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RE: Response: Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government

in #anarchy8 years ago (edited)

We're not going to come to an agreement on property rights here, but I'll try to explain my thinking anyway:

Given that property rights exist, the moral (that's a better word to me than "natural") state of human existence in today's technological world lends itself to voluntary exchange (if you prefer that over "free market"). Given the choice, with the number of people we have now who are high up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, people today choose win/win scenarios over win/lose scenarios. This certainly isn't true everywhere, especially with impoverished peoples or where government coercion and corruption is at its worst.

I make the connection between "moral" and "natural" because of recently reading Steven Pinker's the Better Angles of Our Nature which talks about how humanity is more peaceful now than it has ever been. He's also a big fan of the Leviathan state (which I am not), but I'm not a fan of some of his reasoning or his comparisons of "anarchist" societies and their level of violence to state-controlled societies. Others critique his work by pointing out how all of the "anarchist" societies actually had rulers and weren't anarchistic at all.

I've had enough of these discussions to know they don't really go anywhere. Yes, there are problems with land ownership when it comes to property rights. Yes, if everyone had abundance we may not need money or exchange the way we think about it today and yes, gift/sharing economies that humanity used prior to agriculture were pretty awesome in many ways. Could we still have the technological advancements we currently enjoy (such as Steemit) without a profit motive? Currently, I think, we can not. The default state as of this moment in human history, I believe, is voluntary exchange. It takes coercion, military boot camp training, psychosis, or extreme need/poverty for things to be out of alignment with that default state.

That's my opinion at the moment, anyway. :)