From: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 05:54:21 +0800
To: "Cypherpunks (E-mail)" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Subject: RE: Two Jims, Werner and Matt redefine socialism for their own ends
Message-ID: <33CCFE438B9DD01192E800A024C84A193A7A47@mossbay.chaffeyhomes.com>
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> The two largest employers round where I live are a 
> multinational bank and local government. I can vote 
> for my councillors. Some of them I my  neighbours.

So why can't your neighbors run a bank?

> something like Belloc and Chesterton's "distributivism".

Distribute what and created by whom? Need I point out the obvious
fallacy that wealth is a static sum. It is not, wealth must be *created*
before it exists to plunder and share. Abstract wealth and divorce it
from the creator and you eliminate the motive to create. You can only
live from plundered wealth so long before you slip into oblivion (see
the Soviet Union).

> How many of you have a mortgate or pay rent? Capitalism 
> means that someone else owns your house.

No, capitalism allows you to leverage your future productive capacity to
acquire capital assets you wouldn't otherwise have. That is your choice,
and your benefit.

> How many of you work for a corporation? Capitalism means 
> that someone else owns your job.

No, capitalism allows you to trade your labor instead of your product.
That is your choice, and your benefit.

> And then Matt Gering replied to Ken Brown:
> 
> >> A monopolisitic supplier of some good has a measure 
> >> of political power.
> 
> > Political power comes at the mean end of a gun, what 
> > political power do monopolies have and how?

> And I was almost knocked over by the innocence, ignorance and 
> naievety of such a statement.

The question was not rhetorical. Do you care to answer?

> What political power do monopolies have? The power 
> to deny you things you need to live.

How? By denying the ability of others to supply them. By denying your
right to create them. By (legitimately) denying your ability to steal
them. 

> The power to deny you the means to earn a living.

How? By denying your ability to create and dispose of your own wealth.
By denying you the right to freely trade your labor or the right of
others to purchase that labor. By denying your ability to accumulate
capital.

> If there is only one employer in a town then anyone born 
> there must either leave or knuckle under.

Staying is a restraint that is self-imposed (provided government does
not restrict freedom of movement). Why is there only one employer?

> Unlike what Matt Gering said monopoly power *does* "come 
> out of the barrel of a gun" 

On the contrary I clearly stated it did. But if the monopoly does not
have guns itself, whose guns are they?

> - it is preserved by  military and police authority.

Exactly. So eliminate those guns.

> Like money itself it exists because folk choose to believe 
> that it exists. If we all stopped behaving as if great 
> property existed, it would cease to exist.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't 
 go away." -- Philip K. Dick

Fine, stop believing in money, no one is forcing you to. Did it work?
Oh, you mean *everyone* has to stop believing in it? Sounds like mass
delusion to me, and metaphysical subjectivism. The fact that something
exists or not is clearly independent of whether anyone believes in it or
not.

Money is a symbol. The valuation of any given monetary system is
entirely irrelevant to the existence of that which money represents, and
the failure of Fiat currencies does not abolish the existence of what
they had represented.

What is the root of money?
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/money.html

> That respect for money is buttressed by the state.

Manipulation of the money supply by the state is tool for theft by the
state and denial of economic reality. It had consequences in 1929, and
it will again.

	Matt