Some of you might have seen my first blog post, Debate An Anarchist. This post will not contain any new info for anyone who read through my other blog in its entirety, but this aims to approach it from another angle. Instead of just opening the floor to every conceivable question about how this would work or that would work, the aim of this post is to present the argument for free market anarchism right off the bat and put the statists on the defensive. I don't intend for this thread to be a debate, although if it takes that course I will try and defend my position. But my goal is just to present the anarchists perspective, and organize the most important info from my first blog into one post so people can clearly see the case for anarchism.
If one believes that it is immoral and unjust to steal from someone who has committed no offense, then they are immediately on shakey moral ground to advocate for any form of government. Government, by its very definition, steals from its citizens under of taxation. Taxation is a euphamism for extortion. Many people don't see it this way because they've been taught since they were young that government is good and necessary, but when you strip off the fluff, taxation is extortion. If you don't pay your taxes, the government will put you in jail. It is no different then a robber putting a gun to your head and demanding your wallet. The other defining charicteristic of government is that it maintains its monopoly over any industry it deems fit to by forcing competitors out of business using coercion; if you try to compete with the governments monopoly, you will be thrown in jail, just like if you refuse to fund their monopoly. The nature of government, therefore, is oppressive.
Most people see these actions as being wrong in every other situation, such as when the mafia uses these practices, but they try to come up with excuses for why it is okay when government does it. The response generally given by statist apologists is that there are certain goods which can be catagorized as public goods. Generally, these are defined as goods which are non excludable- if one person buys said good, others around him will benefit from it without having to pay for it- and non rivalrous- one person consuming the good does not inhibit anyone else from consuming the good. Statists argue that with public goods, a 'free-rider problem' arises. The theory goes that everyone will wait for their neighbor to purchase said good, the result being that no one actually buys it and then everyone is worse off. Therefore, government must force people to pay for these goods collectively. I will turn to Hans Hermann Hoppe to tear this theory a new asshole:
"There is something seriously wrong with the thesis of public goods theorists that public goods cannot be produced privately, but instead require state intervention. Clearly they can be provided by markets. Furthermore, historical evidence shows us that all of the so-called public goods that states now provide have at some time in the past actually been provided by private entrepreneurs or even today are so provided in one country or another. For example, the postal service was once private almost everywhere; streets were privately financed and still are sometimes; even the beloved lighthouses were originally the result of private enterpri~ep;r~iv ate police forces, detectives, and arbitrators exist; and help for the sick, the poor, the elderly, orphans, and widows has been a traditional concern of private charity organizations. To say, then, that such things cannot be produced by a pure market system is falsified by experience a hundredfold.
Apart from this, other difficulties arise when the public-private goods distinction is used to decide what and what not to leave to the market. For instance, what if the production of so-called public goods did not have positive but negative consequences for other people, or if the consequences were positive for some and negative for others? What if the neighbor whose house was saved from burning by my fire brigade had wished (perhaps because he was overinsured) that it had burned down; or my neighbors bate roses, or my fellow passengers find the scent of my deodorant disgusting? In addition, changes in the technology can change the character of a given good. For example, with the development of cable TV a good that was formerly (seemingly) public has become private. And changes in the laws of property-of the appropriation of property-can have the very same effect of changing the public-private character of a good. The lighthouse, for instance, is a public good only insofar as the sea is publicly (not privately) owned. But if it were permitted to acquire pieces of the ocean as private property, as it would be in a purely capitalist social order, then as the lighthouse shines over only a limited territory, it would clearly become possible to exclude nonpayers from the enjoyment of its services.
Leaving this somewhat sketchy level of discussion and looking into the distinction between private and public goods more thoroughly, we discover that the distinction turns out to be completely illusory. A clear-cut dichotomy between private and public goods does not exist, and this is essentially why there can be so many disagreements on how to classify a given good. All goods are more or less private or public and can-and constantly do-change with respect to their degree of privateness to publicness as people's values and evaluations change, and as changes occur in the composition of the population. In order to recognize that they never fall, once and for all, into either one or the other category, one must only recall what makes something a good. For something to be a good it must be recognized and treated as scarce by someone. Something is not a good as such, that is to say; goods are goods only in the eyes of the beholder. Nothing is a good unless at least one person subjectively evaluates it as such. But then, when goods are never goods-as-such-when no physicochemical analysis can identify something as an economic good-there is clearly no fixed, objective criterion for classifying goods as either private or public. They can never be private or public goods as such. Their private or public character depends on how few or how many people consider them to be goods, with the degree to which they are private or public changing as these evaluations change and ranging from one to infinity. Even seemingly completely private things like the interior of my apartment or the color of my underwear can thus become public goods as soon as somebody else starts caring about them.1° And seemingly public goods, like the exterior of my house or the color of my overalls, can become extremely private goods as soon as other people stop caring about them. Moreover, every good can change its characteristics again and again; it can even turn from a public or private good to a public or private had or evil and vice versa, depending solely on the changes in this caring or uncaring.
If this is so, then no decision whatsoever can be based on the classification of goods as private or public." In fact, to do so it would become necessary to ask virtually every individual person with respect to every single good whether or not he happened to care about it-positively or negatively and perhaps to what extent-in order to determine who might profit from what and who should therefore participate in the good's financing. (And how could one know ifthey were telling the truth?) It would also become necessary to monitor all changes in such evaluations continuously, with the result that no definite decision could ever be made regarding the production of anything, and as a consequence of a nonsensical theory all of us would be long dead.
But even if one were to ignore all these difficulties, and were willing to admit for the sake of argument that the private-public good distinction does hold water, even then the argument would not prove what it is supposed to. It neither provides inclusive reasons why public goods-assuming that they exist as a separate category of goods-should be produced at all, nor why the state rather than private enterprises should produce them. This is what the theory of public goods essentially says, having introduced the aforementioned conceptual distinction: The positive effects of public goods for people who do not contribute anything to their production or financing proves that these goods are desirable. But evidently they would not be produced, or at least not in sufficient quantity and quality, in a free, competitive market, since not all of those who would profit from their production would also contribute financially to make the production possible. So in order to produce these goods (which are evidently desirable, but would not be produced otherwise), the state must jump in and assist in their production. This sort of reasoning, which can be found in almost every textbook on economics (Nobel laureates not ex~luded'~is) c ompletely fallacious and fallacious on two counts.
For one thing, to come to the conclusion that the state has to provide public goods that otherwise would not be produced, one must smuggle a norm into one's chain of reasoning. Otherwise, from the statement that because of some special characteristics they have, certain goods would not be produced. One could never reach the conclusion that these goods should be produced. But with a norm required to justify their conclusion, the public goods theorists clearly have left the bounds of economics as a positive, werrfrei science. Instead they have moved into the realm of morals or ethics, and hence one would expect to be offered a theory of ethics as a cognitive discipline in order for them to do legitimately what they are doing and to justifiably derive their conclusion. But it can hardly be stressed enough that nowhere in the public goods theory literature can there be found anything that even faintly resembles such a cognitive theory of ethics." Thus it must be stated at the outset, that the public goods theorists are misusing whatever prestige they might have as positive economists for pronouncements on matters on which, as their own writings indicate, they have no authority whatsoever.
Perhaps, though, they have stumbled on something correct by accident, without having supported it with an elaborate moral theory? It becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth as soon as one explicitly formulates the norm that would be needed to arrive at the conclusion that the state has to assist in the provision of public goods. The norm required to reach the above conclusion is this: Whenever one can somehow prove that the production of a particular good or service has a positive effect on someone else but would not be produced at all or would not be produced in a definite quantity or quality unless certain people participated in its financing, then the use of aggressive violence against these persons is allowed, either directly or indirectly with the help of the state, and these persons may be forced to share in the necessary financial burden. It does not need much comment to show that chaos would result from implementing this rule, as it amounts to saying that anyone can attack anyone else whenever he feels like it. Moreover, as I have demonstrated in detail elsewhere" this norm could never be justified as a fair norm. To argue so, in fact to argue at all, in favor of or against anything, be it a moral, nonmoral, empirical, or logicoanalytical position, it must be presupposed that contrary to what the norm actually says, each individual's integrity as a physically independent decision-making unit is assured. For only if everyone is free from physical aggression by everyone else could anything first be said and then agreement or disagreement on anything possibly reached. The principle of nonaggression is thus the necessary precondition for argumentation and possible agreement and hence can be argumentatively defended as a just norm by means of a priori reasoning.
But the public goods theory breaks down not only because of the faulty moral reasoning implied in it. Even the utilitarian, economic reasoning contained in the above argument is blatantly wrong. As the public goods theory states, it might well be that it would be better to have the public goods than not to have them, though it should not he forgotten that no a priori reason exists that this must be so of necessity (which would then end the public goods theorists' reasoning right here). For it is clearly possible, and indeed known to be a fact, that anarchists exist who so greatly abhor state action that they would prefer not having the so-called public goods at all to having them provided by the state. In any case, even if the argument is conceded so far, to leap from the statement that the public goods are desirable to the statement that they should therefore be provided by the state is anything but conclusive, as this is by no means the choice with which one is confronted. Since money or other resources must be withdrawn from possible alternative uses to fmance the supposedly desirable public goods, the only relevant and appropriate question is whether or not these alternative uses to which the money could be put (that is, the private goods which could have been acquired but now cannot be bought because the money is being spent on public goods instead) are more valuable-more urgent-than the public goods.
And the answer to this question is perfectly clear. In terms of consumer evaluations, however high its absolute level might be, the value of the public goods is relatively lower than that of the competing private goods because if one had left the choice to the consumers (and had not forced one alternative upon them), they evidently would have preferred spending their money differently (otherwise no force would have been necessary). This proves beyond any doubt that the resources used for the provision of public goods are wasted because they provide consumers with goods or services that at best are only of secondary importance. In short, even if one assumed that public goods that can be distinguished clearly from private goods existed, and even if it were granted that a given public good might be useful, public goods would still compete with private goods. And there is only one method for finding out whether or not they are more urgently desired and to what extent, or mutatis mutandis, if, and to what extent, their production would take place at the expense of the nonproduction or reduced production of more urgently needed private goods: by having everything provided by freely competing private enterprises. Hence, contrary to the conclusion arrived at by the public goods theorists, logic forces one to accept the result that only a pure market system can safeguard the rationality, from the point of view of the consumers, of a decision to produce a public good.And only under a pure capitalist order could it be ensured that the decision about how much of a public good to produce (provided it should be produced at all) would be rational as well." http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_1/9_1_2.pdf
Having destroyed the public goods theory, unless one is willing to defend international communism, they must logically accept that there is no appropriate situation in which government intervention is required. To be free from the inefficiency and oppression inherent in the construct of any government, the only solution is free market anarchism.
For those interested in learning more about Austrian economics (the root of anarcho-capitalism), visit http://www.mises.org .
heh, the dissolution of the public private distinction is well worn, but to take the private line is interesting. one could take the opposite line and say the private does not exist, but are in fact all public.
Well, "Let's give Joe Jones all our guns and there won't be any shootings anymore!" might sound a bit silly (MRB), but on a day to day basis, I can see around me that it does work. Goverment *is* actually moderately successful at keeping social order. It could be a lot worse.
I do believe government has its flaws, and I think that a stable market anarchy might actually bring us more justice and prosperity. The problem is, how do you get a stable market anarchy? Just like one cannot just create political institutions to achieve any desired effect (DDF), one cannot just discontinue government and expect utopia. At least in history, so far, chaotic anarchy (the kind that gives "anarchy" such a negative connotation) and oppressive governments have been far more common than stable market anarchies.
