Steal This Blog Post
...because I don't subscribe to "intellectual property."
But when it comes to tangible property, I'm a big stickler for the rules. I think it is fair to say that I have thought about a pure market economy more than most people on the planet. I also think it is fair to say that I am not a dumb guy. Finally, I think it also fair to say that I am not crazy or incapable of considering alternate viewpoints.
With the above credentials, I declare that the world would be an unimaginably fairer, richer, nicer, more peaceful, just place--under the value systems of 99.5% of the world's population--if we all just followed a simple rule: Don't steal other people's stuff, and don't encourage others to do so either.
That's it. You do that, and most of today's pressing "social problems" fall away. Now maybe the worrywarts and crusaders in that new world would convince everyone that it was an outrage to humanity that Starbucks wanted to charge 2 seconds worth of work time for a gallon of coffee for the workplace, instead of the 1.75 seconds they charge last year. Such a massive increase in prices--that kind of volatility is very rare, since financial markets are unbelievably deep and intricate--is relatively unheard of. And man, that's expensive! To have to work for 2 whole seconds in order to get coffee for the office?! The unarmed female agents who enforce voluntary judges rulings on cases--what used to be called "the police"--should do something to Starbucks! This cannot stand!
But when it comes to tangible property, I'm a big stickler for the rules. I think it is fair to say that I have thought about a pure market economy more than most people on the planet. I also think it is fair to say that I am not a dumb guy. Finally, I think it also fair to say that I am not crazy or incapable of considering alternate viewpoints.
With the above credentials, I declare that the world would be an unimaginably fairer, richer, nicer, more peaceful, just place--under the value systems of 99.5% of the world's population--if we all just followed a simple rule: Don't steal other people's stuff, and don't encourage others to do so either.
That's it. You do that, and most of today's pressing "social problems" fall away. Now maybe the worrywarts and crusaders in that new world would convince everyone that it was an outrage to humanity that Starbucks wanted to charge 2 seconds worth of work time for a gallon of coffee for the workplace, instead of the 1.75 seconds they charge last year. Such a massive increase in prices--that kind of volatility is very rare, since financial markets are unbelievably deep and intricate--is relatively unheard of. And man, that's expensive! To have to work for 2 whole seconds in order to get coffee for the office?! The unarmed female agents who enforce voluntary judges rulings on cases--what used to be called "the police"--should do something to Starbucks! This cannot stand!
For the last several months, after becoming an active blogger, I've been going back and forth between thinking, "Yeah, anarcho-capitalism would certainly solve most of the State-caused problems in the world, but there are still a lot of bad people out there (e.g., politicians), so we ought to be less peremptory in our declarations of how fair and prosperous a free society would be," and the opposite thought: "Man, I think even Austro-libertarians can't imagine how many innovative solutions the market would come up with, how exponentially fast our growth as a global economy and a global culture would be, how much better we'd be at solving problems without working in the context of Statism century after century...how much better things would be than even we imagine."
ReplyDeleteAs in most situations involving humans or any other life form, I reckon the reality is somewhere in the middle.
From our perspective, I think it would be unimaginably better, but part of my point was that the people living in that world would adjust to it and raise their expectations.
ReplyDelete