“In the end, what is really needed is a fundamental rethinking of the notion that the state rather than private markets must monopolize the provision of justice and security. This is the fatal conceit. No power granted to the state goes unabused. This power, among all possible powers, might be the most important one to take away from the state. ” – Llewellyn “Lew” H. Rockwell, Jr., Founder and chairman of the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama
The Editors’ Quote of the Day:
Prove me that power give to free market goes unabused, the Boys dying in the coal mines are so easy forgotten?
Show me the Nation in which private security and justice worked adequate for all citizens?
“Prove me that power give to free market goes unabused…”
Here is an example of when private corporations are police, judge, and jury …
“Last year, Meeker’s then 3-year-old daughter nearly suffered the same fate, choking on the cords of the style of blinds required by their homeowners association. The Meekers spent thousands on a losing battle with the HOA – even after the near tragedy, it wouldn’t back down on the requirement. The Meekers eventually moved to a neighborhood that wasn’t governed by a homeowners association … The family unsuccessfully tried to fight the window blind requirement, spending $7,000 on legal fees, but last summer moved to a home that is not in an HOA.”
source: HOAs From Hell: More Horror Stories, More Fraud — And Prospect Of Legislative Action. Kansas City Star. 12/23/2016
at https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/hoa/article122547749.html
Or, from the same story:
“In Georgia, a decorated Army veteran who lost a leg in Afghanistan is now ensnared in a battle on the home front — with his homeowners association. The HOA filed a lien on his house related to the placement of his trash cans … The home, given to Lister in 2012 as a gift from the Military Warriors Support Foundation and the Bank of America, has no mortgage and the property taxes are current.”
When governments behave this way, glibertarians express the required outrage. For example, see John Stossel’s video “Mow Your Lawn or Lose Your House!” (07/09/2019) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjV2autXVTc
But when homeowner associations – with their long record of being anti-family and anti-military and fiscally unsound – which are private corporations behave like extortion rackets, the silence from our side is deafening. Not every threat to liberty – or private property rights – comes from the barrel of a government gun.
This is the fatal conceit of libertarians – that privatizing things magically makes them better.
Acton’s maxim that power corrupts did not limit it to political or use of force power, economic power is also power. Apple? Google? Facebook?
First there are no rights or even due process in such a society, only what the private insurance companies allow, and speech, religion, assembly, bearing arms, being safe in your person and property tend to be inconvenient for them, but for an extra $5k/mo you can get a rider that can allow you to have a target pistol.
Stephen Molyneux in a podcast (FDR 3255 – audio only) about 50 minutes in describes it. It is “purely voluntary” but if you don’t buy insurance, they will cut off your power and water, you cant use the roads or walkways, and basically they will lay seige to you until you starve to death, much more like the Branch Davidians at Waco than any free society. He is serious. And that being laid seige to though you have not broken or even suggested breaking the “non-aggression principle” apparently isn’t coercive.
My city handles the utilities and doesn’t demand anything other than paying for them.
Replacing Bueraucrats with Technocrats mistakes the issue. Rights and justice are INDIVIDUAL, not corporate, whether that be a private or state corporation.
A locale where everyone owns and knows how to use guns has justice and security. They outsource neither to the state nor to agencies. Even better when everyone also is a Christian or has Christian values so obey the 10 commandments to the best of their fallen ability.
And corpseorations are undead monsters created by Dr. FrankenState anyway. You can not own something and not be liable for its misuse. You can transfer liability to some extent with insurance or agreements that some will be the first to pay something, but the LLC makes it magically disappear. These “private” justice and security firms will have as the first clause in their contract that they are more immune than the state for any liability from their personnel or actions. There will be no state to appeal to when injured and they will enforce their own contract. How is that different from the existing states?
It seems to me that the negative comments are mostly about individuals or small selective groups. I believe the author is referring to governments, ie. Communism, Socialism, Dictators, and all other abusive governments. Let us not leave out former Republics running amuck and heaping abuse on their citizens by over extending their given powers.
In my case it´s About capitalism
As long as we deal with humans and sinful human nature, we will always have abuses eventually. The thing I look at is this, which one allows me the most freedom without encroaching on other individual freedoms? I tend to see that happening more in capitalism side, than the government side. Short of Glory, we will never be rid of greed, lust, and other such traits.
Maybe, but remember the Boys who worked themselves to death in coalmines of Britain and the Children in fabrication all over the western world.
