And what is the “cartel”?
Published by Yazad Jal June 4th, 2004 in Web WorldSo what do you call a group of bloggers who are staunch advocates of the free market? A cartel! Sounds anthithetical? Yes. But don’t blame us. The moniker was first used by Shanti and it seems to have stuck.
Ravi, MadMan and Gautam were (are) guest bloggers on AnarCapLib and we started to, well, dominate the Bharatiya Blog Mela competitions.
Our main glue is libertarianism, though not all are anarcho capitalists like me. We are all also trying to set up a policy group blog focussing on India and devising libertarian solutions for her many ills. It’s called FreeR India and dear reader, you’ll be the first to know when it’s up and running.
The success of a party can be determined by the number of gatecrashers. And we do have friends who’ve been knocking away on the virtual doors of the cartel. MadMan is devising a logical test of libertarianism. Get ready to jump through the hoop and clear the hurdles!
Any more wanting to join us in the battle against the evil forces of socialism, illogic, and unfreedom? Drop me a line.
I just noticed that we’re all men. No offence meant to the women, we’d love to have you on board, but with logical faculties intact please.
And hey, we don’t neccesarily agree with each other, but what fun is a cartel without some sparring!
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To understand what ‘Cartel’ means we have to get down to its roots: ‘Ca’ and ‘rtel’. The meaning of these two is a profound and poignant mystery and thus so is that of ‘Cartel’.
[To borrow from Jack Handy]
Another religious group/cartel - just what the world needed ;) but more power to you - live and let die is what I say. Here’s some interesting reading for members of the cartel from a reformed libertarian who has realized just how ridiculous it all is. I’m starting Libertarians Anonymous (LA) with a simple 12 step program that will help rid you of these addictive but eventually destructive ideas.
Libertarian to Liberal by Mike Bast
(Yazad: Replaced full text of the article with a link)
Ck, Religious? A majority of us are atheists. And hey, it’s quite easy to pick up stuff from a libertarian critique site. So easy that I’ll provide the link to Mike Huben’s whole site, not just one article from it. Here it is.
There are many responses to Huben. I’ll leave that to my readers to google and find out.
Sorry for posting the entire article.
By religious I meant the dogma. Libertarianism is propogated the same way religion is - by stating absolutes and by not requiring the provision of any proof to back up ones statements. Since I (irrationally) like to back up my arguements with facts, why don’t you send me a libertarian article which you think puts your case forward the best.
I bet you that by replacing (I’m betting that even the grammar will be correct - a simple Find-Replace in Word would probably do it) the word Capitalism/Free Markets with Jesus Christ and God and replacing Government and Taxation with Satan and Evil I could deliver the entire contents of the article as a sermon in any Church and get a pat on the back from a priest for a ‘well thought out’ and ‘rational’ arguement on the importance of God and the evils of Satanic practices.
Hmm…I think the right word is cabal.
{Start Sarcasm} How absolutely brilliant CK. {End Sarcasm}
I wish I could be as brilliant.
Since I am not as endowed, I shall begin first by telling you that, to me at-least,
Libertarianism and libertarian thinking isn’t a dogma.
(Frankly, if it were a dogma, it would boomerang on itself, wouldn’t it? The very basis of Libertarianism as I see it is that there is no dogma, and an individual is free, as in freedom, to believe what he or she wants to. SO where is the dogma here?)
But we’ll leave that aside. A libertarian, such as I am, didn’t wake up one fine day and heard a little priest extolling on the virtues of libertarianism on a street corner and was so moved as to become a zealot, and a converted libertarian.
I, due to some quirk of nature, maybe, and probably due to the fact that I fell on my head when born, but due to my own personal beliefs, and my way of thinking (however bad it might be) believed that an individual should have the utmost right to take care of his life, and that one shouldn’t let oneself be “led, and commanded” by others.
I also developed a strong dislike to authority figures, and to group goals and subjugating one’s better interest for the sake of society etc. I believed that one ought to do one wanted to do. Cause there is no point in putting off one’s dream in the hope that the entire world will one day have the same dream. I believed in it. I still do.
I have never believed that I was good, and that those who didn’t believe in libertarianism are bad. There, to be absolutely truthful to you, is no good or bad in my way of thinking. I don’t claim libertarianism to be the next big thing towards man’s salvation, and the promise of an Eden. I don’t claim anything at all. All I did say was that it is time people began believing in what they did, and not do it blindly, just because some guy up there told them to.
