If you wanted to look for coercion, the devil of your theology, in the real world it is not hard to find at the heart of the system of property relations wherein the rich minority decide that the desperate need of the majority of the world’s people matters less than their own hyper-consumption … and that’s even before you get to the hundreds of billions of dollars they spend on guns to enforce their rule.

I agree that with your last post our debate comes to a natural end. Good day to you too… it’s been fun, thanks.

Not if Hillary Clinton has her way…

As I said in the beginning of this thread, I have no problem with voluntary socialists who seek to persuade people to share with them.

You on the other hand are a coercive socialist who wants to force other people to share at gunpoint if need be. It does not matter how you twist and turn, what ridiculous false dichotomies and rhetorical smoke screens you throw out. In the end, you want to force people at gunpoint, whether guilty or innocent of any wrongdoing, to disgorge the fruits of their labor to be distributed in according to your satisfaction. In effect you seek to exploit people just as the people you rail against did.

At best your system creates poverty and stagnation. Far more often, it leads to the deaths of millions.

Watching Chavez in action, and listening to his speeches, I can predict with some confidence that he will become very repressive. Your just society will turn out to be a charnel house.

Good day, sir.

Also, when you turn historically evolved property relations into fetishes and worship them, you obscure the blood and gore of the process of their formation. If the wealth of the owners of present-day corporations is holy, there is no need to examine the part played by (for example) slavery and colonial exploitation in the formation of that economic power. In the real world Africa’s poverty is causally linked to the wealth of Britain and USA, and the poverty of Haiti is linked to the wealth of French capital. But democratic action to redress these historic crimes and their present-day unjust consequences is a sin against Holy Property.

Dr Hans Hoppe’s speculations don’t prove anything either, outside the formalistic, ahistorical, unsocial notions of individual and property with which he reasons. The bogus certainty of his conclusions is because he has already smuggled his beliefs into his arguments as starting points. His individuals A and B, his childish antitheses, and his scholastic ethical formulae have nothing to do with historical and social reality. You need to get a grip on what discourse remains inside the hermeneutic circles of your property-worshiping religion and what can be used for rational discussion with those who aren’t your co-religionists. It’s pointless offering theological proofs which are convincing only to the believer.

In the end your arguments just assert the sovereignty of your particular ethical system over the real world. But in reality ethical systems arise and have their force within definite societies shaped historically and conditioned by definite material interests. That’s why your ideology has its concrete significance as an ornament on the oligarchies’ ruthless pursuit of the omnipotence of wealth in social life.

By the way, I agree that the finiteness of the spectrum is not the only factor to have an important bearing on how many TV networks there can be. Actually economic factors are more significant in my view, and they depend on the broadcasting technology as a whole, and the place that broadcasting has in a definite economic system. Venezuela could not support 10000 broadcast networks even if there was spectral room for them all. As I said in my first post: “[T]he technology of broadcasting, including the limited number of broadcast frequencies, determines that only a few TV networks can survive economically and share the broadcast spectrum.”

Also, I don’t know from whence you got the idea that I claimed that the European colonials respected property rights during colonization. Maybe that was just tiredness. Oh, and there is no need to be “baffled” by my support for Venezuela’s democratic revolution if you can remember that the idea that the revolutionary government is “nearly identical” to the old oligarchy is YOUR belief, not mine.

Try reading the article instead of scanning it. You’ve got the main thesis wrong. the FCC as decider of frequency blocks is one of the policy recommendations the author is against. Again, it lays out the history correctly. What you call chaos is actually how homesteading works, and is the most equitable way to bring previously unowned things into an economy. As to your argument that physics trumps common law: I think again you are really far off the mark.

The common law system provided an ethical system to assign who could use what frequency where and when. In other words, it adjudicates disputes between people. I mean, one could make the case that physics trumps common law in when guns are involved since the path of a bullet is a kinematic problem.

There is no technical reason for Venezuela to shut down one channel, in order to make room for another. They have plenty of spectrum available.

