In Defense of Anagorism

political economy in the non-market, non-state sector

Tag: incentive

  • Anagorism vs. minagorism

    Minagorist is to anagorist as minarchist is to anarchist. I hate mixing latin prefixes (prefices?) with Greek roots, so I was thinking along the lines of a Minimercatus Center, but that seems to suggest a miniature Mercatus Center rather than a center that is minimally mercantile (or mercenary). The minarchists get away with mixing Latin and Greek elements, therefore I should also have that privilege.

    Just as minarchism (it would seem) concedes the point that humans, left to their own devices, will slaughter each other, minagorism concedes the point that humans, bereft of incentive, will probably “[spend] most of their time drinking booze, smoking weed, engaging in primate sexual acrobatics, and watching wall TV.” Just as minarchists view coercion as at least as evil as it may be necessary, minagorists view non-entitlement of survival (and in more advanced stages of minagorism, independence and solvency) as at least as evil as it may be necessary. The question is how to minimize the role of the market in society to a level just barely sufficient to light a competitive fire under the buns of the population that is just barely hot enough to incentivize just barely enough Gee-Dee-Pee to supply 100% of the population with three squares a day and a roof over each head. If people want to compete harder to obtain luxury goods, the minagorist position is that they’re entitled to their choice of lifestyle, as long as it doesn’t cost the rest of us any leisure time.

    Logo created by Zacquary Adam Green
  • Quotebag #98

    “It’s the mind- and body-numbing tasks, the tasks that make no use of my particular mental or physical capacities, that require incentive. (That incentive might be as simple as the understanding that somebody’s got to do it and as long as the crappy work is fairly distributed I’m willing to do my part.)”—Yalt

    “I have concluded that most ideas equated with ‘positivity’ by the mainstream are cheap abstractions, bankrupt of honesty and meaning.”—Prodigeek

    “Basically, crack babies are a myth and poverty is real.”—N. K. Jemisin

    “The business world pays a lot of lip service to Hayek’s 1940s ideas about free markets. But when it comes to freedom within the companies they run, they’re stuck a good 50 years earlier, mired in the ideology of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his ‘scientific management’.”—Cory Doctorow

    “Until you can build a working general purpose reprogrammable computer out of basic components from radio shack, you are not fit to call yourself a programmer in my presence. This is cwhizard, signing off.”—abachler