As far as people protesting, they’re protesting the state, monopoly, violence, privilege and theft, things which I universally and unconditionally oppose. Things which are part and parcel of a system of collective ownership, but have no place in a system of private ownership of property necessary to have a free market.

I lol’d at dixieflathead.

Important points I take from this article:

1.) Anarcho-capitalists are playing doublethink when they refer to criticize domestic policy as “socialist”, instead of “fascist” or “corporatist”. AnCap’s, anarcho-libertarians, poop-on-the-state, give-it-some-other-cute-name are students of Rothbard, right? For students of such a revisionist historian, to play along with the Newspeak of the political class relays disinformation.

2.) Misusing “socialism” is ignorant of a very real tragedy of common sense that: Democrats are socialist-leaning leaders for the people and Republicans are capitalist-leaning leading to trickle wealth up to the already rich. This is the giant wall for libertarians to break down — that “socialism” and “capitalism” are either both words to describe statism or they aren’t.

To say they are communicates a new form of doublethink when libertarians push free-markets (or whatever else term you come up with), people outside of libertarian circles (the audience) is going to lead to the conclusions using reasoning with which they’re already familiar: that socialism and capitalism are polar opposites and capitalism is the school which promotes free exchange of private poperty. The conclusion becomes: libertarians are Republicans who are against persecuting gay people, etc.. Hence, the much more commonly understood term in our culture: “civil libertarian” to describe FDR-type fascists against persecuting gay people, etc.

3.) Mr. Carson’s point that: “[Rothbard's] stated principles, by providing the basis for a fundamental critique of state-enforced privilege and artificial property rights, offer much room for a common vision of social justice with the socialist Left.” is some illusory big-tent tactics to compromise Truth; it is Truth. Freeing the Market is an act of social justice above all other reason. Continue to misuse “socialism” and this message will get lost. When this message gets lost, we might as well just go to the beach.

“it [captialism] does not have the taint of millions of citizens slaughtered in the fields for “the greater good” or with mass starvation and gulags.”

this is the biggest crock i’ve heard in a long time. if you take off your Western goggles for a minute, you’d realize that BOTH capitalism and state-socialism (mostly called communism) have the taint.

next time people are protesting or striking or asserting their rights in some way across the world somewhere, check the independent media, and you’ll probably find they’re sick of both state-socialism AND capitalism.

http://aaeblog.com/2009/06/22/pootmop-redux/

Also: Brainpolice has offered a thoughtful analysis of the “anarcho-semantics” debate here:

http://polycentricorder.blogspot.com/2009/06/anarchist-and-socialist-semantics-and.html

And, I’ve tried to tie together my remarks on this thread, along with some responses to Stephan’s most recent observations, here:

http://liberalaw.blogspot.com/2009/06/socialism-revisited.html

“Deus, there is nothing disrespectful or inaccurate in my post. I didn’t mischaracterize Carson. Am I permitted to disagree? I linked back here so people can view it themselves–some people might view that as publicity.”

Of course you’re permitted to disagree, Kinsella. You hardly need my or anyone else’s permission. I never stated otherwise. And am I not permitted to disagree with your disagreement?

You didn’t mischaracterize Carson’s position so much as you simply failed to address it, and then tagged on an image of Lenin surrounded by a pile of skulls. I think it’s clear you’re trying to make some kind of association—clumsy and awkward, to be sure, but it’s bullshit and deserves to be called out as such.

“The post-Wall Germans were under the impression that socialism was a bad thing”??? Oh, did they reject mutualism, left-libertarianism or market anarchism? I wasn’t aware of that! Odd, I’ve never read that particular interpretation of the fall of the Iron Curtain before. If that’s not the historical truth, then what you say in that post is largely a non-sequitur and I can think of no other reason for it other than it’s yet another clumsy attempt to smear Carson with some kind of guilt by association to commies.

(BTW, you may be interested to know that if you think that the Germans have rejected STATE-socialism—as opposed to the purely voluntary, private property-based Tuckerite socialism that Carson promotes—you’re wrong once again. Last time I checked with people who live there, Germany is still a STATE-socialist shithole.)

Your past inference that market anarchists are somehow opposed to little crippled girls getting prosthetic legs is another big stinking pile of bullshit that comes to mind. Bullshit of this kind should be called out as such whenever you or any other anti-left-libertarian libertarian serves it up.

I’ll close this comment with a variation on the quote of Ayn Rand Kinsella cites in his LRC blogpost:

“As Rand said when asked: ‘Why do you use the word [’socialism’] to denote virtuous qualities of [‘voluntary cooperation’], when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things that you mean?’ Her answer, as mine, was: ‘To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it”.’

And why would right-libertarians be afraid to redefine socialism and insist on drawing a permanent line in time that dictates that the term may no longer evolve beyond this point? One can only surmise that deep down they’re afraid that in a true state of liberty there would be many and varied paths to libertarian social organization for different individuals of varying temperaments and cultural preferences, rather than the only one being one that would require “a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin,” with “no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal…[S]uch as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism,” all of whom “will have to be physically removed from society…if one is to maintain a libertarian order.”

Income from exploiting the labor of others (is also taxable). If reward was tied to actual productivity, rather than the ability to bargain for a reward for productivity (in other words, if wages captured the entire productivity contribution of workers), you would have a point about the social justice of taxing non-rent income. Sadly, much of the benefit from worker productivity is transferred to those who “own” the output of that labor without just compensation – mostly because there are barriers to level bargaining (too few employers, barriers to entry, outright racism, sexism and classism).

Income taxes serve the function of tapping these transfers and returning at least a portion of this revenue to those who should have been paid their fair share in the first place through government benefits. When these transfers are adequate, there is enough purchasing power in the economy to match productivity. When these transfers are not adequate – sometimes due to the failure to adequately collect worker productivity losses to the owners of capital – there is excess production compared to income.