Goods aren't valued by the amount of labor that is put into them.
Goods aren't 'valued' in my system at all,.....only in the paradigm you accept,.....
Crapitalism is soooo different than what I propose that the terms you are trying to fence my proposal in with are not applicable.
What is more valuable, the Saturday that you spend earning enough money to buy that bauble or the Saturday you spend with your friends and family?
Which system on the table, mine and yours, do you suppose will deliver more family time while still making consumer goods available?
The "Labor theory of Value" was proven false over a century ago.
I'm not trying to substitute one medium of exchange, dollars, for another, time.
I am trying to insure that I contribute enough to the collective that I can go to my grave knowing that I was not parasitical on the workers.
Crapitalism will never deliver that because the very system is to suck the life blood from those improvident enough to not use the system to their own advantage.
Highest commodity prices for the lowest wages, ya know?
and even some good thinkers like Kropotkin and Goldman, built their economic theories on the Labor Theory of Value.
I agree that they didn't have all the answers, but I think that my proposal corrects their mistakes.
They didn't have walmart to co-opt, they couldn't take over the distribution system that is Costco to use to benefit those that put the goods on the shelves rather than the banksters that have mind controlled us with schools and flashylight boxes.
The fact is we have to have workers, we don't have to have dollars.
The shift is in the paradigm, using the nomenclature of crapitalism will not deliver us from enslavement.
Remaining in the box that is wage slavery crapitalism will leave us just that, slaves.
Tinker with it how you please the fact is until we don't make tit for tat trades and contribute because it is the right thing to do and not because we fancy some bauble in the trade then we will always be slaves to those that have more.
So everyone would stop working and take the free stuff until it was gone.
Ok, lets grant that what you say did happen, what do we do now?
Do we sit around and cry in the beer we don't have because we don't have means to supply it, or do we set about creating a system that doesn't reward sloth?
My system floats because of the willingness of the people to do right, ie, to contribute to the collective whole because we love one another.
Imagine that,....not possible, you say?
Then you have had your mind warped by those that want to keep you on the plantation.
And you willingly accept it.
Voluntary doesn't mean much when we have you controlling the media.
Control of the media in a non-coercive environment would be in the hands of those that create the content and make the transmitter transmit.
What I propose is that once the workers that do that now are exposed to the facts as I present them, they would send out the message of their own free will.
What I refer to as control of the media is the workers taking control to get the message out to the other workers that it's time to stop being slaves.
Perhaps in the transition coercive control could be chosen as the direct action of an autonomous group, but not as you envision of a central dictator.
If my proposal is not freely chosen it doesn't float, I only ask for the means to get the message out.
So far, my friend at the tv station refuses on the grounds that the sheeple wouldn't rise up and join us in throwing off the chains of their bosses, anyway, and that the thugs collectively known as law enforcement officers would just silence us for a number of years.
So what happens to your society whenever everyone decides to not work a minute and still get free stuff?
I know generation y is making that a real possibility, but work is the curse of life, no work, no eat.
That will not change under my management system.
The vast majority of rational thinkers can extrapolate the consequences of their actions and will act in accordance with their own best interests.
Perhaps there will be those that refuse, and they will be outcasts just as they are today, with the caveat that they won't be protected by thugs that are jealous of anyone using force except them.
Will you stand up and defend the bum?
If yes, then it is on you. I am sure that each community will have their favored village idiot and dispense with the others.
I'd rather play video games all day and still get the free stuff.
You say that, but would you really play video games suicidally?
Would you push your pleasure button until all the food was gone?
I don't think you would, nor do I think that the workers around you would put up with it for long.
This is what the majority of people would do.
I think looking around says otherwise.
Absent the mind control that keeps the slaves enslaved they would not sit idle until the food ran out, just count the survivalists if you need a demographic.
1) the employer cleared the land,...
Or did he pay some wretch to do it for him?
Did he take the potatoes he didn't pay as wages to the harvesters to pay the planters?
Did he set it in motion from the potatoes his father exploited before him?
Perhaps he gained favor with a bankster and used debt to set it in motion.
If he put a large farm together on his own labor why would he hire more labor unless it was to exploit that labor for his own profit? That is crapitalism, after all, isn't it?
He deserves a portion of the produce because of this.
Indeed he does, he deserves one share of the work.