Maybe they didn´t wore slavechains of metal but they wore those of hunger
“The source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is not the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.”
– Bob Black, The Libertarian as Conservative, 1984
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bob_Black
All of these complaints are in reality complaints about the gross interventions in the free market by government and its regulators.. When a corporation bribes a politician or bureaucrat to promote certain regulations, that is an intervention in the free market. When corporations and their paid hack lawyers literally write our laws and regulations, that is an intervention in the free market. We don’t have free markets in America, or anyplace else on the globe for that matter.
These home owners associations are just another level of government. These too are an intervention in the free market. When an HOA can dictate what type of blinds you must use, you do not own your home, the HOA does. People who move into a housing developement that has an HOA, that is a voluntary act by the buyer of the property. You know what you are getting when you move in to an HOA. Why on God’s green earth would any rational human being voluntarily choose to be subjected to a dictatorship imposed by their neighbors.
Private policing and fire departments and EMS services are active in many towns and cities throughout the country. Because these services are private companies they are also liable for their actions or inactions, they are accountable. You are not going to see private law enforcement beating people up just for the fun of it. Those incidents are only the actions of unaccountable government agencies.
Finally, for ThoDan: Those cases of miners being abused by the companies they work for happen because of the interventions of government that actually allow for the abuses to take place in the first place. The bribes to the politicians and bureaucrats make room for the mining companies to literally write the regulations that allow for the abuses to take place. So those abuses take place, not because of the free market, but because the free market doesn’t exist in the first place.
@Charles K.
“You are not going to see private law enforcement beating people up just for the fun of it.”
absolutly wrong, happens regularly with private security it´s a rare exception with the Police here.
Especially volunteer citicen firefighters are absolutly accountable to the local representatives, Administrations and especially their neighbours.
“Those cases of miners being abused by the companies they work for happen because of the interventions of government that actually allow for the abuses to take place in the first place”
Absolutly Right and wrong,
Right in that the security Forces were used to fight unions and Workers associations and wrong because the goverment didn´t care About work safety, minors Rights and protection, fair wages etc. etc
“You are not going to see private law enforcement beating people up just for the fun of it.” absolutly wrong, happens regularly with private security it´s a rare exception with the Police here.
Tho, buddy, maybe it’s that way in Germany (do I have that correct) but in the USA it is the AGW (armed government workers), the police that get a wink and a nod and sent about their business. If a civilian police officer were to commit what is otherwise a crime, that civilian police officer pays the price, is held liable, and also the company they work for.
Especially volunteer citicen firefighters are absolutly accountable to the local representatives, Administrations and especially their neighbours.
Granted, but the volunteer firefighter and the volunteer EMS person is accountable if they prove to be incompetent or even criminal. And they can be held liable by the courts system, hence the citizens they do harm to. They don’t get a pass under color of law like AGW’s. We have volunteer fire departments here, and they work, and they are not part of the government.
“Those cases of miners being abused by the companies they work for happen because of the interventions of government that actually allow for the abuses to take place in the first place”
Absolutly Right and wrong,
Right in that the security Forces were used to fight unions and Workers associations and wrong because the goverment didn´t care About work safety, minors Rights and protection, fair wages etc. etc
Ok, you got me. You are correct this is absolutely right and wrong. I don’t know about other countries, but the problems in the mining industry here go back well before the unions and to a time when the biggest businesses in town were the mining companies. The mining interests absolutely used the power of government and the color of law to enforce a virtually slave labor environment on the miners (workers). You had both private security and government security working together to allow for the miners to be abused by the companies they worked for. In the USA it took the Federal government under a seriously socialist administration to intervene and bring about unionization of the workforce and the beginning of the safety standards that exist today. Yet it was still the intervention of local, state, and federal governments that allowed the mining companies to engage in their corrupt actions in the first place. So government action both exacerbated and relieved these problems.
What do you want, governments are schizophrenic by their very nature.
Yes in Germany and other countries OTOH i think our Police is educated and trained to a much higher Standard(they serve normally for life) but it´s far from perfect
The mining interests absolutely used the power of government and the color of law to enforce a virtually slave labor environment on the miners (workers).
Our good samaritan laws protect helpers but the volunteer firefighter is normally well trained and educated in firefighting or other Rescue Services(the branch in my hometown specialices in Highway duties), the same goes for medical volunteers who´re for example members of the red cross and they´re not protcted by These laws.
