Saturday, July 25, 2009

Enough is enough: we must have social control of the means of production

No longer can we have a small group of elites owning the means of production at the expense of the rest of the population.

Yes, my friends, the time has come to move to free market capitalism (did you think I was talking about socialism?).

As Ludwig von Mises reminded us many a time, the "means of production" are under total social control in a free market society:

When we call a capitalist society a consumers' democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers' ballot, held daily in the market-place. Every child who prefers one toy to another puts its voting paper in the ballot-box, which eventually decides who shall be elected captain of industry. True, there is no equality of vote in this democracy; some have plural votes. But the greater voting power which the disposal of a greater income implies can only be acquired and maintained by the test of election. That the consumption of the rich weighs more heavily in the balance than the consumption of the poor—though there is a strong tendency to overestimate considerably the amount consumed by the well-to-do classes in proportion to the consumption of the masses—is in itself an 'election result', since in a capitalist society wealth can be acquired and maintained only by a response corresponding to the consumers' requirements.

They aren't under social control when the state owns them and decides to...oh, I don't know...produce shitty "green" cars nobody wants.

So can we put the means of production back into the hands of the people and let society control them again?

Pretty please?

1 comment:

  1. Cork wrote:
    "They aren't under social control when the state owns them and decides to...oh, I don't know...produce shitty 'green' cars nobody wants."

    I'm hoping that "after the revolution," I won't need a car. :)

    ReplyDelete

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