Hoarding isn’t consuming - it is saving. It is storing away for future use.
It stimulates unnecessary consumption of resources by removing resources from the economy, and hoarding them.
EDIT:
A counter example would be the move from warhoused supply chains to just-in-time manufacture (now applied through almost all supply chains). Hoarding (warehousing) to provide resilience is one thing (e.g. to smooth out peaks and troughs in the system, but when taken past a certain level it has negative effects.
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Fascinating thanks. How little I know of European governance!
The resources being hoarded are not being consumed - they are being saved, to be consumed later.
Sorry Al. All I see here is an asserted belittling opinion, not an argument of principle.
I’m sorry @DavidMtl but the things you’re uttering here are not principles, just political platitudes, and not actually useful in principled debate. I understand that there will always be gray areas in life, but the fact that there are does not make nice thoughts of equity into principles.
To clarify what you mean, you and Al are going to have to answer this:
At what point do I have the right to initiate force, fraud or theft against you because you have more property than I think (or some group thinks) you really deserve to have? If you don’t have some sort of objective measure for determining at what point this becomes permissible, then what you’re saying here is meaningless.
The thought of “the nonagression principle is nice, but there comes a point where ‘society’ has to step in and throw its weight around in order to make things equal and fair” has, historically, almost always ended up in brutal totalitarianism with millions dead. It’s the politics of envy, and even if some rich people are uncaring assholes, tearing them down usually does nothing at all to advantage the poor, just those who demand the power “for the greater good”.
If you get very rich by the sweat of your brow, good luck and good will, it doesn’t matter whether I haven’t had good luck or been smart about what I did, or that I was born disadvantaged: I will never have the right to steal from you because of that inequity. I may decide that I need to to survive, and it may even be a right decision from my perspective, and people might sympathize with me for doing so, but that’s a gray area. Gray areas don’t call for throwing out a perfectly good principle. That would leave us with no principles of any kind, ever.
“Property” is used in the presentation mainly to point out that you own you, and I own me. How you parse it out from there can be debated in terms of specific applications, but either the principle stands or it doesn’t. Can’t have it both ways.
Both of your above communications are saying that the principle of self ownership is false, or only true till it isn’t true, without defining specifically where the change objectively is.
Fluently spoken, but sloppy.
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It is a dilemma for socialists. On one hand they think they own the moral high ground - they think that only they care about the poor. On the other hand, it means they cannot agree with the non-aggression principle, nor self ownership and ownership of the results of labour, which is uncaring towards people.
Socialism looks to have a lot of easy answers, but only ever addresses the symptoms. To cure the disease, you need to dig deeper, go back to first principles and build out from there.
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This is you explaining how hoarding stimulates consumption.
If property was not being hoarded here, there would be no need to consume resources to create more property to meet demand that would otherwise be met by release of the excess hoarded property.
Indeed - but the hoarded resources still exist and will be released in the future.
For example, if I decided to hoard oil, more would be extracted in the short term, but less in the long term when my hoard was released. In the fullness of time, it makes little difference.
We’re talking about different things. What you are calling hoarding is conditional, with some unspecified release date.
Hoarding does not have an expiry date. It may be released, it may not, but since the point of hoarding is to preserve value, it is important that the overall amount of hoarding keeps rising (even if some is resold from time to time).
I don’t accept that it is ok to hoard when the reality is that it stimulates consumption, not just in the short term, but also in the long term. There are other negative effects too. As I said, keeping some excess to cope with lean times or unevenness in supply is one thing, but that isn’t what I understand by hoarding.
Definition of hoard: a large amount of something valuable that is kept hidden
Though you’ve now said that by your definition it can’t have these effects: you mean hoarding that doesn’t affect consumption over some unknown time period because the hoard is always released while the property is still useful.
Even if this is a problem, Mark, the questions remains:
(a) Who gets to decide what is hoarding and when it gets to be “too much”? And (b) what do they do about it?
My answers are: (a) Anyone and everyone who cares to have an opinion on the matter, and (b) Whatever they care to with the property and influence they have.
For instance, @Traktion is “hoarding” oil and causing the price to go up (unnecessarily, according to some).
You and I can get together and decide that Traktion is an asshole and we don’t want to have to deal with him anymore. What’s more, we want to “make him pay”. So we pitch in and get an alcohol production plant together from the waste that restaurants are having to pay to have hauled off. We very soon have a cheaper form of fuel that we and everyone else can use cheaper than the oil. Traktion is stuck with hoarded oil that he has to sell for a lot less than he could have if he weren’t hoarding it in the first place, and his oil production facilities lose viability and he goes broke.
Poor Traktion. But everybody involved only controlled their own property, so there’s no violation here. No democracy either. Was justice done? Maybe, maybe not. But there was no violation of the non-agression principle either.
Democratic handling of the same problem:
You and I are forced to pay higher prices because Traktion has influence, having bought the most lucrative commodity in a democratic society, politicians. We are hampered by regulations from using waste, which is otherwise a costly problem, to make an alternative fuel. And even if we did succeed in providing a real alternative, it would be taxed and the proceeds used to bail Traktion out.
