The point I have been trying to drive home to one of my libertarian friends is that the heads of these companies:
All share the same values as the politicians (which are not your values)
All attend the same schools as each other (which are not schools they would let you attend)
See it as their sacred duty to shape society into a form that works against your interests
Are being encouraged and/or allowed to do this by politicians and a judiciary who would gladly do it themselves but need to launder it through the private sector to grant it legitimacy because it's not being done through legislation.
It isn't "My neighbor Joe wanted to sell some apples from his orchard, but he got shut down because he didn't have a food vendor's license and because his orchard wasn't zoned for commercial farming". It's "These Fortune 500 CEOs want to reshape society and change your way of life so that they can maintain a permeant neo-feudalist oligarchy".
To the extent the NAP has any teeth at all, your way of life is being aggressed against by these companies; and you are under no obligation to stand by and let them do it.
Well put. According to our lolbertarian friends, these megacorps having their boots on our necks is not a violation of the NAP, but us trying to remove it is.
That's because this particular brand of lolbertarianism when taken to its logical conclusion results in absolute monarchy. If a megacorp owns all the land in a region and can do whatever it wants with the land, and everyone on its land is obligated to comply with whatever dictates it wants, how is that any different than the old feudal system?
At least Hoppe is honest that he wants states to be absolute monarchies, and has the good sense to want to forcibly remove communists.
In defense of Hoppe, absolute monarchy is a lesser evil than corporate domination. The monarch in question is, at least theoretically, obliged to take care of the res publica, as opposed to serving private interests. If that does not happen, then you get revolts, because people expect some regard for the public interest. Not so with corporations.
If a megacorp owns all the land in a region and can do whatever it wants with the land, and everyone on its land is obligated to comply with whatever dictates it wants, how is that any different than the old feudal system?
Because capitalism and expansive private ownership is what fucking ended feudalism. Corporations are pushing for feudalism, which involved the state building guild systems which were the only legal entities allowed to engage in certain forms of commerce. Feudalism is the heaviest possible form of regulation outside Stalinist Communism.
Why don't corporations just buy up entire cities? Why did the mining towns stop?
Because it's utterly impractical and totally unaffordable without a state protecting them at every level, and subsidizing them to an extreme. Corporate Colonialism and Slavocracy is what they are doing. Colonialism and Slavery are unprofitable because they waste vast resources on shit that doesn't directly contribute to generating a good or service that someone wants. The American South was made under-developed by slavery as an institution. The British Empire was remarkably unprofitable by their own damn records. Colonialism is a shit business practice because it's inefficient.
Why did "Corporate Campuses" return? Because The government (both California and the US federal) subsidized them and convinced entire swathes of the population that private ownership of property was a vast right-wing conspiracy theory. Don't own anything, don't ask to own anything, let the insurance company pay for everything, give your money to the bank, and your pension to the investment firm, and you'll be happy. All while a corporatist legal structure attacks competition, entrapanuership, and sole proprietorship at every possible angle in an economy based on Keynesian Socialist economics and Fabian Socialist politics.
It's massively unprofitable for society as a whole and taxpayers in particular, but if you're the megacorp getting all of your costs socialised while you keep all of the profits private it's a pretty sweet gig.
Megacorps dont exist without government intervention. An ancap society would likely stay mostly local, and corps like Disney or Microsoft would have died out decades ago like they naturally would have without all the lobbying they did for regulations that kept them afloat.
This is probably true. The problem is that you rarely see these types of libertarians talk about it (though more serious ones like Hoppe do, but you rarely hear about them in mainstream discourse for obvious reasons).
When Boeing was having problems with their 737 MAX, was the Libertarian Party of Texas tweeting out "If the concept of Limited Liability for company executives and investors -- a market-distorting legal fiction created by the government -- were eliminated, these issues would be far less likely to occur because the executives and investors wouldn't want to risk bankruptcy and prison time by putting out an unsafe product"? Or were they blaming the FAA?
Well yeah, because most official Libertarian parties in America are controlled opposition, much like the GOP in their own way. Its why I prefer discussing ideas and solutions over strict adherence to ideology or party.
I can't speak for the Libertarian Party of Texas on such a specific issue.
However, the argument isn't unfamiliar to me. The very nature of a Limited Liability Company is a legal structure to protect businesses from prosecution. It exists to privilege these corporations for the benefits of concentrating wealth and power into a few hands which can be taxed and monitored more easily.
Imagine if Boeing were a sole proprietorship. That is a private company. If Boeing built a shit airplane, the company as a fictitious legal construct couldn't be sued, the owner of Boeing could be directly sued. Not only that, he'd actually have to personally sue each of the employees that fucked up. The law would actually create a fixed chain of responsibility, person after person.
Why isn't that done? Because the government first presents corporations, non-profits, and LLC's and legal fictions to protect them from lawsuits, then they tax the shit out of sole proprietorships on top of that, then they offer the largest tax breaks and programs to the largest corporations.
The system is intentionally designed to support these mass, unaccountable, fictitious legal structures. First by promising no legal accountability to corporations, second by adding burdensome legal liabilities to sole proprietorships, third by taxing the shit out of those sole proprietorships which denies any incentive to do it even if you succeed, and fourth by reducing the tax burden on corporations.
