Unspoken assumptions of all socialistic criticism of capitalism, as well as of American court decisions since the New Deal, are that businesses in some sense are an arm of the government, that doing business is a privilege that we need not allow except under certain conditions, and that the public has a right to be served by businesses in certain ways that impose duties on them that we do not impose on other individuals in private association. All of the assumptions are wrong and even self-contradictory. Business is regarded as a privilege because the public “allows” businessmen to make a living and profit. On the other hand, it is an additional unspoken assumption that everyone has a right to a living or a right to the services offered by businesses, which means that the activities which businesses can carry out with our permission are nevertheless things they owe to us. We need both the jobs offered and the services rendered by businesses, therefore we have a right to them. It is a paradoxical right, however, to make someone owe us something that they are under no obligation to offer--since, so far, no one is compelled to go into business. It is also a paradoxical requirement to impose conditions on services offered to us that actually damage the ability of people to offer them well. So we act as though they owe us services that we actually prevent them from doing well.

There is a lurking sterile, negative resentment in all this, that, instead of being grateful for the enterprise that provides abundance and opportunity hitherto unknown in human history, we dislike the persons and motives of those who do the real driving work in the system. By supplying us good things, we think they should be doing it for us instead of for themselves, even while we are busy doing things against them and (we think) for ourselves that inevitably damage their living and their ability to supply us good things. This is the basic craziness of socialist thinking, but, despite the fall of communism and decades of failure of socialist nostrums, it is still strongly with us. What it inevitably leads to is faith in government. If businessmen get disgusted with hassles and recriminations against them, they can just quit or move elsewhere, leaving us with nothing. But it does leave us with government, and presumably government can be compelled to do anything or provide us with whatever we want or need--and it is certainly the obligation of government to do that as it was never the obligation of any businessman. We might even think that was the trouble with businesses: they should have been like government, responding to our needs and rights, but they weren’t. Now we can get government to provide all good things in a disinterested and fair way.

Unfortunately, governments existed long before capitalistic business, and governments even existed that believed their purpose was disinterested benevolence for the needs of the people (as in Confucianism or with certain Christian rulers); but those governments never produced the wealth and opportunity that capitalism did, and they all maintained a hierarchy based on the difference between the patronage of the rulers and the vassalage of the ruled. Those forms were reproduced in the neo-feudalism of the Soviet Union; and they are reproduced in our own society whenever anyone from the IRS, the DEA, or social services (or many other government boards, bureaus, and agencies) shows up to remind people of their civil duty, to punish them for doing something in harmless privacy that the government disapproves of, or to minister to their helpless dependency on the benevolence of society. The paternalism of distant authoritarian benevolence becomes the maternalism of smothering, intrusive, petty dictatorship, “for your own good.” This is the deeply reactionary nature of socialism: it looks for a society of archaic peonage and dependence. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions (as Marx himself would have said), but the use of any socialistic assumptions merely produces different degrees of dependence, contradiction, and vassalage.

A basic error in all socialist resentment is that businessmen are always thought of as “them” and not “us.” We need “them” for jobs because we never think of “us” as providing our own livelihood. That is the fatal conceit, for it starts us at a disadvantage of dependency already; and if we are to be helplessly dependent on something, it may as well be benevolent government as profit seeking businesses. The key to capitalism, however, is that business is not “them.” “Opportunity” does not mean that we can go to “them” to get what we need. “Opportunity” means that we take care of ourselves and that business is just a set of private, free transactions between individuals that have nothing to do with government and that are governed by the same moral rules as any other transactions of private association. This is the principle of Freedom of Association applied to business as much as to private relationships. Capitalism therefore does not mean benevolent government, just government that gets out of the way....but is ready to be called in against force or fraud in business dealings as in any other dealings between persons. Government exists to secure the moral enabling conditions of the free market--the rights of person, property, and contract. Limiting the freedom of business transactions in arbitrary or moralistic ways inevitably gives rise to a “black market” because people continue to trade in ways that they regard as innocent and inoffensive, or at least that they regard as providing things they want, even if the law forbids it.

Business is not “them” most importantly because anyone can start a business. All one needs is a bit of capital. That can be gotten in any number of ways. From savings, from family, from friends, from banks, from investors, etc. Even groups that historically couldn’t get loans because of discrimination, especially Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants in America, were able to start businesses by pooling their small resources into revolving credit associations that could finance businesses one at a time. The result of socialist hostility to business, however, loading it with regulations, licenses, taxes, etc., is to make it increasingly difficult for just anyone to start or run businesses. The fruit of hostility towards “them” is to actually make us more dependent on “them” than ever before. This begins the slide back into feudalism.

