From an Alternet.org interview with “Students Against Sweatshops” author Liza Featherstone:
“Some of the more anarchist types are very critical of activists who don’t lead an alternative, anti-capitalist lifestyle (growing their own food, composting, making their own clothes, etc.). Others say that kind of self-sufficient life isn’t really conducive to building a movement because it’s very isolating, and takes up a lot of time.”
Ms. Featherstone makes an important point, albeit unintentionally. The market system that her activists so deplore is the very system that affords most of them the free time to try to destroy it. Thanks to the free market, we don’t have to make our own clothes, grow our own food, or spend 16 hours a day just trying to survive.
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Thats actually very funny. Excellent quote there Mr. Carden:
“The market system that her activists so deplore is the very system that affords most of them the free time to try to destroy it. Thanks to the free market, we don’t have to make our own clothes, grow our own food, or spend 16 hours a day just trying to survive.”
Funny thing is, without capitalism, these people (why is it that socialists are overwhelmingly women, BTW?) would be working in the same sweatshops that they so deplore.
i find it VERY important to differentiate between capitalism and economy of scale. economy of scale is a tool and one that unfortunately comes at a cost of something free-market capitalists would otherwise shiver at (especially as its size and scope grows) — CENTRALIZED PLANNING of resources for (a transfer of) efficiency (plus consumption of wealth in overhead).
capitalism has also demonstrated innovation (entrepreneurship) of individual means of production of survival. home-grown foods spanning gardens and greenhouses to elaborate hydroponics, and including fermentation of sugars (beer, wine), milk (yougurt), soy (tofu), and even fungus (mycoprotein aka quorn). tailoring can easily be accomplished with any decent sewing machine, though weaving fabrics would be aided by the deregulation on growing hemp; if you want to be really my side of the mountain about it you could leather deer hide.
according to information theory (by claude shannon, and likewise friedrich hayek), the greater the number of hops in communication the greater the entropy. in otherwords, the childhood ‘telephone game’. economy of scale incurs all of the fallibility of communism. this is why hayek favored “dovetailing” rather than central planning.
anarchy and free markets speak the same language; hence anarcho-capitalism. unfortunately (and i encourage everyone to share this message as best as you see fit) all of the ills disenfranchised peoples beset on laissez-faire capitalism truly rests on half-assed regulation causing disasterously misleading market distortions. the curse (psychological appeal?) of socialism is that it tries to solve something like warfare with escalating violence; more guns, more bombs, until such point as mutually assured destruction is achieved.
the charters of incorporation read like constitutional sub-governments. limited-liability is the cornerstone of corporate externalization of costs onto the commons. without government, there would be no corporate persons — though certainly networks of individuals coordinating mutual advantage through the marketplace.
many anarchists may be confused and ignorant, but remind them that really they are anti-state — not anti-capital. (a whole mises article could be written, if not already, on the unfortunate loading of the word “capitalism”.)
-z
p.s. i like to draw conclusions that incorporations are micro-communist states feeding off of otherwise free-markets, largely based on the work of roger h. coase. lew rockwell disagrees with me afaik; probably many if not most libertarians do, particularly those of a socio-economic conservative background. feel free to argue this with me further here in public or in private. anyone, even me :p , can make inaccurate models.
Why are anti-corporate activists afraid of calling themselves anti-capitalists?
This is only true in the United States. Elsewhere it’s recognized as an anti-capitalist movement. In the United States, though, if you say you’re against capitalism, people think you’re one of those weirdos who sell newspapers at protests.
i reiterate, CONFUSED. a very important distinction exists between “anti-corporate” and “anti-capitalist”. i would currently consider myself anti-corporate (and anti-state) while certainly pro-capitalism (until we have star trek style replicators at which point property becomes deprecated), and i believe this to be no contradiction in terms. however, selling newspapers about anti-capitalism would be a contradiction in terms.
people are very angry and misdirecting that frustration at the wrong ideology. (did none of these people read george orwell’s animal farm???) to grow popular awareness of free markets and libertarianism, we should do well to embrace these people and deduce accurate models together.
