Sunday, Aug 01, 2010
Why house price rises are forcing all of us into servitude
Liberty Revival: Taking Aim at the Austrian School of Socialism
I was fascinated by the depth and clarity of the argument against socialism and mainstream right-wing views in this article and its relation to why we are in the state we are in with house-prices and the economy
Posted by the number cruncher @ 08:00 PM (1164 views) Add Comment
20 Comments
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1. little professor said...
Meh. Yet another right-wing "socialism=slavery" American nutjob. Wish they would try stepping out of their own country once in a while and see what the rest of the world is like. No surprise that the author is also a crazed NWO conspiracy theorist who claims that the Rothschilds did 9/11.
Please refrain from posting such trash.
2. tick tock said...
I do wish American commentators would bother to learn what Socialism is before slipping it into every paragraph as a substitute for the word 'bad'.
I'm not asking them to embrace Marx or anything, but such basic misrepresentation of an entire school of political philosophy just makes the author appear ignorant of the subject that they claim to have resolved all problems regarding.
These guys seem to stagger around in the dark, twisting themselves up & calling each other 'Socialist' to try and score points from one another (as it is clearly a tag than ensures automatic defeat if made to stick in the US) & yet none of them seem to have the faintest idea about what 'socialism' is, just some vague notion that it is the opposite of freedom. They have no idea about the Philosophy of Marx, or anyone else for that matter. and, for me, this jumps out at the reader way over & above the merits of any points made.
The Marx and Keynes School of Socialism' indeed.
Very week political commentary of the 'Fox News' variety.
Worship It's
3. Paranoiablue said...
Oops!
The usual entrenchment, from a variety of sites!
Best keep ones head down! ATB
4. mark wadsworth said...
I thought it was quite sensible. Maybe it's 'coz I iz a Georgist.
5. Crunchy said...
little professor, I would expect that exact blinkered attitude from yourself.
Please let me try educating you with this video (utube videos are valid BTW) featuring the late Aaron Russo who unlike yourself was a
personal close friend of Nick Rothschild. I'm probably wasting my time with you however, someone else may find this of use
in trying to make some sense of the chaos we are facing today and why it will persist into our futures.
"Rockefeller Reveals 9/11 FRAUD to Aaron Russo" type this into startpage.com for search privacy if you are also afraid.
There is also a longer version of this recording. I shall say no more on this well researched subject.
6. tick tock said...
I know Mark (u iz indeed innit bruv).... & I'm not necessarily knocking the idea... more the relentless,lazy & inaccurate depiction of 'the enemy'.
It's as if because few wish to be associated with 'Socialism' these days (& in the US most seem to positively fear such an accusation) that everyone completely overlooks the ever more absurd misrepresentations offered up by such commentators.
7. Crunchy said...
Typo- "Nick Rockefeller"
8. Keith Gardner said...
I typically attack neo-classical economics. Not sure how you can describe it as relentless, lazy, and inaccurate depiction of the enemy. Neo-classical economics is the enemy. Neo-classical economics is a system rigged to favor the ruling elite and wealthy, the corporations, and the people who run the corporations, the bankers, whether it is anarcho-capitalism, socialism, or something in the middle called Keynesian economics. Georgism is the true center, creating a synergy of concerns from both the right and left because it strikes the root of the problem.
You won't find Georgism on Fox News either. Fox News talks about socialism because socialism is approved corporatism. You won't even find Georgism on InfoWars.com.
“Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.” — Henry George
“At the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.” — Henry George
“The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of Truth.” — Henry George
“There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.” — Henry George
9. powerofnow said...
The article paints a picture of the frustrating battle between CAPITALISM and STATE SOCIALISM. The writer effectively illustrates that, they are the SAME BEAST, it just depends where you are standing.
Truly free independent markets and people do not rule out cooperation, collaboration and collective action; a truly intelligent approach to resource use such as water, food and energy (LAND) requires collaboration. Giving a favoured few the privilege of monopoly in land energy and money creation makes us all dependent slaves.
10. mark wadsworth said...
What PON says. Where is the fundamental difference between Communist Russian or Venezuaelan style 'socialism', EU-style corporatism or UK/US style Home-Owner-Ism? Or in bygone days, Italian state-capitalism/fascism?
They all depend on massive govt intervention - as I said on the Daily Mail thread yesterday, if the only two things keeping house prices up are restricted supply and artificially low interest rates (not to mention incredibly low taxes on housing), then how is this not 'Blue Socialism'? All these systems are run for the benefit of a few vested interests and are based on lies - the fundamental lie underpinning Home-Owner-Ism is that "rising house prices make us richer", of course.
In the other corner, much derided, are the Land Value Taxers and the Georgists, derided as capitalists by the socialists, derided as socialists by the Home-Owner-Ists and Faux Libertarians and derided as statists by the corporatists. Ah well.
11. Crunchy said...
4. tick tock 'Socialism'
Nobody is a purist. leaders pick and choose what suits their agenda, or the attempt to hide it.
It's naturally a mixture. If anybody doesn't know the general direction the globe is taking by now they may never know.
Barry Soetoro has said that the Star Spangled Banner should be changed to something like 'I'd like to teach the world to sing.................'
That's all I needed to know along with his track record to date and an understanding of history.
I guess some are a little more perceptive than others.
12. shipbuilder said...
The article seems like a good summary of Georgism, but I would agree that the desperation of all 'sides' to hang the 'socialism' tag on each other is tedious and lazy.
The accusation appears to be that a fundamental of socialism is a tax on labour, which is nonsense, just the same as statism=socialism is nonsense.
