I have made the point, often repeatedly, that there is little difference in distinguishing between nasty shit done by a government, and one done by a privately funded organization, especially when arguing with libertarians and anarchists. A case in point emerged in the British press today:
A company that allegedly sold workers’ personal details, including union activities, to building firms is to be prosecuted by the information watchdog.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the Consulting Association, in Droitwich, had committed a “serious breach” of the Data Protection Act.
The ICO said a secret system had been run for over 15 years to enable firms to unlawfully vet job applicants.
Unions have called on the government to outlaw “blacklisting” practices.
A spokesman for the Department for Business said it did have the power to make blacklists illegal and would “review whether to use this power if there was compelling evidence that blacklists were being used”.
There’s your “free market”, suckers. Bastards in power are bastards in power, regardless of whether they are a Minister or a CEO.
True Anarchism implies an absence of coercion, and in a totally unfettered “free market” (as that’s normally understood) you will very quickly find that there is a very brutal exercise of coercion..
I like this theme you are using… what is it?
Hun Tun, in that case, True Anarchism must be about as common as freezing cold fires, since I cannot think of a single system where there is no coercion whatsoever – or, given some people, that any such system would last more than a few hours.
Morison, thanks. Its a modified version of Ulysses Ronquillo’s free theme, which some of the site’s CSS wizards further modified to make it look all snazzy and cool and stuff.