But that is not what crapitalism does, it does not divide the fruit of the labor equally among the workers, in fact, it rewards the non-producer much better than the worker, that is how the 1% get to be the 1%.
My friend works at fedex, she gets $13 an hour and has been there 8 years, she gets all giddy when the managers give out free swag, but she doesn't connect the fact that her not being compensated fully is what made that swag available.
Now let's add in the
$12.1 million NFL sponsorship,
$1 million per nascar race, et al,....
$90 to $95 million in total.
All of which came directly from not paying her the full market value to put boxes into vans.
Her putting boxes into vans netted the bosses far more than it netted her.
Crap if you ask me.
2) The employer bought all of the farm equipment so that the laborer can be productive.
He could have had it for free under my proposal because the plow maker recognizes the importance of the potato farmer having good tools.
Because of this risk the employer deserves a portion of the produce.
And that risk is eliminated by what I propose.
Only if I stay locked into the nomenclature that defines crapitalism do your assertions apply.
If the workers do the work, we don't have to carry the parasites that the banksters and their families are today.
They would have to find productive work and diminish the total work needed by what they contribute instead of ever increasing the burden with their insatiable appetite for profits.
Show me where there is exploitation.
I hope my fedex example serves here,...
But you won't understand it unless you first grasp what going on between the employer and employee.
I understand far better than you my friend,....It is you that are blinded by rhetoric, economics didn't exist as a 'science' until the anarchist started gaining a footing with the workers.
If you don't have enough money to buy bread then you starve, the "free market" didn't starve you.
If it wasn't the 'free' market that refused me bread until I was exploited by someone with more money than me, then who did?
Maybe if the CEO of walmart breaks into your house and steals your last loaf of bread then you can blame him
Why would he do that we he can gather willing slaves by convincing them that they are free?
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
-Johann von Goethe
Also if someone chooses to give you a loaf of bread then the "free market" just prevented your starvation. Everytime someone gives away something this is also part of the free market. Charity and gift-giving are just as much a part of the free market as bartering or monetary exchanges.
Well, at least there is that,....now if we could just get the blinders off the workers so that they realize that they can be free of parasites.
Slave-monkeys-get-revenge-on-cruel-owner.
This is the one I was looking for, the other one is just funny.
If we sound like freeborn to random people we meet, I understand the resistance.
Just callin' em as I sees 'em,....
Heroic effort by anarchoguitarist to respond to FreeBornAngel.
Is it that hard to see that governments are parasites that co-opted the market, pretending to be protectors of markets when in fact they have been destroyers of markets?
Read the Monkey Master fable above and ask this question again,.....
...but is also a means for encouraging the productive development of goods and services from those resources
I suggest that the shame of being a parasite would equally motivate people, it does a good job today.
how do we decide which goods and how many of those goods should be made in the first place?
I propose that a full shelf needs no further production of that good and an empty shelf requires more production.
Stocking levels will gel and production meet demand with no more ups and downs than today.
Probably less because scarcity drives up prices and the highest prices are the end goal of crapitalism.
What will you do for me in return?
So, unless cousin vinny gives you something you would deny him?
without any government or authority figure commanding or ordering it to make it so.
You become the authority figure in this analogy, absent your demand for something in return you refuse to give up your chair, thereby forcing vinny to contribute to your profits.
If vinny had been raised right by his momma he would have felt obligated to do something in return for your gift and not the other way around, by reversing this obligation as you do you have ended any 'free' market and established your refusal as the authority.
If your gift is bread then vinny can choose starvation or to meet your terms.
It is a natural and spontaneous act of society in order to produce and distribute the goods and services that society wants.
I agree but instead of requiring tit for tat trades, and thereby creating authority, one merely contributes to the warehouse and the warehouse worries about distribution from areas of high stockage to areas of low stockage.
If you can't give your production away perhaps you should look at producing something else,....
People are not indoctrinated into the use of money and capitalist markets;
Seriously? How are we not bombarded from birth that we must give some tit if we want some tats?
TNSTAAFL, after all,....
they are merely indoctrinated into thinking that governments are the good guys protecting those things
Merely?
The Most Dangerous Superstition,....Larken Rose.encouraged to fear the alleged chaos that would exist without governments keeping order.
Absolutely, not many people are suicidal, they will continue to produce goods under my management system, I guarantee.
