People who can't understand at least basic economics should be sold into slavery by aggressive free-market capitalists. This will be an excellent example of creating value where none previously existed.

Hmmm. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much facetiousness should I assign to that?

Slavery violates the nonaggression principle.

Indeed, as Salmon P. Chase (the "slaves laywer" and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States) was fond of pointing out, "slavery" is just a series of Common Law offences - assault (to make people work who do not wish to), false imprisonment (to prevent running away) and so on.

It can only be made "legal" by a State action - for example the statutes allowing the catching of run-a-way slaves.

As for morality and free enterprise:

F.A. Hayek often pointed out that humans evolved in hunter-gatherer packs. So such concepts as "fair shares" ("social justice") may be inate in humans.

Of course only those hunter gatherer packs where people overcame such concepts developed into larger and more complex societies. (Somewhere like New Guinea showing that groups of people can be at the same primitive technological stage yet have WILDLY DIFFERENT societies - with societies that have private ownership in the full sense [i.e. civil interaction] eventually developing new tools and methods, i.e. the cause and effect runs first from ideas to technolgy, the technolgy does not just appear by magic).

The long term survival of large scale complex societies depends on private ownership-civil interaction - and both reason and cultural traditions (cultural evolution being quicker than biological evolution - i.e. society evolving faster than our brains) defend these things.

However, (according to Hayek) the socialist instincts continue to exist in humans in advanced civilizations and these instincts (for want of a better word) can come to the fore again - eventually destoying the civilization (with the death of vast numbers of people - as only advanced civilization can support modern numbers, or modern standards of life).

The left seem to understand this also. Hence, for example, the endless appeals to "return to nature" to "follow our feelings" and so on.

Of course Marxists (and the doctrine of the Soviet Union was Marxist - whatever apologists for Marxism may claim) have special ways of attacking reason.

Whether economics is based on logical reasoning from first principles, on whether it is based on the examination of empirical evidence - Marxists will still attack the whole thing as just part of the "cultural superstructure" of capitalist society, simply a way of defending the class interests of the owners of the "means of production" - i.e. making sure that the "relations of production" (the legal ownership and so on) are in their favour.

Marxism itself is explained as being produced by the "contradictions" between the new technology of production (which is supposedly best controlled by the collective) and the old relations of production (the legal structure of ownership based on previous forms of technology).

It is a sealed system as any attack on it (either by logical reasoning or by empirical evidence) will be dismissed as class interest.

If the person attacking Marxism passes a lie detector test this can be explained away without difficulty - because he does not know he is defending the interests of the capitalist class.

And if the person attacking Marxism is a manual worker this presents no problem at all - for the same reason.

Ditto if none of the leading Marxists are manual workers.

They represent the interests of the working class - even if they themselves are people of inherited wealth and leasure.

And they do not need to prove that Marxism is correct - because the very structure of proof (either by logical reasoning or by empirical evidence) is simply capitalist ideology.

All quite perfect - and barking.

"People who can't understand at least basic economics should be sold into slavery by aggressive free-market capitalists."

People who think rubbish like this should bite their fucking arms off before they post.

Hmmm. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much facetiousness should I assign to that?