The three errors which Marx made were these:

(1) His adoption of the labor theory of value which had previously been advanced by David Ricardo.

(2) His failure to understand that the private ownership of property, including capital instruments, is indispensable to political freedom; in short, his failure to understand the menace to human freedom of the ownership of the means of production by the state.

(3) His mistaking the wealth produced by capital for “surplus value”, i.e., value which he thought was created by labor and stolen from the laborer by the capitalist.

From: KARL MARX: THE ALMOST CAPITALIST By Louis O. Kelso
http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/almostcapitalist.htm

Corporations will increasingly not need workers, due to automated factories, computers, AI etc.

When workers aren’t needed for the creation of REAL wealth (food, tools, machines, computers etc.) you’ll get a bloated “service” sector where the serfs “serve” those who own (stock in) the corporations (Marxists call these people “capitalists”).

At this point, capitalism itself breaks down, as only those who own stock in corporations will in truth own anything valuable. With one ownership class and one serving class, this future will resemble high-tech corporatist feudalism.

When the non-stock holding class is no longer useful, the non-stockholding class has two options; be starved into non-existence or revolt against the current structure of the economy and smash it.

Sorry classical libertarians, if this were 1900 I’d be all with you, but your version of capitalism is no longer possible when the neccessities of human life can be manufactured by only a small proportion of the human population.

We should be thinking about what an ideal economic system will be like in the future, not just what worked well in the past.

“Sweden has had greater economic growth than the U.S. for several years now, proof you can have innovation and a thriving economy under conditions of socialism”

The US is not even close to a free market itself, is socialist/fascist itself, and has the burden of a huge “defence” budget. Most european countries have had anemic growth for the last few decades, and it’s getting worse.

European countries are living off their relatively more free market past, this will not last much longer, and remember I told you that. Economic law is mathematical, the truth will out. Notice you never hear of a socialist country coming out of poverty, that is reserved for relatively free market countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and many more examples. How many countries in Europe in the last 20 years have had a booming economy? None. Certainly nothing close to what you see from the asian tigers. Thats not even mentioning the EU, which if it becomes a reality in europe will be a complete disaster.

There is no reason to mine more gold in order to keep prices stable. Explain why in America during the 19th century we had a gold backed currency, and prices dropped steadily all through the century, amidst unprecedented growth. The idea that you have to keep prices steady has no basis, the reason you here it all the time is that almost no one is allowed to get tenure in american universities if they disagree with central banking. Mercantilism is a separate issue, and a mercantilist country would likely not have a gold and silver backed currency.

You must have got your education at an american university, ( can’t anyone think for themselves anymore ), economic growth is fueled by real savings, not artificial money expansion, which causes malinvestment, business cycles, loss of standard of living because of inflation, etc. This is in direct opposition to what you hear on the news all the time which claims that consumer spending is the engine of growth, which is literally putting the cart before the horse.

I genuinely appreciate Libertarians and paleo-cons opposition to empire abroad and police state at home but their economic theory is all wet. Hint Sweden has had greater economic growth than the U.S. for several years now, proof you can have innovation and a thriving economy under conditions of socialism where people aren’t allowed to fall into the cracks and education is easily available to ALL so people can upgrade their skills to compete in the global economy.

OK, so we agree on that.

Where we differ is that you would prefer to base all currency strictly on precious metals, and either mine like heck to keep the value of currency stable, or allow it to deflate in value.

I would agree that this would be a superior systen to the one we have now, by far, if fractional reserve banking was indeed banned.

The only problem is that we’ve tried this before, it’s called mercantilism- things weren’t really so peachy keen back when kings used gold coins.

Besides,if fractional reserve banking is eliminated from the economy, so with most credit. If you want entrepreneurship, for example, you have to have a source of credit available; fractional reserve banking would have to be replaced by something.

I agree that no one should “run” a “central bank,” but imagine the following:

A law or ammendment to the Constitution which outlaws fractional reserve banking and simultaneously orders an amount of money equal to the annual growth rate of the economy created and distributed directly to citizens on an equal basis. Or it could mandate that half of the new money could go to citizens and the other half could go to fund government, (this ratio could be determined by yearly plebiscites). Come to think of it, the total amount of funding available to the government could be determined by plebiscite as well.

Do you have any practical objections to such a policy?

You compare the private FED and a government run central bank and say that a government run central bank would work better. Perhaps, but in both systems intellectual honesty compels you to admit that in the end, with such HUGE power and wealth up for grabs, bad people WILL end up running it for their own gain. I hope your not one of these people who has not yet learned how completely corrupt our society has become and how ridicules it looks to trust in ANYBODY, government or private industry, when they are unfettered by the rule of law, and when I say the rule of law I’m talking about libertarian law, not the perversion of justice that is our current system.

Nobody should run a central bank, because their is no reason to have one, other than to enrich those who control it. Your wrong assumption, that under a libertarian, gold backed currency system, their would still be inflation because of fractional reserve banking, ( under a true free market fractional reserve banking would be against the law because it is fraudulent ) leads you to the next wrong assumption, that therefore we might as well have a central bank.

Their is no need for a central bank, the reason that you hardly ever hear that is because the people who control it also control the educational system and the media, and they will protect their hugely profitable and powerful secret with every thing they have. Changing the thieves to government thieves will not change a thing. Why is that so hard to understand?

You wrote that under a gold backed currency you can have inflation because of fractional reserve banking. Wrong, real libertarians are against fractional reserve banking because it is fraudulent. This is where many people who are not libertarians but have libertarian leanings go wrong. You have to first understand what REAL libertarians believe in, in order to be sure your assumptions are right. So again, your statement was 100% wrong, yet I,m betting you will not admit you were wrong.

A mistake I see over and over again is assuming that in a libertarian society such and such could happen, and this is a weakness of libertarianism, when in fact there is an answer to that because libertarianism believes 100% in the non aggression principle, and would not allow ANY unjust laws to stand.

Well you may say what about people starving because they can’t make it on the free market. Well first of all taking money from some people at the point of a gun – that is what taxation amounts to – to give to other people is immoral. Secondly, it is not even needed, private charity would greatly increase if people were not taxed, which is exactly what happened in america before people were taxed. What you have to understand is that we live in a world of scarcity, and from a practical point of view, ALL systems will have some poor people, and although this is often because of some mental or physical handicaps, it also happens because of plain laziness and choice. Third, under a free market system, society would prosper much more than I think you understand, so much so that this would make poverty and starvation far less prevalent. The free market is a long term solution to poverty, and it would come about much faster than you think. Also our welfare system has been a failure, there are just as many poor people today as there ever was if not more. Many of these welfare cases are discouraged from looking for a job because they would actually start out making less at a job than what they make from welfare. So you trust a system that has been a failure over one that has not been given a chance to show that it can help out those less fortunate. Don’t make the assumption that you know that lots of people starved in 19 century america, it may have been far less prevalent than in other countries, mostly because even back then america was better off than most countries, hint hint.

So I am inclined to agree that private charity organizations are probably more efficient than any bureaucratic government.

Another comment: In the bible, the tax collector is always the sinner…