Chris Moore:

"Do they buy Georgia-Pacific and then demand that the US government stop building access roads for free?"

Yes, I think that a minimum they ought to stop trying to get government to build theft-funded roads for their corporate enterprises. (The roads, of course, are not free. Government forces the rest of us to pay for them.)

"What about the publicly funded access roads I use everyday to get to work? Is it hypocritical of me to advocate for private roads if I drive down I95?"

No, but don't you think there are differences between (1) passively making use of roads that have already been built, at your expense, without your consent; and (2) actively lobbying government to build new special roads at the expense of others, for the benefit of you and a handful of colleagues, without the consent of the victims providing your funding. Most people who use government roads are at best recovering a small fraction of what is forcibly extracted from their own pockets; for a political capitalist like Georgia-Pacific, however, their use of the road comes at a considerable profit, extracted from the pockets of tax victims. The issue here isn't some purist demand that people keep their hands off of unclean government "services." The suggestion is that people who profess to be libertarians shouldn't be engaged in business practices that depend on actively lobbying government to make things worse on the rest of us.

"Now, show me evidence that Koch Industries has paid lobbyists advocating for state subsidies and then we're talking a new ballgame."

Well, you can track Georgia-Pacific's reported lobbying expenditures (for federal lobbying; they also do significant lobbying at the state level in states where they have established timber interests) at https://www.fecwatch.org/lobby/firmsum.php?lname=Georgia-Pacific+Corp and https://www.fecwatch.org/lobby/firmsum.php?lname=Georgia-Pacific+LLC ; throughout the 2000s, their federal lobbying budget has generally been between half a million and a million and a half dollars per year. Of course, this is a massive pile of data about Congressional lobbying on all different issues of concern (GP spends money on a number of things -- e.g., in 2008 they were especially concerned about environmental mandates related to formaldehyde); on the one hand, it covers many issues other than timber-access roads or subsidized logging; on the other, it doesn't include state-level lobbying or, just as importantly, a lot of the company's interactions with the Executive Branch bureaucrats who make most of the actual day-to-day decisions about these things. But it might be a place to start looking.

Magnus:

Is what you describes, the infamous State Capitalism?

Sure; or close enough for government work, anyway.

Although, to be picky, “State Capitalism” may be a broader term than “Neoliberalism” of the sort criticized by the counterglobalization movment. Neoliberalism is one form of state capitalism — currently the triumphant form, if anything can be said to be — but there are others — e.g. Keynsian corporate liberalism, “Asian Tiger”-style authoritarian protectionism, old-guard Western European welfare states, etc. The term also tends to include a number of things that are more provincial or local — not just the kind of national policy or multi-state alliances that “neoliberalism” usually refers to. (E.g. “State Capitalism” includes things like state insurance cartels or local land-grab rackets, or government union-busting, as well as high finance or international aid packages.)

(Presuming throughout that the “State Capitalism” you’ve seen held in infamy is what mutualists or other left-libertarians are referring to by that term. There’s another, unrelated use of the term popular amongst Marxist intellectuals, to refer to a system that combines the appropriation of surplus value with antidemocratic state ownership of the means of production — in which the bureaucratic / managerial class would replace “private” industrialists in the role of commanding and exploiting workers. Trotskyists used to enjoy endless arguments amongst themselves about whether the USSR and the Eastern bloc under Stalin and his successors should be classified as examples of “state capitalism” in this latter sense or as “deformed workers’ states.” Which made for a lot of fun at cocktail parties.)

On which, see Shawn Wilbur’s “What ever happened to (the discourse on) Neoliberalism?” and the Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade’s Free Trade is Fair Trade.

Of course, many people in the counterglobalization movement haven’t been Anarchists. And those who are Anarchists have sometimes been gradualists, or simply confused. But a lot have been, and haven’t been. And it’s worth noting that the major targets of the counterglobalization movement — the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and G8/G20/etc. — are all government conclaves, in which “free trade” and “markets” typically used (as at the IMF and World Bank) to describe a financial system based on rich governments lending millions or billions of dollars to cash-strapped governments so that the latter can either use it to manipulate forex and local money markets, or “invest” it in politically-favored corporate-welfare projects for local political capitalists and politically-connected TNCs. It’s clear what this has to do with advancing the trade interests of incumbent political capitalists, and perhaps also increasing government tax revenues in the developing world. Not so much what it has to do with free trade or market exchange.

MBH,

I’d classify “ground-zero mosque” as a noun phrase.

Did you mean to ask me something about how that noun phrase has become widespread in political talk, even though the thing allegedly picked out by it is neither at “ground zero,” nor a mosque? If so, I’d say it probably depends on the person using the term, and you probably ought to ask them how they came to settle on that phrase. I imagine you’ll find that some people use it out of ignorance, either simple or wilful; others have more or less elaborate rationalizations for why it’s an apt description; some people just don’t give much of a damn about accuracy; etc. No doubt a lot of it has to do with the kinds of intellectual vices and political abuses of language that Orwell described in “Politics and the English Language.” All of which I think will go a lot further towards explaining something worth explaining than “memes” will.