Globovision is not a nationwide network in that they only broadcast in a few cities. They can, however, be watched by anybody with a satellite dish in Venezuela. At the time I issued my challenge, I thought that they had accepted state control like Venevision. Apparently I was wrong. However, Chavez has now started threatening them, so I think I won’t be wrong for much longer.

As to your challenge about U.S. government interference in media here in the U.S., for what its worth radio networks that were calling for armed resistance to Bill Clinton in the early 90′s did not get shut down. On the other hand a radio station in Hawaii in te 1970′s which called for the abolition of the FCC was. Of course, since I am opposed to the U.S. governments existence, I am not sure what point you are trying to make.

You seem to worship mob rule, which you call democracy. You seem to assume that I, in opposing mob rule support oligarchies. I do not. I support the rights of the individual to his or her life and the property which he or she justly acquires.

Democracy is anathema to freedom. Democracy is 51% deciding to plunder the other 49%. Democracy, in its purest form, is a lynch mob dragging some guy out of his home and hanging him from a lamp-post because they want to move into his house.

I have no right to come into your home and take something that you made or traded for. If I banded together with a handful of friends, I still would have no right to do that. Even if, I convinced every person in your town, city, or country to help me take your property, I still would not have the right to do it. Oh sure, I may have the power to do it, you might not be able to stop me, but I wouldn’t have the right.

Your charming attempts to paint the notion that people should be permitted to keep that which they have created or bartered for as some sort of cultish religion are ridiculous. You claim that the European colonials who robbed the aboriginies who fell under their power respected private property rights, when their thieving ways demonstrate the very opposite. You somehow think that Chavez and his men will justly manage property seized by the state, when by collecting so much power and wealth into their hands, they will become yet another oligarchy and perpetrate the same crimes that their predecessors did.

In fact, they can do no other as Dr Hans Herman Hoppe explains in The Ethics and Economics of Private Property

The proof is two-fold. On the one hand, the consequences that follow if one were to deny the validity of the institution of original appropriation and private property are spelled out: If person A were not the owner of his own body and the places and goods originally appropriated and/or produced with this body as well as of the goods voluntarily (contractually) acquired from another previous owner, then only two alternatives would exist. Either another person, B, must be recognized as the owner of A’s body as well as the places and goods appropriated, produced or acquired by A, or both persons, A and B, must be considered equal co-owners of all bodies, places and goods.

In the first case, A would be reduced to the rank of B’s slave and object of exploitation. B would be the owner of A’s body and all places and goods appropriated, produced and acquired by A, but A in turn would not be the owner of B’s body and the places and goods appropriated, produced and acquired by B. Hence, under this ruling two categorically distinct classes of persons would be constituted – Untermenschen such as A and Uebermenschen such as B – to whom different “laws” apply. Accordingly, such ruling must be discarded as a human ethic equally applicable to everyone qua human being (rational animal). From the very outset, any such ruling is recognized as not universally acceptable and thus cannot claim to represent law. For a rule to aspire to the rank of a law – a just rule – it is necessary that such a rule apply equally and universally to everyone.

Alternatively, in the second case of universal and equal co-ownership, the requirement of equal law for everyone would be fulfilled. However, this alternative would suffer from an even more severe deficiency, because if it were applied, all of mankind would instantly perish. (Since every human ethic must permit the survival of mankind, this alternative must also be rejected.) Every action of a person requires the use of some scarce means (at least of the person’s body and its standing room), but if all goods were co-owned by everyone, then no one, at no time and no place, would be allowed to do anything unless he had previously secured every other co-owner’s consent to do so. Yet how could anyone grant such consent were he not the exclusive owner of his own body (including his vocal chords) by which means his consent must be expressed? Indeed, he would first need another’s consent in order to be allowed to express his own, but these others could not give their consent without having first his, and so it would go on.

Since the latter case, that of “Universal Communism” is unworkable, socialsit systems, like that advocated by Chavez, invariably amount to some elite exercising feudal power over those outside the elite. Given your opposition to the debris of Spanish colonialism, I am baffled why you support a nearly identical system being put in place of the old one.