Now, I don’t see where there is dogma here. I don’t even see how libertarian thought could be adapted to a sermon against evil?
I have more to tell, but it would overload this comment board. Also, I want to do it as a post too, at my blog. So I shall stop here.
Another Cartel-igenous reponse for you Ck :-).
1. I only recently found out that I am in the cartel and I suppose it is an appropriate epithet, because the members spend an inordinate amount of time reading each others posts and discussing them. Believe you me there are plenty of differences, and a lot of “rational” discussion goes on, with reasoning and proof from various libertarian and non-libertarian quarters bandied about.
2. I thought “liberals” of the variety that you claim to belong to were supposed to also be pc about what they said. I am what is called an outstanding Catholic. From where I stand, which is admittedly outside the church, I here less of Satan and more about personal responsibility, and the value of family and church in weathering emotional and other storms. That ofcourse if just the lturgical line. Personally don’t see too much similarity, and I promise you that the moment there is I will be an outstanding Cartel-age.
3. Way back when the cartel was still young and was still mustering its forces, we (you and me that is) were having a discussion in the comments of one of my posts. I posted a long reply to your comments which you did not respond to. Would you care to have a look at it and show how I am being unreasonable or dogmatic? [Bihar Brutality] Or do you just want to declare my arguments “libertarian” and therefore beyond the pale of reasonable discussion?
Merci
So, Mike read one libertarian article, where the tone was evangelical and got pissed. And Ck generalizes from a single, second-hand instance, to all libertarian theory. Bravo, that has to be the most logical extension ever. Is it my fault that Mike chooses to read propoganda articles instead of ignoring them like people with an IQ over 20 do? And then generalize from them?
Really, there are rational liberal, communist, conservative and libertarian articles and there are propagandist ones. If you can’t tell one from the other, I suggest you read more till you’re able to tell the difference.
And as an erstwhile member of the catholic church, I can tell you from experience that there are far fewer dogma-spouting libertarians than catholics.
Are you suggesting that you will accept contributions from people without “intact logical faculties” as long as they are men?
So we women can only join if we meet your standards of intelligence?
Perhaps a better(READ more politically correct) line would have been “I just noticed that we’re all men. We would love to have you women on board as well.”(full istaap)
Do not underestimate the women’s discerning power, for that matter the content of the Cartel’s blog especially if it is “focussing on India and devising libertarian solutions for her many ills”. Do not worry, women who read this blog (and in the future FreerIndia) KNOW that this is NOT the place to be holding discussions regarding Sex and the City or “how to make Makhani dal in 25 minutes Nita-Mehta style”. So whatever contributions we do make will be in accordance to the various political views/opinions being discussed, assuring a somewhat logical and relevant discussion and last I checked only logically sound or semi sound people could do that!
:) ditto, Mother T.
I dont know… I strongly feel that it is all very subjective… one should not generalise from isolated instances but… I know it is my personal opinion and maybe I am wrong… I have nothing against women as such…. but… I also don’t want to get beaten up so I will stop here…
Ck, exactly what are the absolutes that Libertarians build their philosophy on? List them down in short, and then attack them. Let’s take it from there.
Yeh second hand debating bahut ajeeb lagta hai. You can always beat a retreat saying “Oh I didnt commit the fallacy, that Mike Bast dude did.”
I’m sorry, Mother T, are you that determined to read exactly what you want to read?
What Yazad said was that the only entry criteria for women was to have their logical faculties intact. You have automatically inferred something that wasn’t implied: that men are exempted from this.
A Cartel member would’ve never made such a silly logical mistake. ;)
You’re disqualified.
He he he! LOL@Madman, and Ravikiran(an afterthought). But true. Mother T didnt think it through.
Let me start with, “taxes”.
1. In any community it’s but natural for a group to associate themselves with like minded people.’The cartel’ is one such instance. This is what which sets them apart!
Consider a local event, residents of a society pool in money each month to the society. Why? So that each member needn’t fork out on his own each time he has to worry about leakage [building repairs ]. This is simply a very much scaled down concept of paying the government!
Government builds roads, bridges comes up with solutions to urban, semi-urban and rural needs. For all these activities to be carried out it needs a resource into which it can dip into. This pool vastly constitutes taxes!!
