How? Do you have evidence of this?

1. That's why I don't argue for common ownership. I argue for no ownership at all.
2. You are assuming. What facts do you have to back this up?

What is a good reason it wouldn't be able to sustain itself?

Philosophy in general -- metaphysics, epistemology, etc. -- is crucial to understanding the essence of the underlying factors beneath politics. If you try to use that as an argument your argument is simply going to fall flat. Where do you think political ideologies came from in the first place?

Jim Jones has nothing to do with this. Neither does WWI. There are people that can easily be convinced by a Hitler, or a Stalin, that they are planning on doing what is best for them, and so they get convinced to give up their property to that person after being convinced. If there's no property to give up, someone like Hitler would have found it much harder to come to rise. Don't duck the question.

The method by which this ideology comes into practice is irrelevant. I have my own ideas on how to bring a system like this into being and it starts, for me, with a radical change in the education system which would be achieved through grassroots organization, and that would be followed by further grassroots movements demanding further reform until the society is sufficiently reformed and the people have enough power to make such a change. Is this coercive and authoritarian? Technically you can call it that, but when it is the people demanding their rights from the bottom, against a group who holds coercive power and authority over them, I look at that as anti-authoritarian and counter coercive at the root, so it really negates this notion. Would this be a revolution? Absolutely and I'm proud to proclaim I'm for a revolution. Do I condone bloody revolution? No, but I understand that depending on what tactics the forces of opposition decide to use, war may be inevitable as a mechanism of self-defense. This is all irrelevant though because this discussion is mostly about after such a revolution. Also, I am almost positive that since your ideas would be based on a radical change as well, namely having the government deposed, your ideology would also require such a revolutionary change in which "coercive" and "authoritarian" tactics would be necessary. For my society, however, it is my belief, based on carefully thought out logic, that such a society, after this revolution, would naturally arise. Oh btw, I am all for grassroots organizations (namely worker operated worker's unions) leading small social revolutions for social change within my society once it is developed.

A business is about as likely to go through a change just because you want to work for them as a government is likely to make a change just because you want to immigrate into their jurisdiction.

It's not the girl that I would have a problem with, it's the fact that I have to rent PERIOD because that gives the landlord certain rights over me. We're renting a house right now and while, luckily, we're renting from a friend of the family, because we don't have enough money to pay the rent on time sometimes (because my mom is currently the only breadwinner and the house isn't cheap but it was the only option locally when we were losing our home and we haven't seen any other options recently either) our landlord is able to hold power over our heads. She holds the power to put us on the street among other things. When she says jump, we say "how high?" because if we don't, we're out. And it's not like she's mean. She's quite understanding. We've been WEEKS late on the rent EVERY MONTH since we've been here because we've been struggling so much financially and she still hasn't kicked us out because she understands, but we have to deal with stress every month because we don't know whether or not we're going to get evicted. The majority of landlords are not that nice. I had a similar, albeit worse renting situation when I moved out temporarily to go to college. And the only difference between renting in your society and renting in the current society is that in yours there is nothing stopping a landlord from evicting a tenant and telling them to pack up and leave right then and there (except maybe contract, but the landlord would still have more rights in such a circumstance. Also, people would need to be educated more in your society because there would be nothing stopping a landlord from placing certain things in their contracts that would be considered illegal today and therefore, the tenant would need to beware and not all tenants are smart enough to look out for such things).

As for the part about it being possible to live in an anarcho-communist lifestyle, I don't understand how you don't see the problem. I mean you even unconsciously acknowledged it in this paragraph and I bolded the text where you did so. That's the whole point. One would have to go through tons of trouble to do that. It would be very irregular in your society and next to impossible. A society that has been changed to work in a libertarian socialist manner would function such that a person who wants to live independently in their own house, as an anarcho-capitalist like the woman who wrote that article would like to do, she can and her possessed land that she is currently occupying would be respected to the fullest. She can call it property if she likes. Hell, she can call it Ted for all I care. The difference is that there would be no authority allowing her to own property that she isn't occupying. She can't buy a portion of Santa Monica beach and sue people when they trespass on it. She can't buy a house and rent it out to people and make money off them. "Idle capital" won't be possible in such a society. Eliminating property rights makes it impossible for people to make money for doing nothing but owning property that people use and maybe signing some routine paperwork. One would have to work in order to earn.