The contention, then, is on who gets to allocate this resource. The author of the referred article contends that the FCC should break this resource into saleable parts and further refine those parts into TAS units that allocate time. At any rate, the FCC does allow for the sales of frequency via an auction – the highest bidder gets the right to use that frequency.

So, while the author is interested in market forces regarding frequencies, he never contends that there should not be regulation of said frequency. Nor does he address how multiple broadcasters on the same frequency should adjudicate conflicts . He discusses spread spectrum technology, an approach the FCC initially promoted to amateur experimenters in 1980. However, spread spectrum wasn’t available prior to the the advent of technology that could take advantage of it and it was cost-prohibitive to most individuals.

Spread spectrum works well, but it is power consumptive as the receiver needs to scan multiple frequencies and multiplex different signals instead of receiving narrow band communications. In addition, the presence of many spread-spectrum devices tends to degrade performance. That is because even though the devices can swap frequencies, all the devices within range are trying to do the same thing and collisions still occur. Thus, their still needs to be a limit on the frequency and the wattage on a given device; the first because the greater the spread, the more opportunities for collisions, and the latter because of the potential for interference on a given frequency.

Ostensibly, you and the author believe that all devices should communicate on all frequencies with no regulation. The approach to frequencies needs to be more in line with the laws of physics than common law because the former dictate what is or isn’t possible, not the latter. Most people don’t want their wireless to drop because someone turned on the microwave oven – each uses the 2.4 Ghz band, and wireless is spread spectrum.

The spectrum is huge, but it is finite, and who gets to do what in the spectrum is paramount. The FCC has minimized the potential for conflict. Witb narrow-band communications, the race was on for the best frequency and he who supplied the most power, won. We avoided a wild west of communications, which would have benefited no one.

This was a case of pwerful corporations ensuring the profit that only a monopoly or an oligopoly can rake in by having government keep competitors out of the market. The chaos theory was advanced as a rationalization to defend the act, much like the United States is now said to be in Iraq to prevent terrorist networks from forming there.

I agree with you that there is no TV network in Venezuela whose programming is not under state oversight. In fact I can’t think of any TV network in the world whose programming is not under state oversight. That’s why I thought you were just on another irrelevant state-bashing kick!

The correct interpretation of your question seemed ludicrous to me because even with state oversight TV stations are basically controlled by their owners, not the state (unless it’s an owner). Isn’t that obvious? That’s why they bothered to take over the RCTV network in the first place, even though the old coup-plotters’ RCTV was already under the very same state oversight as the new public channel, it’s only the ownership that’s different.

There are 3 privately owned TV companies in Venezuela now. One of them, Globovision, is still actively supporting right-wing rebellion against Venezuelan democracy – all anti-government, all the time. It is certainly not controlled by Hugo Chavez. Can you name a TV station in the USA which recently promoted armed rebellion against the US government and continues to be professedly working for its downfall? Take your time.

My claim was that because the number of broadcast TV networks is limited and when they are owned (as in Venezuela’s case) by a rancid oligarchy then freedom of expression through TV for the popular majority can only come at the expense of the former oligarchic owners. RCTV’s owners used their control of the network to express (freely) disinformation and propaganda aimed against that popular majority. They ran free non-stop ads for weeks promoting an oil industry lockout to bring down the elected government, then supported the coup regime of the right-wing dictator-for-a-day, then suppressed news of the uprising which restored democracy. Such a station can not serve freedom of expression for the Venezuelan majority unless it stops serving the freedom of expression of the tiny clique of wealthy owners who oppose them. So it IS a zero sum game, but the result is an increase in the number of people able to exercise freedom of expression because RCTV was responsive only to a tiny, right-wing clique of owners whereas the new channel is oriented to the popular majority, millions of people. So the replacement is good for freedom.