Those People do mostly want to do good and not fail the trust of their fellow citicens
Those firefightung Units ´ve normally a youth Department
“. The mining interests absolutely used the power of government and the color of law to enforce a virtually slave labor environment on the miners (workers).”
There ´re some difference but the tune is the same
“All of these complaints are in reality complaints about the gross interventions in the free market by government and its regulators..”
Anyone who has ever played the game Monopoly knows that this oft-repeated talking-point excuse for the problems of capitalism is wrong.
It’s also funny – if cognitive dissonance were funny – how those who employ this “crony capitalism” excuse blindly overlook – nay, fetishize – the most significant government distortion of the free market: corporations.
Corporations are people under the law (thanks to government), yet do not possess a conscience, empathy, morals, nor a soul. This makes them, by definition, sociopaths. Yet while moral behavior and personal responsibility is expected of natural persons, the disciples of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman celebrate the sociopathy of corporations as a high virtue.
This is antithetical to every major religious belief in the world. Those smelly Occupy Wall Street hippies may have been wrong about a lot of things, but they weren’t wrong about everything.
Corporations are people under the law (thanks to government), yet do not possess a conscience, empathy, morals, nor a soul. This makes them, by definition, sociopaths. Yet while moral behavior and personal responsibility is expected of natural persons, the disciples of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman celebrate the sociopathy of corporations as a high virtue.
You have made my point for me. It is the intervention by government that made the corporations legal persons. Government also made these corporations immune from the consequences of their immorality. That is also called an intervention in the free market. Again, we don’t have free markets in America, we have corporatist markets in America. So corporatism is in reality the merger of the corporations and the government, a symbiotic and parasitic relationship.
This is antithetical to every major religious belief in the world. Those smelly Occupy Wall Street hippies may have been wrong about a lot of things, but they weren’t wrong about everything.
Amen brother, the Occupy movement wasn’t wrong about everything. The were wrong about what they wanted. The end result of what they wanted would have been even worse than corporatism. It would have inevitably led to state capitalism.
“People who move into a housing developement that has an HOA, that is a voluntary act by the buyer of the property.”
By claiming that people freely, knowingly, voluntarily, and willingly agree to subject themselves to privatized governance by an HOA corporation, you just made the argument that HOA dictatorships (your word) are the result of free market capitalism.
This contradicts your argument in your previous paragraph that
“All of these complaints are in reality complaints about the gross interventions in the free market by government and its regulators”
Perhaps you should heed Ayn Rand’s advice: “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong” (Atlas Shrugged, 1957).
This is not a contradiction at all. The person who chooses to buy into a community that is controlled by an extra level of government, the HOA, voluntarily chooses to do so. The HOA, along with it’s additional rules and regulations, is still an intervention in the free market.
I don’t know the article that you refer to, but I would not have filed suit to change the rules, I would have filed a liability claim against the HOA for their negligence in demanding a demonstrably, provably, dangerous style of blinds. Their rules and regulations may generally be harmless, but when a rule or regulation actually causes harm, then the HOA should be held liable. As a private corporation they should not be exempted from liability claims. If instead the HOA is a government, and recognized as such, they will be held unaccountable. Again, an intervention in the free market.
I don’t understand why so many people who are big on preparedness, are so confused by the concept of capitalism and continue to conflate capitalism with corporatism.
those that can’t or wont understand capitalism will be a victim of it….
In 1990, Capitalism defeated Communism.
By 2010, it had also defeated Democracy and Free Markets.
Many people believe that free market capitalism is selfish, even immoral. They say it’s about greed, about a hunger for money and power; that it helps the rich and hurts the poor. They’re wrong. The free market is not only economically superior, it is morally superior to any other way of organizing economic behavior. Here’s why.
The free market calls for voluntary actions between individuals. There’s no coercion. In a free market, if I want something from you, I have to do something for you.
Let’s say I mow your lawn and you pay me twenty dollars. What does that twenty dollars really mean? When I go to the grocer and say, “I would like to have four pounds of steak” He, in effect, says to me, “You want a lot of people to serve you — ranchers, truckers, butchers, and packagers. All these people have to be paid. What did you do to serve your fellow man?”
“Well,” I say, “I mowed my fellow man’s lawn.” And the grocer says, “Prove it.” Then I offer him the twenty dollars. Think of the money that you’ve earned as a certificate of performance. It’s proof that you’ve served your fellow man.
