Socialism minus coercion equals libertarianism

[MrBogosity]

This just occurred to me:

I'm having yet another conversation with so-called "anarcho-communists." It went the usual way: suppose I want to run a business/ok if you're a worker/but I'm not/still ok if workers agree to take shares/they're not they're taking a paycheck; you know how it goes.

So we're at the point where I'm a capitalist business owner with workers who have no share or stake in the company, they just work and take their paychecks and go home. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but really there are only two options:

1. I will be allowed to continue
2. I will be coerced into stopping or changing the setup in some way

So, we all know that if it's #2, then you have a government using force to make people be communists or socialists. But what if they don't?

If no coercion is being applied, then what you have are businesses run whatever way people want. Some of them are capitalist like mine, some of them are owned by the workers, some of them are communes, etc. This system is NOT socialism or communism or anything like that.

Socialism - coercion = libertarianism!

Not only is this logically defensible, it seems to me to be pretty unassailable. Nothing in libertarianism prevents the workers owning a factory, or from people who are all agreeable to the arrangement setting up a commune. ALL of those things are compatible with libertarianism, and would absolutely be allowed in a libertarian society.

But socialism, by definition, is when the workers own the means of production. If they don't, it's not socialist.

Communism, likewise by definition, is when property is communally owned. If you have private property, it's not communist.

Only libertarianism allows these to exist in a voluntary fashion alongside capitalism or whatever private, voluntary arrangement people want to work out between themselves.

Socialism - coercion = libertarianism

Communism - coercion = libertarianism

Sounds like we win.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I've mentioned this before, how if you want to run a business or even a community in a socialistic or communistic manner and nobody's being forced to, I won't try to stop you.

They of course wont' respond because that's not what they want to hear.