In any case, I certainly do not think that the aptness of the phrase “ground zero mosque” is the most important issue in that whole idiotic shouting match. The most important issue are (1) the direct effort to associate all Muslims, just as such, with the actions of a specific group of Islamist terrorists, for the purpose of collective blame; and (2) the substantive arguments being given to the effect that the sensitivities of American nationalists are legitimate grounds for violently suppressing other people’s private property rights and free exercise of religion. Most people who believe in belligerent nationalism, religious intolerance and overt tyranny are still going to believe in those things with or without the specific phrase “ground zero mosque,” and I think there’s a lot more to be gained by challenging the substance of the argument, rather than trying to come up with polemical explanations of people’s reasons for using and spreading the noun phrase.

MBH:

Anyone who advocates tearing government “out at the root” is an anarchist

Man, I don’t care what you consider them really to be. When you use the phrase ‘so-called’ and then wrap the following term in quotation marks, that very strongly suggests that you mean to say that somebody actually called them so, in as many words.

If you’re trying to make a point about the public meaning of words like “anarchy” and “anarchist,” then certainly you ought to be able to back up the claim that at least somebody, somewhere calls the Kochs “anarchist” in as many words. If you can’t find any such description, then (1) the Kochs are probably not very good paradigm cases, or particularly important to understanding the public meaning of the terms “anarchy” or “anarchist,” and (2) the Kochs are definitely not ‘so-called “anarchists”.’ Maybe you think they really are anarchists who are not so called; but if so, you ought to think of a better way to express what you mean.

whether they prefer to be called “autarchist” for politically correct purposes or not.

The article says nothing to suggest that either Charles Koch or David Koch considers himself an “autarchist,” or prefers to be called “autarchist.” Do you have any independent data to suggest this is true?

The bit about “autarchism,” in the article, is a brief description of Robert LeFevre’s self-identification. (That’s also the only mention of “anarchism” in the article, as well.) Which shows us that the Kochs hung out with some anarchist libertarians. Which we already could have told you. Later, prior to the big nasty Cato split, they also hung out with Rothbard and Roy Childs, who really were so-called anarchists. Incidentally, LeFevre’s reasons for wanting to be called an “autarchist” were idiosyncratic, not conformist (*), and had nothing in particular to do with “political correctness” in any plausible interpretation of that term. (Roughly, he thought — wrongly — that all Anarchists truly so-called were anti-propertarian and anti-market; and he also thought the term suggested the breakdown of all control, including even self-control, which conflicted with LeFevre’s personal interest in Stoic moral philosophy.)

(*) Just about nobody — not even his own students — followed LeFevre’s usage (Roy Childs, for example, was describing himself as an “anarchist” within about a year), or even took it very seriously.

John Howard: Except for the spousal prerogative to conceive offspring together, and to feel society's approval for conceiving offspring together.

Heterosexual couples can procreate as much as they want -- that's their business -- but they have no "prerogative" to "feel society's approval for conceiving offspring together." My approval (or disapproval) of their choice to have children is my own damn business.


John Howard: No MarkZ, even in theory I'm opposed, because it'd use energy and cost billions of dollars and would injure our natural reproductive rights.

I have no idea what you think "our natural reproductive rights" are, but I'm pretty sure your natural reproductive rights don't include the "right" to constrain other people's reproduction.

In any case, what in the world has this got to do with whether or not same-sex couples ought to have their marriages recognized for, e.g., tax or immigration or next-of-kin purposes? None of those has anything in particular to do with the prospects of having children.

MBH:

I come to find that the most powerful so-called “anarchists” in the world have a certain way of advancing their corporate interests. …

“So-called” by whom?

Desi: You can’t honestly say any employer would pay a minimum wage if left to themselves.

But who’s suggesting that bosses be “left to themselves” to set wages? The question is how to get bosses to pay a decent wage. Statists suggest doing that through the political means — by coercing bosses into abiding by a price floor on labor. Anti-state leftists don’t say that bosses should just pay whatever they feel like paying; we suggest that workers should use non-coercive, social or economic means to ensure that bosses pay decent wages. Not through the State, but rather through consensual social and economic organization. Rather than counting on government to protect us through laws, we suggest that fellow workers should exercise our rights to freely associate, share information, pool resources, unionize, slow-down, strike, and in general create a rich set of voluntary labor unions, co-ops, mutual aid networks, fallbacks, and alternatives to wage-labor.

Gene:

I don’t think so — polytheists have a hard time being fanatical (about religion, anyway)

Really? Try telling that to Justin Martyr, or Saint Sebastian.

It’s true that intolerant polytheists rarely get very exercised about the things intolerant monotheists get exercised about — in particular, the fact of worshipping gods other than their own — they usually either accept that there are more gods out there; or else interpret your cult as the worshipping of the gods they already know, only under a different name. But they do easily get exercised if you refuse to worship the gods that they worship, or do things that they consider desecration towards the things that those gods hold sacred. Some of the most famously syncretic pagans, such as the Romans, were also some of the most ultraviolent — the pagan Roman state was constitutionally a theocracy — since the Emperor was both supreme pontiff and held to be literally divine. (*) Those who refused to worship the Roman civic gods (e.g., Christians), or who practiced other religions considered to undermine the supremacy of the official Roman religion (e.g. “Egyptian rites” and various mystery cults) could be persecuted with extreme violence, including round-ups, massacres, and all kinds of gruesomely inventive ways of torturing people to death for their religious convictions.

(*) Caesars were routinely deified after their deaths; “Son of God” was among Augustus’s official state titles (referring back to the posthumous deification of Julius Caesar). Domitian and Diocletian went so far as to demand to be venerated as living gods during their own earthly reigns.

... I suppose that this is going to depend, in part, on an evaluation about what sorts of technological developments are most significant and most threatening.