Plenty of violations of the non-agression principle there.
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Why would you hoard something indefinitely? What would be the point of paying the overheads of storage? What would be the economic gain from this?
Either consumption of hoarded goods are delayed, to supply demand at a later date or the hoarder realises losses from his poor speculation - the latter is rarely going to be the aim, for logical/economic reasons.
Moreover, others supplying oil get to benefit at the hoarder’a expense - temporarily, people will pay the other suppliers more due to the supply squeeze. Perhaps this is just the price signals other oil hoarders were waiting for?
In the fullness of time and competition, the market resolves this stuff without aggressive intervention.
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That IS consumption. If I buy a pound of gold I’ve taken it off the market. It doesn’t matter if I stick it in a vault or turn it into a statue, it’s equally unavailable to others who want to use or trade it. If I buy food whether I eat it or freeze it it’s equally unavailable to others. If I buy seeds whether I plant them or not they’re equally unavailable. Consumption is the removal of something from the market. The only reason it would matter if you degrade or change the product is if you reenter it onto the market. Until then it’s equally gone whether you use it or store it.
Yes but what you WILL DO in the future doesn’t matter from an economic perspective. When calculating credit and debt one is measuring what one has NOW and there is no certainty you will reenter your saved asset onto the market, use it or if it will be destroyed.
@fergish, thanks for the answer, it gives me a lot to ponder about. I haven’t had a discussion like this in a very long time. I’m not a scholar in history, philosophy or economics so I hope I don’t bore you with the sloppiness and platitude of my arguments.
You can see me as the annoying kid in the class that just can’t give up challenging every single thing ever said by the teacher. In fact, my younger sister once got kicked out of her class on the first day when her teacher realized I was her brother. I was that annoying. So I hope I won’t get too much on your nerves, I’m honestly trying to learn.
I had a great argument, fluently spoken, until I realized there are concepts I don’t grasp as much as I thought, so instead of giving you a sloppy answer, I’ll go do some reading. I’m still not convinced though, I just find it hard to put it into words.
So instead of going into that direction, and because it’s getting late, I’ll ask you a side question, I hope you don’t mind entertaining me with an answer. Here is goes: is indirect aggression recognized in the non-aggression principal?
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Question everythin and never stop learning. There is no such thing as a stupid question.
That is not what I would consider consumption. Turning oil to fumes, beer to urine, food to… Well, you get the idea! It is the permanent removal from the marketplace.
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Well, that is just the last sentence I wrote. I think I did fully explain my reasoning in the previous posts/sentences - I don’t feel I was being belittling either tbh - it was certainly not my intention. I address the argument, not the person, and I’m fine with the idea that arguments/idea can be belittled, ridiculed, criticised etc, as it’s what Free Speech is for. The answer is not to complain of the belittling of ideas, but to have ideas robust enough logically, that they cannot easily be belittled. (I’m talking generally here).
I’m not sure what you are looking for as an answer, when you say I’m not making an argument of principle, Yes, “don’t steal” “don’t use force/violence” are guiding principles, as are “provide for the vulnerable” or “don’t discriminate” etc.
There are many principles, axioms, moral codes etc that can used as a guiding principle and applied to different areas of Society.
If you are asking should the video principles be followed in regard to economics, then I’d say amongst other principles and safeguards. I think I explained the practical problems as I saw them - when applied to companies/Corporations, the “principle” could impact on Human Rights and grant “personhood to Corporations - the guiding principles should include all Human Rights in my book, not the single principle of free trade.
In summary, I think yes the principles in the video can be used as guides within the context of free-trade, but I would say among others and with safeguards and proviso’s, caveats etc. I don’t see the principles as taking any kind of primacy over other concerns - I’d be more likely to use"Whatever adds to the general well-being of Humanity or causes least suffering” - or something along those lines as a guiding principle, as it encompasses other principles.
Hope this helps - I’m sensing we’re maybe not as far apart as you may think actually.
Edit:
The video states we have a right to choose our leaders (I’d prefer representatives), but that one has no right to impose leaders on others. As I’ve just had David Cameron imposed on me, then this would seem to rule out Democracy.So how do we choose our representatives/leaders, without creating enclaves, more borders and disputes?
Really now? You could call that just product conversion as if you get some plants in there and those fumes become converted back into oxygen, that urine and bio-waste becomes fertilizer and compost, which makes MORE fertilizer. Which in turn makes MORE plants for you to eat, purify your oil fumes iwth, create fibre for clothes with, put in pots as house plants or whatever. 
Interestingly, the link at the top right that pops up, links to the creator of the video and it’s philosophy, - the video being used as promotion for his book all about “free markets”.
http://jonathangullible.com/frontpage
The author is “Ken Schoolland”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Schoolland
“In 2008 Schoolland added his name as a signatory to the Academics for Ron Paul petition and website, declaring his support for the 2008 presidential candidate”
"characterized as the “intellectual godfather” of the Tea Party movement.
“Paul is a Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute”
I’m sorry, but I have to stick by my original assertion, that this is propaganda for the free- market ideologies, promoted under the guise of being tied to a moral philosophy.