28
Nov
2017
Contra Keynes
Krugman has been writing nonstop on tax policy, so Tom and I did an evergreen: We just tackled Keynesianism per se in this episode. Fun for the whole fami– OK fun for just you.
Krugman has been writing nonstop on tax policy, so Tom and I did an evergreen: We just tackled Keynesianism per se in this episode. Fun for the whole fami– OK fun for just you.
If only libertarians didn’t share Keynes’ obsession with full employment. We tried e-mailing a “libertarian” about slavery and got a link to an article claiming that, “This means that more people will go without a
job as their loss in wages and jobs is transferred to these others: the favored cooperative farmers.”
http://rsei.rau.ro/images/V1N2/Articol_1.pdf
The article does not appear to have been written with slavery in mind, but it was linked to us with slavery in mind. Certainly, if the results of abolitionist efforts was increased employment of free workers and reduced employment of slave laborers, that would be a success.
It’s ridiculous to think that a freed slave would necessarily end up unemployed. By holding someone captive, the slaveholder is preventing the slave from finding other employment or pursuing other interests. And if some of them want to be unemployed, that should really their choice to make. Slaves effectively receive negative wages once the costs of captivity and beatings are factored in, so good riddance if they lose those negative wages.
So obviously I’m not the only one who recognizes your “anti-slavery” campaign as being a cover for things like minimum wage.
Here’s something strange though… we have documented open air slave markets happening right now in Libya. I’m not talking about some rubbery definition of “slavery” but this is the real deal: African migrants are being kidnapped, sold and forced into labour by Muslim slave traders. This is a direct consequence of the policies of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Yet despite this overt and well documented example of slavery, I don’t hear anything from the “Progressive” movement about this. You would think this is more significant than wailing about King Leopold of Belgium who died more than 100 years ago… but no, apparently failed “Progressive” policies and Muslim slave traders must not be spoken about.
Come to think of it, the sex slaves used by Daesh don’t seem to attract the same campaigning efforts either… why is that though? Another failed Obama policy… better to keep quiet, huh? Stick to blaming the libertarians, much more politically correct that way.
No, it’s the other way around, […] Libertarian opposition to minimum wage is a cover for supporting slavery. Libertarians are not content with simply legalizing low wage jobs. Libertarians apparently oppose all minimum wages, including the individual minimum wages people want to set for themselves, to be enforced by leaving any employer who does not pay them sufficiently. In order to eliminate even individual minimum wage, libertarians are apparently prepared to support locking people up at their “jobs”, as well as beating people who attempt to leave their employers. both of which were documented in the examples we gave to the person who linked the article complaining about job loss.
Rubber slavery under King Leopold killed millions. And it is well documented. Women were kidnapped in order to force the men to gather rubber. Villages were burned for resisting. People were killed and their hands taken as trophies when rubber quotas weren’t met. For you to say that isn’t real slavery just proves that libertarian depravity truly knows no limits.
We’ve been trying to focus on historical example of slavery due to the actions of libertarians like Dan and Darien, who love slavery so much that they are prepared to counterboycott abolitionist efforts in order to support slavery. Since historical slavery is historical, there is not much that the likes of Dan and Darien can do to aggravate the issue further, unless they acquire a time machine. However, if you would like, I am sure it would be easy to find examples of historical Muslim slavery.
And neither of us likes Obama or Hilary. That is a distraction you are using to try to divert attention away from your love of slavery.
“Rubber slavery under King Leopold killed millions. … People were killed and their hands taken as trophies when rubber quotas weren’t met.”
So … quotas imposed by the government?
“… to try to divert attention away from your love of slavery.”
You don’t actually believe this about libertarians (No, you don’t).
I believe consistent Marxists are willing to commit mass murder in order to stop what they believe to be the source of most of the world’s misery (freedom of exchange), but I don’t accuse them of *loving* mass murder.
Sheesh.
King Leopold ruled the Congo as his private property from 1885 until 1908. It was not until 1908 that the Belgian government took over from him. The Belgian government also enslaved the populace, but at least they were less brutal than King Leopold was.
What’s your point? That there is a difference between being willing to enslave people in order to abolish any form whatsoever of a minimum wage, even one enforced by the employee simply walking away, and loving slavery? That libertarians would be happy if people would agree to sub-zero wages of their own accord, but are simply willing to enslave those who will not comply?