I hope that libertarians(members of the cartel in this case) would come up other basic precepts of libertarianism and give us the pleasure to attack, discuss and perhaps shake hands.
Until then…Over to ‘the cartel’
GK, You’ve described a fraternal society with voluntary contributions. Taxes are not voluntary. You’re making a leap of faith by linking the two.
And I have provided a link in the post about libertarianism. Read through it.
Ha Madman
I think it is unfair, dismissing me as illogical. I think I made a very logical deduction from this very preturbing caveat:
“No offence meant to the women, we’d love to have you on board, but with logical faculties intact please.”
As you said, it means that ONLY women with logical faculties can be on board. If one was to infer from the caveat that men are not exempt then Yazad would have to put in the assumption that women = men+ women, or replace the word women with people. You see, inferences can only be made with available information/data and there is no information/data to suggest that men are not exempt. Therefore it is more logical to infer that men are excluded rather than otherwise.
Caveats/disclaimers are very serious statements and should be thought out very carefully before being made.
This was a very sexist statement you must admit.
Anyway I don’t want to turn this into one of those feminist issues, issues I totally dislike. If you think I cannot join the cartel..too bad(READ sob!sob!), I’ll take my loser ass elsewhere…..
Here are examples of the parallels I see between Liberarianism (Lib) and Religion (Rel):
1] Neither Lib nor Rel can historically or empirically prove their claims.
2] They both ask the ‘believer’ to have ‘faith’ in a system/entity that has never existed in tangible form - but is nevertheless documented in books - the Koran, the Bible, the Gita. The Lib postualtes that lack of Govt intervention, no-taxes etc. will lead to the betterment of humanity has never been proved but is still documented in the works of others.
3] It is impossible to argue rationally with both libertarians and religious men. Both hold a belief which cannot be proved - so when you do argue with them they just reference some obscure text. When pressed or you dig a little deeper you find that the text is just that - words written by somebody else which cannot be proved because the events which the text references have never occurred.
4] Both Lib and Rel like to take credit for all the good things that have happened in the world and blame their nemesis (Govt./Satan) for everything bad in the world. They both search deperately in any postive event that occurs for some element of their belief. If none is found (as is usally the case) they are quick to manufacture some point of view which will show the world it was their beleifs that caused that event to take place.
5] When both Libs and Rels are pressed their first line of defense against a detractor is that they should read a little more about the subject. Then they will both argue that the detractor lacks the mental capability to fully understand the issue.
So here’s my challenge to the Cult…oops Cartel I mean - give me a good ‘non-propoganda’ libertarian article which clearly and succintly outlines libertarian views - I will fisk it and with minimal manipulation of keywords turn it into a religious article which could be preached by any priest.
Ck wrote: “4] Both Lib and Rel like to take credit for all the good things that have happened in the world and blame their nemesis (Govt./Satan) for everything bad in the world”
For an interesting viewpoint on this, check out this article and the comments below it http://slate.msn.com/id/2101835/
So there, you’ve got your article.
Quizman the article you provided me seems to be left leaning and is not in synch with libertarian view - see the quotes below:
“But if liberty is the ability to make a decent living or attend a good school, then getting government out of the way isn’t enough. In fact, government expansion, in the form of student loans or job training, may be necessary”
Author seems to be arguing for subsidized education and some sort of welfare system
“But to the extent these institutions threaten the individual, liberty may be better served by government expansion, in the form of workplace regulation or injunctions against school prayer.”
Author seems to be arguing for more Govt. expansion and regulation.
I was looking for a libertarian article not this leftist one. Slate BTW is an acknowledged liberal source and is definitely not libertarian.
CK _ I requested you to read the comments below the article as well. I know that Slate is run by Michael Kinsley, a famous centre-leftist. [As opposed to the radical left of www.thenation.com]
Ck, you are pulling the same stunt you pull on spontaneous order. Ignoring uncomfortable questions. Hence I will repeat.
Ck, exactly what are the absolutes that Libertarians build their philosophy on? List them down in short, and then attack them. Let’s take it from there.
Yeh second hand debating bahut ajeeb lagta hai. You can always beat a retreat saying “Oh I didnt commit the fallacy, that Mike Bast dude did.”
Give specific examples of all the parallels between religion and libertarianism.
1] Neither Lib nor Rel can historically or empirically prove their claims.
Which claims are you talking about?