http://www.friesian.com/capit-2.htm#business

[QUOTE=Socialism Sucks]Unspoken assumptions of all socialistic criticism of capitalism, as well as of American court decisions since the New Deal, are that businesses in some sense are an arm of the government, that doing business is a privilege that we need not allow except under certain conditions, and that the public has a right to be served by businesses in certain ways that impose duties on them that we do not impose on other individuals in private association. All of the assumptions are wrong and even self-contradictory. Business is regarded as a privilege because the public “allows” businessmen to make a living and profit. On the other hand, it is an additional unspoken assumption that everyone has a right to a living or a right to the services offered by businesses, which means that the activities which businesses can carry out with our permission are nevertheless things they owe to us. We need both the jobs offered and the services rendered by businesses, therefore we have a right to them. It is a paradoxical right, however, to make someone owe us something that they are under no obligation to offer--since, so far, no one is compelled to go into business. It is also a paradoxical requirement to impose conditions on services offered to us that actually damage the ability of people to offer them well. So we act as though they owe us services that we actually prevent them from doing well.

There is a lurking sterile, negative resentment in all this, that, instead of being grateful for the enterprise that provides abundance and opportunity hitherto unknown in human history, we dislike the persons and motives of those who do the real driving work in the system. By supplying us good things, we think they should be doing it for us instead of for themselves, even while we are busy doing things against them and (we think) for ourselves that inevitably damage their living and their ability to supply us good things. This is the basic craziness of socialist thinking, but, despite the fall of communism and decades of failure of socialist nostrums, it is still strongly with us. What it inevitably leads to is faith in government. If businessmen get disgusted with hassles and recriminations against them, they can just quit or move elsewhere, leaving us with nothing. But it does leave us with government, and presumably government can be compelled to do anything or provide us with whatever we want or need--and it is certainly the obligation of government to do that as it was never the obligation of any businessman. We might even think that was the trouble with businesses: they should have been like government, responding to our needs and rights, but they weren’t. Now we can get government to provide all good things in a disinterested and fair way.

Unfortunately, governments existed long before capitalistic business, and governments even existed that believed their purpose was disinterested benevolence for the needs of the people (as in Confucianism or with certain Christian rulers); but those governments never produced the wealth and opportunity that capitalism did, and they all maintained a hierarchy based on the difference between the patronage of the rulers and the vassalage of the ruled. Those forms were reproduced in the neo-feudalism of the Soviet Union; and they are reproduced in our own society whenever anyone from the IRS, the DEA, or social services (or many other government boards, bureaus, and agencies) shows up to remind people of their civil duty, to punish them for doing something in harmless privacy that the government disapproves of, or to minister to their helpless dependency on the benevolence of society. The paternalism of distant authoritarian benevolence becomes the maternalism of smothering, intrusive, petty dictatorship, “for your own good.” This is the deeply reactionary nature of socialism: it looks for a society of archaic peonage and dependence. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions (as Marx himself would have said), but the use of any socialistic assumptions merely produces different degrees of dependence, contradiction, and vassalage.

A basic error in all socialist resentment is that businessmen are always thought of as “them” and not “us.” We need “them” for jobs because we never think of “us” as providing our own livelihood. That is the fatal conceit, for it starts us at a disadvantage of dependency already; and if we are to be helplessly dependent on something, it may as well be benevolent government as profit seeking businesses. The key to capitalism, however, is that business is not “them.” “Opportunity” does not mean that we can go to “them” to get what we need. “Opportunity” means that we take care of ourselves and that business is just a set of private, free transactions between individuals that have nothing to do with government and that are governed by the same moral rules as any other transactions of private association. This is the principle of Freedom of Association applied to business as much as to private relationships. Capitalism therefore does not mean benevolent government, just government that gets out of the way....but is ready to be called in against force or fraud in business dealings as in any other dealings between persons. Government exists to secure the moral enabling conditions of the free market--the rights of person, property, and contract. Limiting the freedom of business transactions in arbitrary or moralistic ways inevitably gives rise to a “black market” because people continue to trade in ways that they regard as innocent and inoffensive, or at least that they regard as providing things they want, even if the law forbids it.

Business is not “them” most importantly because anyone can start a business. All one needs is a bit of capital. That can be gotten in any number of ways. From savings, from family, from friends, from banks, from investors, etc. Even groups that historically couldn’t get loans because of discrimination, especially Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants in America, were able to start businesses by pooling their small resources into revolving credit associations that could finance businesses one at a time. The result of socialist hostility to business, however, loading it with regulations, licenses, taxes, etc., is to make it increasingly difficult for just anyone to start or run businesses. The fruit of hostility towards “them” is to actually make us more dependent on “them” than ever before. This begins the slide back into feudalism.

http://www.friesian.com/capit-2.htm#business

www.friesian.com

[QUOTE=Socialism Sucks]www.friesian.com

However you spell it, be careful, it’ll fry your brain and you’ll become an obsessive-compulsive proponent of outdated sixties claptrap.

[QUOTE=Unregisteredgfdig]However you spell it, be careful, it’ll fry your brain and you’ll become an obsessive-compulsive proponent of outdated sixties claptrap.