Are you sure our current democratic society isn't "already pretty good" (MRB)? Perhaps a slightly better organized democratic society? If you think it's not, then what is your plan to go from here to stable market anarchy? Or is anarchy something that looks good on paper but doesn't work out in practice?
On March 10 2008 11:02 oneofthem wrote: heh, the dissolution of the public private distinction is well worn, but to take the private line is interesting. one could take the opposite line and say the private does not exist, but are in fact all public.
The anarchist perspective isn't that all goods are private or that all goods are public, but that there is no distinction; all goods are goods. And all goods can be provided most efficiently on the free market. That is why I said in my last paragraph that to defend the state production of a particular good, one must defend the states ability to produce all goods, since there is no true distinction between private and public goods.
On March 10 2008 11:05 bash9 wrote: Well, "Let's give Joe Jones all our guns and there won't be any shootings anymore!" might sound a bit silly (MRB), but on a day to day basis, I can see around me that it does work. Goverment *is* actually moderately successful at keeping social order. It could be a lot worse.
Saying things could be worse is hardly an argument against anarcho-capitalism. Yes, things could be worse. They could also be better. As for the government, they maintain social order through coercion and extortion. I don't think such practices are necessary or beneficial.
I do believe government has its flaws, and I think that a stable market anarchy might actually bring us more justice and prosperity. The problem is, how do you get a stable market anarchy? Just like one cannot just create political institutions to achieve any desired effect (DDF), one cannot just discontinue government and expect utopia. At least in history, so far, chaotic anarchy (the kind that gives "anarchy" such a negative connotation) and oppressive governments have been far more common than stable market anarchies.
Bringing about an anarcho-capitalist revolution won't be quick or easy. The best way, imo, is through education. To bring about anarcho-capitalism will require the public to be educated on why it is the best system, and why government is bad.
Are you sure our current democratic society isn't "already pretty good" (MRB)? Perhaps a slightly better organized democratic society?
Our current government is better then fascism or communism since the less state power the better, but it's not as good as having no state authority.
If you think it's not, then what is your plan to go from here to stable market anarchy? Or is anarchy something that looks good on paper but doesn't work out in practice?
Since it's never really been put into practice on any long-term basis with the suppport of the public, it's impossible to rule out its effectiveness empirically, one would have to attack the theory of it. I think that if enough people understood and accepted it, it would work better in practice than any government could. Of course, that is just my opinion.
i do not really follow what you say about public goods.
but, i believe that taxes, especially progressive taxes are good for a country along with the government spending and welfare programs that come along with it. The government needs to equalize the starting line for the rich and poor. Class mobility, the ability for anyone to succeed, is an important part in making a strong country because it is a crucial part of growth. In theory, by providing the necessities such as schooling and medicine and other welfare programs, the government allows for people to born into poorer families public education for those that can't afford private schools. and food stamps and other welfare programs allow the kids to study instead of worrying about food.
similarly, the government is needed for infrastructure. they need to build bridges, roads, power plants, sewers, subways, and buses. those things are crucial for the success of trade and businesses. factories need power, ships make a shorter trip through the panama canal, trucks need roads, etc.
while the free market is the best in terms of efficiency, the government also needs to be concerned with the overall growth of the economy. the things i would like you to consider are the need for life to be a meritocracy rather than a birth lottery and the importance of government's role in building a country. there are probably maybe more arguments for why government is crucial but i can't think of them right now. i got the ez 2 i think.
yes, free markets and protecting businesses are very important towards growth and prosperity, but they're not the only thing.
That was a wall of text and I didn't read it simply because Anarchy at its most basest level is fundamentally flawed, because it requires the virtue of people. And people are not virtuous. If you said anything in that big post of yours that contradicted that statement in any kind of convincing way, please tell me so and I might actually read it.
Edit: Or if in this case anarchy was not intended as a means of societal rule.
On March 10 2008 11:02 oneofthem wrote: heh, the dissolution of the public private distinction is well worn, but to take the private line is interesting. one could take the opposite line and say the private does not exist, but are in fact all public.
The anarchist perspective isn't that all goods are private or that all goods are public, but that there is no distinction; all goods are goods. And all goods can be provided most efficiently on the free market. That is why I said in my last paragraph that to defend the state production of a particular good, one must defend the states ability to produce all goods, since there is no true distinction between private and public goods.
that's a rather silly angle to take, since the contention is not over productive or distributive efficiency of goods but over private and public domain and the associated rights and obligations.
if you are talking about just public goods, these are defined by access exclusivity, a politically contingent question.
On March 10 2008 13:32 Plutonium wrote: I stopped reading when you said that taxation was extortion.
Are you challenging this statement? See what happens if you don't pay your taxes. See if you don't get thrown in jail. Your only choice under government is to give them your money or they will exercise violence against you. That is the definition of extortion.
Other people are analyzing it in depth, but let me ask you a simple question:
What exactly would stop me from coming into your house, killing you, and stealing your stuff, if not for a public police force or system of justice?
Private Defence Agencies. Security is an economic good, and would naturally be provided under an anarcho-capitalist system.
that's a rather silly angle to take, since the contention is not over productive or distributive efficiency of goods but over private and public domain and the associated rights and obligations.
if you are talking about just public goods, these are defined by access exclusivity, a politically contingent question.
Did you read the post? The whole point of the excerpt was to demonstrate that exclusivity is not an objective distinction, but exists on a spectrum, even down to the most seemingly private goods such as deodorant or house development. You can't objectively define what constitutes a public good and what constitutes a private good because every good has externalities, the positives or negatives of which are entirely subjective. That is why it nonsensical to argue that certain goods could be more efficiently provided by the state than by the free market.
What happens to the people who can't afford to pay the "Private Defense Agency?" Is it OK to kill them? What happens if I break my leg and can't work for three months so I get fired, and have to choose between paying for food and paying for protection?
Unions wouldn't be able to exist, because there would be no laws against beating or killing striking workers to encourage the rest to get back to work.
What happens to orphaned children? Do we send them to work in the local sweatshops? What's to stop industrialists from completely destroying the environment for a much larger profit - they won't have to live with the results fifty years down the line?.
Hell, whats to stop slavery? Why even pay the workers, when I can hire guards with guns for a fraction of the cost?
Well, I hope I didn't interfere with your fun in your crackpipe Ayn Rand fantasy where we let the poor and the disabled all die because they're a drain on society. Let's not forget the elderly who had their pensions stolen by greedy CEO's who flee to the other end of the earth, without any repercussions, and god forbid if you get seriously ill and have to choose between paying between not only medicine and food, but also protection from being killed.
I can only hope you can one day become a productive member of society.
but, i believe that taxes, especially progressive taxes are good for a country along with the government spending and welfare programs that come along with it. The government needs to equalize the starting line for the rich and poor. Class mobility, the ability for anyone to succeed, is an important part in making a strong country because it is a crucial part of growth. In theory, by providing the necessities such as schooling and medicine and other welfare programs, the government allows for people to born into poorer families public education for those that can't afford private schools. and food stamps and other welfare programs allow the kids to study instead of worrying about food.
As a side note, literacy rates in the US were over 90% before education was socialized. Putting a good under the control of government must lead to a decrease in quality. Empirically we see how private schools are better than public ones. We often here about the extremely long wait times to see a doctor in Canada or to get an operation and how people will cross the border to use U.S. healthcare services. So I already question your underlying presumption that socializing certain industries would allow for them to be provided more effectively. But I don't want to make my case empirically, I would rather discuss the theory of it.
Let me ask you this; you do not advocate communism, right? You see how the free market can more efficinetly deliver toys, electronics, clothes, and cars, as opposed to socializing the production of these goods, right? If you agree, then what distinction do you make between these goods and education or medicine that you could use to argue that the state is more effective at providing the latter goods? The distinction most people point to is that of "public goods", and the point of the excerpt I posted was to show that no such distinction exists, and thus all goods can and will be better provided on the free market.
similarly, the government is needed for infrastructure. they need to build bridges, roads, power plants, sewers, subways, and buses. those things are crucial for the success of trade and businesses. factories need power, ships make a shorter trip through the panama canal, trucks need roads, etc.
Why is the government needed for these services? Presumably people desire them. If they are desired, then people will be willing to pay for them. If people are not willing to pay for them, then the conclusion you must draw is that they must not want them enough to warrant paying for them, otherwise they would pay for these services. If they don't, then, wish to pay for them (demostrating their preference to spend their money in other ways) what moral right do you have to force these people to fund it?
while the free market is the best in terms of efficiency, the government also needs to be concerned with the overall growth of the economy. the things i would like you to consider are the need for life to be a meritocracy rather than a birth lottery and the importance of government's role in building a country. there are probably maybe more arguments for why government is crucial but i can't think of them right now. i got the ez 2 i think.
yes, free markets and protecting businesses are very important towards growth and prosperity, but they're not the only thing.
On March 10 2008 15:05 Plutonium wrote: What happens to the people who can't afford to pay the "Private Defense Agency?" Is it OK to kill them? What happens if I break my leg and can't work for three months, and have to choose between paying for food and paying for protection?
Well, I hope I didn't interfere with your fun in your crackpipe Ayn Rand fantasy where we let the poor and the disabled all die because they're a drain on society. Let's not forget the elderly who had their pensions stolen, and god forbid if you get seriously ill and have to choose between paying between not only medicine and food, but also protection from being killed.
Arguing here can come to no good. I can only hope you can one day become a productive member of society.
This line of argument is idiotic. What if I die because I had a tumor and my socialized medicine had me waiting too long (a scenario which almost happened until the person came down to the U.S to use our healthcare)? What if police inefficiency couldn't stop a bad guy from killing me, where a private defense agency (who has more economic incentive to protect its clients) would've stopped him? Bringing up stupid hypotheticals doesn't help either of our arguments. Try actually poking a hole in the logic of my argument. Demonstrate why the state is better suited to provide certain goods then the private sector.
Imagine I'm an industrialist - what's to stop me from hiring child laborers, and making them work sweatshop-style, paying them the bare minimum to survive. What else would they do - they don't have any education and can't get any because they don't have any money to hire teachers. They can't go anywhere else to work for more money, because they don't have any skills, and there's no minimum wage.
They wouldn't be able to strike, because I could just shoot the leaders, with no repercussions.
Hell, why even pay my workers, when I can hire guards with guns for a fraction of the cost, and make them slaves. You are a fucking idiot who doesn't understand or realize even the smallest things democracy and government has brought you. Be grateful that you have them, because they're the only reason you're not right now a wage slave in a Nike-Adidas conglomerate factory.
that's a rather silly angle to take, since the contention is not over productive or distributive efficiency of goods but over private and public domain and the associated rights and obligations.
if you are talking about just public goods, these are defined by access exclusivity, a politically contingent question.
Did you read the post? The whole point of the excerpt was to demonstrate that exclusivity is not an objective distinction, but exists on a spectrum, even down to the most seemingly private goods such as deodorant or house development. You can't objectively define what constitutes a public good and what constitutes a private good because every good has externalities, the positives or negatives of which are entirely subjective. That is why it nonsensical to argue that certain goods could be more efficiently provided by the state than by the free market.
Sure you can. There are plenty of grey areas but enough black and white for governments to exist. True, with advances in the ability for people to raise capital over time, certain goods and services originally considered public (such as postal system) can now be privatized. It would be highly unreasonable, however, to think that market failures would not occur naturally when it comes to many things other things that we take for granted: pollution regulation, military forces, public transit, education, monopolies, etc.