Yes, I do believe that libertarians love slavery. The threats from Dan and Darien, Tel’s constant accusations that abolitionists are by definition supporting minimum wage (which most of the world defines as the illegalization of low wage jobs, not simply the opposition to people being forced to work for low or sub-zero wages against their will)… so many libertarians who deliberately lie by saying that obvious captives, ones who are chained or locked in or beaten for running away, are there voluntarily, the glorification of the car industry and others that were built on slavery… what conclusion could be reached other than that libertarians must love slavery?
Many pacifists and abolitionists have been socialists. The great anti-slavery campaigner E.D. Morel left the (classical) liberal movement because of Morel’s opposition to World War I (apparently the liberals were pro-war) and eventually became a socialist. John Tully, a modern socialist, takes pride in the abolitionist efforts of many socialists.
Okay. I will say this in public because you asked me to. You shouldn’t waste so much of your time arguing with these trolls who are pretending to be Libertarians. From what you’ve told me, you have given them plenty of examples of how government makes slavery worse. If they were real Libertarians, they would oppose both slavery and excessive government. So they would be glad to hear that they were right about too much government being bad. But instead they keep trolling you and claiming that slavery is not slavery. So they are not real Libertarians. If you looked around more, you could probably find real Libertarians who would help.
This is how abolitionists explain why certain types of spending are bad.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/slavery/0/steps/24398
Libertarian insistence on portraying the rich simply as taxpayer victims, regardless of whether or not specific rich people are receiving these sorts of subsidies, serves the purpose of creating the propaganda that helps keep these slavery-causing policies in place.
And there is also this.
The U.S. subsidies to the rich have their origin in precisely the anti-slavery, protectionist concerns you’re expressing.
They’re misguided policies, to be sure. But regulators know that the more farmers produce, the lower the price that consumers will pay.
So, in order to protect individual farmers from competition with one another in the U.S., or from competition with foreign farmers, people like you and your friends from Haiti, West Africa, et al support these protectionist policies.
The rich are logically and necessarily going to be the beneficiaries of the anti-business policies you believe in because protecting businesses and workers from, respectively, other businesses and workers, requires the suppression of strategies that smaller businesses use to underbid those who currently have a higher market share.
Now, you didn’t say you supported U.S. subsidies, but you did mention little farmers being priced out of the market, as if “the little farmers” were the thing that needed preserving; like how Walmart is poo-pooed for putting mom-and-pop-stores out of business. That’s the kind of thinking that gets these bad policies passed.
[Aside: Were the rice farmers being priced out by a legitimately more efficient U.S. rice firm, those poor farmers would still have to stop producing rice – which begs the question, why don’t they grow different crops or offer their [presumably] other wise unskilled labor to foreign outsourcers in, say, a factory? Could it be that their own countries, motivated by protectionist sentiments of their own, are prohibiting foreign companies from “taking Haitian jobs”?]
A couple good resources on bad farm policies from a libertarian perspective:
Jonesin’ for a Soda
https://mises.org/library/jonesin-soda
[Time stamped]
The Great Depression, World War II, and American Prosperity – Part 1 [Lecture 5] by Thomas Woods
[www]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW5yvuyhVyI#t=26m09s
To be clear, abolitionists, or at least abolitionists who have done their research, oppose these rice subsidies. The abolitionists in Haiti and West Africa were quite clear that the United States should “end the subsidies on rice.” As in, no more subsidies to rich American farmers. Subsidies bad.
The soda article you linked claims that “With free competition, companies best able to satisfy consumer demand are the ones that expand production and stay in business; the consumer is king.”
We propose a correction: Americans and other first world consumers are king. The companies that stay in business are the ones that satisfy the demands of Americans and other firstworlders. The demands of thirdworlders count for far less, and the demands of slaves count for less than nothing. For example, many of the people who grow cacao have never even tasted chocolate.
Libertarian use of the word efficient is utterly confusing, by the way. One moment, libertarians are declaring that whatever product has the cheapest price must be the most efficient, regardless of what was done to make it cheap, the next, they are saying that protectionist policies are protecting inefficient producers, even though those inefficient producers are presumably able to offer cheaper prices thanks to the protectionist policies. Perhaps this is an internal dispute between different libertarians. A non-libertarian writer defines efficiency as greatest output per unit of input, but this is still confusing. Still, I suppose it’s good that at least one libertarian has something to say about “corporate welfare”, even if they don’t mention slavery and only seem to care about the wellbeing of consumers rich enough to afford soda.
