Anarcho-Capitalism

Akrasia

bus77 wrote: »

I'm sorry Akrasia, you've rolled this up into one big ball.

When you talk about what happened to that large group of immigrants and corporations your talking about the same thing, but it's deeper than capitalism, free or otherwise.

You have to look at the origin of the corporation. I wasn't sure how the ''Corporation'' came about. Who in their right mind would create such a voracious unthinking monster? Turns out nobody would, not in their own society.
The first corporations were colonial in origin.
So in both case's you've got large groups of 'Aliens'. One group imposed upon a society, another group imposed upon.

People sometimes help people who are on their own, but are always hesitant to lift up large groups. Who knows why things are like that, it's deep. In any event the question becomes ''Well, what can we do with them?''

It's not even 'materialism' of just pursuit of wealth alone that forms that. Or even racism. It's a type of 'social-lock' that's the starting point.

From that springs two simple rules.

1. Don't colonize

2. Spread out large groups of new people

Corporations are a specific type of business organisation that has evolved down through the years. They grew out of Mercantalism in the 14th century onwards. There was an interdependent relationship with the state and colonialism (trading companies were basically an arm of the colonial navies of the time) But it is very very difficult to imagine how a libertarian trading system would have worked at that time without necessitating large powerful trading companies that would have been capable of defending their own ships from piracy or as insurance through scale against losses through storms and shipping disasters. The businesses probably wouldn't have been as large as the east india trading company, but they would still have been large enough to exploit their workers and to consolidate wealth for themselves.

Modern corporations were chartered companies, strictly limited by the state to only perform designated operations (in the public interest). They were often brutal and nasty entities but this was because of a failure to regulate them properly, not because of over regulation. Corporate charters were given to regulate natural monopolies that the state did not want responsibility for (like railways, smelting and mining). In a libertarian society, these natural monopolies would still exist but there would be even less regulation of business practises.

In the early 1900s, laissez faire ideologues decided to get rid of the public interest elements of corporate charters (or at least not enforce them anymore) and they gave corporations the right to buy other companies. They did this in response to the success of non chartered companies (partnerships and private limited companies that were at an advantage in a less restricted environment) This is when things got really bad. Corporations began to buy each other and turned into Massive organisations with the power to control vast areas of public life with no accountability other than to their shareholders.

Conglomerates and large corporations are powerful enough to bully smaller startups and competitors across whole economies. This has forced the development of anti trust and pro competiton laws to regulate capitalism. Without these laws capitalism would have eaten itself decades ago, but libertarians are opposed to any kind of state regulation on capital other than limited enforcement of free contracts. Without the competition authority in Ireland, There would probably be only one supermarket chain in Ireland today and every small producer would be at the mercy of their distribution chain.
(As it currently stands, even with nominal competition in the retail market, the distribution system is an oligopoly and small producers are being squeezed by the large distributors almost to the point of collapse while they enjoy massive profits)