Check out Kevin Carson’s http://www.mutualist.org website. It is an excellent site arguing for “free-market anti-capitalism” and would answer your problems better than I could.

I reject the notion that individualism=capitalism because it draws the battle lines between the private sector and the public sector. I draw the battle lines between individuals and institutions, with business entities very definitely classed as institutions. Even a one-person business, with no plurality of ownership or staffing, looks to me like the project of someone with above-average abilities in negotiation, salescrittership or some other seemingly dark (and hardly “productive”) art. Self-employment is at best self-enslavement. Debt financing is to indentured servitude as equity financing is to chattel slavery, and of course self-financing is largely a privilege of those who have the luxury of business ownership as a hobby; persons going into it from a position well in the black. The only hope for individual freedom is the abolition of economics, perhaps by the achievement of “post-scarcity.” Perhaps a cheap substitute or transitional phase can be experienced with the achievement of a radical increase in non-asymmetric market transparency. I have dubbed my crude attempt at a strategy “pubwan.” Then again, perhaps the so-called post-autistic school of economics will come up with a viable alternative to the market model, but I’m not counting on it.

I embrace anarcho-”socialism” not for their alleged demands for collectivization, but for their preference for cooperation over competition. Why should someone with a mostly losing track record at competitive pursuits (especially those with economic outcomes at stake) contribute effort to the cause of social darwinism? Where’s the “self-interest” in that? I don’t consider “collective” a dirty word, although I don’t consider it a clean one either. I think collective bargaining is definitely a defensible method for individuals (understood to mean flesh-and-blood humyn beings) dealing with public or private institutions (which always seem to bargain from a position of relative strength), but I suppose the ultimate abolition of institutions (anarchy, as I understand it) really should properly imply the abolition of collective pursuits. If transparency without asymmetry can be accomplished, coordination of effort without institution-building should be quite possible.

I hold that, centrally speaking, “individualism” is the opposite of “institutionalism” (not “collectivism”) and “anarchism” is the opposite of “authoritarianism” (not “statism”). The way I express my values is by treating everyone I meet as an equal; with very deliberate effort to suppress my admittedly unextinguished instincts or reflexes to exhibit dominant or (more often) submissive behavior. My spectacular failures to live up to my stated values fall into two categories; dealing with cops and dealing with private sector employers, with easily 99% of instances being in the latter category in these precarious times when one is always “for sale.”

For someone who is both working-class and law-abiding, private sector institutions such as employers, landlords, insurers and creditors will be seen to be a much more frequent source than the state of authority in one’s life, and of constraints and restraints on individual choices. So will, of course, be the market, which is to say the “going rate” for labor, housing, access to capital, etc. The hackneyed clichés about nobody holding a gun to your head are insulting. People don’t voluntarily choose their private affiliations, as the range of available choices is constrained by market conditions. Those with more market leverage have more freedom, and inequality of freedom implies de-facto authority. At best, the market economy is a meritocracy of salesmenschip, assertiveness and poker-facedness. The market, like the state, is an entity whose authority must be questioned and challenged.

Crusoe did not create the island, and having his liberty over the whole of it reduced by some fraction so that Friday can have liberty to continue to exist is real and an attempt to minimize imposed costs. We should be objective enough to eliminate “utility monster” arguments. We should admit that a much higher imposed cost would be placed on Friday if he was bound to accept any condition of Crusoe or drown. And Crusoe isn’t having as much imposed on him by letting Friday have a share of land. This is not the same as saying Friday should have a share of Crusoe’s capital or labor… things which Crusoe produces. Keeping exclusive rights to one’s labor and the product of it is the absence of imposed costs. To another person who would like to have your labor cheaper than you want to sell it, such is the lack of a positive benefit, not an imposed cost. However, with land, less than equal access and ownership rights is an imposed cost.

I probably made that sound a little more Georgist than I intended. I’m not as good as Lester. I’d say, contrary to Rothbard, Locke’s Proviso (leaving enough and just as good for others when taking a share of land from the commons) is absolutely essential to liberty.

“But in short… liberty requires minimizing the *imposition* of cost to others.”

But aren’t “costs” in this sense subjective since they stem from each individual’s subjective system of preferences? Thus, is there an objective way to decide whether the costs imposed to Friday by Crusoe, who lets him drown, are larger than the costs imposed to Crusoe by Friday, who violates his private property rights?

Thanks for comments. On the Crusoe example, I strongly recommend the J.C. Lester book “Escape from Leviathan.” But in short… liberty requires minimizing the *imposition* of cost to others. Crusoe would be imposing cost by making Friday drown, but if he failed to render aid to a dying Friday, that is a lack of positive externality, not an imposed cost. I have to agree with George in part that land as a natural resource must be considered separately from capital goods and man-made property. But George tried to address land with a national approach that would be subject to the same power temptations of other centralized systems.

I generally agree with your points in this post. (By the way, Robert Nef, president of the Swiss classical liberal “Liberales Institut”, calls himself a non-centralist. That’s also a neat term.)

I too think that an anarchist society would require some active resistance against centralization. Of course, the standard objection would be that a large company would collapse anyway if it grew too far and abused its power. While I don’t think this argument is the final word on the subject, I still think that it deserves consideration.

As to your obejction to “finders keepers”-property rights (which I advocate), I think it is pretty valid. I’ve read one response to it, which, applied to your metaphor, would go the following: Crusoe wouldn’t have the right to kick Friday off his island because the threat Friday poses to Crusoe by being on his island is much smaller than the threat Friday would face if Crusoe kicked him off the island. I think this sounds intuitively valid as far as it goes, but I’m afraid it doesn’t allow us to draw a line. If we accept this response, wouldn’t we also have to grant a starving person the “right” to steal form a better off person? And if we accept this, wouldn’t we also allow for at least some government distribution of income?

Anyway, these are just my $0.02 which turned out to be a little more. I’m looking forwart to your next post!