In ordinary language, finished goods are wealth, and there are already factiories in Japan where the only human workers are there to fix the robots when they (occasionally) break, and thanks to the exponential growth of computing power, soon trucks will be able to drive themselves (and if we don’t find it too creepy) robots nurses will be able to deliver a baby better than Ron Paul himself.

In a market where humans are only marginally required for the production of real wealth (finished goods) as well as for many services, the question is who’s going to own the robots. If we stick with capitalism, the answer is those who own lots of stock in the corporations. It’s an old arguments, but what’s changing is that unlike in the Fordist period of capitalism, relatively few people will earn (livable) wages, (except as servants of large scale stock holders), only stock holders will be able to afford the goods produced by the near-fully automated means of production. Everyone else can either work for those people, or work in a subsistence manner without access to the modern economy.

We had a system like that before, and it was called feudalism. Like I said, I’m not a Marxist, but I think Marx’s insight that automation will seperate the mass of humanity from access to the true wealth-creating engines is exactly what’s playing out now. It’s why China is the only country which is industrializing and why social inequality and poverty continue to increase world-wide.

All political structures are based on the underlying economies, and our economy is changing quickly, thanks to the exponential growth of computing power. Remember I wrote this when someone invents the truck that drives itself better than a human could and a million truck drivers are laid off in a year.

Indeed. Libertarians subscribe to a dishonest form of social Darwinism. About the kindest thing you can say about libertarians is that mostly they seem to have genuinely deceived themselves and are not just faking it.

Honest social Darwinism is simply the notion that might makes right – or more precisely: there is no “right”; there is only might. Anybody who gets anything he or she wants or needs by any means, whether by getting people to pay him money for stuff, by lobbying the government for stuff, or by knocking people over the head and taking their stuff, is simply exercising power in any of its various forms. If they succeed, they will survive and prosper, and to the extent that these survival traits and behaviors are heritable or socially transmissible, they will be perpetuated. And that’s neither good nor bad; it’s simply what happens.

Libertarian dishonesty is founded on two primary falsities: a false division between “government” and “nature”; and a false division between government and money-based economies – even though government is entirely contained within nature and therefore as natural as anything else, and even though money-based economics is entirely a superphenomenon of government, wholly dependent on and contained within it.

Thus, libertarians think that the exchange of money within an economy with certain rules defining artificial social constructs like “currency” and “property rights” constitutes “nature” – even though it is entirely contingent on a vast system of police and courts of law, among other things. “Government” is the opposite of “nature” and stands outside of it. When the government demands sacrifices of those who prosper in the economic game which is defined, maintained, and entirely made possible by the government, it is interfering with the sacred workings of “nature”, preventing the “fittest” from reaping fully their just rewards. Furthermore, unlike the honest social Darwinists, the libertarians dress up this preordained outcome as being morally desirable – *actually* good: their own maximum prosperity, based on success in a particular game with particular rules created and violently enforced by a certain kind of government, is really morally better than any other arrangement, and should be meekly accepted by everybody else.

The starving man must say, “Well, I know that if I cooperated with large numbers of others, we might be able to compel a change in this governmental economic setup, the better to serve our needs, but I know that exercising political power like that would be cheating against the will of Nature, so I certainly won’t do anything like that! Anyway, it would be nice if you’d help me, but if you won’t, then I’ll just accept that and go die, and be happy that this ‘natural’ economic setup has properly weeded me out!”

Money is not created by people, but rather by banking corporations, as a libertarian you should know that. So making money really involves doing what banking corporations are willing to pay for, since they are the ultimate originators of all money.

Understanding this really is the source of the dilemma and a false left/right divide in my opinion. As I said above, if banking corporations wish to create their own private currencies with the name of their corporation on the tokens and convince private citizens to use them of their own free will as a medium of exchange, then more power to them.

But if they want to create a currency which belongs to every citizen and reads “The United States of America” on it, then every citizen has a right to the profits created by this method.

And yes, taxing the profits of banking could create enough money to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the sick who are unable to care for themselves.

And no, taxing banking is not coercive, because:
1. all of the profits of creating the *national* currency belong to the citizenry in the first place, because it’s OUR currency, and
2. corporations are not people and cannot be coerced; only people have rights. You might have a right to associate in a corporation and rights as an individual within that association, but that association itself has no rights, especially if it’s applied to the citizenry for a charter.

And I really don’t understand this fetishization many libertarians have with living on the dole. It’s true that some people will ‘cheat the system’ and live on the dole when they could support themselves, but ultimately it’s very hard for a man to meet women, have self-esteem or feel satisfied with life while living in a government provided cement box and eating surplus cheese. Personally I’d rather see a few people cheating the system than a few people dying of hypothermia under bridges. And no, I don’t think living in government housing with other derelicts will become the new fashion and snowball out of control.

If the oppressive law enforcement and military bureaucracies we have in the U.S. were seriously curtailed, a decent social safety net could be provided without taxing individuals, but taxing the creation of U.S. money. Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen, it’s basically what Pennsylvania did before the Revolution; the government issued loans directly to citizens and then used the interest for public works like roads and bridges. The Pennsylvaniers got roads and bridges without any taxes, and lower interest rates than the private banks offered. Pretty neat, huh?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Myron to engage in a substantive debate. His MO is to utter empty platitudes and election slogans. When he gets questioned on the details, he immediately resorts to name-calling. Ask for specifics and he disappears, only to resurface in another thread to start the song and dance all over again.

Myron is like Oakland: there is no there there.