I never said I was an anarcho syndicalist, in fact I don't think it would work. I am sympathetic to that viewpoint and would obviously be a great improvement on what we presently have.
Like Murray Bookchin I think anarcho syndicalism is a negative ghost of an idealised system, a Utopia which never really existed.
It's the best so far but every societal structure is built to be constantly torn down and replaced by new ideas.
I am also very sympathetic to Adam Smith's viewpoint, he was also a savage critic of capitalism as the quote of his in my signature would indicate.
You can say it is silly to argue that people are enslaved but how many people would do something else if they had the means? Almost everyone in the general population.
I think you are drastically underestimating me.
I would also argue that the very wealthy suffer though they do not know it, they tend to get wrapped up in their work and miss out on the most important things in life.
I think Michel Foucault correctly said
"The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them."
Maybe Anarchism is just asking why, I can tell you that people who do that to wealthy people in our society have a tough time of it.
All these arguments were made in a different time, Adam Smith talked about making nails - how a team is better than a skilled craftsman. That's a truly archaic argument for division of labour when almost all our production is now automated (and much credit for that must go to capitalism - along with the periodic crises of overproduction and the manufactured wants).
Why is it that Automation leaves people in terror of joblessness when it should be providing for freedom and creativity?
No offense but like most people you haven't any knowledge of what actually happened in the 20th Century. If I can oversimplify.
The Marxists thought the state should sieze private property, the anarchists thought that a stupid idea as they knew the state would seize power and refuse to relinquish it.
Which is exactly what happened in Russia where any pretence at Marxism was dropped very early on by Lenin.
The only place where anarcho-syndicalism was implemented was Spain for 6 months during the civil war before it was crushed. It left a big impression on George Orwell and homage to Catalonia is worth a read.
It is generally (with exceptions) not the anarchists who bring the violence, the opposite is true. It is the State which obliterated these ideas with absolute ruthlessness as evidenced by the fact that you don't even know what happened.
In NZ that started with a coal miner in Blackball demanding half an hour lunch break to finish his pie as 15 minutes wasn't long enough. They sacked him and the next day everyone walked off site with the outcome being 30 mins for lunch.
Later took the form of 10% of the national police riding into Waihi in 1912, storming the town hall and bludgeoning a miner to death. Then chasing all the gold miners and their families out of town because they represented an existential threat to the powerful interests.
It ended with Massey's Cossacks charging into waterfront workers a few years later, still the history talks of "militant"unionists.
In fact the violent bloodthirsty victor writes the history and obliterates all memory of the loser.
Well it's important to have some knowledge of how the world is not just in investing. Again I don't think there is a magic wand.
I think money helps allocate for scarcity, and the best description of the political problem was described by Wilhelm Von Humboldt in the limits of state action. Scarcity is great because as Plato said neccessity is the mother of our invention, the purpose of a state is to organise a people in self defense and little else.
Investing is not a zero sum game, in my particular case it's a wealth transfer mechanism from bad investors to good investors.
Trading is a zero sum game.
Wow that's quite a lot to stake in one thing if your portfolio isn't huge.
While I have been known to have 50% of my portfolio in one thing it's a rare exception and certainly not at that price based on the information you had.
SHJ Price at posting:
86.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