Where each government draws the line specifically between private and public depends on the government (and in a democracy, the people who vote on it). For example, the US is the only rich developed country that considers health care a private good. The distinction between private and public is inherently a subjective one, but why does that matter? A certain balance is required when it comes to government size and what goods are considered public. History has tried various different amounts of government, and I'm pretty sure that having none at all is simply not optimal.
Simply put, certain economies to scale are just so large that market failures are certain to exist in a private system. History has certainly shown it to be the case.
Let's take an obvious example: education. In the current system, the government provides free education for every child. This is widely to be considered to be economically optimal, since this will give a chance for poor children to contribute more to the economy. In an anarchical system, who would pay for this education? Should private companies educate poor children in the hopes that they will grow up to be able to contribute to the company? Or maybe, you would suggest that some company spontaneously pop up and take up the task of educating every child in the country and then take a part of the student's future wages. If you noticed, before universal education was implemented by national governments, this simply didn't happen. There are just so many practical limitations that while in theory governments are inefficient, history demonstrates that they are necessary in reality.
Also, how would you deal with the most obvious form of market failure? Monopolies.
Note: I will no longer, in this blog entry, be entertaining questions that fall under the the format "how would good so-and-so be provided if not by the state?" My answer to all these is simply that the private sector can provide it more efficiently. The burden of proof is on you to argue why a particular good should be taken off the free market and given to a coercive monopoly. You cannot take this as a premise unless you are advocating communism. If people do want to bring up these questions, I would point them to my first blog entry, where all conceivable situations of the aforementioned type have already been raised. For the anarchist perspective on the provision of the most commonly disputed points, I direct you to this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p215 See Chapter 12 on police, the law, and the courts.
You don't deserve to live in a country where people have given their lives for the freedoms you have now, if you simply want to give them away.
Let's see how much you like anarcho-capitalism when you're in one - Why don't you move to the poorest, most polluted, urban slums of China and try out something close to it. Have fun stitching together Air Jordans for half-a-handful of rice a day.
On March 10 2008 15:26 Plutonium wrote: Imagine I'm an industrialist - what's to stop me from hiring child laborers, and making them work sweatshop-style, paying them the bare minimum to survive. What else would they do - they don't have any education and can't get any because they don't have any money to hire teachers. They can't go anywhere else to work for more money, because they don't have any skills, and there's no minimum wage.
They wouldn't be able to strike, because I could just shoot the leaders, with no repercussions.
Hell, why even pay my workers, when I can hire guards with guns for a fraction of the cost, and make them slaves. You are a fucking idiot who doesn't understand or realize even the smallest things democracy and government has brought you. Be grateful that you have them, because they're the only reason you're not right now a wage slave in a Nike-Adidas conglomerate factory.
Massively stupid and insulting posts like this will not be tolerated. The idea that all people are really evil and the only thing holding them back from exercising their evil will is government, is profoundly stupid. Government does not create morality. People create morality. The fact that there is enough public support to enact laws against things like shooting people, as well as the thousands of charitable organizations demonstrates that most people aren't this evil. Pointing to one possible situation that might arise in anarcho-capitalistic society is an extremely poor refutation. I could just as easily provide you with countless examples of state-created violence or oppression. As I said before, argue against the theory of it or GTFO.
Let's imagine that I had no morals, and I open my shoe factory.
Who would stop me from doing exactly what I detailed above? Why, if anybody tried to oppose me militarily, I could just hire even more men with guns to kill them with my massive industrial profits.
Hey, they could try to boycott me, and everyone would have to go around barefoot. If somebody tried to sell shoes elsewhere, I would just buy them up or kill them.
You're not arguing against us or debating, you're just plugging your ears and screaming about Ayn Rand and Ron Paul.
Alright, try this line of reasoning. Current systems of government exist because they are superior. Certain goods exist because they ultimately increase the economic power of a country: education for human capital, military and police forces for security, etc. You want to argue that competition is better than government for providing these services. My point is very very very simple: why hasn't this happened yet if anarchy supposedly better? And the way I see it, the answer is also very straightforward: anarchy not actually better in practice. Where do you draw the line? It's impossible to say objectively, but it's something that's tried and tested. Example: People's health with respect to alcohol was once considered a public good, leading to the prohibition in the US. A few years later, it was turned back into a private good.
Again, I'm operating under the premise that what works the best is what survives. Governments work better than no government in practice, and that's why we have them. If you wish to debate, start from here.
And finally, where these lines are drawn are decided by the people themselves. We call it democracy. In theory democracy should optimal since it tries to maximize everyone's utility function equally, and in a perfect system where everything is decided by democracy, it would maximize the overall utility of a country's inhabitants.
Also, you still haven't addressed the issue of monopolies.
Sure you can. There are plenty of grey areas but enough black and white for governments to exist.
It is either black and white or exists on a grey scale. You can't have it both ways. It exists either on a dichotomy or a spectrum. You need to demonstrate why a certain point on that spectrum makes government production the best option.
True, with advances in the ability for people to raise capital over time, certain goods and services originally considered public (such as postal system) can now be privatized. It would be highly unreasonable, however, to think that market failures would not occur naturally when it comes to many things other things that we take for granted: pollution regulation, military forces, public transit, education, monopolies, etc.
Again, I have debated these at length in my first blog post which you're welcome to post in (providing you read the whole thing first, since otherwise you will likely bring up a topic already covered, as are all the ones you raise here), but the focus of this entry is on the theoretical model. I maintain that no market failure does have to occur in the industries you mention, and that market failure is created from government intervention (artificial price fixing).
Where each government draws the line specifically between private and public depends on the government (and in a democracy, the people who vote on it). For example, the US is the only rich developed country that considers health care a private good. The distinction between private and public is inherently a subjective one, but why does that matter? A certain balance is required when it comes to government size and what goods are considered public. History has tried various different amounts of government, and I'm pretty sure that having none at all is simply not optimal.
There is no point in just flatly stating that a certain amount of balance is required, since my whole argument is that goernment is *not* required. The burden of proof is on you to explain why government intervention is necessary.
Simply put, certain economies to scale are just so large that market failures are certain to exist in a private system. History has certainly shown it to be the case.
Show me how this supposed market failure comes about. Don't just make flat assertions, give evidence.
Let's take an obvious example: education. In the current system, the government provides free education for every child. This is widely to be considered to be economically optimal, since this will give a chance for poor children to contribute more to the economy. In an anarchical system, who would pay for this education? Should private companies educate poor children in the hopes that they will grow up to be able to contribute to the company? Or maybe, you would suggest that some company spontaneously pop up and take up the task of educating every child in the country and then take a part of the student's future wages. If you noticed, before universal education was implemented by national governments, this simply didn't happen. There are just so many practical limitations that while in theory governments are inefficient, history demonstrates that they are necessary in reality.
Explain to me why education is better provided by the state then the free market. Most economists who subscribe to the public goods theory wouldn't even consider education to be a public good. So even if I grant you that there is a distinction between public and private goods, you are saying that this private good is more efficiently provided by the state then by the free market. If private goods can be better provided by the state, why even have a market at all? Why not have all industry be centrally planned?
Also, how would you deal with the most obvious form of market failure? Monopolies.
There are two types of monopolies. The first type is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly exists when one firm provides the best quality product at the lowest price and all attracts all the consumers from competitors firms. There is not, in this case, an absence of competition, only of competitors due to the firms efficiency. You would be hard pressed to argue that this is market failure. The second type of monopoly is a coercive monopoly. This is a monopoly that exists because it uses aggression to bar competing firms from entering the market. This type of monopoly can only exist with the aid of government. This type of monopoly must lead to market failure, and is one of the central anarcho-capitalist arguments against government.
On March 10 2008 15:39 Plutonium wrote: You don't deserve to live in a country where people have given their lives for the freedoms you have now, if you simply want to give them away.
Quite the opposite, dipshit. Freedom involves freedom from government oppression. Freedom is constantly at odds with government.
Let's see how much you like anarcho-capitalism when you're in one - Why don't you move to the poorest, most polluted, urban slums of China and try out something close to it. Have fun stitching together Air Jordans for half-a-handful of rice a day.
Yeah, China is totally anarcho-capitalist. Sorry, no room for retards here.
i agree w/ azndsh's first post, but not so much the "only superior forms of government" line of reasoning.
in your scenario where everything is privatized, kid X's family is too poor to afford private school. should he not go to school then? there's a big difference from a government providing the basic necessities and communism. also, education is much more than literacy. you could say that people are literate after the 3rd grade. =/. also, i would argue that 10% illiteracy is very bad. that means 1/10 people in your country can't read and write, which probably means they're poor and are going to be poor for the rest of their lives.
and i guess private owned roads and bridges would go under the monopoly problem.
obviously, private education is going to be better than public. but for those who can't afford it, there has to be something!
edit, also: coercive monopolies can exist without the help of government. like one company (standard oil) becomes big. a 2nd company seeing their success wants to start too. first company sees that 2nd company will hurt its monopoly power so they decide to temporarily sell their stuff cheaper so that the 2nd company can't compete. 2nd company goes out of business. then 1st company increases prices again. oh no.
Plutonium -- Ayn Rand is not an anarcho-capitalist....in fact, she is a TARGET of anarcho-capitalists' arguments (she argues that the military, police and courts should be government run)....At least target the right people (rothbard would be a good start) -- that is, inform yourself.
Alright, try this line of reasoning. Current systems of government exist because they are superior. Certain goods exist because they ultimately increase the economic power of a country: education for human capital, military and police forces for security, etc. You want to argue that competition is better than government for providing these services. My point is very very very simple: why hasn't this happened yet if anarchy supposedly better? And the way I see it, the answer is also very straightforward: anarchy not actually better in practice. Where do you draw the line? It's impossible to say objectively, but it's something that's tried and tested.
I assume you think liberal democracies are the best form of government? There was a time before them. Imagine if we lived in the 1400s and you were trying to argue in favor of liberal democracies, and I countered with "well if it's so great, why haven't we had it yet?" The answer of course is that just because a certain political philosophy has not been successfully implemented in the past, doesn't mean it can't be in the future.
Example: People's health with respect to alcohol was once considered a public good, leading to the prohibition in the US. A few years later, it was turned back into a private good.
My point exactly; the distinction is arbitrary, and it is immoral to force your judgment on someone else in these types of situations.
Again, I'm operating under the premise that what works the best is what survives. Governments work better than no government in practice, and that's why we have them. If you wish to debate, start from here.
For any political system to be successful, it needs public support. Anarcho-capitalism, if enough people accept it, very well could change the political landscape for the better in the future and then it would survive. The fact that it has not been implemented on any long term basis so far does not mean that it can't be.
And finally, where these lines are drawn are decided by the people themselves. We call it democracy. In theory democracy should optimal since it tries to maximize everyone's utility function equally, and in a perfect system where everything is decided by democracy, it would maximize the overall utility of a country's inhabitants.
I think the consumer should be allowed to draw these lines. When you bring in government to make these decisions for people, you're taking the judgment out of the consumers hands; you're saying that your subjective judgment qualifies you to use other peoples money in ways they otherwise wouldn't use that money (and if they would spend the money the same way you would, there is no need to force them to).
Also, you still haven't addressed the issue of monopolies.
On March 10 2008 16:04 geometryb wrote: obviously, private education is going to be better than public. but for those who can't afford it, there has to be something!
