-- On 7 Dec 2001, at 5:35, mattd wrote:
The implicit coercion is the protection racket of the state lurking in the background and attempting to monopolies money.
Money in the US was largely privately issued until 1915. Capitalism long predates government monopolies of money. The word dollar comes from thaler, which a government stamped ounce of silver -- but stamped by a minor government very far away, one of many such stamping authorities. James A. Donald:
Without property rights, the specialization of labor has to take place by something very like a state telling people what > they must do, and what they may consume. Thus to suppress capitalism requires centralized terror, and lots of it. Nothing less will suffice. Been tried."
mattd:
Without property rights enforced by coercion by even the most minimal state
The state is the enemy of property, not the source. Property rights in the means of production not only continued to exist without state support, where the state was absent, they invariably continued to exist in the face of massive bloody state violence aimed at crushing those rights. Always, those seeking to crush those rights had to escalate far beyond what they expected, then escalate the violence even further. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG MRwFqhIB+qkA4W1vMk/7uvu4yQqZo01QBY934d0T 4fiMl7/h0c4yVNTogn2WQL0VXfpYDXkzLG40B4rb4