leftlibertarian.org

Major posts based on my research for the organizational behavior project:

A Heads-Up on My New Project
General Outline (pdf)
Chapter One Draft: Critical Survey of Orthodox Views on Economy of Scale
Chapter Two Draft: A Survey of Empirical Literature on Economy of Scale
Chapter Three Draft: State Policies That Promote Corporate Size and Centralization
Chapter Draft: Decentralized Production Technology

On the Irrationality of Large Organizations
On the Superior Efficiency of Small-Scale Organization
What Can Bosses Know?
Toilet Paper as Paradigm
Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth
Part I: The Divorce of Entrepreneurial from Technical Knowledge
Part II: Hayek vs. Mises on Distributed Knowledge (Excerpt)
Part III: Rothbard's Application of the Calculation Argument to the Private Sector
Follow-up: P2P, the Two Economies, and Desktop Manufacturing
Distribution of Capital and the Pull Economy
Managerialism and the State
Natural Organizations and the Pull Economy
Robert Jackall on Corporate Bureaucracy
Liberation Management, or Management by Stress?

Secondary Posts:

The Panopticon: Not Just For Prison Any More
Face Time, Extrinsic Measures, and Contract Feudalism
Dilbert, Corporate Bureaucracy, and Libertarianism
P2P: New Economic Paradigm?
Dave Pollard on Organizational Behavior
Inmates Running the Asylum
New Wine in Old Bottles
Great Discussion on Corporate Hierarchies
Three Quotes on Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Outsource Everyone But the Pointy-Haired Bosses
Blaming Workers for the Results of Mismanagement
I Wish You Wouldn't Be So Good to Me, Cap'n (or, Executive Compensation and Ass-Kicking)
The Importance of Competitive CEO Salaries

From RadGeek.

The death penalty is the definitive expression of what the power of the imperium means. It means that the State claims a special right to control you, to beat you, to tie you down, and to kill you, at its own pleasure and discretion, a claim that would be universally met with indignation and horror if it came from anyone else, if it weren�t covered with the robes and the crown. The death penalty � an act of State-sanctioned murder whether the victim is good or evil, innocent or guilty, redeemed or sinful � shows the State in all of its power and all of its glory, in the mirror that flatters not.

Kevin Carson joins Knapp, Long, Spangler, and Johnson in a melee about definitions of socialism. All the various posts and threads are worth a read. Instead of entering into the debate, I want to revisit some larger points about the role of language and definitions in debates like these. The quotes below are about idiotic comments about anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, but the same kind of idiocy is painfully apparent in some libertarian's criticisms of socialism.

"Grammatically speaking, Anarcho-Capitalism is an oxymoron, which in my opinion makes it unsound as a philosophy. Anarchists are opposed to the economic policies of Capitalism, and anyone claiming to be an 'Anarcho-Capitalist' simply does not grasp the true meaning of Anarchism."

Notice that this person's sense of what is grammatical (is this purely linguistic grammar, or a deeper conceptual grammar?) seems completely determined by his or her theoretical conception of anarchism. Thus, it is not that anarcho-communists (as this person is) have a fundamental disagreement with anarcho-captitalists over the proper conception of anarchism, but rather the anarcho-captialists are merely talking nonsense. That is, anarcho-capitalism isn't merely false, or even incoherent in a broad sense, but is instead nonsensical on its face. And how do we know that anarcho-capitalism is nonsense? Because anarchists are opposed to capitalism. QED. And, conveniently, you can't beg the question against a view that is literally nonsensical. Of course, on this person's view, anarchism 'IS' communism, economically anyway. Sorry Proudhon, Bakhunin, Tucker, Warren, Godwin, Goodman, Ward, Bookchin, you're not real anarchists either!

Indeed, this whole passage is indicative of a general mistake in discussing contested concepts--not distinguishing concept from conception. Having a concept of something will involve, among other things, the ability to apply it across a sufficiently large range of cases in a way deemed sufficiently appropriate by one's fellow concept-users. When you and I are talking about justice, there must be enough of an overlap in our uses of the term (and the inferences we make, etc.) that we can recognize that we're in the same conceptual ballpark. If you think that justice is generally about giving people their due and I think its primarily about the best way to fix my lawnmower, then something has gone wrong with my concept of justice (or lack thereof). If we don't share a concept, then we're just talking past one another.

On the other hand, concepts can be fleshed out in a number of incompatible ways. These various ways to flesh out a concept are conceptions. Rawls and Nozick offer differing conceptions of justice, but both share a concept of justice.

We should always be on guard that we haven't confused our own conception of a concept with the content of the concept itself. When we make this mistake, we simply define our opponents out of existence. Of course, the line between concept and conception is fuzzy and some debates concern whether a particular conception is actually compatible with the basic concept involved. And the hard part is there's no algorithm, no recipe for making these kinds of determinations.