I see a fundamental component of socialism being the common ownership of the source of all our wealth - land and resources. This is clearly shared with Georgism, but just as clearly not with capitalism, as the article points out.
13. mark wadsworth said...
Shipbuilder, agreed.
The big difference is that Georgists believe in common economic ownership of land and resources (its value being collected and redistributed via the tax system) while legal ownership and what happens on the land is a private matter; but the old-school socialists that 'the state' should be the legal owner of the land and dictate what happens on it.
Actually it was Tom Paine who first suggested collecting LVT and paying out a Citizen's Dividend. Why isn't Georgism called Paine-ism?
14. Crunchy said...
5. powerofnow said...
Truly free independent markets and people do not rule out cooperation, collaboration and collective action; a truly intelligent approach to resource use such as water, food and energy (LAND) requires collaboration. Giving a favoured few the privilege of monopoly in land energy and money creation makes us all dependent slaves.
Nail and head.
'Competition is a sin.' J D Rockefeller senior. 1839-1937. It's a family affair.
15. Keith Gardner said...
the dialog has improved thanks to powerofnow.
to answer the other criticism...
public wealth is defined as unearned wealth, found wealth, or wealth held by the people in common rather than as individuals. public wealth includes land, natural resources, and monetary expansion necessary to prevent deflation due to population growth or economic growth. public wealth can also include interest on public debt and legal tender issued as debt.
private wealth is defined as earned wealth. individuals earn private wealth through labor, risking private wealth through loaning private wealth, or through using private wealth or labor in the production and use of capital, such as tools, technology, education, and organization.
others have defined public wealth as rent and private wealth as wages and interest. since interest is a confused term due to modern definition, i would define public wealth as rent, monetary expansion, and interest on rent and monetary expansion. i would define private wealth as labor, capital, and interest on loaning private wealth earned through labor and capital.
if gold is legal tender, and the gold increases in value, causing deflation, that increase in value is due to lack of monetary expansion. the wealth was not earned by the individual holding the gold. it was found wealth caused by the capital of others making production more efficient and by other people joining the economy to trade. it was wealth created by others.
if a person in the middle of the city owns a vacant lot and that vacant lot increases in value, it is a case of found wealth. the wealth was created by the community, not the owner of the vacant lot. the owner of the vacant lot did nothing to increase the value.
if a person works a job, that person earns the wealth. he produced something and earned it. he didn't find it. he labored and produced it. if a person loans money to another person and charges interest, he earned that interest by risking his own wealth to loan it.
there is an issue of consent as well, which is why georgism is considered libertarian. if a person earns interest by loaning another person their wealth, both parties consented. if a person works and another person pays for the work, there is consent. since everyone found the earth and natural resources, they must all consent to it's use. everyone must agree to consent to the terms of the currency being used for payment of taxes and debt and since it is the public who gives value to the currency itself.
if you want a better definition, look up "public", "private", and "wealth" in the dictionary and piece the definitions together. next, you'll have to figure out what is public wealth and private wealth.
16. Keith Gardner said...
Georgism just implies that taxing most of the land value or collecting ground rents can be used to fund government and drive down the cost of owning land, secure labor by taxing land value where people won't buy land unless they plan on putting it to use rather than to store wealth or extract rent, and have the cost of having a nation imposed on those who actually own a piece of it,
However, I believe Henry George could have been more exhaustive by considering what Paine proposed to better guarantee "free land" through a citizen dividend. Also, while Henry George had the right idea about money, I think he could have wrote a book on it. He probably would have been killed if he did, but it would have been nice so we wouldn't have to depend on quotes from Lincoln. He should have also spent more time considering a one-time tax on the extraction and sale of natural resources (movable land) and land devaluation through waste disposal. Most Georgists consider natural resources and land devaluation issues today, except for the Georgists who are merely single tax supporters.
Paine-ism is a weird word... Paine-ism is generally described as Geolibertarianism or Libertarian Georgism or Georgist Libertarianism, where ground rents are divided among the public rather than spent by government for them. Paine's solution was also somewhat crude. It wasn't continuous in nature. It wasn't collecting ground rents. It was collecting taxes on land and distributing that tax money to young men at the age of 18.
Anarcho-capitalism Georgism would divide all ground rents to the public and seek other methods to fund government.
Anarcho-Georgism would more represent the philosophy of Chief Seattle and indigneous people where the community or tribe just have an oral understanding that they share the land rather than own it.
Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Adam Smith, the Physiocrats, David Ricardo, J.S. Mill, the Old Testament, and others also believed in Georgism. However, they weren't credited with the philosophy. Henry George was credited for the philosophy because he wrote a whole book on it and sold 3 million copies of it.
17. urbanbear said...
Mmm, this article seems to make sense, too far to either the rich or the state is effectively Socialist slavery.
This Georgism sounds interesting, it certainly seem to make more sense than only the state being funded by Land Tax (i.e. LVT), given we all have a stake in the land, not just the state. I like that Georgism seems compatible with Capitalism and private trade. I will have to read further and see if Georgism still looks good.
BTW there is nothing to stop Capitalism using cooperation and collaboration and collective action, it just requires will and the right business model, in fact I suspect that Corporations are not even proper Capitalist businesses, because they are allowed to exist, with effectively more rights than living people, by Socialist Corporatist states.
18. Crunchy said...
1. little professor
Not so trashy now. Good posting by the number cruncher and contributors.
Please don't be so quick to dismiss in future, it cramps the site.
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