You have not answered why education, clearly a private good under anyones criteria, is better provided by the state then by the market. I could use this same argument you're making to argue in favor of socialized everything. If I can't afford a swimming pool on the market, there has to be some state mechanism to provide it...
edit, also: coercive monopolies can exist without the help of government. like one company (standard oil) becomes big. a 2nd company seeing their success wants to start too. first company sees that 2nd company will hurt its monopoly power so they decide to temporarily sell their stuff cheaper so that the 2nd company can't compete. 2nd company goes out of business. then 1st company increases prices again. oh no.
First, what you are describing is not coercion. One firm lowering their prices is not initiating aggression against another firm. Second, you're assuming that if a company raises its prices it's automatically a bad thing. Third, when the company raises their prices again, another competitor will, if possible, offer the same services at a lower price, so the monopoly would again have to lower their prices. They would perpetually have to keep their prices low to maintain their monopoly. But say they were able to raise their prices somewhat, but not enough for other firms to think it worthy to invest in the market. Then that is the market price. You're essentially arguing that it's bad for firms to make profit, or arbitrarily deciding when a firm makes "too much" profit and thus feel its okay to come in and set a price ceiling, which creates market failure through surplus and dead weight loss
Old Soviet cartoon – two old women are standing in an endless line-up to buy bread. One says to the other: "What a terribly long line!" The other replies: "Yes, but just imagine – in the capitalist countries, the government doesn't even distribute the bread!" http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/06/freedomain-radio-faq-part-2.html
I also have another question for any statist brave enough to answer: If you believe government is acceptable at the state level, why not at the international level? If government is good, why isn't it good at all levels? Will any statist explain why they are not in favor of one world government, and extreme consolidation of power?
First, what you are describing is not coercion. One firm lowering their prices is not initiating aggression against another firm. Second, you're assuming that if a company raises its prices it's automatically a bad thing. Third, when the company raises their prices again, another competitor will, if possible, offer the same services at a lower price, so the monopoly would again have to lower their prices. They would perpetually have to keep their prices low to maintain their monopoly. But say they were able to raise their prices somewhat, but not enough for other firms to think it worthy to invest in the market. Then that is the market price. You're essentially arguing that it's bad for firms to make profit, or arbitrarily deciding when a firm makes "too much" profit and thus feel its okay to come in and set a price ceiling, which creates market failure through surplus and dead weight loss
i think the economics term for it is "dumping" if you wanted to look it up.
On March 10 2008 14:55 CaptainMurphy wrote: Private Defence Agencies. Security is an economic good, and would naturally be provided under an anarcho-capitalist system.
LOLOLOLOL And if people are poor they dont deserve security ? or health care ?
Your ideas are weird. With such a political system, human life value become the value of the money that they own.
Well I have two basic points against anarchy, which I will outline again and try to address some of your responses in the process:
(A) Democracy is better Premises: 1. Perhaps the only actual objective way to decide what is best is by what gives the highest overall utility. If you can think of a better way to objectively compare two different systems, I surely haven't heard it before.
2. Democracy is the best way to accomplish the highest overall utility.
I think the consumer should be allowed to draw these lines. When you bring in government to make these decisions for people, you're taking the judgment out of the consumers hands; you're saying that your subjective judgment qualifies you to use other peoples money in ways they otherwise wouldn't use that money (and if they would spend the money the same way you would, there is no need to force them to).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you argue that people should vote with money instead of everyone having an equal vote. Voting with dollars results in a lower overall utility though. Rich people have a bigger vote, so they might be happier, but the poor will be disproportionately less happy.
Although, in fact, it may be advantageous in terms of economic output to have an anarchical system, money and utility have a non-linear relationship, so a more equitable distribution of money and less total can result in higher total utility. On an unrelated note, often times higher utility translates to higher economic output in the long run (on the generation timescale).
Of course, democracy like any system is full of flaws in its implementation, but theoretically, it is the starting point for maximizing overall utility. So yeah, private/public goods is a spectrum, but people decide on the dividing line on that spectrum with votes.
In summary, quoting the person above me,
With such a political system, human life value become the value of the money that they own.
(B) Practical limitations of anarchy Anarchy doesn't work as well as it sounds on paper for several reasons.
1. Economies of scale. While in theory a lot of things work with anarchy, they just don't in practice. Let's take education as an example again. Imagine a nationwide system of boarding schools that provide the best education in the country for free. It takes the students with the most potential, regardless of their financial background. In return, students agree to pay back a small percentage of all their future earnings. This sounds decent in theory, but the problem is the billions and billions in sunk costs required, for something that won't pay for itself for dozens of years.
The same applies to say, a national interstate highway system. People could have instead opened toll roads all over the country. The initial investment is absolutely enormous, and the time it takes before it will pay for itself is on the order of decades or longer. In fact, this investment could very well fail altogether like many previous government policies. Who's going to invest in a project that won't pay off until after their death with also a large degree of uncertainty? The expected return is positive, but the initial investment is huge and/or the payoff is in the far future. Economies of this scale do cause market failures. You can theorize about all these alternative systems for national military, education, courts, etc., but they just simply don't work that well in practice.
2. Monopolies, coercive or natural, are not good. Coercive monopolies can most certainly and have most certainly arisen without the help of government: Standard Oil being the most obvious example. Natural monopolies are the most efficient for production but not for the consumer. Being able to charge arbitrarily high prices maximizes only the company's profit and not the consumer's utility.
Functionality aside, how do you figure it would be sustainable?
Suppose the US government collapses. Groups of people will naturally band together for mutual protection. The most effective of such groups will attract followers, many of who will have comparative advantage in economic output, and will voluntarily exchange some of their surplus for the opportunity to generate that output unmolested by other parties. Congratulations, you have government again.
You know, I don't think you'll be able to convince me, and I probably won't be able to convince you, but you've gotten me very interested in reading about economic theory again. Maybe I'll start with the Austrian school this time.
LOLOLOLOL And if people are poor they dont deserve security ? or health care ?
Your ideas are weird. With such a political system, human life value become the value of the money that they own.
This is common response from liberals, one that I used to buy in to (being a recovering liberal myself), but it neglects a couple important points. This is essentially the liberal argument from morality. You are saying that stealing is justified if the money is put to use that you deem as 'fair'. This creates a world of problems. You're basically advocating that anyone has the right to steal from anyone if they personally deem it as fair. At the very least, you are advocating that anyone can steal from anyone else who has more money then them, since stealing from the rich to give to the poor is presumably 'fair' stealing, according to you.
But further, I would argue that the most moral distribution of health services is the one which provides the most benefit to everyone, not just poor people. And that can only be discerned on the free market.
On March 10 2008 17:15 defenestrate wrote: Functionality aside, how do you figure it would be sustainable?
Suppose the US government collapses. Groups of people will naturally band together for mutual protection. The most effective of such groups will attract followers, many of who will have comparative advantage in economic output, and will voluntarily exchange some of their surplus for the opportunity to generate that output unmolested by other parties. Congratulations, you have government again.
If the state were to just randomly collapse today, anarcho-capitalism probably would not survive, let alone exist at all. Like any political theory, anarcho-capitalism requires the public to accept it, otherwise you have revolution. If true anarcho-capitalism was impelemented though, an argument for why it would not return to government society is presented here: http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/06/stateless-dictatorships-how-free.html
On March 10 2008 17:29 azndsh wrote: You know, I don't think you'll be able to convince me, and I probably won't be able to convince you, but you've gotten me very interested in reading about economic theory again. Maybe I'll start with the Austrian school this time.
Heh, when I started reading up on the Austrian school I had no intention of converting to anarchism. I was a staunch liberal democrat. But the more I read, the more I was like "holy shit, this makes a ton of sense."
I think the American modern usage of the word liberal is a gross misinterpretation. It bothers me so when you use it like that! And makes me sad to say I espouse liberal values.
Although you sound very educated, you draw absurd conclusions from non-absurd ideas. Welfare system = it's okay to steal from anyone as long as it's far. You arguments are reasonable, but your portrayal of the other side is not. Is this a good environment for rational debate and discourse?
Premises: 1. Perhaps the only actual objective way to decide what is best is by what gives the highest overall utility. If you can think of a better way to objectively compare two different systems, I surely haven't heard it before.
Agreed.
2. Democracy is the best way to accomplish the highest overall utility.
Disagree :D
Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you argue that people should vote with money instead of everyone having an equal vote.
In a way, it is voting with money. I see this as the purest form of democracy possible. Under traditional democracy, if 51% of the people vote for a government, the other 49% are forced to accept it. 51% of the people decide that person x has the best moral judgment to exercise his powers of resource allocation (ignoring that he would have to be a psychic to be able to allocate resources more efficiently than the market) over the entire 100%. The 49% in protest cannot opt out, or they are looking at jail time. So I see this as incomparibly less moral than capitalism, in which a person who is not satisfied with the provision of a certain service is allowed to opt out.
Voting with dollars results in a lower overall utility though. Rich people have a bigger vote, so they might be happier, but the poor will be disproportionately less happy.
You are overplaying the value of having more money here. Just because someone is rich, doesn't mean they will buy up more goods at the same rate. When rich people go grocery shopping, they're not going to buy up 1000x more groceries then the common man who they make 1000x more cash then. They may buy 2x or 3x as much, but the majority of markets rely on quantity of consumers.
Although, in fact, it may be advantageous in terms of economic output to have an anarchical system, money and utility have a non-linear relationship, so a more equitable distribution of money and less total can result in higher total utility. On an unrelated note, often times higher utility translates to higher economic output in the long run (on the generation timescale).
When might this be advantageous? Equitable distribution is communism. When is this equitable distribution desirable or efficient?
Of course, democracy like any system is full of flaws in its implementation, but theoretically, it is the starting point for maximizing overall utility. So yeah, private/public goods is a spectrum, but people decide on the dividing line on that spectrum with votes.
As mentioned above, their votes are to force their own judgment of allocating other peoples resources.
1. Economies of scale. While in theory a lot of things work with anarchy, they just don't in practice. Let's take education as an example again. Imagine a nationwide system of boarding schools that provide the best education in the country for free. It takes the students with the most potential, regardless of their financial background. In return, students agree to pay back a small percentage of all their future earnings. This sounds decent in theory, but the problem is the billions and billions in sunk costs required, for something that won't pay for itself for dozens of years.
There is no such thing as free education, or any free economic good. The money to pay for it comes from taxes; you are forcing people to fund an industry that you think is a good idea. What if others don't like public education and would rather let private institutes compete for their dollar? You would tell them too bad, this is how I think your money should be spent. Again, though, you are arguing that a private good could best be provided by the state. If education could be, why not all goods?
The same applies to say, a national interstate highway system. People could have instead opened toll roads all over the country. The initial investment is absolutely enormous, and the time it takes before it will pay for itself is on the order of decades or longer. In fact, this investment could very well fail altogether like many previous government policies. Who's going to invest in a project that won't pay off until after their death with also a large degree of uncertainty? The expected return is positive, but the initial investment is huge and/or the payoff is in the far future. Economies of this scale do cause market failures.
So you think it is acceptable to force people to fund a project that has a high likelihood of failing? Well, you then mention that the expected return is positive. If that is the case then people will fund it. You're saying that you should get to determine what other people should fund based on your preferences. What if I don't want to fund it? What if instead of a highway the project in question is a state amusement park. Can you force me to fund that as well if you think it will be good (say, increase tourism and provide entertainment to children)? Why are you a better authority over how I spend my money than I am? Now you might say that a highway is clearly more beneficial than an amusement park. This is of course entirely subjective, but I think most people will tend to agree. And if most people agree that funding a highway is a good thing, then you don't have to coerce them to fund it. If you do coerce them to fund it, you find yourself coercing others into spending their own money in ways they don't want to.