The often do try to seek other employment, which is precisely the problem. Someone who successfully self-employed, or employed by a trusted member of their home village, is less vulnerable to slavery than someone who is desperately looking for a job. A self-employed person might still be captured by brute force. But it is cheaper and less risky for an enslaver to trick people into slavery. They offer good pay, good working conditions, etc., but these are lies. Once the employee arrives at the job site, the trap closes. Sometimes when the enslavers want children, they promise the parents that the child will receive a good education.
A successfully self-employed person (or someone employed by a trusted member of their home village) has less reason to be tricked by a recruiter’s false promises. Someone on the verge of starvation is more likely to take risks that may land them into slavery. Even if they are lucky enough to find an employer who does not enslave them, the situation may still be substantially worse than successful self-employment. There are cases that do not meet the definition of slavery, where the employees are beaten or even raped but put up with it so they can feed their families. Presumably, if self-employment were a viable option, they would probably not tolerate being beaten or raped.
Slavery tends to be a big problem in third world countries that have a high international debt load. It’s likely that in order to get their citizens to pay off these debts, the governments of these countries have tax regimes that somehow force people to grow cash crops or make other things for export instead of just being able to grow enough to feed themselves and their neighbors and not needing to worry about whether they can sell abroad. Without some form of violence or threat of violence, it seems unlikely that even bad rice farmers would be unable to at least feed themselves, except in the case of crop failure, even if they failed to be able to sell excess at competitive prices. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find enough information about the taxation systems of these countries to be sure of this theory. Regardless, there is a correlation between a high international debt load and slavery in that country. Another possible explanation might be policies that the IMF, World Bank, and other organizations demand high debt countries adopt, regardless of the wishes of the citizens of those countries.
Haiti is a formal slave colony of France. They gained their independence through an exceptionally bloody rebellion. In 1825, with French warships at ready near the Haitian capital, a French emissary demanded that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs to France for its independence, the alternative clearly being invasion and re-enslavement. This was about 5 times Haiti’s annual export earnings at the time. It was not until 122 years later, in 1947, that Haiti was able to pay off both the original debt and all the interest payments from the loans they had taken to meet the deadlines. That’s 122 years when, because of this debt, Haiti was forced to export substantially more than they were importing. Not really protectionist, except in the sense of protection from enslavement by the French.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-independence-debt-reparations-for-slavery-and-colonialism-and-international-aid/5334619
(We aren’t endorsing every single opinion expressed in that link, but it contains factual information about Haiti’s debt to France.)
The video doesn’t seem to say anything about slavery, although there was slavery in the United States during the Great Depression. “Convict leasing”, for incredibly trivial offenses (including the offense of leaving an employer), without due process, plus the threat of convict leasing effectively forced a lot of people to sign contracts basically agreeing to milder forms of slavery.
http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/
So, apparently, a number of Haitian farmers face the threat of eviction by illegitimate landowners if they fail to earn enough money (or whatever) to pay rent. Presumably, if not faced with the threat of violent eviction, they would not need money so much and could simply continue to grow food to feed themselves and their neighbors even if cash prices for their crops were low.
Aha.
So, from this, it seems probable that US rice subsidies are making it harder for the Haitians who actually work the land to convince their foreign landlords not to give that land to foreign corporations who will make clothing and other products desired by foreigners, rather than food for the locals.
Slavery in the United States during the Great Depression:
Enslaving people, stealing their land and chopping off their hands violates the NAP. We have that one covered.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/5066625414/in/dateposted-public/
Really? If you’re entirely sure about about that, then please look at this article.
https://mises.org/library/paid-enough-buy-product
It claims that, “The result was twofold: his [Henry Ford’s] workers were able to be paid more than workers in other industries, and individuals across the economy were able to purchase high-quality automobiles.”
Rubber slaves in Henry Ford’s supply chain, based on those photos, clearly were not “paid more than workers in other industries”, nor were they “able to purchase high-quality automobiles”.
Libertarians ought to fix these propaganda pieces which glorify profits obtained by slavery, or, better yet, stop publishing them to begin with.
