corporations have their definition.
That's still absurd, it's like saying that marriage did not exist before the state recognized it for tax and other legal purposes, providing a "legal framework"....
Again, corporations/cooperatives where people voluntarily chose to act and be treated as a commercial and legal entity for their own benefit, are way older than any state, which makes your belief that dissolution of state would eliminate "corporations", simply amusing.
Last edited by pocalujmniewdupe; 08-24-2014 at 09:00 AM..
That's still absurd, it's like saying that marriage did not exist before the state recognized it for tax and other legal purposes, providing a "legal framework"....
Again, corporations/cooperatives where people voluntarily chose to act and be treated as a commercial and legal entity for their own benefit, are way older than any state, which makes your belief that dissolution of state would eliminate "corporations", simply amusing.
First, cooperatives are called "partnerships". Secondly, corporations and partnerships aren't the same thing. The great benefit of a corporation, is that it receives something called "limited liability"(partnerships don't). The effect is that, corporations become separate legal entities from its owners.
There are other differences between corporations and partnerships. But all that really needs to be said is this. If corporations could exist without government, they would have. But they have never existed without government, because they cannot exist without government.
Anyone who thinks "corporations" would rule the world without government, doesn't know what they are talking about.
Without the corporate framework, it would be nearly impossible for any single entity or person to gather and organize enough resources to form any sort of monopoly, anywhere. And even if they could, it could never be maintained for any length of time.
Furthermore, almost all anarchist schools of thought have be screaming this same thing for 200 years. Corporations need government. The original anarchists were all anarcho-socialists. Which is basically communism without the government force.
First, cooperatives are called "partnerships". Secondly, corporations and partnerships aren't the same thing. The great benefit of a corporation, is that it receives something called "limited liability"(partnerships don't). The effect is that, corporations become separate legal entities from its owners.
There are other differences between corporations and partnerships. But all that really needs to be said is this. If corporations could exist without government, they would have. But they have never existed without government, because they cannot exist without government.
Anyone who thinks "corporations" would rule the world without government, doesn't know what they are talking about.
Without the corporate framework, it would be nearly impossible for any single entity or person to gather and organize enough resources to form any sort of monopoly, anywhere. And even if they could, it could never be maintained for any length of time.
Furthermore, almost all anarchist schools of thought have be screaming this same thing for 200 years. Corporations need government. The original anarchists were all anarcho-socialists. Which is basically communism without the government force.
First, cooperatives are called "partnerships". Secondly, corporations and partnerships aren't the same thing. The great benefit of a corporation, is that it receives something called "limited liability"(partnerships don't). The effect is that, corporations become separate legal entities from its owners.
Wrong. Co-ops of which good examples in the US commercial realm are the so-called "Credit Unions" do in fact enjoy the status of legal entities and separate its members from liability. They are de facto and de iure corporations.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
There are other differences between corporations and partnerships. But all that really needs to be said is this. If corporations could exist without government, they would have. But they have never existed without government, because they cannot exist without government.
Has marriage existed before the government definition was adopted? Has adoption existed before legal definition has been established? Corporation has been around for ages, as in the case of Hanseatic cities or most medieval time cities of Europe. Of course, they were not in the exact form as we have today but neither were most legal institutions that we have today.
No, the existence of the state and law is not conducive to monopolization of power and resources, quite the opposite.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
Without the corporate framework, it would be nearly impossible for any single entity or person to gather and organize enough resources to form any sort of monopoly, anywhere. And even if they could, it could never be maintained for any length of time.
Yes, because the third world oligarchs needed to incorporate to gather resources and create monopolies. LOL As a matter of fact, torn-by-anarchy third-world countries with weak governments usually see much jigher rate of consolidation of power (and means of production) than well-organized societies with extensive and fairly efficient legal systems containing anti-monopoly provisions.
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Originally Posted by Redshadowz
Furthermore, almost all anarchist schools of thought have be screaming this same thing for 200 years. Corporations need government. The original anarchists were all anarcho-socialists. Which is basically communism without the government force.
The fact that they have been screaming the same thing for over 200 years does not make their point any more valid than it was 200 years ago.
Corporations do not need governments, they need laws just like legal partnerships and other legal entities. Without corporations we would have oligarchs. Big difference and a step forward, right?
Last edited by pocalujmniewdupe; 08-24-2014 at 11:07 AM..
That's still absurd, it's like saying that marriage did not exist before the state recognized it for tax and other legal purposes, providing a "legal framework"....
Well, if you want to work with such a shaky metaphor as marriage, so be it. Did marriage exist before religion? Yes or no. Saying that marriage is the product of the church (pick a flavor) would be a wiser comparison than marriage being a product of the state.
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Originally Posted by pocalujmniewdupe
Again, corporations/cooperatives where people voluntarily chose to act and be treated as a commercial and legal entity for their own benefit, are way older than any state, which makes your belief that dissolution of state would eliminate "corporations", simply amusing.
The dissolution of a state would not eliminate humans cooperating for mutual benefit, but it certainly would eliminate the need to file Articles of Incorporation in order to conduct business as a corporation.
If corporations are way older than any state, surely you can provide some examples of famous Visigoth business entities.
It's amusing alright, just not in the way you think
I really can't squawk on much of this. I disagree on the legitimacy, very strongly, of our current system. But you've been pretty consistent. Fair enough.
yeah, fair enough. You've caught me on one of the rare subjects where my optimism outweighs cynicism
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Originally Posted by No_Recess
Earlier you accused me of a socialist streak. I won't help my defense here by paraphrasing a little Marx : the history of the world is a history of class struggle.
Class, of course, is achieved thru social constructs such as private ownership, "race", etc.
I'm not that naive to think force will be a choice by some in my worldview. But here's the kicker: as long as their use of force is to secure resources for their own use (even if that is under an agreement I don't subscribe to) I will be confronted by a man...not an agent of a faceless illegitimate state. And here's the next kicker: since I'm not a subject to a state I can defend myself as I see fit. No waiting lists for a gun, no licenses, etc.
I will live by own free will and die by it. If another man outsmarts me it won't be due to some statist technicality. That right there is the definition of freedom.
Having said all that...let's give ourselves credit. We do just fine in many arenas of life without the government all up in our business.
I go to my local farmers market. I haggle, I wheel, I deal. I get good deals. Probably been worked over too though. Whatever. It's me vs. the vendor. No 3rd party nonsense.
In my leftist libertarian society cooperation will work. We can form small voluntary associations. You and I both agree that our new neighbor can't be forced to abide by our pond agreement. Neither one of us would stop him from fishing either. At least not immediately. Sure, WE may need to think about some alternatives to benefit each of us.
But isn't self-determination a lot better than some statist making the decision for all 3 of us?
I'm no scholar of Marx, as I find him rather impractical - the results achieved by self described Marxist states did not seem to correlate well with what Marx desired. So I kinda see him as a dead end.
I would dispute, however, that class is achieved through social constructs. Class is inherent in the outlook of Homo sapiens - we sort, classify, and organize by nature. Those social constructs are just one of the more obvious ways by which we keep score - but they are not the root cause of classification.
Other than that, I won't pick apart what you say. Instead I will offer an observation. If we throw out all functions of the state, we are going back to being little more than intelligent apes. It comes down to survival of the strongest and smartest and the absolute destruction of those who are not strong enough or smart enough - absent the state, self determination always comes down to whether you are willing to kill your competition or not.
Although I am no fan of the state in all it's tentacled glory, the observation above leads me to wonder what is the proportion of good done by our having become civilized - having a state entity that does what none of us would do on our own - be that law enforcement, sanitation, roads, etc. Would it truly be worth tossing all that aside to gain self determination at the most basic level - a level where we might lose toAustralopithecus were they not all extinct.
Can we really claim that Homo sapiens penchant for civilization, and millennia of practice at it, has not made us what we are? Is that penchant and practice not basically what you are calling statism?
I was going to go through this point by point and basically refute everything, but there is so much stupidity and ignorance in this post that it's not worth even getting started.
I agree. With that being said, I am a bit of a masochist so I will take a stab...
To answer your question: Basically the uptick in anarchists and libertarians is due to the failures of government and statism. The short and long economic damage and social turmoil using such an entity has caused, fuels it. Who knows if the uptick will last.
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Originally Posted by valsteele You do realize if there was no government everything would be taken over by private enterprise, right? I'm not going to go as far as to say the government is our friend, but at least they are accountable to the general public on a certain level. Private enterprises aren't always bad, but their prime motivation is profit. Without a government the more unsavory corporations would be free to exploit people in any way they want. Comcast could charge you $200 a week for your Internet connection and you'd just have to pony it up or live like it's 1985.
