461–470 of 493 posts
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Depends on the time period. Single individuals crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Single individuals helped colonize the new world.
Yes, I tend to call 1000 single individuals traveling together a community or group.
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how can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? sure, many services can be provided by for-profit businesses for a fee, but who helps to put out fires for example? who pays for equipment used by firefighters? i see no way to make firefighting work unless everyone contributes. unless you rely on generosity of some, but that would not be fair, nor is it sustainable. how do you build streets?…
- How can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? How would that people make money?
as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution
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- How can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? How would that people make money?
how was money invented? as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution
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Your (3) contradicts (1). Rewards do not necessarily go to capital. (1) says rewards are assigned based on supply and demand. If labor is scarce and investment is plentiful, rewards will go to labor. If investment is scarce, and labor is plentiful, rewards will go to capital (with the obvious caveat that there are many other factors that affect returns, and their distribution within the pools of labor and capital). U…
I don't agree. If the rewards of a human venture (involving some amount of capital, labor and IP, but almost certainly all 3) do not go to capitalism, then it's not a capitalist venture. There are certainly other ways of distributing the rewards, no question about that. So the question arises: why do the rewards go preferentially to capital in so many of the ventures that exist in our system? Your argument claims tha…
Wage-based employment in the western world is certainly an economy. It is affected by laws, taxes, regulations, wage transparency, negotiating power, unionization, social welfare benefits, etc. But it is approximately a market, and wages are affected by the supply of labor (with skills/without; with education/without; with an artisan skill/or not; prepared to do dull, repetitive, smelly, disgusting job/or not).
How is labor not a market?
And do you know workers with profit sharing, or performance-related bonuses, or share options? Well they are essentially capitalists in their own employer, with some (small, perhaps insignificant) share of the returns to the business.
Do you know anyone who is self-employed? They are solo capitalists, self-started, owners of their shop or tools, and a capitalist of one.
Do you have a pension that owns equities? You are also a capitalist.
You may hate your manager, or envy them, because they earn more than you, and get to boss people around. They are not capitalists. Managers are not capitalists. Don't confuse your hatreds. They are only capitalists to the extent that they also get share ownership and options. Choose your targets carefully, and be explicit in your class-warfare hatreds.
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how was money invented? as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution
Ah yes, but that is huge difference. Supporting private businesses that makes sense (free market) sounds more effective for me than collecting taxes and distribute it by centralised power. Decentralisation of financial system is a way that could fix many inequalities in society.
also taxes are simply mandatory contributions. that doesn't require a centralized power. but they are not a free market either.
the examples i gave can not be solved in a free market.
there are more: access to water in areas where i can't dig my own well (or where uncontrolled water use causes problems).
solving this with a free market inevitably means that there will be some people who won't have access to water because connecting them is to expensive. we see this problem now with access to internet in rural areas. pretty soon access to internet will be required, and that means, we as a community have to pay for it to enable everyone to get access to it.
another good example to look at is waste removal. while waste removal can be done trough private businesses and paid by the amount of waste you have, in cities it must be mandatory, because if it is not, then some people will simply throw the trash into the street. if it is mandatory, it is no longer a free market. but rather similar to taxes. but without a central power.
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Ah yes, but that is huge difference. Supporting private businesses that makes sense (free market) sounds more effective for me than collecting taxes and distribute it by centralised power. Decentralisation of financial system is a way that could fix many inequalities in society.
the problem is that this is not an exclusive either taxes or free market question. also taxes are simply mandatory contributions. that doesn't require a centralized power. but they are not a free market either. the examples i gave can not be solved in a free market. there are more: access to water in areas where i can't dig my own well (or where uncontrolled water use causes problems). solving this with a free market…
Why would anyone throw trash on street, with full of bins? Mandate usualy change human behavior in opposite direction.
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You think you have a right to take something by force, but the other person doesn't have a right to be furious about it and try to take it back?
They certainly can't complain about someone else taking it from them when that's how they got it in the first place.
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I've driven from Alaska to Argentina, right around the coastline of Africa and right around Australia. On the Pan-American Highway for two years I spent an average of $1,200 per month, for all expenses including SCUBA diving, shipping the Jeep (and flying myself) around the Darien Gap and everything else. That was 40,000 miles In Africa I spent an average of $1,650 for all expenses including all National parks, visas…
A boat that doesn’t work sinks and kills you. A car that doesn’t work stays put. It’s a whole different world. I would not trade my van for a boat if I was looking for a cheap life.
And if my car had stopped moving forward on the world's most remote road, I would have died just as well as a boat that doesn't float.
I drove 1,000 miles through the scorching desert without seeing another person or vehicle for 10 days.
OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others". Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social f…
Everyone lives in their own world in their mind. A persistent theme I see in society in general is inability to grasp how others could have a completely different perspective and interpretation of anything. That said, OOP's sentiment is largely caused by housing costs across the world. Western society at least is two faced, on one hand liberty of the individual is emphasized but at the same time society is extremely…
All laws are ultimately backed up by threats of violence. Including the laws of whatever country you live in.
Governments around the world and throughout history have routinely decided who gets to live and who gets to die.
I am not happy about this but it is unfortunately true.
You can make every claim you want about lack of authority but it is easily overruled by a fist in your face.
Not having a government simply means that there will be more than one militant group enforcing things using violence. See “failed state”.
OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others". Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social f…
I think you're conflating community with government. You can have community without government, and government without community. You can be someone who hates government and rejects their authority, who also loves their community and readily admits dependence on them, and this is not contradictory. Voluntary communities and governments exist all the time
All humans are a mix of good and evil. So you need a system in place to minimise the negative impact of this.
This is BTW the reason why utopian societies always fail.