I'm not negating that Norway did have an influence. After all the settlers on Iceland were Norwegian. What I am saying is that Iceland's allowance of property rights which, from what I understand, were actually influenced by Norway, are what allowed the Norwegian government to take over slowly because small families accumulated capital to the point that six families held a majority of the wealth and power and seeing as they held an allegiance to Norway, it was at their hands that the country was turned over to Norwegian rule.

As for Menace's sources not talking about the Norwegian government much... So? Were they supposed to? It wasn't about the Norwegian government, it was about Iceland and the fact that it was at the hands of the rich families who had accumulated all the capital that the country was taken over by the Norwegian monarch.

Oh, and I'd trust Encyclopedia Britannica over wikipedia any day lol.

No, property, as being something owned but not in use by the owner, is not held out of mutual respect, it is held using force. An authority has to guarantee such property rights.

As for the Native Americans, they wouldn't attack each other over land rights. I'll watch that video momentarily.

The fact that a global community gives us easy access to each other's cultures so we can have a common understanding of each other and the fact that it has bridged everyone together into one big global culture makes it so that we can have a mutual respect for each other without needing to enforce property restrictions.

I use it as an example for certain purposes, but it isn't an example of exactly how a cooperative would work because there are so many restrictions forcing it to conform to a capitalist society.

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erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

It's funny because I quickly googled "cable monopoly" and the first two results are articles completely debunking the myth, lol. Aahhh, I know if I go thru with doing this it's going to come back and bite me in the ass but I have too much dang fun proving teachers wrong.

If the government stayed out of the economy, land would be much more affordable. This would lead to many more options available for the people. It's unfair to use America as an example because there is a lot of government control in the economy.

"Because agricultural land required investments and because boundaries could be easily marked, crop land was often privately owned, usually by families or clans rather than individuals. For example, families among the Mahican Indians in the Northeast possessed hereditary rights to use well-defined tracts of garden land along the rivers. Europeans recognized this ownership, and deeds of white settlers indicate that they usually approached lineage leaders to purchase this land. Prior to European contact, other Indian tribes recognized Mahican ownership of these lands by not trespassing."
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/feature....ericans

Also, even before the white people came, it was common for one tribe to steal things like horses and such from another.

"Norway's consolidation of power in Iceland was slow, and the Althing intended to hold onto its legislative and judicial power. Nonetheless, the Christian clergy had unique opportunities to accumulate wealth via the tithe, and power gradually shifted to ecclesiastical authorities as Iceland's two bishops in Skálholt and Hólar acquired land at the expense of the old chieftains."

so we are in agreement on this, only you make no distinction between possession (in your view, to criminally simplify the issue, ownership with owner use) and ownership (ownership without owner use).

no. in my view NO ONE would control that lake. anyone would be allowed to come in and drink from that lake.

no, they wouldn't, because there would be no body of force to enforce the person's hoarding. that person couldn't have a claim of ownership to the lake in the first place and, therefore, there would be no force stopping the hoarder. he would simply naturally lose power to hoard, which is a power he has simply because it is ordained by an authoritative body.

unemployment checks are irrelevant. they would be unnecessary in such a society as i propose. the only compensation that may be made in a conventional fashion by people without working is compensation by people unable to work, such as people with severe mental and physical handicaps. we would need to build programs somehow that would help people with, for example, cerebral palsy to make money. responsibility is relevant, because if it is true that actions are enacted by antecedent causes, then the actions of the man who lost his job and found it impossible finding another, in part resulting in his alcoholism and apathy, could have been prevented on a much more mass scale had it been easier to work and make money, as is the situation in a capitalistic society that couldn't care a bit about you and is about caring only about self.