First, that depends on the kind of libertarian or anarchist one might be. Typically anarchists are against forms of institutions of force and violence, specifically those with a monopoly on said act. Private enterprise without the presence of the state will be free of little things like corporations. Corporations have special privileges and benefits granted to them by the state (i.e. limited liability for starters). Large businesses, organizations and individuals will have to comply with consumers and customers, just like smaller players have to do. If not, they will face financial hardship via competition, social ostracization, financial boycotts, etc. As you have said, private company's incentive is profit. They can't stop others from starting another entity to compete with them. They have no state to arbitrarily make laws and regulations that can crush competition and raise barrier-to-entry into the market place.
This nonsense about corporations running our lives is moot under any anarchist society or libertarian nation for that matter. What i love most is that you cite Comcast, a oligarchical entity with monopolistic powers enforced and granted by government, as an example of how bad private enterprise can be.
Furthermore, there is more to the private sector than just businesses. The non-for-profits are an excellent example of private entities with "no-profit motive". Even under our current system, they provide a variety of services to communities and individuals at low or no cost to consumers.
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The police would all be privatized so you'd either have amateur security guards going around and killing people on a regular basis or you would simply have mob rule and people suspected of crimes would be killed in gruesome ways by their neighbors without any trial. I'm not a huge fan of cops myself but I respect them because I know that if the average citizen was dishing out justice they would be far less forgiving and more likely to hurt innocent people.
This is too big of topic for me to do it justice here. Under a libertarian perspective, it is conceivable that policing will still be under the jurisdiction of the state. I am not aware of how different It would than current policing is done by government.
Under Anarchy, since there are no rulers, but rules, people will have to engage one another like individuals and come to some sort of arrangement. In a free society, the collective negotiation power of millions of people is hard to imagine what kind of creative things they could come up. This can range from simply having a private police force to dispute resolution organizations or anything in between.
Your question is also dubious one at that. You assume in a free society, policing will be a serious issue. Why do you assume an anarchist society would be more violent that a government-ran one?
In many cases, crime has became a serious problem, in no part not due to the government policy ( i.e war on drugs, war on poverty, etc.)
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Piracy and human trafficking would explode in prevalence due to the lack of law enforcement and child labor would become the norm since there would no longer be public schools. It would be like the old days when only rich kids were able to have an education while the rest worked in fields and factories. And all the gun nuts in right wing states would finally be able to go out and become the warlords they have fantasized about being for so long.
There is too much nonsense in this paragraph to shift through. It would take too many paragraphs to pull this apart, correctly. Essentially, you think that social ills and issues can only be addressed with government intervention ( inspite of the evidence agianst that notion). I'm sorry but this "argument" It amounts to mental ineptitude.
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Oh yeah and if you're an atheist and support anarchy or libertarianism, you are inadvertently supporting religion too, since aside from private enterprise and government the most powerful organizations are religious ones. Without a welfare system poor people would be forced to rely on religious charity (and theft), and the middle class would live in gated communities ala South Africa to get away from the desperate indigent who will steal from them if it means their kids don't starve. If you think panhandlers are annoying now try dealing with 20 times more of them.
You have this ass-backwards. You essentially believe in government. You are definitely a person that believes that the state can fix/properly address societal and economic issues, despite the evidence to the contrary. The fact that you can't honestly comprehend how these things can be addressed with voluntary interaction and lack of coercion pretty much signifies a religion-like quality. The rest wasn't even worth addressing.
As far as the welfare-state goes, this problem was pretty much already addressed with voluntarism means. Friendly societies were the social safety net before the modern welfare state existed. Mutual aid societies used to provided social benefits ( job training, unemployment benefits, healthcare, etc. ). When they were at the height in many West countries, they drove healthcare costs down, patients had better health-outcomes at their hospitals (which were available to people regardless of ability to pay) that state-owned hospitals and clinics. Unfortunately, thanks to statists like yourself, we now have to go with either socialized medicine or corporatist health insurance. On top of that there are dozens of non-for-profits, churches, philanthropic individuals, charities, ones own family, etc. that help out the destitute and poor. The welfare-state has done far more to damage minority and poor communities than any good that it might have caused.
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It would be the end of civil rights since nobody could enforce anti-discrimination laws and the wealth gap between the majority and the minority would only grow due to the nature of capitalism. Eventually this would lead to a race/class war as people became more and more desperate. If you think Ferguson is bad..
Um discrimination still happens today even with civil rights laws in place. You're 'point' is moot at best. The best way to mitigate discrimination is through social change and not political change.
Last edited by Tk101; 08-24-2014 at 05:39 PM..
Reason: grammar
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: the history of the world is a history of class struggle.