Re: Santorum introduces more rent collection opps

On 28 Apr 2005 08:02:50 -0700, "Quirk" <quirk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>> You have _claimed_ it is not, but have offered no proof. And the
>> evidence of history is that it is, though perhaps not just yet.
>
>I have offered a proof, a logical proof.

Nope.

>Influence on the State is a function of expenditures made to influence
>it.

But not just expenditures of money. It would take an immense amount
of money to buy an election while lacking a significant amount of
volunteer labor.

>As wealth generated by the economy tends to accrue to the owners of
>land, they will be thus be able to control the State.

Land rent is "only" about 20% of GDP.

>As the price of
>labour is driven by competition down towards its cost,

Clearly a blatant falsehood.

>they do not have
>any means to accumulate the wealth needed to take control away from the
>owners of land.

Then how did Hugo Chavez come to power in Venezuela?

>And history is on my side here, that you can find certain atypical
>examples and occurrences does not change the fact that by and large the
>increase in the share if the economy that accrues to property and the
>decrease of that which accrues to labour continues relentlessly.

No, it is subject to periodic reversals.

>> Allocating the return to applying the fruits of private labor to
>> production rather than consumption to the private individuals
>> responsible for doing so is not privilege.
>
>I agree with this. Interest is meant here in the classic sense, Capital
>Yield. Not interest in the return on investment of abstained
>consumption sense, which I support.

?? But how are these fundamentally different? Abstaining from
consumption directs labor to production of capital rather than
consumption goods, and the yield of the resulting capital is the
reward for doing so.

>> And yet, despite your claims of impossibility, there are many
>> historical cases where positive land reforms have actually been made
>> by states.
>
>Yet the overall trend is the concentration of wealth and expansion of
>the rights property, thus supporting my impossibility theory.

The fact that it is only an overall trend and not a monotonic
certainty refutes your impossibility claim.

>Whatever victories are won by labour against property

This is Marxist class warfare talk.

>via the State are
>dwarfed by the losses and retrenchments.

Nope. There is a current propertarian swing in progress, but it
follows an era of gains for labor that began in the 1930s and
continued through the 60s.

>> There are other means of influencing the state than wealth, most
>> obviously voting and education.
>
>Voting requires candidates and parties to vote for, and the mass
>support to give them a chance at election. None of this can be
>accomplished without wealth, and neither can education.

It doesn't take all that much wealth. But it does take education.
And the Net is providing the means for that.

>> Just because it isn't easy or
>> infallible doesn't mean it isn't possible.
>
>True, but the hard economics of it do mean that it is impossible.

Claim without proof.

>> >Do you imagine the landlords will voluntarily redistribute the land
>> >rent?
>
>> Do you imagine the landlords enforce their privileges themselves?
>
>Yes, by using their wealth to ensure its enforcement.

What do they do, throw dollars at squatters?

>> They rely on the consent and, yes, the _active_cooperation_ of the
>> victims of their privilege for its maintenance.
>
>And they have developed a highly sophisticated control mechanism that
>delivers the consent of these victims, it is called the State.

No, a certain _kind_ of state does so, and even then it only works on
those who do not understand it. To claim that a state like China (let
alone Cuba or North Korea) is in the service of landowners or
"property" is just silly.

>> Withdraw that consent
>> and cooperation, and justice becomes achievable.
>
>I agree, however "Withdrawing consent" does not mean to hope and pray
>for a altruistic party and candidate to overcome the daunting economic
>obstacles and deliver justice via a reformed state and in the meantime
>allow Rent to continue to collect in the pockets of land owners, to be
>spend on keeping the state from being reformed.

Strawman. Education and political work (and the Greens are clearly
making headway in Europe) are not "hoping and praying."

>"Withdrawing consent" means forming industrial organisations with
>ownership models that embody our ideas of justice from the start, and
>expend whatever resources we can muster on acquiring land and capital
>for these organisations to build their basis of power.

No, that's just what _you_ claim it means.

>> The American aboriginals and Africans (who were in effect practising
>> "anarchists," remember, as they had no private land ownership and no
>> significant private accumulations of capital), were murdering,
>robbing
>> and enslaving each other long before the USA came along.
>
>Two wrongs do not make a right, this still disproves the notion that
>the USA was a "just state."

It was certainly more just than what went before.

>And as I have said, this is not Anarchism, which is specificly against
>"murdering, robbing and enslaving."

Claiming to be "against" something while opposing the only known
effective means of preventing it is not very persuasive.

>I have no clue why you feel the need to continue with this
>equivocation.

Cast out first the beam that is in thine own eye.

>> Not, it only proves that it _did_ not, not that it _could_ not.
>
>Ok, I am content to "merely" prove that the USA was (and continues to
>be) an unjust state and that it could not maintain whatever liberty it
>did provide.

Again: not "could not." _Did_ not.

>> The fact that history records considerable improvement in the average
>> justice of states over the centuries.
>
>Only as far as these improvements were also in the interests of
>Property.

No. Property was the clear loser in the English income tax of the
early 19th C, the Meiji-era tax reforms in Japan, etc.

>> Slave owners did not
>> voluntarily give up their slaves, yet chattel slavery was
>nevertheless abolished.
>
>Because wage slavery is far more efficient than chattel slavery.

Wage slavery is an oxymoron. and it is clear that abolition of chattel
slavery greatly improved the conditions of working people generally,
not just the slaves.

>> No, just more than they _chose_ to maintain.
>
>Who chose? Property chose. Labour never had a choice.

Nonsense.

>> ?? But wouldn't working people do the same to secure their rights
>> against encroachment by the privileges of the elite?
>
>I hope so, but before resistance is possible they must first acquire
>the basis of power to resist,

But before they can acquire the basis of power, they must first
understand the issue. But if they understand the issue, they can
always just _vote_ their interests.

>and this must be accomplished by
>organising industrially, not politically, this has always been the
>Anarchist argument.

And it's wrong.

>> How are the nodes to be made so
>> much wiser than the individual human beings that comprise them?
>
>By removing the coercion of Property, and achieving freedom,

Where has abolition of property ever been accompanied by freedom?

>allowing
>the nodes to be actually directed by the wisdom of human beings that
>comprise them,

Such as it is....

>not directed by force, for the interests of Property.

You are still saying "property" when you seem to mean "privilege."

-- Roy L
.

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