2] They both ask the ‘believer’ to have ‘faith’ in a system/entity that has never existed in tangible form - but is nevertheless documented in books - the Koran, the Bible, the Gita. The Lib postualtes that lack of Govt intervention, no-taxes etc. will lead to the betterment of humanity has never been proved but is still documented in the works of others.
This in itself is a very irrational statement to make. If something has never been tried before, how can its proponents give historical evidence? If prior proof of success is a prerequisite for trying something new, then nothing will ever be tried. Libertarians point out the flaws in the current system and present an alternative system without those flaws. No Libertarian will say that our ideas are a panacea to all evils, that we will be living in paradise. Crocin cures fever, not AIDS, Heart Disease and astigmatism.
3] It is impossible to argue rationally with both libertarians and religious men. Both hold a belief which cannot be proved - so when you do argue with them they just reference some obscure text. When pressed or you dig a little deeper you find that the text is just that - words written by somebody else which cannot be proved because the events which the text references have never occurred.
OK, maybe you just choose to argue with Libertarians who fight on references. Whenever I tried to engage you in a debate on spon_order, you ignored my mails and chose to respond to someone else in fallacious ways. I challenge you to a debate on this very blog, with one of the rules being “No references to Other Books Allowed”. Deal?
If you accept, then let yazad start a thread, and we can start debating there.
Gautam don’t take it personally if I choose to respond to or not to certain posts. Sometimes I have the time and the interest and at other times I do not.
My sporadic postings actually coincide very closely with my travel schedule. Long flights , longer stopovers and a big meeting to attend at the end of an 8 hr flight so I can’t afford to relax and grab a beer at the airport lounge - so I amp up on coffee, work on my presentations for a while and shoot off a post or to on Spon order or Yazad’s blog. True that sometimes (some would say all the time) I don’t make much sense but I do think I occassionally at least have something interesting to to say.
All the posters here seem to have all the time in the world to maintain and update their blogs and write long posts - unfortunately for some of us Libertarianism is not the sole focus of our lives - just an occassional diversion and an interesting thought exercise. It’s like chess -Yazad is like Gary Kasporov who plays chess for a living - I’m just a guy who plays chess for an hour or two on the weekend and then gets back to his real life. Does Gary Kasporov play better chess than me - most certainly - that is what he does in life - but I think we both get an equal amount of pleasure out of a good game in fact I think I might actually enjoy it more - theres less pressure ;)
Ck, what Gautam was trying to say is that there’s a “pattern” to your disappearance. Generally occurs when you are beaten in an argument. I’m sure you can pick up the thread a week later. We don’t mind the gaps!
But honestly, I don’t care that much. Comment at your convinience. BTW, all of us have a “day job” like you. This is our spare time activity!
It appears that Mike Bast was a shallow libertarian and became a shallow welfare-statist. Should we celebrate?
I myself have written a libertarian sermon of sorts. It is quite brief. I’d be interested to see Ck’s religious translation.
Ravages, is this a fair paraphrase?: “The existential root of libertarianism is the experience of being very bad at taking orders from morons.” (Leopold Leider, whoever that may be)
GK: is a “society” what Yanks call a “condo”, i.e. a housing complex with private areas separately owned and common spaces owned by the association? I live in one such; it’s cheaper than a separate house, and I don’t have to bother about the roof or the grounds. To make the analogy with government stronger, let’s endow the association with authority to tax what I import to the complex, to screen my visitors in advance, and to assume new powers over the residents by simple majority vote.
Ck: An ethical position is not subject to proof, of course, but it is possible to argue that ordinary ethical principles which others are presumed to share - e.g. “do not steal, do not presume to be wiser than your neighbor about his own circumstances” - lead to one’s favorite policy if consistently applied.
Whereupon we run into the practical objection: the system envisoned by any given libertarian lunatic, like anything proposed in any legislature, has no exact precedent. True, but we can say confidently that more or less libertarian policies have had better or worse results. For example, does anyone lament the loss of the Permit Raj? Is there any question that the Victorian era of relatively free trade coincided with relatively rapid improvements in the Western standard of living? Do the Swiss suffer from the lack of an energetic foreign policy?
CK, you want empirical proof? Fine by me. There has been one very well documented period of near complete “libertarian” society: the area now consisting of what is called the continental United States prior to the 20th century.
From the beginning of records, every region and revelation had its greatest peaceful interaction between people, and greatest advancement, prior to government interference.
