Peter Hume,

You'll never persuade me that the form of work in my example of child exploitation is preferable to subsistence farming in a communal setting.

Grok,
Talking of the next stage of human society taking shape:
It seems to me that the alienated state of industrial man emanates from large-scale industrial practices. It is in the localised nature of small-scale enterprises that man begins to connect to a greater degree with the product he is forming. In that setting, there is a "connection" between the individual, his community and the purpose of his labour. This is fundamental to a healthy psychological outlook. In this situation, man is able to "apply" his labour and expertise in a rational and meaningful way within the immediate context of his daily life.
This is closely aligned to Hegel and Marx's ideas on the interactive relationship between the way we work and our consciousness.

Dear Peter Hume,

As I said I am not going to argue economics. The Scandinavian countries are great places to live, and I will leave it at that.

I will just note that much of the US budget has little to do with intervening in supply, demand, prices, profits or losses. Much of it is devoted to paying interest on debt, supporting a grossly inflated military and funding entitlements.

It makes arguing simpler if you can line me up alongside grok. Just put everyone who does think like you together as the other. grok does the same thing.

Hey, Peter Hume.
I'm guessing your post (some pages back now) prefaced 'Grim' was a rebuttal of my post. The reason I have to guess is because by my count, you used the word 'Government' about 7 times; whereas I didn't use the word once.
Apples and Oranges, Peter?
To demonstrate my willingness to box my opponent -rather than my own shadow- let me address your points one by one.
“It is true that all capitalists aspire to be monopolists. What stops it happening is competition from the market.”
This makes precisely as much sense as saying: “It is true all Olympic contestants want to win. What stops it happening is competition ...from other competitors(?)”.

“The case of the drowning man is relatively clear and in practice
a) is not really an issue because people tend to help and...”

One billion children (out of a possible 2.2 billion) live in poverty. Would you say this statistic is the result of:
a) people tend to help, or
b) people have the right to turn their backs?

“Firstly, it is a simple non-sequitur to jump from seeing a problem to concluding that government must be the solution.”
There's that 'G' word again, which you seem obsessed with, and I didn't mention; however...
“Force is justified to stop aggressive force or fraud, that is all...”
How would you define 'aggressive force', Peter? Do you mean bullying behaviour? Such as when a large company does a little price cutting, to send a smaller competitor to the wall?
You say the Mises has never been refuted, but he's never really been widely accepted either, has he. Perhaps what you really mean is that you have never accepted any rebuttals, but then, neither has our friend Grok.
I admit, rebuttals are hard when the opponent comes out with statements like “there is no such thing as Society” (to get around the nonfeasance problem), or “climate change is a myth” (since 'economic calculation' has a problem with such issues).
Hint: if your philosophy doesn't strictly agree with reality, it isn't reality that's wrong.
And finally:
"That is why the interventionists, like the Marxists, can never explain: • *how* government is going to bring about these hoped-for net benefits, and...”
But you answered this one yourself, Peter.
“Force is justified to stop aggressive force...”
All we have to do is apply the same standards of civilised behaviour to the market place, that we apply to all other aspects of society.
Oh that's right, there's no such thing as society, is there.

It never fails, I'm away a day or two and miss all the fun!

Dear GH,
you might be surprised to learn that dialectical thought is not mechanically devoted to synthesis (you're in way out of your depth). So who cares about your bloody rabbits!

After perusing the posts I missed (and glossing a few), I sympathise completely with Grok. I have long felt the same frustrations as he clearly does with the patent ignorance that abounds on the subject of Hegel and, more importantly, Marx's new paradigm. It really is difficult not to be contemptuous (and depressed) when one again and again encounters the ideological drivel soaked up during those intensive decades of mass-indoctrination in shallow bourgeois justification.
Indeed it's not all ideology, it's an incongruous mixture of breath-taking naivety and cynicism. Ideological blindness is no excuse in toto as the facts of Western rapaciousness are plain. What we have here on OLO, and in the wider community, is sophism (wilful self-deceit) and evasion of responsibility behind an indefensible and inhuman economic rationalism.
In short, pleading ignorance doesn't get you off the hook! Poirot's example will serve: you are defending a system (which has not relented since its inception) based on child-abuse and exploitation in general! Bourgeois morality, secular and Christian, isn't worth sh!t. It's a great big F(expletive) lie! And deep down, it's defenders know it!

Grok,
I appreciate your obvious understanding of the issues, beneath the ideological surface.
The one point I infer from your position that I'm sceptical of, is that a dialectical shift to communism can be relied upon. I can imagine both capitalist dystopias (oxymoron) and comprehensive collapse; communism seems to me a remote possibility, as indeed does revolution?

I find it hard to understand how we can spend so much time debating instead of doing more productive things with our time...

Proving someone else right/wrong deserves such time? time that money cannot buy. When we are old, we might look back and think:" So i spent all that time doing this?".

I hope it is/was worth it.