2. Monopolies, coercive or natural, are not good. Coercive monopolies can most certainly and have most certainly arisen without the help of government: Standard Oil being the most obvious example.
Coercive monopolies cannot arise legimitamtely in a free market. They require the use of coercion, which is criminal. If they engaged in such practices, PDAs representing the victims would take the monopoly to court. Only under the statist system, where government enforces such coercion, can a coercive monopoly legitimately arise.
Standard Oil was not a coercive monopoly. "There are few unambiguous examples in business history where leading firms have attempted to gain or hold dominant market positions by engaging in extensive predatory practices.33 Even the allegedly classic examples of such practices in the nineteenth-century petroleum and tobacco industries (involving Standard Oil and American Tobacco) are either exaggerated or unfounded. Standard Oil secured its market position in petroleum primarily through internal efficiency and merger and not through systematic predatory practices." http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE3_1_4.pdf They provided a good service at a cheap price, and by the time the court even got finished with them (it took a while since they had to really reach for evidence), Standard Oil's market share was down to 64%; hardly a monopoly.
Natural monopolies are the most efficient for production but not for the consumer. Being able to charge arbitrarily high prices maximizes only the company's profit and not the consumer's utility.
And the high prices help pay the employees who go out and consume other goods, and then the company can afford to employ more people. Not to mention that the consumers, by virtue of the fact that they are paying for the good, demonstrate their willingness to buy it in that action. How do you know whether the good to a certain group of people (company employees) is not worth the cost to another group (consumers of the good) in overall utility? The only way is to let the free market dictate the prices. Otherwise you are instituting a price ceiling, which brings about market failure through deadweight loss and causes a shortage.
The arguments in that link are silly. In the extremely unlikely case where DROs coexist without any inherent animosity (ethnic lines, religion, ideology, whatever), they can and will merge for the sake of economies of scale until the point where they become governments in all but name. This can also happen in spite of mild/moderate animosities in response to aggression by external governments.
On March 10 2008 18:04 Ancestral wrote: I think the American modern usage of the word liberal is a gross misinterpretation. It bothers me so when you use it like that! And makes me sad to say I espouse liberal values.
Word meanings change over time according to popular usage. Liberal these days generally means quasi-socialist.
Although you sound very educated, you draw absurd conclusions from non-absurd ideas.
If my conclusions are absurd, then attack them.
Welfare system = it's okay to steal from anyone as long as it's far.
If this isn't true show me why it isn't. Welfare system is using other peoples money to pay for services that you personally think are a "good" use of that persons money. what constitutes good use is entirely subjective. Obviously the person who's money you took didn't think it was a good use, otherwise you wouldn't have had to take it from him by force.
You arguments are reasonable, but your portrayal of the other side is not. Is this a good environment for rational debate and discourse?
We must disagree about one anothers position; if we saw both positions the same way, then we would agree on which position is the right one. If you think I have misrepresented your position, explain where or why.
On March 10 2008 18:28 defenestrate wrote: The arguments in that link are silly. In the extremely unlikely case where DROs coexist without any inherent animosity (ethnic lines, religion, ideology, whatever), they can and will merge for the sake of economies of scale until the point where they become governments in all but name. This can also happen in spite of mild/moderate animosities in response to aggression by external governments.
Even if they merge and form a natural monopoly, which would be very difficult to do over something as big and populated as a country-size land mass, there is still a fundamental difference between this natural monopoly and government. Subscription the the DRO is voluntary.
Sure you can. There are plenty of grey areas but enough black and white for governments to exist.
It is either black and white or exists on a grey scale. You can't have it both ways. It exists either on a dichotomy or a spectrum. You need to demonstrate why a certain point on that spectrum makes government production the best option.
True, with advances in the ability for people to raise capital over time, certain goods and services originally considered public (such as postal system) can now be privatized. It would be highly unreasonable, however, to think that market failures would not occur naturally when it comes to many things other things that we take for granted: pollution regulation, military forces, public transit, education, monopolies, etc.
Again, I have debated these at length in my first blog post which you're welcome to post in (providing you read the whole thing first, since otherwise you will likely bring up a topic already covered, as are all the ones you raise here), but the focus of this entry is on the theoretical model. I maintain that no market failure does have to occur in the industries you mention, and that market failure is created from government intervention (artificial price fixing).
Where each government draws the line specifically between private and public depends on the government (and in a democracy, the people who vote on it). For example, the US is the only rich developed country that considers health care a private good. The distinction between private and public is inherently a subjective one, but why does that matter? A certain balance is required when it comes to government size and what goods are considered public. History has tried various different amounts of government, and I'm pretty sure that having none at all is simply not optimal.
There is no point in just flatly stating that a certain amount of balance is required, since my whole argument is that goernment is *not* required. The burden of proof is on you to explain why government intervention is necessary.
Simply put, certain economies to scale are just so large that market failures are certain to exist in a private system. History has certainly shown it to be the case.
Show me how this supposed market failure comes about. Don't just make flat assertions, give evidence.
Let's take an obvious example: education. In the current system, the government provides free education for every child. This is widely to be considered to be economically optimal, since this will give a chance for poor children to contribute more to the economy. In an anarchical system, who would pay for this education? Should private companies educate poor children in the hopes that they will grow up to be able to contribute to the company? Or maybe, you would suggest that some company spontaneously pop up and take up the task of educating every child in the country and then take a part of the student's future wages. If you noticed, before universal education was implemented by national governments, this simply didn't happen. There are just so many practical limitations that while in theory governments are inefficient, history demonstrates that they are necessary in reality.
Explain to me why education is better provided by the state then the free market. Most economists who subscribe to the public goods theory wouldn't even consider education to be a public good. So even if I grant you that there is a distinction between public and private goods, you are saying that this private good is more efficiently provided by the state then by the free market. If private goods can be better provided by the state, why even have a market at all? Why not have all industry be centrally planned?
Also, how would you deal with the most obvious form of market failure? Monopolies.
There are two types of monopolies. The first type is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly exists when one firm provides the best quality product at the lowest price and all attracts all the consumers from competitors firms. There is not, in this case, an absence of competition, only of competitors due to the firms efficiency. You would be hard pressed to argue that this is market failure. The second type of monopoly is a coercive monopoly. This is a monopoly that exists because it uses aggression to bar competing firms from entering the market. This type of monopoly can only exist with the aid of government. This type of monopoly must lead to market failure, and is one of the central anarcho-capitalist arguments against government.
ironically you are creating somewhat of a false dichotomy right here. While you are technically right, you need to understand that things can be quite "black or white" in a practical sense, even if it really is just the extremes of a gray scale.
Practicality and realism are what seem to be missing from your views. You present your arguments for the free market quite well..but there are key points you are ignoring.
You arguments are logically consistent, but you are missing the whole point. It doesn't work for obvious reasons....huge ones that wouldn't be solved unless we lived in some sort of utopia where people lacked basic human traits.
An anarchy would never be self sustaining...as people would form together in groups existing as separate "mini" governments until one or a few got big enough to mirror what we already have.
Why would they do this? Because they would realize that there is power in numbers and "order." Sure, at first it might start out as a commune of sorts, but it wouldn't take long until they would start enforcing rules and performing tasks similar to that of any government today. It's an ironic twist but the free market would create the "demand" for some sort of order.
There are generally very simple reasons why arguing any sort of idealistic position fails in the context of the real world.
What is the point of having a logically consistent argument ( at least assuming one accepts your premises ) if it fails to work in any practical sense.
As a last example, someone could do the same thing with communism, and start with reasonable premises like your own. They would give a logically consistent argument but ignore the reality of human nature that make it all fail in practice.
Because anarchy is unsustainable, what you are really arguing is a highly capitalistic society vs a highly communistic one. Imagine the "types" of governments on the gray scale we were talking about. Both extremes are only sustainable to a certain degree in reality.
Basically arguing in ideals is useless because it ignores any sense of realism and practicality...all of which are important when it comes to how things are done.
On March 10 2008 18:28 defenestrate wrote: The arguments in that link are silly. In the extremely unlikely case where DROs coexist without any inherent animosity (ethnic lines, religion, ideology, whatever), they can and will merge for the sake of economies of scale until the point where they become governments in all but name. This can also happen in spite of mild/moderate animosities in response to aggression by external governments.
Even if they merge and form a natural monopoly, which would be very difficult to do over something as big and populated as a country-size land mass, there is still a fundamental difference between this natural monopoly and government. Subscription the the DRO is voluntary.
This is what I'm talking about. The only difference would be in ideals. In all practical senses, it would be very similar.
Making things voluntary only means so much when one option is clearly superior to others.
What I also really want to stress is that for all your arguing, it is quite pointless other than an interesting topic to think about. The first governments came from anarchy, and while there are flaws when it comes to existing governments and ideals..... people realized that efforts are much better spent working on a type of government that meets those ideals best in practice, rather then talk about anarchy like it is a legitimate option.
Captain Murphy, you seem to take a very pro-capitalist position, yet identify with "anarchism." What is interesting to note is that most anarchists are highly critical of capitalism, just as they are critical of the state. This is not to say your position is "wrong." It is merely an observation, as you represent yourself as "anarchist" and most anarchists would not side with your post here.
The other thing is that you seem to spend all your post talking about free markets, when the main point of anarchy in general is to disable systems of rule, to work for the greatest possible freedom. You can of course argue that laissez faire capitalism is the best way to go about that, but from my perspective, arguing for laissez faire can, at best, only be a small part of making a case for anarchy.
As to free markets themselves, there is a good quote: "free markets mean that those who don't have enough money to buy what they need do not have a right to live." This is troubling to me, and to many other people. This does not, of course, mean I am automatically in favor of a welfare state.
Another thing that troubles me is that I see no reason to think corporations would be any more just or humane than governments. Indeed, much of what is going on today reflects the fact that governments are increasingly run in the interest of corporate power and profit. To think that corporations might run amok, completely free of regulation is scary for me. Whether it is corporations or the state, it is still the same people, and with the same goals. Neither case looks particularly good to me!
I mentioned this in your debate thread, but I'll kind of get at it here too.
Anarchy means "no rule." It is an ideal, an extreme, and an abstraction - a pure thing with no basis in reality. Still, we can be closer or further from the purity of anarchy. If you identify as an anarchist, and you favor laissez faire, you have to make the case that laissez faire better matches anarchy than some other school of anarchy (and there are many).
It's not an issue of perfection, it's just an issue of what comes closest to the ideal.
Anarchists are, of course, critical of power. Anarchists want freedom from coercion. Along these lines, anarchists are critical of the state. It makes sense. Why should the government have all this authority over us, to tax us, to wage war in our name, etc? But is the state the only source of domination and coercion? Of course not! So what other structures or institutions might exist that perpetuate coercion and domination?
Anarchists tend to see heirarchy in general as the problem. With heirarchy comes domination and coercion. So, as a laissez faire capitalist, you have to make the case for laissez faire being the system that best reduces heirarchy. Now, we all know that capitalism concentrates wealth and power - this has always been true. This lends itself directly to heirarchy. Those who own the means of production own the means to life; they hold all the bargaining chips. Those with nothing must surrender to those who have everything, or else die. Power corrupts.