A few examples: Prior to forced government schooling, literacy rates were 80%+ for “blacks”, 95%+ for “whites”, and only getting better. Those rates have done nothing but fall since.
Aboriginal tribes were betrayed continuously by “government”. The great slaughters and unilateral abrogations of treaty were not private efforts.
The “wild” west had substantially lower crime rates in every way than the “settled” east, exactly the same way that those areas where Americans carry arms for their own defense today are far more peaceful than where people depend on government to protect them today.
George Washington is the only president to have rode at the head of his troops as Commander In Chief, to put down a revolt in western Pennsilvania after the Fed.Gov levied a tax on whisky which the cabal of eastern distillers wanted in order to crush the competition.
Private efforts, such as the Great Northern railroad, crossed the continent quickly and profitably, declining only after the cabal of railroad executives were able to create for themselves a government agency to crush competition.
Ever hear of Boulder Dam? The Fed.Gov expropriated it, renamed it Hoover. Even something that big was being created privately.
And what the heck, lets throw the Internet into this mix. It was only AFTER the Fed.gov released control of “peering” at the end of 1992 that things took off. Is it just a coincidence that when the DMCA and software pattents came into effect, we got the .com bust? There is a great boom when government releases control, and a bust when government retakes control. Hmmm…
The biggest error in your thinking is that only through government does cooperative action take place. This is simply not true. Fantastic things happen when interested individuals come together voluntarily. It is force which styfles innovation, creates deadlock, and crushes spirit.
Will I see you at Mojave when Rutan’s private rocket goes into space on the 30th? I doubt it.
Curt-
Did someone say they wanted women? I have a wide variety available….
Actually, just one model available. And you can have her in any suit - as long as it’s black.
As for the ‘logical faculties intact’ comment…I doubt women without logical faculties would be here in the first place. Logical faculties are also rather difficult to turn off - as I discovered to my initial dismay and enduring boredom deep into the teenage years of trying to enjoy activities that everyone else was enjoying.
So I’m dunking a toe in the water, might even let you have a foot. Call me a Provisional Member.
M
Well said “Mother T”. Madhu, Yazad: I find her statements perfectly logical. Your statement explicitly mentions requirements for women; nowhere in your post is it stated or implied that a similar requirement is in place for men.
Last night, I while returning from a mall, I noticed a woman dressed in suit (assumption: has a good job and is perhaps well educated) with a three year old by her side and a few month old baby in a crib, smoking in a designated smoking area. I guess we all know that second hand smoke is especially bad for kids; that the designated smoking areas are perhaps the worst places to be. There were at least four others, one of them a post-doc in my department. None, I repeat none bothered to ask the woman to not have her kids in that area.
I guess what I want to say is that people aren’t always the best judges of whats right and whats not, even in the precence of scientific evidence (eg. second hand smoke is B-A-D for kids). Libertarianism, therefore, might be godd in theory, but it has its flaws when it comes to real situations.
Curt, I would like to reply to some of your statements. Not now, but I would get to them soon.
BTW, I was a libertarian — though I didn’t know of this term until a few days back :-( — until I read Noam Chomsky. That got me thinking… I am not sure anymore.
“I guess what I want to say is that people aren’t always the best judges of whats right and whats not, even in the precence of scientific evidence (eg. second hand smoke is B-A-D for kids). Libertarianism, therefore, might be godd in theory, but it has its flaws when it comes to real situations.”
They are her kids - her responsibility, not the responsibility of random passers by in a smoking room.
Do you expect strangers to walk up to parents feeding their kids fried foods and Coke? Or tell them off if they let kids play in the sun without a hat?
Bringing up children isn’t a village responsibility.
And the best way to minimize bad decisions is to minimize the total number of decisions, by concentrating all decision-making in a central authority and thereby doing away with the vast mass of decisions that would otherwise be made by, for example, you and me. Right?
“So, Mike read one libertarian article, where the tone was evangelical and got pissed.”
Actually, I didn’t just “read one article” and get pissed. I was heavily involved in the libertarian movement for many years (about 15, actually), including trying to start a party on campus, spending a summer in Washington, DC. as a Koch Summer Fellow, spending time at the Institute for Humane studies, and being involved in my local party. How much have YOU done?
This article was written for a libertarian party newsletter, and was meant to be very short. Not that you’d have been expected to know that, but before slinging crap, you might want to be sure you know of what you speak.