My point about state regulation of the broadcast spectrum is that it is not just a plot, it’s one way of coping with the finite spectrum (which you said didn’t need, we could all have national media companies, etc, remember?) I agree that privatizing the spectrum would be another possible way of controlling access to this scarce resource. It hasn’t happened in Venezuela where the state does own the finite broadcast spectrum and hence was able to replace one of the necessarily limited number of networks simply by its sovereign choice not to renew RCTV’s licence, which was in effect a lease. Ending RCTV’s broadcast license was an exercise of legal, pre-existing property rights, not a violation of them. On your third point I see that for you, and Ted, the word “theft” is a religious term within your property-worshiping liturgy in which it is used to anathemize any interference in private property. All I will say is that property fetish unbelievers tend to reserve the term to refer to illegal and uncompensated compulsory transfer of property.

I stand by the right of the majority of the people, although they own little, to exercise power over the wealthy including over their wealth. I support democracy, not just at home in my own country but for the whole world. I do indeed expect this to yield increasingly good results, as the majority of the earth’s population becomes politically dominant on a world scale for the first time. Democracy will come.

There are about a billion hungry people on our planet and a few tens of thousands die of hunger every day. That’s because those people don’t have political power. By comparison, the modest political power of a citizen of the US empire – even a citizen with no personal property – is enough so that that citizen need not fear the deprivation in which most of the world’s people live.

It’s because the small ultra-wealthy minority in a few rich countries exercises political (including military and informational) power over and against the deprived majority of the world’s people that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year on wars to defend or extend the property of the wealthy while the much smaller sums required to eliminate hunger, preventable disease and illiteracy are not to be found. That world of hyper-consumption and militarism alongside desperate poverty is the “civilization” of which the fetishism of private property is the “basis”.

You claim that the government needs to dictate who can use spectrum. If that is the case, would you also claim that the government should be assigning temporary licenses to use land since it is similarly scarce? Because they are both similarly abundant.

Richard is completely correct about spectrum. Unfettered use of frequencies creates chaos because of the potential to trample other signals. Many people have mobile phones, which are allowed to operate in a very specific range. Without regulation, then with enough wattage and knowledge, one could broadcast their own personal programming and render your phone – or those of emergency services – useless. It would not be in your best interest to be in an airplane that loses air-to-ground communication because some guy thought it okay to take over the 250 MHz band with re-runs of “Leave it to Beaver.”

There does need to be an authority to regulate spectrum because it is finite.

I see you have conceded the main points, so I’ll just mop up the rest.

Dis Manibus! I am debating the fricking black knight!

Let’s see, You claim that Hugo Chavez does not control all the television networks, but you can’t name one. Got it. I guess you win that point.

You claim that the government needs to dictate who can use spectrum. If that is the case, would you also claim that the government should be assigning temporary licenses to use land since it is similarly scarce? Because they are both similarly abundant. Actually, I guess Chavez, with his latest land reform system is doing just that; the people “given” the land cannot sell it, must farm it to the satisfaction of the state, and thanks to price controls cannot even control what they sell it for. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t an Escambray Mountains revolt all over again.

Your third comment is one of the most elegant rationalizations for rulers to plunder their subjects. Private property is no fetish but rather the basis of civilization. One only needs to look at the places where to has been abolished – China under Mao, North Korea, the Soviet Union under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Cuba under Castro to see what happens when it is not respected. “They have no need of it”-indeed.

I point you to Murray Rothbard’s review of Franz Oppenheimer’s The State:

In essence, he said, there are only two ways for men to acquire wealth. The first method is by producing a good or a service and voluntarily exchanging that good for the product of somebody else. This is the method of exchange, the method of the free market; it’s creative and expands production; it is not a zero-sum game because production expands and both parties to the exchange benefit. Oppenheimer called this method the “economic means” for the acquisition of wealth.
The second method is seizing another person’s property without his consent, i.e., by robbery, exploitation, looting. When you seize someone’s prop­erty without his consent, then you are benefiting at his expense, at the expense of the producer; here is truly a zero-sum “game”–not much of a “game,” by the way, from the point of view of the victim. Instead of expanding production, this method of robbery clearly hobbles and restricts production.So in addition to being immoral while peaceful exchange is moral, the method of robbery hobbles production because it is parasitic upon the effort of the producers.
With brilliant astuteness, Oppenheimer called this method of obtaining wealth “the political means.” And then he went on to define the state, or government, as “the organization of the political means,” i.e., the regularization, legiti­mation, and permanent establishment of the political means for the acquisition of wealth.
In other words, the state is organized theft, organized robbery, organized exploitation. And this essential nature of the state is high­lighted by the fact that the state ever rests upon the crucial instrument of taxation.