So, most anarchists agree with you - the state must go. But they take the critique further. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power, and sets the stage for domination and coercion. Therefore, capitalism must go, too.
Anarchist critique can go even deeper than this. Some anarchists argue that technology itself leads to domination. Consider time, which is a technology, and how time is used to dominate and coerce. Time itself is used to synchronize the movements of masses of people - something obviously useful to large scale heirarchical systems. Some anarchists argue that agriculture was the step that led to massive imbalances of power, so they argue for a return to the "primitive" state.
My point here is not to advocate any particular position at all, but to point out that anarchism is about eliminating rule, eliminating heirarchy and domination and all that stuff.
What you seem to have done is read up on economic theory, and base your anarchism entirely on the economic sphere. This is a good first step, but to think that domination and coercion are located only in the government is short sighted. Look beyond economics. I recommend getting into sociology and culture studies, and you'll see many other dimensions to critiques of power.
On the other hand, you may freely admit that laissez faire is not really anarchist, but is still the best possible solution to X problem. Many people do this, just as many people would prefer the state to whatever "real" anarchy might be.
From my perspective, your anarchism doesn't go far enough.
LOLOLOLOL And if people are poor they dont deserve security ? or health care ?
Your ideas are weird. With such a political system, human life value become the value of the money that they own.
This is common response from liberals, one that I used to buy in to (being a recovering liberal myself), but it neglects a couple important points. This is essentially the liberal argument from morality. You are saying that stealing is justified if the money is put to use that you deem as 'fair'. This creates a world of problems. You're basically advocating that anyone has the right to steal from anyone if they personally deem it as fair. At the very least, you are advocating that anyone can steal from anyone else who has more money then them, since stealing from the rich to give to the poor is presumably 'fair' stealing, according to you.
But further, I would argue that the most moral distribution of health services is the one which provides the most benefit to everyone, not just poor people. And that can only be discerned on the free market.
You didnt really answered
What do you do for poor people ? You let them die ? How can free market provide them health care if they are poor ? i would like to read some economic explanations.
I hope that a weirdo like you will never be elected ( no offence but i dont like your ideas ) With your ideas morality become money.
On March 10 2008 18:04 Ancestral wrote: I think the American modern usage of the word liberal is a gross misinterpretation. It bothers me so when you use it like that! And makes me sad to say I espouse liberal values.
Word meanings change over time according to popular usage. Liberal these days generally means quasi-socialist.
can you elaborate on what quasi-socialist means? I haven't met a single liberal who didn't believe in the free market.
ironically you are creating somewhat of a false dichotomy right here. While you are technically right, you need to understand that things can be quite "black or white" in a practical sense, even if it really is just the extremes of a gray scale.
True. The extremes of the grey scale are free market anarchism and communism. Entirely state controlled or entirely not state controlled. The grey comes in when you try and make cases for "enough" state control.
Practicality and realism are what seem to be missing from your views. You present your arguments for the free market quite well..but there are key points you are ignoring.
So you admit that my argument makes sense... but you still think it won't work. Ok.
You arguments are logically consistent, but you are missing the whole point. It doesn't work for obvious reasons....huge ones that wouldn't be solved unless we lived in some sort of utopia where people lacked basic human traits.
I disagree. But you're getting at what most people think of when they think of anarchism; that everythig would dissolve into chaos and morals would be thrown out the window. There is simply no reason to think this. We don't get our morals from our government. Morals are innate, and government was created by the people because enough people believed it was a good idea. Anarchical society would not be a society of no rules, it is just that anarcho-capitalists believe these rules could be better enforced without government.
An anarchy would never be self sustaining...as people would form together in groups existing as separate "mini" governments until one or a few got big enough to mirror what we already have.
An anarchic society, just like any type of government structure, would not function if most people didn't want it to. If most people want to form a government, then a government will form.
Why would they do this? Because they would realize that there is power in numbers and "order." Sure, at first it might start out as a commune of sorts, but it wouldn't take long until they would start enforcing rules and performing tasks similar to that of any government today. It's an ironic twist but the free market would create the "demand" for some sort of order.
Order can be provided on the free market. Anarchism doesn't create the demand for government, but as I said above, if a majority of people want government, they will likely be able to impliment one by force.
What is the point of having a logically consistent argument ( at least assuming one accepts your premises ) if it fails to work in any practical sense.
This is somewhat contradictory. If my argument makes logical sense, then it should work. If you don't think anarcho-capitalism would work, then some part of my argument must be illogical or wrong.
As a last example, someone could do the same thing with communism, and start with reasonable premises like your own. They would give a logically consistent argument but ignore the reality of human nature that make it all fail in practice.
If you want to start your own blog and try to defend communism, I would be happy to debate that with you. I don't believe that communism can stand on the same logical ground anarcho-capitalism can.
Because anarchy is unsustainable, what you are really arguing is a highly capitalistic society vs a highly communistic one. Imagine the "types" of governments on the gray scale we were talking about. Both extremes are only sustainable to a certain degree in reality.
Blanket statement, no proof.
Basically arguing in ideals is useless because it ignores any sense of realism and practicality...all of which are important when it comes to how things are done.
This is what I'm talking about. The only difference would be in ideals. In all practical senses, it would be very similar.
It may be superficially similar, but there is a huge difference between whether competition is allowed or not.
Making things voluntary only means so much when one option is clearly superior to others.
Making things voluntary means everything. There will always be a superior option on the free market. Making things voluntary is what allows people to choose the superior option.
What I also really want to stress is that for all your arguing, it is quite pointless other than an interesting topic to think about. The first governments came from anarchy, and while there are flaws when it comes to existing governments and ideals..... people realized that efforts are much better spent working on a type of government that meets those ideals best in practice, rather then talk about anarchy like it is a legitimate option.
People may have started from a lack of government, but they never entertained the thought of anarcho-capitalism. People naturally banded into communistic family tribes.
Basically what I'm saying is that your view of morality is that poor people are more important than everyone else. Free market capitalism brings the most benefit to everyone. Welfare tramples peoples rights and benefits a few at the expense of everyone else.
What do you do for poor people ?
For one, not tax them :D
You let them die ? How can free market provide them health care if they are poor ? i would like to read some economic explanations.
First, most people are generally moral and if someone comes in who needs an operation, they will likely be able to get it. But the reason I don't like this line of reasoning is that it doesn't take into account all the negative effects of not letting the free market act. Socialized healthcare will necessarily be inefficient since the market doesn't set the price and the government bars any competition. As we hear about in other places that have socialized medicine, there are very long wait times to see a doctor or get an operation. People have died waiting for operations in Canada. Your argument is equivalent to me saying that socialized medicine is bad because people have died from being on the waitlist for too long. So coercing citizens to help the poor ended up hurting society at large. Yes it is possible for people to die in anarcho-capitalist society, but it is also possible and can be caused by socialized healthcare. The question is, which system is net better for every member of society, not just the poor, and that is capitalism.
The question you haven't answered is, if you believe that healthcare (a clearly private good under any standards) can be more efficiently provided by the state, why not have all private goods be produced by the state?
On March 11 2008 00:37 nA.Inky wrote: Captain Murphy, you seem to take a very pro-capitalist position, yet identify with "anarchism." What is interesting to note is that most anarchists are highly critical of capitalism, just as they are critical of the state. This is not to say your position is "wrong." It is merely an observation, as you represent yourself as "anarchist" and most anarchists would not side with your post here.
I wouldn't say most anarchists. The anarcho-capitalist position is more prominent than you think. Check http://www.mises.org if you're interested in learning more about it.
The other thing is that you seem to spend all your post talking about free markets, when the main point of anarchy in general is to disable systems of rule, to work for the greatest possible freedom. You can of course argue that laissez faire capitalism is the best way to go about that, but from my perspective, arguing for laissez faire can, at best, only be a small part of making a case for anarchy.
The argument for laissez faire is the crutch of the anarcho-capitalist argument. If the anarcho-capitalist can demonstrate that laissez-faire is the most efficient means of production for any good, the only logical conclusion to draw is that the state is unnecessary.
As to free markets themselves, there is a good quote: "free markets mean that those who don't have enough money to buy what they need do not have a right to live." This is troubling to me, and to many other people. This does not, of course, mean I am automatically in favor of a welfare state.
See the post I just made above this one. This line of thought commonly used to advocate welfare puts the desires of poor people above the desires of everyone else, and does more harm than good for society.
Another thing that troubles me is that I see no reason to think corporations would be any more just or humane than governments. Indeed, much of what is going on today reflects the fact that governments are increasingly run in the interest of corporate power and profit. To think that corporations might run amok, completely free of regulation is scary for me. Whether it is corporations or the state, it is still the same people, and with the same goals. Neither case looks particularly good to me!
The big difference is that on the free market, the wants of corporations coincide with the wants of consumers. Firms want to make money. The only way they can make money (aside from robbing people) is to produce the best product at the lowest price, because that is what the consumers want to buy. Since corporations, unlike government, can't force consumers to buy their product, they must make it appealing so that the consumer wants to buy their product.
Government, on the other hand does not have the same incentives to do well. Since they force consumers to pay taxes regardless of their job performance, and jail any competition, they are not forced to respond to market demand in the same way that corporations are. We can not know how many thousands of lives have been unnecessarily lost due to inefficient police work that might've been stopped by a better motivated and equipped PDA.
Corporate corruption cannot hold a candle to government corruption.
Anarchy means "no rule." It is an ideal, an extreme, and an abstraction - a pure thing with no basis in reality. Still, we can be closer or further from the purity of anarchy. If you identify as an anarchist, and you favor laissez faire, you have to make the case that laissez faire better matches anarchy than some other school of anarchy (and there are many).
Technically I would argue that the other schools of anarchy don't really qualify as such. Most of them are communistic in nature, but if you're forcing people to cooperate, then you have government. If you don't force people to cooperate, it's not really left-anarchy at all.
Anarchists are, of course, critical of power. Anarchists want freedom from coercion. Along these lines, anarchists are critical of the state. It makes sense. Why should the government have all this authority over us, to tax us, to wage war in our name, etc? But is the state the only source of domination and coercion? Of course not! So what other structures or institutions might exist that perpetuate coercion and domination?
Anarchists tend to see heirarchy in general as the problem. With heirarchy comes domination and coercion. So, as a laissez faire capitalist, you have to make the case for laissez faire being the system that best reduces heirarchy.
I see coercion as the biggest problem; as a side note it's ironic that government takes away your property rights in order to protect them. But yes, artificial hierarchy is also a problem.
Now, we all know that capitalism concentrates wealth and power - this has always been true. This lends itself directly to heirarchy. Those who own the means of production own the means to life; they hold all the bargaining chips. Those with nothing must surrender to those who have everything, or else die. Power corrupts.
In any system, there has to be someone who owns the means of production. In a statist system, that control is handed over to a coercive monopoly. In a free market system, it is unlikely there would even be a monopoly, but if there was it would be a natural monopoly, which I don't see as a problem or market failure in any way.
So, most anarchists agree with you - the state must go. But they take the critique further. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power, and sets the stage for domination and coercion. Therefore, capitalism must go, too.
Anarchist critique can go even deeper than this. Some anarchists argue that technology itself leads to domination. Consider time, which is a technology, and how time is used to dominate and coerce. Time itself is used to synchronize the movements of masses of people - something obviously useful to large scale heirarchical systems. Some anarchists argue that agriculture was the step that led to massive imbalances of power, so they argue for a return to the "primitive" state.