So if you are entirely sure that the actions taken against the Congolese to force them to gather rubber “violates the NAP” (whatever that means), it would be helpful if you could kindly tell William L. Anderson as much and request that he fix his article, and, should he decline to do so, debunk him in public, one libertarian to another.
And, while you are at it, if you could kindly explain to Tel, one libertarian to another, that these actions taken in the Congo did indeed amount to real slavery, and that the campaign against it was not “a cover for things like minimum wage” (as most people define minimum wage), that would be great too.
“violates the NAP” (whatever that means)
Or if you want to explain to us what violates this NAP of yours, perhaps you could explain what detail about King Leopold’s reign of the Congo you noticed which lead you to the conclusion that what happened to the Congolese which counted as slavery (by the incredibly narrow libertarian definition of slavery) and violated “the NAP” – a detail which, presumably, Tel missed, leading him to the conclusion that what happened to the Congolese under King Leopold was not slavery and presumably did not violate any NAP? Or was it the other way around? Did Tel notice something about the situation which proved it was not slavery, by the incredibly narrow libertarian definition of the word slavery, and did not violate any NAP, a detail which you missed?
Or you could explain to us why these are not slavery (from the libertarian perspective).
The response we got when we e-mailed these examples to a libertarian was:
So, if you could kindly explain why what happened to the Congolese under King Leopold was slavery and violated “the NAP” from the libertarian perspective (at least, your version of it, if not Tel’s), but why what is happening to these tomato workers is not slavery and presumably does not violate “the NAP”, from the libertarian perspective, it might shed some light on the situation.
If you look above you can see that Tel trolled him. Tel accused Anonymous of only campaigning against slavery as a cover for minimum wage. Tel also implied that what happened in the Congo was not real slavery. So a lot of Libertarians or pretend Libertarians have trolled Anonymous and mutual friend of ours like this. So he is very confused and has no idea what the Non Aggression Principle is. And it probably will not be possible to explain without trying to reverse the effects of all the trolling.
Additionally, in a recent article, Bob Murphy claimed that “a uniform head tax that isn’t tied to behavior” does not distort activity very much, is “more efficient” (for some mysterious definition of efficient) than other systems of taxation and imposes “much less drag” compared to other systems of taxation. All this sounds a lot like an endorsement (at least in the relative sense if not the absolute sense).
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/carbon-tax-opposite-tax-reform/
In the Belgian Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Uganda, Papua New Guinea, and Togoland, head taxes have been used by forced labor regimes. So, if you could kindly render your opinion about whether these systems of taxation “violate the NAP” more or less (relatively speaking) than other systems of taxation:
Select excerpts from a report by Dr. Raingeard, as printed on pages 121-128 of Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts by Jules Marchal.
“When a native, remarkably enough, managed to resist the threats and blows of the merchants, I have seen government officers offering him the choice between signing a contract and prison.”
“Suppose we leave to one side the legitimacy of a tax which benefits only Europeans and presents the blacks with no compensatory advantages. This tax, which is sometimes equivalent to two or three month’s work, ought to replace corvees in kind, it used to be said; in reality, the two co-exist, and the natives have now to bear the burden of both a tax in money and a tax in kind.”
“By law old men and adolescents of less than sixteen years old are exempt from taxation. In practice, as I have many times observed in Mushuni and Mombanda circles, 80% of old men and 40% of children pay.”
“It is of course the case that when an entire population is put to work, in a manner harmful to its very existence, it cannon be a question of voluntary labour.”
“Entering into the agreement, and then honoring the contract are enforced by means of prison and the chicotte, which are generously administered by government officers, who have been reduced to acting as labor recruiters and as guards supervising convicts on behalf of the companies.”
“Those who do not die at the trading post return to their villages as walking skeletons.”
“They work from six in the morning to six in the evening without a moment’s rest, even in the very middle of the day.”
“Some posts boast of file houses built of half-crumbling adobe, 4 metres by 3 or 4 metres, in which 15, 20 or 25 natives are piled on top of one another. Other managers settle for allowing the new arrivals to build straw huts, outside of work hours of course. In these huts, which are 1.50 metres high, the blacks sleep one on top of the other. In Dunda I saw five in the same bed, which was 1.20 metres long and 0.80 metres wide.”
“Two days later the porters asked for were paraded in front of him, old men, invalids and women, with ropes around their necks.”
“Sanitary conditions are lamentable. Sleeping sickness ravages the local population.”
An explanation of motives, which we do not endorse: