Defining capitalism may be for a different article but there is an important distinction that should be made when we discuss it to clear up confusion. For a simple definition, it is economic freedom and private property. The distinction comes into play when people start lumping capitalism with other stuff. You may have heard terms like crony capitalism or state capitalism etc. The distinction is “capitalism and” vs “capitalism except.” When people start lumping other stuff with capitalism it doesn’t not add something to it, it replaces part of it. People use the term mixed economy to describe this lumping together of capitalism with other stuff. Namely, other economic ideas like socialism, communism, interventionism. Mixed economy is a nice way of saying fascist economy. Unfortunately most developed countries have this type of economy. There can be any amount of this other stuff mixed together. That’s why all these countries can still be the same basic thing (fascist/ mixed economy) but still be quite different from each other.
For an example we need to understand what economic freedom and property mean. *Property is the right to have exclusive control of what happens to something. *Economic freedom is the ability for any 2 people to trade properties or services on terms they both agree to.
A lot of people say we have a capitalist system now. We do but only to a certain extent. It also contains much anti capitalism. When the state comes along and decides to add a regulation of some sort they are essentially saying that sure you own this property but not this certain aspect of it we own that and get to say whats done with it.
This is how people can simultaneously say look at all this good stuff that capitalism has given us and then also complain about how we don’t have real capitalism. The private property and economic freedom that we do have causes the good stuff but the stuff that is a negation to capitalism is what we are complain about. Some people don’t like the term mixed economy because it doesn’t make this distinction. It’s not clear if it means a bunch of whole things working together or a bunch of partial things lumped into one. The later is what it is. There is no “capitalism and” there is only “capitalism except.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a goth that doesn’t like The Addams Family. They are definitely an icon in the culture. I have the main seriesand movies on DVD. I remember watching the reruns as a kid with the family. It was certainly one of the many influences that got me into goth culture. There was a certain elegance and quirkiness about it that made it fit what I like. They had all kinds of wonderful things from their mansion to all the museum type things in it. They had their own butler. This family had it made. This article will mostly focus on the show and original comics.
Charles Addams the creator of the original Addams Family comics was your standard suit and tie man with a dark twisted sense of humor. The comics scattered throughout this article are his.
There are some particular things I’d like to point out about this lovely family that we all adore. One of the earlier episodes, they end up fighting with someone that’s trying to get their kids in school. They were all content with teaching the kids on their own, but they legally had to give in and send their kids to school. Gomez remarks something like, “What’s the point of having kids if you just send them away all day”. Then one day, Wednesday comes home crying because of the stuff they were teaching in school. This family would have definitely been for the modern unschooling / homeschooling movement.
Some people have pointed out that they don’t have jobs, but they are uber rich. Gomez is always playing in the stock market, where he at least sometimes loses money but then just shrugs it off comically because he has so much. They have random treasure chests and safes and bundle of money in drawers. Where did their money come from? It is kind of a mystery, but they do expose a bit about it in some episodes. There is an episode where they try to get insurance, but the insurance guy doesn’t want to give them any. Gomez ends up getting the insurance guy on his side when he exposes that his family inherited several big businesses that were very important to the insurance company. The Addams family is basically a venture capitalist family (or something of the sort) that owns all kinds of property that they inherited over several generations. In one episode (maybe the same) Gomez says something like,” We Addamses haven’t worked in generations.” It is also mentioned that they got some of their gems and wealth from ancestor pirates.
Politics is part of the show in some episodes. They don’t seem to take any particular position as far as republican or democrat. They have always supported the losing presidential candidate. In general, the show seems to be more antagonistic towards politicians, if any view is taken at all. At one point, they ask a campaigner if the L in the candidate’s middle name stands for Lucifer. The campaigner, seeing how creepy the house is, said yes, thinking he could win a vote that way. This is making fun of the way politicians just say whatever to get votes (consistent, true, or not)
They get plenty of guests on the show, and they are always quite lovely to them. But somehow they are always misunderstood and scare people away. At one point, a Beatnik shows up. They find him strange and question his tattoos, piercings, and slang, but end up thinking he was alright. The show doesn’t seem to approve of modern social justice warriors (SJW) stuff, as it made fun of the beatnik. I recall fat jokes. The romance between Morticia and Gomez would probably have todays SJWs screaming rape, since Mortica never seems to be in the mood, but Gomez keeps trying to kiss and romance her. Then there are times when guests are involved in similar things with other characters; like fester and his lady; or lurch and his crush; or the mix-up between Pugsly, his teacher, and Gomez. There was plenty of cultural appropriation (a good thing); French and Italian language appropriation between Gomez and Morticia’s. The show displayed a time when men were men, women were women, Itt was it, and Thing was a thing.
In conclusion, The Addams family is a much beloved goth capitalist family that poked fun of politicians. They hated mandatory schooling (state indoctrination). The goth culture has never really been about politics or economics, and accepts people of all types. It’s always been about aesthetics and music. There has been a particular movement of SJW plaguing it (like they plague everything) that want to get rid of some of it’s best parts. Important parts of the culture have always been dark comedy, shock for the sake of shock (shock rock) and individualism. There’s a weird tendency these days for people to take all these things from the past that were meant for comedy, shock factor, and other entertainment and then do them in a serious fashion. Then they act offended when people laugh, are shocked, or entertained. Modern goths could learn a lot from revisiting this old show, learn how the Addams family dealt with people who had different views than them. You’ll never find 2 goths that are exactly a like. We have all kinds of views regarding politics and economics. Most are probably with the rest of the population and just stay apolitical.
**This is the second article in the property rights series. Click here to read the first one.
II. If a person owns themselves, they are responsible for their actions. They own their labor. When they mix their labor with unowned or self owned things the product of their labor becomes theirs, until sold or abandoned. I think this is an idea that most people would accept but, let’s go over the alternatives.
1. Someone else owns the product of your labor. In most cases this would be the exact definition of theft. Something important to note is that we are talking about who initially owns the product of the labor. Once it is sold or traded it is no longer theirs. For example imagine a scenario where someone paints a painting with all their own materials and then some one comes along and tries to claim it as theirs. Obviously theft.
2. Everyone owns the product of your labor How could an unknown person who had no role in the labor or even know of it’s existence possibly claim ownership of a product? This certainly kicks out a large chunk of people as rightful owners. Of course it’s nice when an act of charity happens but there is no legitimate right to be split between everyone. What about the people left that did participate in the labor? If only one person is involved in the labor of the product then the product is obviously his. In the case of an assembly line where several people are involved in the labor of a final product, things can get complex. I currently work at a furniture manufacturing company so I can speak from experience on how these things work. An oversimplified explanation of the process should get the point across. We have several people split up in several departments. There are people that order things, people that receive things, people that send stuff to saws, people that work the saws, people that do finer touches, people that pack things, people that transport things etc. Something as simple as a cabinet door has gone through the labor of countless people. If they all maintained their ownership in the door, nothing would be able to be done with the door until everyone agreed to do the same thing or by violating the rights of the people that didn’t want that thing to be done. The price of the product is unknown until after it has been sold. What happens is people sell their labor ahead of time at whatever price they and the employer agree to. Value (worth) is subjective and includes countless parameters depending on the person, time, location price, motivation, desire, etc. The point is you own your labor until it’s sold at whatever price you and the employer agree to. You can always renegotiate or the agreement can end at the will of either party. Use of coercion to do these things violates rights. Multiple people maintaining ownership of something leads to inability to do anything with that thing unless all owners agree to the same thing. People can sell their ownership in a thing . Once this is done the person who sold it has no right to it, unless another voluntary agreement is made to change the ownership.
3. No one owns any body’s labor/ property This should clearly be absurd. What point is there in anybody doing anything? How could a person legitimize getting paid for their job. This would mean that once a person made something any random person could take it and use it. Then another could take it, on and on into infinity; even in mid use. If a person doesn’t own their labor then how can any one be responsible for any of their actions? What point is there to doing anything? Who repairs or replaces things when they are broken? This is some sort of absurd nihilism.
4. Mixture Since everyone seems to be obsessed with being inconsistent, we currently live in a time where people pick and choose who gets to own their labor and products of their labor on a whim. Of course if people do own their labor and property they have the right to give it up or abandon it. They would have to own it first to be able to do that. The point is one person doesn’t have the right to say if another owns their labor or property. Unless the one person has already violated the other persons labor or property, then compensations should occur. The state is notorious for violating labor and property rights while in some cases it helps enforce compensation. Countless restrictions on employees, employers, and consumers make this obvious. So we live in a cluster of state guided whims that give us this mixture of property rights and violations.
Part three is on the way. This one no doubt brings up other issues.
Note: This is more or less ideas to play with, not something I endorse in full. Note: This is a work in progress I may change and edit things.
Our current voting system Every 4 years we get together an make a big hoopla about who to vote for president. Every 2 years and some times other times there are votes for other things and people. It is very static. All it takes is a candidate who can put on a good campaign show or propaganda then we have to deal the results for years.
The overhaul There are multiple big changes that could be made. I had this idea after exploring the site isidewith.com It is a very advanced political quiz that lets you login and answer probably a hundred or more questions then matches you with candidates and party platforms. If you haven’t checked it out it will be worth your time the site has all kinds of sections and info. You can create a login to save and change quiz answers anytime. My thought after visiting the site was: Why isn’t our actual voting system more like this?
The first big change would be to make voting non static. There is no specific voting date people just log in and change their vote whenever they want. Then issues and candidates change after certain thresholds are are met. (These thresholds will be the main debate. more on this later) This will keep office holders in check they can’t just run a nice campaign then once they are in do something different. People and issues will change much faster if they screw up. This would also make term limits pointless.
Thresholds Right now the threshold is more than 50% wins and replaces, with complications of the electoral college to apparently make things more fair. There would be multiple thresholds and 50% would not be a likely number.
For candidates – you would have a threshold to get into office preferably much higher than 50% and then a different minimum thresholds to get kicked out so that we aren’t changing things by the hour. or minute. There may be gaps with no one in office. That may even be one of the options to vote for. For issues – you would have more than just pass or fail bills. No vote = no change. Votes to move in certain directions are just that. highest % wins
example: increase tax 20% decrease tax 30% no vote 50% No change wins
Another big change that others have already brought up is Ranked voting or something similar. This is basically just putting candidates in order based on how much you want them to win so it’s not all or nothing voting. You might still get someone you kinda like. This would make primary voting stuff obsolete. Another similar one would be to give each voter a certain amount of point and have them give how ever many points to who ever they want. It could even be all for one; kind of like character sheets in RPGs
Not voting = no change I mentioned this earlier. The voting includes the entire population not just voters. Right now it’s either no change or a move in one particular direction on issues. Pass/fail bills only move in one direction or nowhere.
I. Self Ownership Ownership is the right to control what happens to something. It also tells who is responsible for something. Most people would be willing to admit that they have ownership in themselves. Our very words like “myself” imply ownership. It basically means this self is mine. You own yourself. I own myself. What are the consequences of not owning yourself? A few logical options are available.
1. Another person owns you If someone else owns you, this is some form of slavery. I think in modern times we can all agree that slavery is not to be desired. But, even back in the day when slavery was viewed as acceptable, it was only really only a partial form of ownership. Slaves were still responsible for their actions at least to some extent. Slave owners did not have full control over what the slave did. This is why they often did mean and cruel things to motivate the slaves to do what they wanted.
2. Everyone owns you Hopefully this one comes across as absurd. This is basically some form of communist/slavery fusion. How could every person have some ownership in every other person? Could an individual in China actually claim to have some sort of right to ownership of an individual in Canada, when they have no knowledge of each others existence? Even if everyone did own each other, each individual would still have a minute piece of ownership in themselves. How much ownership would each person have and how would one arrive at this conclusion? Would it be split up evenly or would certain people have more ownership than others?
3. No one owns anyone (including themselves) This is another pretty absurd one. How can any person be responsible for any actions? How can any actions have any meaning? If a person has no ownership in themselves can any of this language make sense? Words like myself and yourself have no meaning. This appears to be some sort of nihilistic/communist view. Good luck getting a communist to tell you which they want. They seem to constantly juggle between wanting to eliminate property and mutual ownership of property. They both lead to absurd conclusions but the reasoning is a bit different. Some communists may also accept self ownership but then they are just inconsistent when ownership applies to other things.
4.Mixture There may be some trying to mix these ideas but that would just lead to a mixture of these problems. While I have seen people try to argue for these alternatives, this mixed view seems to prevail without people directly advocating it. This is largely because of lack of understanding of self ownership. It’s like people generally believe they own themselves unless x issue then unfounded exception. So, “I own you” , “you own me”, “we all own each other”, “no one owns anyone”. People think ownership changes based on circumstance, but no one can agree on who the owner is. How could this possibly be true unless a person already violated the ownership of another? We can see this by how people react when something bad happens. Who is responsible for the actions? Is it the person who directly did the action? Is it some group that the person may or may not be part of? Is everyone at fault? no one? a tool? society? People may not admit to holding to any of these views because people seem to debate things on a more superficial level. These ideas seem to be on a deeper level of people thinking without them really realizing it.
The ideas for this article were based on some stuff in For a New Liberty