My point here is not to advocate any particular position at all, but to point out that anarchism is about eliminating rule, eliminating heirarchy and domination and all that stuff.
As you said yourself, there are different types of anarchy. I'm only defending the type I favor, anarcho-capitalism, the elimination of the state in favor of a pure capitalist society.
What you seem to have done is read up on economic theory, and base your anarchism entirely on the economic sphere. This is a good first step, but to think that domination and coercion are located only in the government is short sighted. Look beyond economics. I recommend getting into sociology and culture studies, and you'll see many other dimensions to critiques of power.
My advocation of anarchism is indeed based in economic theory. One that I've been thus far convinced has no flaws. If you want to bring up a particular example of coercion that you think I am overlooking, I would be curious to know what you're referring to.
On the other hand, you may freely admit that laissez faire is not really anarchist, but is still the best possible solution to X problem. Many people do this, just as many people would prefer the state to whatever "real" anarchy might be.
I make no such admission. If one believes that people have ownership over their property, anarcho-capitalism is the only sensible form of anarchy, or any government.
I'm not sure you read me closely. I was not talking about efficiency of production for any good. I was talking about anarchist critique. We can disagree on the meaning of "anarchy," but if you take it to mean "without rule/rulers," which is how it is used in most anarchist literature and the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought, then anarchy must be critical of power in general, whether corporate or state or otherwise. Efficiency is not at issue.
I'm not arguing here with your economic thinking at all (I don't agree with it, but I'm not arguing it.) I am arguing that what you present as anarchism does not best represent anarchy. It is anarchist in the sense that it dispenses with the state. But again, if you take anarchy to be a state without rules and rulers, a state without domination or heirarchy, it must go beyond the state. The state is not the only thing that has ever dominated and oppressed people. Theoretically, an anarchist thinking might be used to critique some unknown african tribe just as quickly as it would critique capitalism or a particular government.
On March 11 2008 03:40 nA.Inky wrote: I'm not sure you read me closely. I was not talking about efficiency of production for any good. I was talking about anarchist critique. We can disagree on the meaning of "anarchy," but if you take it to mean "without rule/rulers," which is how it is used in most anarchist literature and the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought, then anarchy must be critical of power in general, whether corporate or state or otherwise. Efficiency is not at issue.
I guess we are not reading the same anarchist literature. The Austrian definition does not mean 'without rule', it means 'without government'. Anarcho-capitalism thinks rules against the initiation of violence could be enforced could be better provided without government.
I'm not arguing here with your economic thinking at all (I don't agree with it, but I'm not arguing it.) I am arguing that what you present as anarchism does not best represent anarchy. It is anarchist in the sense that it dispenses with the state. But again, if you take anarchy to be a state without rules and rulers, a state without domination or heirarchy, it must go beyond the state. The state is not the only thing that has ever dominated and oppressed people. Theoretically, an anarchist thinking might be used to critique some unknown african tribe just as quickly as it would critique capitalism or a particular government.
When I say 'anarchism' I mean 'anarcho-capitalism', not any other type of anarchical system.
Captain Murphy, I am not ignorant when it comes to economics. I am a class short of my BA in economics.
Econ is all well and good, but explore other social sciences and philosophy in general. Econ has suffered in many ways because it has isolated itself from psychology and sociology and ecology and so on. In some ways, it is working off of psychology that has been discredited for hundreds of years. I say these things not as an argument against anything you've said, but to encourage you to dig deeper. Economics isn't everything.
[in response to your response to my earlier post in this thread]
Well, I am unconvinced. In history "no state authority" has led, in almost all cases, to "bad anarchy" rather than "good anarchy", so I think the position is defensible that the objective to just discontinue government is a silly one. If you want market anarchy, it is hardly as simple as that. It is so complicated, in fact, that I wonder if it's not best to let go of the idea entirely and to be satisfied with what we've got - a democratic society is an immense improvement over both "bad anarchy" and oppressive government - worth the trouble even of fighting civil wars over it. How much better is market anarchy than democracy?
Of course, you might think that after everybody has been "properly" educated, it will actually be as simple as discontinuing government, as everybody would then proceed to do the right thing. Unlikely, but I'll concede that perhaps then we might at least have a shot at a more coordinated effort to create a stable anarchist society.
At any rate, education shouldn't hurt, and we should be able to talk about things, but I don't think the circumstances here are right. Our government today is everywhere. It does so many things! Many bad things I'm sure, but also many things that people will hold crucial for a well-functioning society. There isn't enough space here in a single thread to go through every issue and convincingly argue that government intervention there is not only not crucial but also not desirable. Assuming, of course, that said position is even possible to convincingly defend.
What you might do here is plant a seed of doubt. People might concede that coercion and extortion are not the most elegant solutions to society's problems. They might be willing to investigate whether - at least for one particular issue - "laissez faire" might magically do just as well as government intervention or perhaps even better. There is, however, a not entirely unreasonable fear that if we don't do anything about certain kinds of problems, disaster follows. To break through this, you will have to argue rigorously. A few light lines here and there as response won't do. You need sound theoretical arguments backed up by solid research (but at least do some paragraphing ).
I propose the following. Every so often, you will highlight one especially irritating (to you) government intervention in your blog (or take requests). We will then try to gather facts and discuss whether it is a crucial or unwelcome intervention. If we take our time and give the opposing view an honest chance, we might actually see this go somewhere. Your job is done when you have demonstrated that every government intervention is unwelcome. Perhaps then we can talk about controlled anarchy and PDAs.
For example:
- How will roads get built?
- How will people get educated?
etc. Dedicating a couple of days and a thread to a smaller issue will make it much easier for us to have meaningful discussions.
To offer more of my own political perspective, in case you are interested, Murphy, I'll say this:
I think the problem is deeper than capitalism or government or communism or what have you. It has to do with how humans relate to other humans. We run into problems when there is too great a division of labor, or too many middle men. What happens is that causes are very isolated from their effects. This causes a breakdown in morality. This causes an erosion of humanity. This is why, I believe, welfare states don't work. This is why communism didn't work. This is why capitalism today is not working (unless your idea of "working" means having a lot of consumer merchandise available.)
Even pure capitalism will have this flaw if it is practiced on a large scale. If you look into health issues and things of that nature before certain regulations took effect, you'll see that capitalist firms had no problem with poisoning their consumers, offering up all kinds of dangerous products. You'll see that people worked in extremely unsafe working conditions. The free market does not protect people. IT does not necessarily give them what they want.
Of course, today, with regulations and so on, in some ways things have improved, but there are ways to circumvent the system. The issue is not government or corporations - the issue is scale. Things are so big now that there is an erosion of humanity. People will sacrifice the environment, or human and animal wellbeing in the interest of profit, and they can and will consistently get away with it.
Communist governments were no better - perhaps worse.
In short, I am not invested in communism or capitalism... I see big problems with both. I think a lot of it has to do with scale. I don't see this in black and white, but there is some level of technological development, some level of division of labor, etc, that leads to big problems.
I'll say here at the end that I would be very skeptical of any school of thought that passes itself off as absolute. Nothing is perfect. Laissez faire is not perfect. It is tempting in its purity, but there is no purity. No pure state. We cannot devise some philosophy and say "this is perfection - if only things were this way, all would be well." Such philosophies are tempting because they free us of responsibility. We can just fall back on God, on Laissez Faire, on Communism, on Anarchy, and say "well, this is the way it is meant to be... it's perfect. If you have a problem with it, it's probably you that is the problem."
There is no purity. There is only gray, and we must continually find balance in a shifting world.
Well, I am unconvinced. In history "no state authority" has led, in almost all cases, to "bad anarchy" rather than "good anarchy", so I think the position is defensible that the objective to just discontinue government is a silly one. If you want market anarchy, it is hardly as simple as that. It is so complicated, in fact, that I wonder if it's not best to let go of the idea entirely and to be satisfied with what we've got - a democratic society is an immense improvement over both "bad anarchy" and oppressive government - worth the trouble even of fighting civil wars over it. How much better is market anarchy than democracy?
Depending who you ask, anywhere from somewhat better to alot better. In regards to historical precedent, though, the dissolution of a state is often a sudden chaotic event, when no one has really wanted anarcho-capitalism.
Of course, you might think that after everybody has been "properly" educated, it will actually be as simple as discontinuing government, as everybody would then proceed to do the right thing. Unlikely, but I'll concede that perhaps then we might at least have a shot at a more coordinated effort to create a stable anarchist society.
How to transition to anarcho-capitalism is another debate all together.
At any rate, education shouldn't hurt, and we should be able to talk about things, but I don't think the circumstances here are right. Our government today is everywhere. It does so many things! Many bad things I'm sure, but also many things that people will hold crucial for a well-functioning society. There isn't enough space here in a single thread to go through every issue and convincingly argue that government intervention there is not only not crucial but also not desirable. Assuming, of course, that said position is even possible to convincingly defend.
Right, that is specifically what I'm trying to avoid discussing in this blog. I've discussed it at length with others in my first blog which you can check out, and the handling of specifics is also discussed in this online book I linked to: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp
What you might do here is plant a seed of doubt. People might concede that coercion and extortion are not the most elegant solutions to society's problems. They might be willing to investigate whether - at least for one particular issue - "laissez faire" might magically do just as well as government intervention or perhaps even better. There is, however, a not entirely unreasonable fear that if we don't do anything about certain kinds of problems, disaster follows. To break through this, you will have to argue rigorously. A few light lines here and there as response won't do. You need sound theoretical arguments backed up by solid research (but at least do some paragraphing ).
I propose the following. Every so often, you will highlight one especially irritating (to you) government intervention in your blog (or take requests). We will then try to gather facts and discuss whether it is a crucial or unwelcome intervention. If we take our time and give the opposing view an honest chance, we might actually see this go somewhere. Your job is done when you have demonstrated that every government intervention is unwelcome. Perhaps then we can talk about controlled anarchy and PDAs.
For example:
- How will roads get built?
- How will people get educated?
etc. Dedicating a couple of days and a thread to a smaller issue will make it much easier for us to have meaningful discussions.
This is kind of what I did in my first blog posts, where I opened it up to any and all questions. Roads and education are discussed thoroughly, as are many other industries people think we need government intervention in. Also, the link I posted above details the answers to these questions as well.
The point of this blog is to put the burden of proof on the statist. If you believe the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources for private goods, prove to me what is so special about education that it needs to be handled by the state.
On March 11 2008 04:03 nA.Inky wrote: To offer more of my own political perspective, in case you are interested, Murphy, I'll say this:
I think the problem is deeper than capitalism or government or communism or what have you. It has to do with how humans relate to other humans. We run into problems when there is too great a division of labor, or too many middle men. What happens is that causes are very isolated from their effects. This causes a breakdown in morality. This causes an erosion of humanity. This is why, I believe, welfare states don't work. This is why communism didn't work. This is why capitalism today is not working (unless your idea of "working" means having a lot of consumer merchandise available.)
I agree that what you point out is a flaw of communism, I don't see how it is a flaw of capitalism.
Even pure capitalism will have this flaw if it is practiced on a large scale. If you look into health issues and things of that nature before certain regulations took effect, you'll see that capitalist firms had no problem with poisoning their consumers, offering up all kinds of dangerous products. You'll see that people worked in extremely unsafe working conditions. The free market does not protect people. IT does not necessarily give them what they want.
I would argue that regulation does not have to be provided by the government. It could be provided by a private, independent regulating body. You might object that nothing would stop a company from disobeying the regulations, but if a company did this, they would surely lose their business to comapnies that meet the regulatory standards.