People accuse the free market of not being moral because they say it’s a zero-sum game, like poker, where if you win, it means that I have to lose. But the free market is not a zero-sum game. It’s a positive sum game. You do something good for me, such as give me that steak and I’ll do something good for you — give you twenty dollars. I’m better off because I valued the steak more than I valued the $20 and the grocer is better off because he valued the $20 more than he valued the steak. We both win.
Ironically, it’s the government, not the free market, that creates zero-sum games in our economy. If you use the government to get a food stamp, a farm subsidy or a business bail out, you will benefit — but at the expense of your fellow citizens. Isn’t it more moral to require that people serve their fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces rather than not serve others and still have a claim?
But, a lot of people ask, what about giant corporations? Don’t they have too much power over our lives? Not in a free market. Because in a free market We, the People, decide the fate of companies who want our business.
Free market capitalism will punish a corporation that does not satisfy customers or fails to use resources efficiently. Businesses, big and small, that wish to prosper are held accountable by the people who vote with their dollars. And, again, it’s the government that can undo this.
Take the example of the American automobile industry. It was struggling to survive in 2009. Why? Because they were producing cars that did not please a sufficient number of their fellow men. In a free market, they would therefore have gone bankrupt. The market would have said, “Look, you’re done. Sell your plant and equipment to somebody who can do a better job.” But when Chrysler and General Motors failed, they went to Washington D.C. and got the government to bail them out.
The government bailout essentially meant to them: “You don’t have to be accountable to customers and stock holders.’ No matter how inferior your product is and no matter how inefficient you are, we’ll keep you in business by taking your fellow man’s money. When government interferes in this way, it takes the power away from the people and rewards companies that couldn’t compete successfully in the marketplace. That may work out very well for politicians, big unions and corporate officers, but it seldom does for the tax payer. That’s why a free market system can only work if there is limited government. Limited government means you and I decide which businesses survive.
That’s the America that our Founding Fathers envisioned — a limited government that has only a few specifically mentioned — or enumerated — powers that are listed in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. It’s this brilliant, limited-government notion that produced the wealthiest nation in history. In a free market, the ambition and the voluntary effort of citizens, not the government, drives the economy. That is: people, to the best of their ability, shaping their own destiny.
Sounds pretty moral to me.
I’m Walter Williams of George Mason University for Prager University.
But is that really free market capitalism, free from all regulations ?
Free from rules for a safe workplace, fair wages, undecent Exploitation of labour in….
How do you explain the Boys who slaved themselves to death in british coal mines and other People?
i offer the no true scotsman fallacy what happened to those boys was indentured servitude not free market capitalism….
if you mean debt Bondage capitalism in an unregulated economy you may be right
There is no capitalism in what was actually slave labor. These folks did not sell themselves into bondage. The Scots and the Irish were routinely rounded up by the British government and sold into slavery. The only way out was to buy your way out of your involuntary slavery, or die in the mines or on the plantations in the American colonies.
“But, a lot of people ask, what about giant corporations? Don’t they have too much power over our lives? Not in a free market. Because in a free market We, the People, decide the fate of companies who want our business … “I’m Walter Williams of George Mason University for Prager University.”
Then why did Prager University sue YouTube?
“In October 2017, PragerU filed a federal lawsuit against Google [which owns YouTube], claiming that 37 of its videos on YouTube were unfairly demonetized or flagged so that they could only be viewed with “restricted mode filtering” (which limits views based on certain characteristics, including the age of the viewer). PragerU claimed that Google’s actions violated the First Amendment and asserted YouTube was a public forum.”
The American courts have still not resolved a fundamental question: Are social media companies publishers, or merely platforms? At various times, they claim to be BOTH. If they are platforms, then they cannot censor. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides legal protection for Internet platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) from liability for any statements or content that their users post. Yet they still insist on censoring–and a lot of that censorship is directed at conservative, pro-life, and pro-gun individuals. These giant Tech companies cannot have it both ways!
Neither american law nor Courts set´s the rules for other nations laws or Courts.
The law and the Courts in Germany have a fully different and opposite view on this, if they do not censor after an appropriate time, they will be fined.
they must censor racism, hate speech and other Things demeaning human dignity, Honor and so on – also Things unapprobiate for the Young(extreme violence etc) i believe could be unacceptable
Unlike in Germany, the U.S. has a Free Market for ideas. In fact, with very few exceptions, we have a Constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech, even if that means hurting someone else’s feelings. By setting up review panels for what speech is allowed, and what is not, it starts a nation on a slippery slope of tyranny. We also have the Second Amendment, which reinforces — and insures– all of our other rights. We have a completely different outlook than the European Model, which places THE STATE over the populace. Here, any powers of the State are granted by We The People, who are the sovereigns. The government works for us — that is why they are called Public Servants.