Hey! You better not criticize us, or I’ll BURY you in old copies of the Dan Smoot Report!!

[QUOTE=Unregisteredgfdig]However you spell it, be careful, it’ll fry your brain and you’ll become an obsessive-compulsive proponent of outdated sixties claptrap.

Typical ignorance from those who claim intellectual superiority yet never show it.

[QUOTE=Socialism Sucks]Unspoken assumptions of all socialistic criticism of capitalism, as well as of American court decisions since the New Deal, are that businesses in some sense are an arm of the government, that doing business is a privilege that we need not allow except under certain conditions, and that the public has a right to be served by businesses in certain ways that impose duties on them that we do not impose on other individuals in private association. dependence, contradiction, and vassalage.
http://www.friesian.com/capit-2.htm#business

This should be compulsory reading for all of our elected officials - and, especially, the liberal democrats who love nothing better than bashing “big business”.

Good post. Visit the website.

[QUOTE=John Yuma]Good post. Visit the website.

Thanks for your approval. Many people I come into contact with, do not have the IQ to understand this article, but you don’t need to be Albert Einstein to understand it. If you have to take 10 minutes to read it, do it. If you like it, there are other good writings on this website. The political stuff is under political economy. If you like it read the opening page to get a feel of what this page is. Dr. Ross is a Libertarian from California who teaches philosophy.

[QUOTE=Socialism Sucks]Thanks for your approval. Many people I come into contact with, do not have the IQ to understand this article.

There’s nothing like a true believer, drunk from the exhilaration of having finally read a book ... or in this case, a WHOLE article, looking down on lowly, plain, uninformed sheep-people. Get a life.

[QUOTE=Unregistereddfdig]There’s nothing like a true believer, drunk from the exhilaration of having finally read a book ... or in this case, a WHOLE article, looking down on lowly, plain, uninformed sheep-people. Get a life.

If you are either so uninformed or so uninterested in this subject, then you truly are one of the “lowly, plain, uninformed sheel-people” God help this country if it is populated by your ilk.

[QUOTE=kdlfkfml]If you are either so uninformed or so uninterested in this subject, then you truly are one of the “lowly, plain, uninformed sheel-people.” God help this country if it is populated by your ilk.

Look, if you think single-issue sloganeering is gonna save the world, fine, have fun. But why look down—with a bold sneer—on the great unwashed who don’t think your way? Those regular “ilk” are the ones who work the docks and computer terminals, fight the wars, raise the kids, and make this life damn interesting and worthwhile. They’re part of a vast agora—marketplace—of ideas and colors and personalities and religions and risks and benefits that make up this world, and they’ve stumbled through the centuries pretty well.

[QUOTE=Unregistereddfdig]There’s nothing like a true believer, drunk from the exhilaration of having finally read a book ... or in this case, a WHOLE article, looking down on lowly, plain, uninformed sheep-people. Get a life.

Weak. No facts, just insults. “Get a life”? Back under your rock…

[QUOTE=kdlfkfml]If you are either so uninformed or so uninterested in this subject, then you truly are one of the “lowly, plain, uninformed sheel-people” God help this country if it is populated by your ilk.

It is projection! You see the arrogance in these people because they are stupid! It is amazing that people today naturally gravitate to the side of being lazy and ignorant. The reason is socialist thinking which includes hegelian philosophy, post modernism hogwash, and the inability to work since all socialist are LAZY!

[QUOTE=Socialism Sucks]It is projection! You see the arrogance in these people because they are stupid! It is amazing that people today naturally gravitate to the side of being lazy and ignorant. The reason is socialist thinking which includes hegelian philosophy, post modernism hogwash, and the inability to work since all socialist are LAZY!

At this point, your honor, I rest my case.

[QUOTE="Socialism Sucks” Sucks]At this point, your honor, I rest my case.

You have no case. You have offered no information, no justification, no facts. The court is laughing at you. If you were defending a criminal, he would get lethal injection.

[QUOTE="Socialism Sucks” Sucks]At this point, your honor, I rest my case.

You see. No effort to refute the points made in the essay or by me. Nothing, but ad hominem. This person is exactly what I am talking about. They are contentious, but lazy and stupid. Enlightenment is a dirty word to these type of lazy socialists. They want the government to take care of them, which means, those who are doing all of the work, have to pay for those who wish not to do work. These socialist people hate prosperity and they hate honest hard work. It is a problem that so many liberal minded people have not validated their assumptions. If they can ask themselves, “Is what I say true,” then answer it with productive research into the problem, then they might one day come to the realization that it is not complex or difficult, but really simple. The thing is, if you operate off of founded principles, as those who wrote our constitution, then you cannot go wrong, because principles do not change with time. Ask any liberal what their principles of good government are, and they cannot tell you anything. They don’t know what principles they operate on. They just use blind faith that what they espouse is right, only because they believe it is right, so it MUST be right!