I’m a bit surprised you don’t mention Primitivists and other “Green Anarchy” hangers-on. Any thoughts? I for one would certainly hang out with even the worst anarcho-syndicalists long before the back-to-the-paleolithic crowd.

1. END CREDIT CARD USURY: Beginning in the 1980s – as part of the Reagan counter-revolution – interest rate controls began disappearing in this country. Rates that generally were below ten percent would rise as much as three times.

Let’s suppose that I don’t have enough money to cover my present expenses, for whatever reason, and the only place where I can get the money is from a lender who is going to charge me 30%. Let’s say that I think about this and decide that, all things considered, I’m better off paying the 30% premium than defaulting on my current bills (and possibly getting evicted, having my utilities shut off, or whatever). So I call up the lender and choose to sign a contract opening the line of credit at 30%.

What business is it of the government’s, exactly, whether or not I choose to do this? Where would anyone in the government get the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to butt in and override my considered decision by telling me that I can’t take out loans at that interest rate?

And what exactly do you expect me to do if I need money and I can neither scratch together what I need on my own, nor can find anyone willing to lend to me at the artificially low rates that the government has imposed upon above-ground lenders?

It’s a strange sort of populism that would deliberately set out to deprive working folks of resources for getting by in tough circumstances.

I still just don’t get the demand for declaring a “Third Wave” in the first place. Not just because of my worries about the women who are targeted when this is done, but because, at a basic level, the effort is premature. The “First Wave,” as conventionally dated, doesn’t refer to a single generation of women; it refers to 72 years or so of organized feminist activity and thought, carried on by three generations of women who had lots of internal differences and some pitched battles over tactics, organization, goals, class, race, sexuality, ideology, etc. Those conflicts often took the form of intergenerational conflicts between the older leaders and young upcoming activists; sometimes they led to sharp breaks in organizational structures or to big swerves in the direction and character of activism.

Whenever the “Third Wave” language gets brought out I always just wonder why we can’t at least put a good 72 years of work into the Second Wave before we declare a new one.

So I should stress I’m noting that certain “libertarian” positions are deeply anti-libertarian …

Block is wrong about contracts for selling yourself into slavery. But his position is unusual amongst libertarians, or “libertarians,” or whatever you care to call them. Murray Rothbard, who is a paradigmatic anarcho-capitalist if anyone is, explicitly rejected the position. Roderick Long, who is not an anarcho-capitalist but sometimes deigns to speak or work with people who do identify as anarcho-capitalists, also explicitly rejects the position. Describing Block’s position on this point as representative of “‘libertarian’ positions” is misleading, at best. In any case, I don’t see what any of this has to do with the ideas expressed by Long (not by Walter Block) in the interview.

I’m not actually talking about Long’s position, beyond indicating that left-“libertarianism” (i.e., the leftwing of right-wing Libertarianism) seems to have far too much capitalist baggage to be really that libertarian.

As far as I can see, the only evidence you’ve presented of how much or how little “capitalist baggage” Long’s position has, is that Long mentions Block at some point, in order to highlight some of his differences from Block, and Block has some rotten ideas. How in the world this would tell you anything about how much “capitalist baggage” left-libertarianism (as understood by Long) does or does not have, I don’t know. Of course, if you don’t want to talk about Long’s ideas, but would rather talk about something else (e.g. whether or not Walter Block should be considered “libertarian”) there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, but then why have the conversation in a section supposedly devoted to replies to an article about Long’s ideas?

Maybe if they realised that “anarcho”-capitalism has very little worth keeping, then maybe they will stop sticking pictures of Murray Rothbard next to Proudhon and rediscover the genuine individualist anarchist tradition. Wishful thinking, maybe, but some of them do seem to be recognising the issues at hand — which is encouraging.

Oh, and I would agree with the comments on free markets tending to increase inequalities rather than reduce them. That the capitalist class uses the state to increase its position and power does not automatically mean that a free market would not produce such inequalities to some degree.

“The genuine individualist anarchist tradition” squarely disagrees with you on this point. Here, for example, is Benjamin Tucker:

When Warren and Proudhon, in prosecuting their search for justice to labor, came face to face with the obstacle of class monopolies, they saw that these monopolies rested upon Authority, and concluded that the thing to be done was, not to strengthen this Authority and thus make monopoly universal, but to utterly uproot Authority and give full sway to the opposite principle, Liberty, by making competition, the antithesis of monopoly, universal. They saw in competition the great leveler of prices to the labor cost of production. In this they agreed with the political economists. They query then naturally presented itself why all prices do not fall to labor cost; where there is any room for incomes acquired otherwise than by labor; in a word, why the usurer, the receiver of interest, rent, and profit, exists. The answer was found in the present one-sidedness of competition. It was discovered that capital had so manipulated legislation that unlimited competition is allowed in supplying productive labor, thus keeping wages down to the starvation point, or as near it as practicable; that a great deal of competition is allowed in supplying distributive labor, or the labor of the mercantile classes, thus keeping, not the prices of goods, but the merchants’ actual profits on them down to a point somewhat approximating equitable wages for the merchants’ work; but that almost no competition at all is allowed in supplying capital, upon the aid of which both productive and distributive labor are dependent for their power of achievement, thus keeping the rate of interest on money and of house-rent and ground-rent at as high a point as the necessities of the people will bear.

…

For these and other reasons Proudhon and Warren found themselves unable to sanction any such plan as the seizure of capital by society. But, though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, they aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few. And when the light burst in upon them, they saw that this could be done by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost,—that is, to nothing beyond the expenses incidental to handling and transferring it. So they raised the banner of Absolute Free Trade; free trade at home, as well as with foreign countries; the logical carrying out of the Manchester doctrine; laissez faire the universal rule. Under this banner they began their fight upon monopolies, whether the all-inclusive monopoly of the State Socialists, or the various class monopolies that now prevail.

Of course, just because Tucker and the other individualists believed something doesn’t necessarily mean that what they believed is true. Maybe you are right and “the genuine individualist anarchist tradition” is wrong about this. But if you are going to be deigning to consider “the genuine individualist anarchist tradition” as a legitimate and valuable part of anarchist history, then perhaps you ought to show some recognition that the views expressed by market anarchists such as Long, at least on this particular point, are much closer to the views expressed by the individualists than your own views are.

Of course, this kind of scheme is exactly how nearly every cell phone plan in the United States works: you’re allowed a certain level of usage (minutes of talk time) at the fixed monthly rate, and if you exceed that level, you are metered and charged for your excess usage. Different plans allow for different levels of unmetered usage, which with cell phone plans is rather important, since the charges for usage over the limit are exorbitant.

Tim Lee: It’s only during periods of peak usage that the customer’s bandwidth uses has any marginal effect.

Every cell phone plan which offers unlimited nights and weekends already engages in this kind of time-based calculation.

I don’t think this sort of change would actually be much of a novelty for people who are used to buying telecommunications services.