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Some Notes on Rousseau

Got involved in a multi-party internet slap-fight, where the initiatory party was both condescending and rude from the outset.  She assumed superior intellect from the start and continued to be a total “B word” throughout.

However, she often referred to Hobbes and Rousseau as the underpinnings for her arguments that “should be very basic and well known” as if it is just plain ol’ obvious that our betters need to initiate violence, lest there be chaos (anarchy!).

Here are some notes in my quick research about one of her heroes, the French Radical Commie,  Jean Jacques Rousseau:

Locke, you have rights in a state of nature.  You may need protection of those rights.  His argument for governments.

Rousseau is different.  He thinks rights are GRANTED by government.  Humans give up ALL of their rights to the “General Will”.  It is above and beyond all of our aggregate wills.  The community will decide the laws that we will all live by.  The general laws of society.  When we give up our freedom to the general will, we are freer than we were before because we can now do what we want to do.

Does everyone agree on the same thing?

He believes that the legislator can get people to not worry about their individual interests, but can be molded into the general will.  Social engineering writ large.

Mistakes cancel each other out in his mind.

Even if you are outvoted…you were incorrect in desiring something counter to the general will.

“No” means yes.

This is the origin of totalitarianism.

It’s intellectual cover and justification for ANY law.

The lawmaker can change the nature of man.

Freedom comes from being bound to the general will.  Very Orwellian.

Continue reading “Some Notes on Rousseau”

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Why is the Capitalist Workplace so Authoritarian?

You are told that capital tyrannizes over labor. I do not deny that each one endeavors to draw the greatest possible advantage from his situation; but, in this sense, he realizes only that which is possible. Now, it is never more possible for capitalists to tyrannize over labor, than when they are scarce; for then it is they who make the law — it is they who regulate the rate of sale. Never is this tyranny more impossible to them, than when they are abundant; for, in that case, it is labor which has the command.

– Frederic Bastiat, from Capital and Interest

A persistent criticism of capitalism as an ideology is that it is authoritarian by nature, and can only lead to tyrannical bosses ruling over dependent staff who are forced – by fear of poverty and starvation – to remain under their command. Certainly, if we take our example from the workplaces of today, most of them are hierarchical, and many of them pretty authoritarian. In extreme cases staff even need to ask permission to go to the bathroom. So there appears to be some demonstration to the thesis.

In reality there is nothing inherent in the system of free enterprise that necessitates hierarchy, and many businesses have been successfully run with decentralised structures. Ricardo Semler is an example of an entrepreneur who had such massive success running his business on a non-hierarchical model that he turned to teaching other capitalists all over the world to do the same. Nonetheless, crappy bosses who like to throw their weight around the shop or office are ten a penny, and since no one likes working under a dictatorship we really have to question why more egalitarian models not more common.

A market will tend to use the skills and propensities of the labour force within that market, because it is costly and time consuming to inculcate staff with new habits. For example, if a workplace can afford to hire experienced staff rather than train newbies they will often do so (especially where there is a high minimum wage.) Companies will sooner offer a raise to hold on to an employee with a good work ethic than take a risk on someone new. The fact is, human qualities are less malleable than other factors of production, and so it’s usually going to be preferable to try and court the kind of employees you want around rather than try to foster whoever walks in the door into a new sort of character you like; especially considering people have their own proclivities and desires for their own personal character development, unlike machines. This is why most of the companies that run in cooperative or non-hierarchical structures begin with this idea as a primary value, and will tend to attract a certain kind of person who shares in the company vision and is competent to contribute to making it a reality. (Tim Kelley, an expert who currently helps companies adapt to what he calls “The New Paradigm in Business” states that as they do usually some number of employees flee, unable to adapt to the rights they are afforded, and responsibilities they must shoulder, under the changed system.) Continue reading “Why is the Capitalist Workplace so Authoritarian?”

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Taxation: Partial Slavery Is Still Slavery

By Steven Clyde

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on the Social Contract, for part 1 click here, for part 2 click here

“If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what he has contributed to it, your law, it is true, is no plunderer, but it does nothing for me who want your money – it does not promote equality.”[1]

Robert Nozick gave us a great underused parable titled “The Tale of the Slave” in his 1974 classic “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” which he describes the state of society as it is now but from the perspective of a slave in nine stages.

In the first stage, you have no rights and more importantly no property rights (the right to oneself being the most important). In each ascending stage, you are given more and more rights (such as time off, etc) and at some point are given the right to go get a job anywhere; a portion or your rights and 3/7’s of your wages are still retained by your master. And finally at the last two stages, you are given the right to vote but only to break a tie (but there has never been a tie), and 3/7’s of your wages are still retained by your master.[2] It’s interesting to note that, if you take all the marginal tax rates adjusted for inflation for a single person filing in 1974 and take a mean average of them, you get 39.24%,[3] slightly less than 3/7.

 

Though marginal tax rates don’t reflect what was actually paid in but rather what was paid in as a percentage on what a person makes above a certain income level,[4] could Nozick have been onto something that yet again mimicks U.S. society whether he intended to or not? Regardless, if individuals are able to use tax breaks or a loopholes to retain more of their wealth made through personal sacrifice then this is something to be applauded, though it is often demonized in the current political climate.

How can this then be that those who recognize that they never signed a direct contract to be deprived of the full value of their employer contracted wages are the ones at fault by refusing to be extorted? What rational claim could they possibly have to justify an action that would be forbidden had it been done by another private individual? Continue reading “Taxation: Partial Slavery Is Still Slavery”

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Bastiat’s “The Law” – Condensed

Freedom Juice – A glass a day keeps tyranny at bay

Edited by Freedom Juice

We hold from God the gift which, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot support itself. We have been entrusted with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting it. To that end, we have been provided with a wonderful collection of faculties, and plunged into the midst of a variety of elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements, that we acquire property.

Personality, liberty, property—this is man.

It is of these three things that it may be said, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation.

It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. It is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men have made laws. What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Every man has the right of defending his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?

If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine together, to extend, to organize a common force, to provide regularly for this defense.

Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or classes. For this perversion would be in contradiction to our premises. Who will dare say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren?

Man can only derive life and enjoyment from perpetual application of his faculties to objects, or from labor. This is the origin of property.

Continue reading “Bastiat’s “The Law” – Condensed”