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In my last response to Molyneux's video, I made a quasi-empirical argument for the fascist metaphysics applied to the German mind, and how that allowed for scientific, philosophical, and engineering innovations. Now, however, I wanted to make a defense on the hardest argument made by Cultured Thug in the debate. This being the fascist System supporting protectionism. Looking back at the original video, Cultured Thug brings up the example of local farmers growing corn, and how they would lose against Mexican farmers who will work for scant wages. Indeed, the fascist would believe that all contributing members of a society should be able to earn a living wage in the System. But in Stefan's mind, it is totally okay to screw over your own kinsman if it means getting a better deal for yourself. This really strikes at the core of what I perceived to be the difference between Molyneux and Cultured Thug: a sense of collectivism and improvement in oneself and the community versus individual self-interest. Now, just to move aside for a quick second, since this is a kind of stream of consciousness writing, I wanted to touch on the point of there being no ethical concern in the unbridled free market. I believe this is true, and I think Cultured Thug did a good job on providing tangible examples of this (processed food, pornography, etc.) Aside from this, the assertion by Molyneux that, because Cultured Thug had no experience running a business he could not make any judgments on capitalism, is such a classic informal fallacy. So Stefan, why can you make judgments on government when you have never held any kind of public office? Anyway, back to the matter at hand. In the present case, that is to say the case of the local corn farmer, Stefan said you should just do something else if you are that small business owner since you cannot compete with a multinational conglomerate's slave labor. Really, you can see this with a lot of the capitalist System. Cultured Thug brought up Walmart, for instance. Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. do the same things with hardware manufacturing. Now, how does this relate to the video above? Well, Greg Johnson makes the case that it is a sense of nationalism which is truly competitive. Here's why: The current state of this capitalist System we have right now, Johnson says, is simply one of taking advantage of cost cutting. This can be made in regard to Stefan saying there was no incentive for slave owners to ever invent labor saving devices because they were invested in slavery. Yes, and similarly, capitalists have zero incentive to do things like automate because they can cut costs by working people in poor countries to an inhumane extent. Nationalism, as Johnson correctly points out, will be the system that takes us to the stars. Imagining AnCapistan again, sure you would not have slavery, as it goes against NAP. But since there is scarce work (a limited number of jobs) and a surplus of people, the wages which would be offered in AnCapistan would be cruel. You don't like working for a dollar a week? Well, fuck off, nobody's forcing you to be here. This reinforces Cultured Thug's point of there being no ethical incentives in capitalism. Similarly, there is an economic argument to be made using a production possibilities curve (PPC): Now Stefan, asking for alternatives, said you could do any of the three following things to compete in a capitalist System:
Now I will show you why these are untenable within or without Stefan's capitalist System: For point one, this was essentially covered above. Dropping wages just means enslaving your fellow citizens. No fascist would allow a hard working kinsman to suffer. Regarding point two, actually it is a somewhat fair point. But with the idea of helping your fellow citizens in mind, why would you screw them over for a better deal? For point three, this is where Johnson's ideas really come into play with the PPC. Because no nationalist regulation of markets will just allow these corporations to keep kicking the can of wage slavery down the road, to keep with the old habit of cutting costs by hiring people for terrible wages and keeping as many of the profits as they can. Why, Stefan, if automation is so great in capitalism, is it not being done? Because of the PPC. Because a company would need to reorient their business towards an automated process. That means having to produce under your current PPC frontier while you expand it, or at least equalize it through automation. And this would require a huge upfront investment from the owners of the corporations as well as having to somehow keep their profit margins high producing less product for a certain period of time. Now, why would they do that when they can keep these high profit margins with the status quo? Clearly, this cannot happen organically in an unregulated market. Further, asking a local farmer to "just automate lol" is really quite rich. How is a local farmer who cannot compete in this uneven playing field supposed to take even more drastic pay cuts to reestablish their respective PPC under a new automated system? Now, I am not against automation, and I think Cultured Thug is somewhat, though I am not trying to put words in his mouth. I think you can have automation in a fascist system (Henry Ford, for instance), but that is an argument for another time. Anyway that is my long winded defense of Cultured Thug's arguments. I think he did a great job, better than I could have done on the spot. I just thought I could maybe add some insight.
