The Conquest of The Conquest of Bread: Chapters 10 and 11
More bizarre economic ignorance from Kropotkin in these two chapters, which demonstrate his inability to comprehend the concept of trade-offs–specifically in labor comfort and safety and in the quality and/or durability of capital goods.
Full show notes here.
Of course, these are all problems easily solved by free markets and private ownership… And far better than any communal or centrally planned alternative, because a market allows for laborers or consumers with different preferences to gravitate toward employers or manufacturers who share a similar set of preferences, and reward them according to how well their preferences match the laborers or consumers.
Kropotkin gets something a little right by lamenting how the press often ignores the efforts of voluntary associations in favor of highlighting the actions of the state. However, he fails miserably to square the continued existence of voluntary associations with the simultaneous existence of expropriation. Either those voluntary associations have private property rights (which brings the situation back to that of individual property rights), or they must become coercive, or they will be expropriated.
Two articles to help broaden your understanding of the issues this week!
We have “The Free Market and Job Safety” by George Reisman
https://mises.org/mises-daily/free-market-and-job-safety
and “The Myth of ‘Planned Obsolescence’ ” by Lew Rockwell.
https://mises.org/free-market/myth-planned-obsolescence
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Intro music by Praz Khanal, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/prazkhanal-24653570/
Thumbnail image from Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LADY_JUSTICE_15inches.jpg