Sorry, but you´re in error
(1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.
(2) Das Deutsche Volk bekennt sich darum zu unverletzlichen und unveräußerlichen Menschenrechten als Grundlage jeder menschlichen Gemeinschaft, des Friedens und der Gerechtigkeit in der Welt.
(3) Die nachfolgenden Grundrechte binden Gesetzgebung, vollziehende Gewalt und Rechtsprechung als unmittelbar geltendes Recht.
The Grundgesetz The German Constitution
Preamble
Conscious of their responsibility before God and man,
Inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law.
Article 1
[Human dignity – Human rights – Legally binding force of basic rights]
(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
(2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.
(3) The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law.
This Article the first and one of the eternal articles of the GG binds the state to the rights of the People, to their protection and Service and btw. Public Servants or Public Service we call such Things over here
The Preamble states clearly that all power Comes from the people
Our soldiers also swear to defend the Rights and freedoms of our People after that only to give loyal Service to the State
A Nation may and has also start the slippery slope of tyranny, genocide, torture etc. with Unlimited free speech.
And yet you are saying other nations courts and laws should dictate to the USA what should happen here. Germany’s regulations should not affect what happens here.
Google (YouTube) needs to decide whether it is a platform where others actually do the publishing, or a publisher in it’s own right. I have been, in the past, a Google AdSense publisher. I was the publisher, not Google. Now I would be considered by Google to be a content provider, not a publisher. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc. want it both ways. They want to be exempted from government regulations that are applied to publishers because they claim they are only a platform. Yet want to function as a publisher so they can engage in censorship to promote their own political agenda.
No, i say that an international Business like YouTube or Google has to be acceptable under the law of many different States
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides legal protection for Internet platforms
PragerU sued Google/YouTube claiming violations of their First Amendment rights, not violations of the Communications Decency Act (CDA).
You can read their complaint here –> http://www.bgrfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/PRAGER_U-_v_GOOGLE-YOUTUBE_complaint_10-23-2017_FILED.pdf . It references the First Amendment 11 times, and the CDA not at all.
– “Google/YouTube’s use of restricted mode filtering to silence PragerU violates its fundamental First Amendment rights under both the California and United States Constitutions” (p. 03)
– “Such a censorship regime cannot pass muster under the First Amendment and is discriminatory and unlawful under California law.” (p. 06)
– “This is a civil action arising under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States” (p. 09)
– “The United States Supreme Court also recognized more than a half-century ago that the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution can apply even on privately owned property.” (p. 11)
– “One of the most important places to exchange and express views is cyberspace, particularly social media, where users engage in a wide array of protected First Amendment activity on any number of diverse topics.” (p. 11)
– “Google/YouTube’s denial of PragerU’s right and ability to do so, therefore, must be redressed because such a denial violates the First Amendment of the California and U.S. Constitutions” (p. 11)
– “Apparently Google/YouTube believe that they are exempt or somehow immune from the First Amendment’s strict prohibition against content-based restrictions on free speech under California as well as federal law.” (p. 18)
– “SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION. (First Amendment of the United States Constitution and/or 42 U.S.C. § 1983)” (p. 34)
= “The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the freedom of speech and association, and against viewpoint discrimination in the access and use of public spaces, quasi- public spaces, and limited public spaces.” (p. 34)
– “Defendants’ actions were done with the intent to deprive Plaintiff and other conservative voices of their First Amendment rights.” (p. 36)
– “WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays for relief as hereinafter set forth. 1. For a declaratory judgment that Defendants have violated and continue to violate PragerU’s free speech rights, both facially and as applied, under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and/or Article I, section 2 of the California Constitution” (p. 42)
This is counter to their own claim that corporations don’t have too much power.
i think the suing is proof positive that corporations can be reigned in by the people in a free market capitalism alongside just not buying their products. i think it also gives a nod to democracy too in that we allow redress of grievances when the government or an entity becomes too powerful. We also have anti-monopoly laws in place to deal with them too….
Then i´ve misunderstood your meaning of a free market,
I understood it as a market without the WROL
Excuse me please