When the Canadian government recently announced the plan to build a monument to victims of communism, Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader (and the party’s sole MP) tweeted: “no mention of monument to victims of capitalism.” While the government should not build any monuments—it is spending our money without our consent—Ms. May’s tweet warrants comment. It reflects widespread ignorance of capitalism, and not just among politicians. As the system consistent with requirements of human survival and flourishing, understanding capitalism is in our self-interest.

Many people confuse our current mixed economy with capitalism. However, there is no capitalist system anywhere in the world (the closest to it was 19th century America but even there capitalism was not pure but entailed government involvement in the economy), so there hardly could be any “victims” of capitalism. But more fundamentally, there cannot be victims of capitalism because the whole concept is a contradiction. To see why, we must be clear what ‘victim’ and ‘capitalism’ mean.

‘Victim’ is a “person destroyed, sacrificed, or injured by another, or by some condition or agency; one who is cheated or duped” (The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language). In another words, a person is victimized by physical force—whether initiated by another or caused by a natural phenomenon (such as earthquake or flood)—or by fraud committed by another. ‘Capitalism’ is “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). In other words, capitalism is a system in which the initiation of physical force and fraud is banned. Under capitalism, only the government can use force—but only in retaliation against its initiators, such as terrorists and other criminals.

Because initiation of physical force and fraud are banned in a capitalist system and the government’s only role is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, there are no victims. Quite the contrary: capitalism is the only victimless social system. People are free to pursue their interests but they cannot violate the rights of others by initiating—or threatening to initiate—physical force against them. The government—via independent courts and objective law—is there to deter and punish them in case they do. Under capitalism, violations against others’ life, liberty, and property are deterred and punished, including crimes such as polluting someone else’s property, or otherwise damaging or stealing it. Under capitalism, the government protects individual rights and cannot itself initiate force, for example by confiscating citizens’ property to build monuments.

In every statist system, including the mixed economies prevalent in most countries of the world, there are victims because the individual rights are not fully protected and governments themselves initiate physical force in varying degrees, from taxation and confiscation of property for the sake of alleged “public interest” to imprisoning and executing dissidents. If we want more freedom and recognition of individual rights—necessities for human survival and flourishing—the first step is to understand what capitalism means and then promote it, by educating all those willing to listen. Elizabeth May might not be among them but many others will be.

In other words, capitalism is a system in which the initiation of physical force and fraud is banned.

‘Victim’ is a “person destroyed, sacrificed, or injured by another, or by some condition or agency; one who is cheated or duped” (The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language).

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ilmdge posted:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3662635&userid=187209

thanks for reminding me why an sa account isnt worth 10 dollars

daddyholes posted:

i am literally becoming bored with how every news source now confirms all my Postés

this. . . . this is too much power for one Goon to have...... ....f-forbiddenforum.... ..guide my hand.....

I'm still very slowly working my way through that thread. It's hard to read at length, but I want to get to the end and go, I just read the whole thread, and I just want to make sure everyone knows that there was an armed coup that overthrow old Yanuk. I mean, snipers that were specifically taking out armed neo-nazis in a crowd is pretty terrible, but they were beating and killing policemen and burning down government offices. This is also kind of the problem I have, which I will admit I may have misunderstood, about the whole Libyan thing. The timeline between people shooting at crowds and crowds burning down government buildings and beating officials. I mean, my government supported both of those uprisings, but I'm pretty sure that if I and a large group of my friends started burning down buildings in support of a more fair electoral system...I'd get shot. So what's the difference?

so the whole snipers thing well... it's basically acknowledged at this point by everyone (after the successful coup of course) that the snipers, who fired on *both the crowd and the riot police*, were a mysterious provocateur group. Now, of course, there may be some insanely stupid and totally unreasonable reason that Yanukovych would deploy those snipers as the compromise he was signaling towards for months was finally reached, but it's unlikely. it is extremely likely that the snipers were actually part of the eastern European 'Gladio network' thats been developed for decades, from the cradle (in the form of 'Plast' scouts) to their current deployment (culminating in some 55 year old "Ukrainian"-American banker/death squad shit cowardly stalking Ukrainians with his Nazi acolytes)

what's more interesting, is the predictable deployment of 'mysterious snipers' in hot spots sensitive to NATO operations. Most famously, of course, is the case of the mysterious snipers used in the 2002 CIA coup of Hugo Chavez, but they've also been used to spectacular effect during the 1993 Black October in Moscow to consolidate Yeltsin's severely weakened position. spooky shit