...in case any of you were wondering. I don't think we have truly free markets in the US; at best we have markets that are severely restricted and controlled, and designed to favor the large over the small, and especially over the individual.
Without the state much of what leads people to hate what they think is capitalism would be gone, and many of the reasons people think they should be "socialist" anarchists would disappear. Would there be homelessness if not for the state's housing rules and regulations? Would there be lack of employment and income opportunities if not for the state's interference in those areas?
And if, as left-libertarians are so fond of pointing out, the large corporations that they despise so much could not exist if the state were gone, then what worries them so much about anarcho-capitalism? By their own logic, it would be something completely different from what we now call "capitalism".
SE,
ReplyDeleteI think, at this point, perhaps you and I are better described as individualist anarchists? ;)
We've both grown increasingly critical of wage slavery, it seems.
The State's housing rules and regulations are not the cause of homelessness. Even now, during the current depression, the vast majority of homeless are mentally ill. The State, in pursuit of Reaganomic free market philosophy, cut off funding for mental hospitals, and out-sourced housing for the mentally impaired to the private sector, which, of course, is far more interested in profit than helping people, ergo... tens of thousands of homeless people who aren't able to take care of themselves. That's what happens in "Free Market Capitalism."
ReplyDeleteThe State's housing rules and regulations are not the cause of homelessness
ReplyDeleteAre all homeless people mentally ill? Not in my experience. I've known several people (co-workers) forced to live in their cars (for months) because they couldn't find an affordable place to rent.
I can tell a personal story of living in a single family house that had been "illegally" divided up into three units, with the rent for each much lower than an apartment or a whole house. When the local bureaucrats found out, the owner was forced to turn the place back into one home (including being required to return the garage, which had been converted-without permits-into a very nice apartment of its own, with bath and kitchen, back into a bare garage).
I lived there and I was forced to find somewhere else to live at nearly twice the cost, so please, spare me the knee-jerk liberal "the free market is evil" bullshit.
In my case it was government rules and regulations that threw me out on the street! If the free market had been allowed to function without interference from busybody nanny state assholes, I would have been far better off.
And it's not just homelessness itself that is the issue, but the cost and availability of housing in general.
ReplyDeleteIn the case I gave above from my own experience, the owner was not allowed by housing regulations (even if she could have gotten permits to convert the place into three units) to rent that house as anything other than a single family home. She was providing three units of affordable housing where there was only one expensive unit before, and the State reversed her free market decision and thereby reduced the number of rental units on the market, driving up rents.
I think, at this point, perhaps you and I are better described as individualist anarchists?
ReplyDeleteCork, that probably does describe me better than anything else right now.