If anyone is making a fetish of anything, it is you with your support for strong governments. Your implied belief that if the right people are permitted to threaten, rob and plunder with impunity, somehow society will be better off is illogical in the extreme. But hey, this time it’s going to work out differently, right?

Yep, you really showed me…

Please elaborate.

If you mean, I reconstruct history: no, I do not.

If you mean, I am attempting to revive the south: Again, that is not the case. I feel that the destabilization of the slave industry was fine. While I believe that less government is better, I believe that of both state and federal governments.

If you are wondering if I am for or against slavery, that depends: Quite a few of my friends are into BDSM, and it seems to work out just fine in those relationships. :)

But, I find it interesting how often people who demonize slavery often do so with the wrong facts. I have no problem with demonization, mind you. Just the correctness of facts.

There are people who seem to place slavery as a thing that americans, or white people did. They fail to own up that slavery was common in other parts of the world. They often fail to own up that many African slaves were captured and sold by other Africans. They often fail to own up to the fact that slavery existed on the African coast long before the white man came.

I do not debate that slavery in America was harsh, that atrocities occured, ect. It was, they did, etc. I only make sure to point out the fact that slavery is not the sole province of any one people. It has been practiced by many races, and many civilizations. It is still practiced today by some people.

I also like to take time to point out that the civil war was not about slavery.

The civil war began, fighting wise, on April 12, 1861.

The emancipation proclamation came nearly two years after: Jan 1, 1863.

In a quote from the government archives:

“…the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.”

Anyway, Richard, if you statement was not a blanket statement, my apologies, but it seemed so to me.

As for your statements regarding Tarrans questions/challenges, I feel number 1 is of incredible import.

As for your response to the third, I feel you are definitely in the wrong. It is theft.

Much like if I were to take your drivers license away, for a time – or forever, and give your car to someone else. Don’t worry. We’ll pay you what we think it is worth.

Maybe you do not think it is a big deal. Maybe that sounds fine to you.

How about your property? You bought your home. You sweated, bled, shed tears in making it really yours. You lived your life in it. Your children grew up in it.

Now we can take it away. We’ll give you market price, not to worry. The smell of your porch won’t be the activator for memories out there with the wife or the kids… but hey, you got the cash – and it was for the public good. Or maybe just coporate good.

How about this? Lets draft you. We’ll take a few years of your life, maybe even your life, but we will compensate. Is that a theft of years? Or also acceptable?

I personally think all three are theft, in fact.

One of the scariest phrases I have ever heard has been “For the common/public good.”

Obviously others who fought in the war fought for different motives. But for a lot of individuals the war was certainly (at least in part) “about” defending slaveholding.

The question of the main causes of the war is an interesting (but different) one. I am sure you are right that freeing the slaves was not the primary war aim of the Union leadership.

These days you don’t see all that many supporters of the freedom to own slaves, but we have an equivalent in those who support the freedom of the wealthy to rule over society through the subordination of democracy to markets and private property rights fetishized as all that is holy.

I see you have conceded the main points, so I’ll just mop up the rest.

Your first comment is irrelevant.

The article your second comment relies on simply makes a right wing case for privatizing the spectrum rather than allocating it as a publicly-owned good. There can only be a finite number of broadcast networks in any case which was the point at issue. The spectrum is a limited resource.

Your third comment just expresses an emotional attitude on your part rather than arguing a matter of fact. Without a broadcast licence RCTV can not put to use that equipment which is however installed and working and perfectly suited for its successor channel to use. So it’s economically rational to turn it over to the new channel… although I accept that for a worshipper of private property like yourself it could be too sacred to be sacrificed to mere expediency in that way. Yes, it is confiscation but it’s not correct to call it theft when the confiscation is legal and the old channel’s owners will be financially compensated. You’re just misusing the word theft to express your disapproval.