Could a government bureaucracy have something to do with this arrangement? Sure, any government oversight agency is going to support the structure I just spelled out. Getting rid of it is one first step, but they can always be replaced by another "temporary" agency later.
The point I have been trying to drive home to one of my libertarian friends is that the heads of these companies:
It isn't "My neighbor Joe wanted to sell some apples from his orchard, but he got shut down because he didn't have a food vendor's license and because his orchard wasn't zoned for commercial farming". It's "These Fortune 500 CEOs want to reshape society and change your way of life so that they can maintain a permeant neo-feudalist oligarchy".
To the extent the NAP has any teeth at all, your way of life is being aggressed against by these companies; and you are under no obligation to stand by and let them do it.
Well put. According to our lolbertarian friends, these megacorps having their boots on our necks is not a violation of the NAP, but us trying to remove it is.
That's because this particular brand of lolbertarianism when taken to its logical conclusion results in absolute monarchy. If a megacorp owns all the land in a region and can do whatever it wants with the land, and everyone on its land is obligated to comply with whatever dictates it wants, how is that any different than the old feudal system?
At least Hoppe is honest that he wants states to be absolute monarchies, and has the good sense to want to forcibly remove communists.
In defense of Hoppe, absolute monarchy is a lesser evil than corporate domination. The monarch in question is, at least theoretically, obliged to take care of the res publica, as opposed to serving private interests. If that does not happen, then you get revolts, because people expect some regard for the public interest. Not so with corporations.
Because capitalism and expansive private ownership is what fucking ended feudalism. Corporations are pushing for feudalism, which involved the state building guild systems which were the only legal entities allowed to engage in certain forms of commerce. Feudalism is the heaviest possible form of regulation outside Stalinist Communism.
Why don't corporations just buy up entire cities? Why did the mining towns stop?
Because it's utterly impractical and totally unaffordable without a state protecting them at every level, and subsidizing them to an extreme. Corporate Colonialism and Slavocracy is what they are doing. Colonialism and Slavery are unprofitable because they waste vast resources on shit that doesn't directly contribute to generating a good or service that someone wants. The American South was made under-developed by slavery as an institution. The British Empire was remarkably unprofitable by their own damn records. Colonialism is a shit business practice because it's inefficient.
Why did "Corporate Campuses" return? Because The government (both California and the US federal) subsidized them and convinced entire swathes of the population that private ownership of property was a vast right-wing conspiracy theory. Don't own anything, don't ask to own anything, let the insurance company pay for everything, give your money to the bank, and your pension to the investment firm, and you'll be happy. All while a corporatist legal structure attacks competition, entrapanuership, and sole proprietorship at every possible angle in an economy based on Keynesian Socialist economics and Fabian Socialist politics.
It's massively unprofitable for society as a whole and taxpayers in particular, but if you're the megacorp getting all of your costs socialised while you keep all of the profits private it's a pretty sweet gig.
Megacorps dont exist without government intervention. An ancap society would likely stay mostly local, and corps like Disney or Microsoft would have died out decades ago like they naturally would have without all the lobbying they did for regulations that kept them afloat.
This is probably true. The problem is that you rarely see these types of libertarians talk about it (though more serious ones like Hoppe do, but you rarely hear about them in mainstream discourse for obvious reasons).
When Boeing was having problems with their 737 MAX, was the Libertarian Party of Texas tweeting out "If the concept of Limited Liability for company executives and investors -- a market-distorting legal fiction created by the government -- were eliminated, these issues would be far less likely to occur because the executives and investors wouldn't want to risk bankruptcy and prison time by putting out an unsafe product"? Or were they blaming the FAA?
Well yeah, because most official Libertarian parties in America are controlled opposition, much like the GOP in their own way. Its why I prefer discussing ideas and solutions over strict adherence to ideology or party.
I can't speak for the Libertarian Party of Texas on such a specific issue.
However, the argument isn't unfamiliar to me. The very nature of a Limited Liability Company is a legal structure to protect businesses from prosecution. It exists to privilege these corporations for the benefits of concentrating wealth and power into a few hands which can be taxed and monitored more easily.
Imagine if Boeing were a sole proprietorship. That is a private company. If Boeing built a shit airplane, the company as a fictitious legal construct couldn't be sued, the owner of Boeing could be directly sued. Not only that, he'd actually have to personally sue each of the employees that fucked up. The law would actually create a fixed chain of responsibility, person after person.
Why isn't that done? Because the government first presents corporations, non-profits, and LLC's and legal fictions to protect them from lawsuits, then they tax the shit out of sole proprietorships on top of that, then they offer the largest tax breaks and programs to the largest corporations.
The system is intentionally designed to support these mass, unaccountable, fictitious legal structures. First by promising no legal accountability to corporations, second by adding burdensome legal liabilities to sole proprietorships, third by taxing the shit out of those sole proprietorships which denies any incentive to do it even if you succeed, and fourth by reducing the tax burden on corporations.
Could a government bureaucracy have something to do with this arrangement? Sure, any government oversight agency is going to support the structure I just spelled out. Getting rid of it is one first step, but they can always be replaced by another "temporary" agency later.