-z
I agree completely, Zuzu. But, it is terribly difficult work to embrace these ‘anarchists’ because, frankly, they aren’t, they’re hard-core statists with a chip on their shoulder. Logic and reason rarely work. Building models doesn’t work. Anger, fear, agression… the Dark Side are these.
I’ve had some luck by first decrying corporations, and then trying to appeal to their logic centers. That seems to help a little, but there’s a strong desire for retribution that derails any critical thought.
Ta,
Zuzu, you’re ignoring the economies of scale. While there may be inefficiencies introduced in a larger organization, at the same time people have invented ways to produce more at a lower cost per unit.
The example of Gallo from November 29th demonstrates this. The Gallo “winery” in Modesto produces its own glass bottles. If it were more efficient to eliminate the bureaucracy and “central planning” required within the company to produce the bottles, they would not be making them themselves.
Please do not project your dislike of “corporations” into falicious arguments that they are somehow economically inefficient. They exist because they indeed *are* efficient, even though some of that efficiency comes because of government grants of limited liability.
And concerning your last sentence, please remember that this is a web log for discussing Austrian economics. We are not here to “deduce accurate models”. :^)
My appologies, Zuzu, indeed somewhere in your postings you did make the same point I tried to make, thinking that you had missed it. I’m sorry that it took three readings for me to discern it.
May I suggest a greater use of the shift and enter keys, and less bold and italic?
May I suggest a greater use of the shift and enter keys, and less bold and italic?
i apologize for not everyone enjoying my e.e.cummings capitalization style.
i’ve tried to use emphasis (italics) for titles of creative works as appropriate, or for entire blocks as quotation. i tend to use strong (bold) type to stress words in a sentence. again, sorry if this is confusing.
to be fair, my thoughts in that comment were all over the place, and quite probably a little irritating to follow.
They exist because they indeed *are* efficient, even though some of that efficiency comes because of government grants of limited liability.
quite right. (and i noted your supplementary correction.) my argument, which i take you acknowledge, is that this is primarily efficient in the current marketplace because of the distortions created by government-granted limited-liability which enable the corporativist organizational model to externalize many costs onto individuals / the public / the commons or government subsidy (which amounts to individual “theft” by proxy).
i suspect, though have yet to formalize into a logical model, that without the benefit of limited-liability, the overhead costs of bureaucracy (central-planning) in the scaling of ‘economy of scale’ would amount greater than any efficiency gained from it. communist nation-states have no breathing room to budget externalization, which is why their ill net results are seen immediately.
to offer an alternative (which unfortunately most anti-corporatists cannot), i suggest that we look (again) to free markets. when most anti-corporate people, particularly socialists (including u.s. green party supporters), speak of wanting decentralized local economies (e.g. “mom and pop” shops not walmarts), i again suspect that what they are actually describing is capitalist free market “dovetailing”.
‘economy of scale’ is not at fault per se, but it was underwritten by government “legal subsidy” in an age where technology designs were premature and necessarily fashioned large rather than small because they were early pioneers in “the law of accelerating returns”. this is something like NASA subsidy of putting humans on the moon in the 1970s rather than until a sustainable economic means of doing so is discovered, though many discoveries were made in the process. technology evolves to produce smaller, finer, more exact forms of technology; to quote Eric Hodges, “I’m interested in feedback loops between humans and technology. The early 19th century saw an explosion in lathe precision because each new lathe could be used to produce a more precise lathe.” in a time now exploring the extent to which miniaturization can be applied, the continued distortion of incorporation in economy of scale seems only to at best transfer efficiency rather than create it. simply, capitalism has created the means (technology) for individuals in a market network to do more efficiently what used to require the centrally planned co-ordination of hundreds of men. applying ‘economy of scale’ requires a different mode of scaling — the difference between linear and logarithmic. again, i suspect scale-free free-market networks to represent that scale. (but limited-liability and path-dependency / linear-thinking distorts greater recognition of this.)
We are not here to “deduce accurate models”.
i would like to go on to argue (more so in the appropriate space) that this is precisely what mises attempts with his kantian style. (and what at least i am inclined to do as primarily a student of cybernetics and systems theory.)
-z
I used to make models, but then I got hooked on the glue…
“I used to make models, but then I got hooked on the glue…”
*chuckles*
Good one.
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