i completely disagree. people would still be subject to wage slavery that would leave individuals and their bosses with massively different salaries and people would still be living in poverty, even if that level was lower than in any earlier capitalist society. and to deny that rentals would be a significant industry would be foolish completely. because of hoarding of resources due to property rights and the society being far more conducive to wage labor, rental would be the best, possibly only option for certain people. i have already explained why i am opposed to this.

i understood what you said. first of all, i'm not personally arguing for anarcho-communism (though I_Guy is). i am arguing for anarcho-syndicalism. second, you are completely wrong. no libertarian socialist community could exist within an anarcho-capitalist society because of capitalist greed and hoarding. on the other hand, no anarcho-capitalist society could arise within a libertarian socialist society, not because of force, but because there would be no property rights enforcing capitalist hoarding which is essential to wage labor and markets (by your definition of course). if a capitalist community did, somehow, arise within a libertarian socialist society it would likely destroy the society from within over time.

is there any logic reason to think there's a link between the two?

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Wal-Mart just announced this week an increase in wages at more than 1,200 stores by about 6 percent (along with higher wage caps for each position). The average full-time hourly wage for Wal-Mart associates — at $10.11 — is almost twice the current minimum wage. Wal-Mart also provides benefits including health care, 401(k) plans, and profit-sharing."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/16/opinion/main1901101.shtml

You have probably heard it said that under capitalism, "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer." This is simply false.

It was actually a prediction of classical economics that incomes would accrue primarily to the owners of land and capital. In his 2007 book, A Farewell to Alms, economic historian Gregory Clark points out that if you look at real returns to land (rental rates), they have fluctuated but remain virtually unchanged. The same holds true for capital (interest rates). Real wages for unskilled workers, meanwhile, have exploded.

Sources of mortality have also fallen: infant mortality and maternal mortality are miniscule fractions of what they used to be, and life expectancy has increased radically. It was 24 at the height of the Roman Empire, 30 in Britain at the end of the 15th century, 45 in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, and it is pushing 80 today.

Joseph Schumpeter once wrote that capitalist progress does not consist of more silk stockings for the queen of England but of reasonable substitutes for them for poor workers in exchange for progressively less labor. Further, he argued that the key beneficiaries of changes in material standards of living would be the poor at the expense of the rich. Cheap electric lighting was an absolute boon for the very poor, while the very rich could have paid flunkies (or forced slaves, in some cases) to stand around holding torches.[1]"

http://mises.org/daily/3771

why not? it's a lake. what can he possibly do in order to hoard so much that it has a significant impact on the lake's supply of water? it will be when he tries to find somewhere to store it and keep it away from others that he'll run into trouble because he would have nowhere to house all of that water. what would he do in order to house it? i can't see any way that he could possibly do that when private property rights aren't protected. what is he going to do, waterproof his house, fill it with water, and sleep on the roof?

prove it.

when i speak of wage slavery i am speaking of wage labor and it's similarities to slavery in that, while you have a choice of who to work for, you are still renting out your labor. while slaves were bought by a master, wage slaves at least have a little bit of choice as to who their master is (though not a total choice) lol.

i contest that in my society, making renting impossible by eliminating the protection of private property will be perfectly fine because anyone will be given the chance to voluntarily work and make the same amount as anyone else and hoarding won't offset the equality of the people economically. the only thing that will separate people economically will be their will to work.

lol it's not that big of a deal. anarcho-communism, while considerably different in it's theory, still fits under the umbrella of libertarian socialism, and libertarian socialism in general is what i am a proponent of. that is why i don't argue with I_Guy even though there are some critical places in which we disagree. the overall philosophy is similar enough to share, generally, the same criticisms of capitalism.

i don't recall ever saying it would. if i did, i misspoke and i retract my statement. i just do not believe a libertarian socialist society could possibly arise within an anarcho-capitalist society for reasons that i would hope are apparent after i described what my ideal is about.

what i meant to ask was, is there any logical reason to actually think that there is a link between the lack of privatization and the downfall of the Icelandic society?

what? how? if anyone can drink from the lake however much they please that is somehow control????

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10970