I used to call myself a libertarian socialist. This was in college. At the time, I didn’t realize that libertarian socialism was already a common euphemism for left-anarchism. I was not an anarchist, even though I did embrace the non-aggression principle. I just hadn’t thought it through yet.

I was an individualist, a decentralist, and a secessionist. I thought the only ethically legitimate arrangements were voluntary. But I wanted to see more voluntary experiments in socialism and "intentional communities." I absolutely did not trust businesses or markets larger than a certain very small size, and I considered "capitalism" to be a dirty word.

It was with these ideological reflexes that I made my pilgrimage to the Mecca of voluntary socialism: the Israeli kibbutz.

I lived there for almost half a year. I loved the people, loved the life, loved the land, but I also, sadly, came to the conclusion that socialism was not sustainable, whether voluntary or coerced.

It was clear to me that I was visiting a dying institution.

Christopher Westley posts to blog.Mises.org about "the Degania kibbutz’ decision to abandon socialism and allow the private ownership of property, a move many kibbutzim in Israel have been making in response to low productivity and the abandonment of their youth." Read the rest.

As I mention here, San Francisco once dealt successfully with disaster by letting the market work. With drastic shifts in prices came significant adjustments in both supply and demand. But that was 1906. Today we have a more overtly market-friendly man in charge:

April 30, 2007

Left Coast Road Socialism and the Market-friendly Governor

B.K. Marcus

Yesterday afternoon, my friend, who has recently moved to the Left Coast, pointed to this blog to alert me to the fact that MacArthur Maze, “the complex of freeways where Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and all the traffic from the East and South Bay area come to a head,” has collapsed again.

(”Again?” Yes, again: the exact same spot that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.)

My first thought was, of course, “road socialism.” The blog author concludes it’s corrupt government, without any apparent sense of redundancy.

Last night, my friend wrote me again:

One of the first things I thought was “Oh, ferry and BART prices are going to skyrocket,” as that would be the normal (aka market) method for balancing the suddenly decreased supply of “transportation between the East Bay and SF.”

But no.

http://bart.gov/news/features/features20070429.asp

I’m gonna have an interesting commute tomorrow.

So Governor Schwarzenegger — who has claimed that the two people who have most profoundly impacted his thinking on economics are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith (”At Christmas I sometimes annoy some of my more liberal Hollywood friends by sending them a gift of Mr Friedman’s classic economic primer, Free to Choose“) — thinks the best way to deal with sudden changes in supply and demand is to obliterate the price system.

So much for electing market-friendly politicians.

April 30, 2007 10:16 AM | comment | Digg | contact B.K. Marcus | other posts

(Many thanks to Choicy White Boy.)

Here’s an image that tells at least half the story:

I won’t look for an image to go with this post.

The reliefs carved onto the walls of Rameses III’s mortuary temple gave the pharaoh credit for leading an enormous victory. In the carvings, the rejoicing Egyptian warriors are surrounded by piles of hands; it was customary for soldiers to sever the right hands of the dead and bring them back to the scribes, so that an accurate count of enemy casualties could be recorded.*

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* The technique of “counting by hand” was varied, once or twice, in earlier battles, when the soldiers apparently decided to cut off penises and bring them for accounting instead (making for one particularly interesting relief, in which a scribe is comparing the hand-count with the penis-count to see if they agree.)

Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, p. 277