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In the last response to Molyneux, I argued that AnCap leads to something very similar to the fascist State and that, looking from a Hoppean point of view, fascism can be seen as fitting well in the mold of a libertarian State. What I wanted to expand on now were some of the arguments once the fundamentals were squared away. The first was a proof of the benefits of the fascist metaphysics, education, and propaganda. The idea of becoming the over-man, meritocracy, and access to education in spite of class upbringing, as Cultured Thug said, led to National Socialist Germany leading the world in many fields. Even ones he did not mention: Medicine, physics, sheet metal stamping, military tactics, aeronautical and aerospace engineering, and electrical engineering. Really, the list goes on and on. Stefan, to not admit there was an impressive amount of innovation coming from a fascist State, says something to the effect of: "well Germans have a very high spatial IQ." Yes, I agree with that. Germans are a great race of brilliant minds. But, in the wrong system, even intelligent people can have their potential retarded. Cases in point: East Germany. The United States and Russia having to take these brilliant thinkers after the war. And guess who, besides Germans has the highest population of German descendants? This allows us to look at this hypothesis more scientifically. Since America, although not being AnCapistan, is more similar to Stefan's ideal System and has a large number of the same population, then you should see, accepting his hypothesis, similar innovations. But you did not, since we had to take these Germans after the war. So clearly a System can affect the culture and therefore the spirit of discovery and innovation. Not to say that America has not made any really important discoveries, just that the fascist System for some reason was able to nurture whatever makes genius better than the greed of raw capitalism. Not to mention the false dichotomy Stefan set up: If a fascist State does well, it is solely because of genetics. But if a capitalist State does well it is because capitalism is the best system there is. Part 3 to come. Molyneux can be kind of a dick sometimes when it comes to hearing new ideas. To prove this, I can already tell you exactly how he would respond to that first sentence: "Calling someone a dick is not an argument." Right, because telling someone, in other words, that your arguments are in bad faith is not an argument, I guess. Here he goes up against someone who I admire a lot and who is clearly more well versed in the justifications for his beliefs than Stefan is, Cultured Thug. The first thing I want to argue is the shortsightedness of the Anarcho-Capitalist position (AnCap). All of the derivations of beliefs are based upon the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP for the sake of space). Thus, if any conclusion regarding social interaction is derived from the NAP as the major premise, then it is moral in the AnCap mind. The State, the AnCap would say, is wrong because it is a violation of the NAP. Putting it syllogistically:
This is an AAA-1 syllogism, and is therefore formally valid supposing the major and minor premises are true. Indeed, most AnCap arguments can really be condensed back into such a form as I said before. The major premise being anything violating the NAP is immoral. Which is why the AnCap position has such an allure at first glance. But I will explain why this position fundamentally leads to contradiction with itself: Suppose that there existed a society of AnCaps. There was no State, because it is immoral. We respect private property rights here, because anything else would be a immoral. First, how would land be dived up? Is it through birthright? Conquest? What? Whatever it is, eventually someone will own large amounts of property. Because there is no State and because there will inevitably be violations of the NAP and because the average person desires security, there will be private police. Maybe you can see where I am getting with this. What is the natural conclusion of AnCapistan? It is this:
Wow, it sounds like the natural conclusion of AnCap is just a State by another name. Weird, it is almost as if Hans Hermann Hoppe said just that. AnCap is basically just feudalism really. And if taxation in AnCapistan is not immoral because it is just a contractual agreement, and because I must live somewhere, and because anywhere I would live I would most probably be subject to paying such fees, and because my not paying into something while also reaping the benefits of the community would violate NAP, then taxation is not a violation of the NAP. Part 2 to come. A bit about me: I used to be very politically active and I liked the alt-right. After some of the violence and doxxing that went on, though, I had to really reexamine if it was worth being honest about my opinions if it meant having my life and the lives of others around me destroyed. But to just extend an olive branch to people who might hate me for my opinions, know this:
I did not wake up one day and say "I think I'll adopt ideas that will make my life a living hell." It just kind of happened. I kept quiet about it, in fact I still am in my daily life quiet on matters of politics. I do not want to hurt anyone, I do not want to silence anyone, I just want to explain why I believe what I believe. I wish, really, I could just be cool with whatever I am told by the world to think. I wish I could like John Oliver and all of that. And I have tried to be the good leftist that would not appear to be a threat to the establishment. But I just cannot. So rather than starting from the presupposition that I am a bad person with bad intentions which justifies ruining my life, understand that I am open to other ideas. Just present them in a calm and reasonable way. |
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