And presented with a knowing choice, would choose mine as rewarding them better than crapitalism ever could.
people still have to be educated and prepared for such a revolution,
Not unless we get control of the pathways into their minds, ie, the media,....
the process of doing that will cause small changes to occur
I concur,...
resulting not in revolution, but the devolution of government as it withers away, resisted, ignored, and bypassed by people who no longer accept the legitimacy of government.
The most likely scenario,....
Ending the legitimacy of government in people's minds seems to me to be the key to getting rid of government and ushering in an anarchist society.
Absolutely, it is just a matter of how, spectacle today, or death by ignoring over time,....
We cannot possibly hope to openly fight governments unless we can match them in manpower, weapons, and technology.
We will not win on the battlefield, death is the domain of evil and we are bringing light.
How we reach the battlefield of the mind is the question, spectacle is faster, but education can work.
it will only be after governments have been greatly weakened in legitimacy and power,
If those kids in Baltimore could be shown that we don't have to have dollars, but we do have to do the work we could capitalize on the moment, but I can't go and nobody but me is advocating anything but crapitalism that I have seen.
I mean, I'm sure that others have followed the non-aggression principle as far down the path as I have, but I just haven't been introduced to them.
Hello Mac,
The sad thing is that people like Freeborn could be allies if they truly believed in a voluntary society.
Please point to where I have advocated anything but a voluntary society?
Perhaps I have advocated seizing the pathways into the minds of the people, but the people will still have to freely choose to follow my advice.
Mine is not a top down dictatorship, even one as small as the local farmer ordering around the local drunk.
I would rather be part of a community where I could own property and buy and sell my labor.
And I would rather be part of a community that recognizes my work as a gift deserving of their own.
As long as his community doesn't attack us or plunder our resources then the two communities could exist side by side.
I don't see your refusal to associate with us as compatable.
It is you that sets yourself up as the authority over what is yours, we give freely as a matter of pride.
Your rules would require you to exploit our generosity for your own benefit, you've said as much.
You would take from our shelves and contribute nothing.
And because it is better to carry a bum than to enslave him we, in the majority, would let you until your consumption threatened one of us enough to surgically remove you as a cancerous cell.
No, your insistence that we trade at a disadvantage, ie, profits to you at the expense of our labor, would not allow us to live side by side.
I am convinced that with just the leisure available under my system I would have no problems converting your slaves.
Actually in a voluntary society there may be 100 different communities, each one trying their own type of economic system.
Right, and how is that any different than the world today, the US exploits the labor costs of the poor and your 100 communities would do the same.
Dollars are an accounting trick that exploit those without them to the benefit of those that create them from nothing and trade them to us at face value for our lives.
Crapitalism is that system's dogma.
Just look to the religiously blind adherence to it.
That's the beauty of freedom is that society doesn't have to fit any one model. Individuals are free to chose what kind of lifestyle they want to live as long as they don't force others.
Absolutely, if you want to work less, consume less, if you want every bell and whistle then work more, or invent the personal computer,....nobody under my system is going to deny Steve Jobs whatever level of consumption makes his tummy tingle,...he can't take it with him, after all.
The problem with many leftists is that all of society has to fit their mold.
Said the 'free market' crapitalist that refuses all but his own paradigm.
Its pretty sad that leftists can't even tolerate the existence of one different system or any people who have different ideas.
By leftist I am going to assume that you mean authoritarians such as yourself, and not me, I can't repeat that my proposal will have to be voluntarily emplaced any more emphatically than I already have.
It reveals the totalitarian and utopian tendencies of their ideology.
UH HUM,.....ditto,....

"The whole world must accept it for it to work."
Once the idea is fully understood, it won't be a problem finding converts.
I wouldn't care if 99% of the world decided to live in some sort of co-op or commune. Just as long as I'm free to associate with the 1% of like-minded individuals whether it be 100 people or just 10.
Reverse the situation, do you think you could sell crapitalism to someone that only has to produce enough for himself when you are telling him that he has to produce enough to support the bosses and their wives' lavish spending?
That he has to produce one for him and three for the stockholders?
I hope you stay on the voluntaryist path, AG, you will come to see that I am right, just as I did.
I, too, was once a crapitalist, it was the only option presented to me and it was presented with misnamed undesirable opposites to choose from.
Only by following the non-aggression principle was I able to see my way to true freedom.
You will, too.