Noam Chomsky – "On Anarchism" [video]

Well considering the cost of the Dept. of Education is 71.9 a year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...), that would work out to 20$ a year for a population of 360 Million. Adjusted for Youth, which is around 73.9 Million (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...), we're looking at about 972$ per youth per year.

Thats what the governments pays now for the entire system. The teachers, the building costs, the supplies, etc. If we really wanted to have an alternative to public schooling, IMO (I'm an anarchist) it couldn't be done with a voucher system.

The best solution is to question school as an institution. It was primarily for very young children and for reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Education_in_the_Uni...

We need to rethink these institutions and consider the technological advantages. My solution would be to put half of that 70 billion into Libraries, and make the accomodable for children during the day. Make it completely optional.

Make it completely optional, ok. What about the kids whose parents won't ever take them to one of these spaces/libraries? You know there will be thousands of kids growing up illiterate, not knowing any math, learning nothing but TV/youtube/Xbox if they are lucky to have that. Public education is shit, I agree with you on that. The problem is that for a percentage of children (varies by country, but quite high in the third world), handing the responsibility of their education to their parents is even shittier.

Honestly, I think the most rational thing to do is shift the conversation to specific alternative institutions. So, for instance, if you propose "We should replace today's join-stock companies with joint-stock cooperatives, and institute commons trusts, empowered to levee taxes on economic rents, for management of public resources", you're likely to get a pretty broad buy-in, from almost everyone except the most hardcore, deontological minarcho-capitalists and revolutionary socialists.

> If an exchange is genuinely voluntary, it leaves both parties better off by definition.

Libertarians often compare taxation to theft (and believe me, I'm sympathetic). But by that yardstick, taxation is voluntary: I have a choice between the costs and benefits of government, versus the transaction cost of leaving for another country, versus the risk of being thrown into a cage. I make my "choice", and both I and the government "benefit".

Meanwhile, if I need a certain drug to survive, and the provider of that drug charges $1000/month, we both benefit through that exchange, but it's hardly a choice on my part. Even if that drug could not have existed without the incentive of future rent-seeking on their part, I still have effectively zero negotiating leverage in that business relationship, and I would say it's exactly as "voluntary" as the taxation example above.

Look at it in terms of the Ultimatum Game [1]. If the 2nd party is offered only $1 from the 1st party's $20, they can choose to defect and spoil the benefit for both, which gives them bargaining power. But if the 2nd party is in deep poverty, this will effectively never happen, and if the 1st party knows this, they will always offer $1. Better than nothing? Sure, I guess. But realities of biology and survival render any lofty ideals of free will moot.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

> But again, your property is your property, and you have the right to defend it regardless of whether a State exists.

In practice, no one defends their own property. If the only force preserving your land is you and your shotgun, ten of your neighbors might use their shotguns to disagree. It is through some combination of explicit law and implicit social contract for them to not do so, either soft-enforced in culture or hard-enforced by violence, that makes it possible for you to own and successfully defend your land. Possession might be 9/10ths of the law, but that last 1/10th makes a big difference.

> Capitalism is not a "system".

First, agreed on crony capitalism. That's a shit sandwich for everyone.

However, just because a system is emergent rather than engineered, does not mean it is not a system. Is the rainforest not a system? Or the orbital mechanics of the earth, the sun and the moon?

Moreover, in reality, markets are always affected by issues of public policy (and not deciding or doing nothing is still a decision):

- How are disputes managed, and what are the costs? Are you on your own for legal fees, or must the loser pay for the winner's costs? If not, do you tolerate SLAPP suits? [2]

- Where are the exact lines drawn around property? Can I prevent airplanes from flying over my land, if so, how high up? Can I give my cows as many antibiotics as I want, even if that weakens their effectiveness in the greater microbial ecosystem? Can I dump radioactive waste, which does not touch my neighbor's land, but which will gradually leak radiation for millions of years after my death?

- Intellectual property: how is it defined and enforced? (Good luck defending a copyright with a shotgun.) How long do copyrights last? Are there patents, and who decides what's patent-worthy? There is obviously a high moral hazard for crony capitalism here, but it is difficult to capitalize on intellectual and creative output without rules governing IP.

You probably have answers for these issues. They might be very good answers. But the point is that capitalism does not emerge perfectly formed from nature: while it is powered by emergent and distributed forces, it is always going to be shaped by culture and law and history, and there are a plethora of potential capitalist systems.

To re-iterate, I'm not arguing against capitalism; I do not dispute that markets create wealth. I'm saying that, at best, "pure" libertarian capitalism is an implementation of negative rights [3], and that this is a far cry from the narrative of calling all transactions "voluntary". Even if all forms of state solutions are worse (they might be), people under immediate pressures of life and death do not effectively have any choice, any more than they do against direct state violence.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publi...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

If you remove the loaded language in "private residential property" and rephrase as simply "residence", i.e. your residence where you are living, then we aren't talking about property as a means of production, which is where the sticking point is. Your residence is your possession, and you have every right to privacy.