Of course, today, with regulations and so on, in some ways things have improved, but there are ways to circumvent the system. The issue is not government or corporations - the issue is scale. Things are so big now that there is an erosion of humanity. People will sacrifice the environment, or human and animal wellbeing in the interest of profit, and they can and will consistently get away with it.
Communist governments were no better - perhaps worse.
In short, I am not invested in communism or capitalism... I see big problems with both. I think a lot of it has to do with scale. I don't see this in black and white, but there is some level of technological development, some level of division of labor, etc, that leads to big problems.
Interesting.. I'm not trying to claim that capitalism is utopian. No system can be utopian since the world has limited resources. But I do think that a system that doesn't rely on initiating violence is better than any system that does.
I'll say here at the end that I would be very skeptical of any school of thought that passes itself off as absolute. Nothing is perfect. Laissez faire is not perfect. It is tempting in its purity, but there is no purity. No pure state. We cannot devise some philosophy and say "this is perfection - if only things were this way, all would be well." Such philosophies are tempting because they free us of responsibility. We can just fall back on God, on Laissez Faire, on Communism, on Anarchy, and say "well, this is the way it is meant to be... it's perfect. If you have a problem with it, it's probably you that is the problem."
There is no purity. There is only gray, and we must continually find balance in a shifting world.
There may not be purity, but I do believe in objective morality. I believe that it is never acceptable to initiate violence against a person who has done no wrong, and no government system can escape breaking this moral truth.
Captain Murphy, again your arguments are always well prepared, but since I have finals this week, I haven't the time to read all of them.
However, as to my previous post, our positions are less different than you think. I think the state is an outdated relic and will inevitably be abolished; the reason I say you are coming to fallacious conclusions based on pro-mixed market / big state views is that in order for good debate, you have to see that the other side is not entirely unreasonable.
For many people in western nations, the current system has worked reasonably well. And it's due to the current system we have. It's very flawed, but it does not reduce to the ridiculous situations you're describing. Unless these are rhetorical tools. If there's one thing I love, it's high rhetoric. But just dismissing alternate arguments as you are doesn't seem good for progress or understanding.
On March 11 2008 04:43 Ancestral wrote: Captain Murphy, again your arguments are always well prepared, but since I have finals this week, I haven't the time to read all of them.
You have finals now? I just got done with my mid-terms last week :o
However, as to my previous post, our positions are less different than you think. I think the state is an outdated relic and will inevitably be abolished; the reason I say you are coming to fallacious conclusions based on pro-mixed market / big state views is that in order for good debate, you have to see that the other side is not entirely unreasonable.
I think it is up to you to show why you're view is reasonable. Do you deny that government, by its very nature, must coerce and extort its citizens?
For many people in western nations, the current system has worked reasonably well. And it's due to the current system we have. It's very flawed, but it does not reduce to the ridiculous situations you're describing. Unless these are rhetorical tools. If there's one thing I love, it's high rhetoric. But just dismissing alternate arguments as you are doesn't seem good for progress or understanding.
No one engages in high rhetoric more than politicians ;D. I'm just calling a spade a spade. I am not dismissing arguments, I have been providing counter points to them. The only arguments I have dismissed are ones that I declared from the outset where outside the scope of this blog, and pointed them to my first blog.
i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote: i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp Short answer: the market can address all these concerns.
On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote: i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp Short answer: the market can address all these concerns.
i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me?
On March 10 2008 15:36 CaptainMurphy wrote: Note: I will no longer, in this blog entry, be entertaining questions that fall under the the format "how would good so-and-so be provided if not by the state?" My answer to all these is simply that the private sector can provide it more efficiently. The burden of proof is on you to argue why a particular good should be taken off the free market and given to a coercive monopoly. You cannot take this as a premise unless you are advocating communism. If people do want to bring up these questions, I would point them to my first blog entry, where all conceivable situations of the aforementioned type have already been raised. For the anarchist perspective on the provision of the most commonly disputed points, I direct you to this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p215 See Chapter 12 on police, the law, and the courts.
There already are private defence agencies and they only protect those who can afford them. Why don't they serve the poor. The rich already have better security and the gap will only get bigger with free market. Thats right the poor have to rely on the cops. Better then nothing what they will get in anarcho capitalism where the PDA are more likely to be their muggers. The goverment provides services people would be deprived from in the free market. The goverment maintains these services to be available to everybody. So also to the people who can't afford it privately. The free market makes write offs. I don't expect charity to help people with their basic needs. Millions of people will be living at the grace of the whim of their benifactors who factually decide if they are worth to live another week.
There already are private defence agencies and they only protect those who can afford them. Why don't they serve the poor.
The poor already have police, which they along with everyone else help pay for.
The rich already have better security and the gap will only get bigger with free market. Thats right the poor have to rely on the cops. Better then nothing what they will get in anarcho capitalism where the PDA are more likely to be their muggers. The goverment provides services people would be deprived from in the free market. The goverment maintains these services to be available to everybody. So also to the people who can't afford it privately. The free market makes write offs. I don't expect charity to help people with their basic needs. Millions of people will be living at the grace of the whim of their benifactors who factually decide if they are worth to live another week.
The result of privatizing security is that it would help more people than it hurt. Society as a whole would benefit even if some extremely poor suffered (which wouldn't necessarily have to happen, because there is a good chance that caring folks such as yourself would be happy to subsidize the poor voluntarily). So you are saying that the poor are more important than the less poor. But again, when you say that poor people might be hurt by privatizing security, you're not taking into account all the people who are hurt by having socialized security. By virtue of the fact that socialized security is a coercive monopoly, it is going to be inefficient. We don't know how many innocent civilians have been killed due to public police inefficiency that could've been saved uner a privatized system.
It's like saying, why not socialize the automobile industry. Some poor people can't afford cars. Socializing the automobile industry would help them, but at the expense of everyone else. Same with every industry. The free market is the best tool to produce goods for society. Security is no exception.
i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me?
Look again. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 address these issues (except for climate change, but you could consider that an extension of pollution. Endangered species, too is not mentioned, I don't really see the issue with that though). If you read that and still aren't satisfied, then we can discuss it.
To advocate any form of government is to say that you(or a governing body) should have the right to spend other peoples money in a way you see fit to. From my perspective, that is grossly unethical.
Here is a quote I like on morality from a libertarian website: "The first thing that philosophers must do is lead by example. A key ingredient in the moral ideal of a stateless society is that there is no such thing as positive obligations. Being born in a country does create a moral obligation to pay taxes. Being poor does not create a moral obligation for others to give you money. Being successful does not make you a slave; failure does not give you the right to be a parasite. Having children does not create a moral obligation for others to give them an education. Getting old does not create a moral obligation for others to pay for your retirement." http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/06/freedomain-radio-faq-part-2.html
Youre right. There are no moral obligations. But the social darwinism would make a very harsh world. With zero artifical (non-market) redistribution of wealth there would be law of the economic jungle. This may be efficient but it will weed out the weak. It would be efficient missery. The problem of poverty won't disappear IMO. There are also examples of privatized companies that failed to become more efficient then its staterun form. These are natural monopolies in witch case it is a sellers market with a huge entry barrier for competition by nature of the product.
On March 11 2008 12:47 KaasZerg wrote: Youre right. There are no moral obligations. But the social darwinism would make a very harsh world. With zero artifical (non-market) redistribution of wealth there would be law of the economic jungle. This may be efficient but it will weed out the weak. It would be efficient missery. The problem of poverty won't disappear IMO.
If you agree that there are no moral obligations compelling someone to give their money to someone else, then you must agree that to force someone to give their money to another- stealing- is immoral. So if you are a statist, then, you must at the very least admit that your system is immoral. You can also, hopefully, appreciate the irony in an institution which takes away liberty to preserve it. To address what you say about it weeding out the weak: If 100 people are forced into a poor existence so that 300 people can be lifted to a prosperous one, why would that be evil? I don't see the argument that 'well, this particular subset of people could be hurt, therefore your idea is bad' as being a good one, since it doesn't take into account those who benefit. The net effect on society of removing government I believe will be positive. I don't believe any system which necessitates stealing from everyone who it decides lies inside its juristiction can be a good or effective system, and I think it must bring about more misery then a free system. And you're right, poverty won't disappear. The only way to get rid of poverty is to implement communism; then no one is relatively better or worse off than anyone else.
There are also examples of privatized companies that failed to become more efficient then its staterun form. These are natural monopolies in witch case it is a sellers market with a huge entry barrier for competition by nature of the product.
Natural monopolies are efficient. Every market has barriers to entry. Whether the cost is high or low, it exists on a spectrum. But barriers to entry exist, and they are natural. How can you arbitrarily conclude where a barrier to entry is "too high"? There is no way to. Natural barriers to entry are part of the free market, and they factor in to the determination of market price. The only 'bad' barrier to entry, imo, is the unnatural barrier. Unnatural barriers occur when a firm uses violence to force out other competitors. This creates market failure/ inefficiency. The only way this can legally occur is with government. Government is state-sanctioned mafia. Anyways, please give an example of a company that was private, but became more efficient upon becoming state controlled.
On a somewhat related note, here is a fun rant against government:
On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote: i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp Short answer: the market can address all these concerns.
i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me?
that just seems like a fairytale utopia that would never work because of all the failures and abuses. i guess the best historical evidence would be that the world started in anarchy and governments started up independently all over the place. so here's blah:
you realize that markets won't prevent overfishing. they'll just make them more expensive until they are all gone. e.g. buffalo/bison in north america... whales...
i don't see understand how intellectual/property rights work in anarchy. the person who uses it owns it or the person who owns it owns it? im not sure. so if i own a plot of land, then it's mine forever?
if i owned a chunk of a river, i would build a dam on it and make lots of money supplying energy to people close to me and the people a lot farther down the river would be screwed since the part of the river they use is all dried up now.
so i'm kind of confused by what they mean by property rights. surely, no one owns the river? i mean if i build a huge net and catch all the fish upstream are the downhill fishermen allowed to blame me? i'm just better at catching fish. and surely they don't own the water itself. if i used it all to power my generators how could they blame me? the water is mine too.
free market courts seems very stupid to me. obviously if fair courts were what people wanted then there would be no problem. but if i committed to a crime, I would never agree to be taken to a court that would find me guilty and likewise, the accuser would never agree to be taken to a court that would find me innocent.
private armies can be built just as easily as private security. furthermore private security has the implication that they would go to the highest bidder and they would have a lot more to gain by joining the people who want to shoot you and take your stuff.
obviously people don't want to go to a fair court, they want to go to a court that will rule in their favor...
If you agree that there are no moral obligations compelling someone to give their money to someone else, then you must agree that to force someone to give their money to another- stealing- is immoral.
my statist immorality is less painful than your callous immorality. to solve this problem, just attach a please to every irs statement.
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: Basically what I'm saying is that your view of morality is that poor people are more important than everyone else.
I dont care if Bill Gates can earn more money because of tax cuts. He doesnt need it to live. On the other hand there are many people who struggle to survive because of poverty. So yea i guess that their lifes are more important than tax cuts.
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: Free market capitalism brings the most benefit to everyone.
Pure ideology. Economic efficiency doesnt mean benefits to everyone. You need more knowledge about economics, you should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency Efficient =/= fair.
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: Welfare tramples peoples rights and benefits a few at the expense of everyone else.
Yea let them starve because they are expensive -.-
For once you have a good idea. Poor people should be exempted of taxes. But this doesnt mean that rich people shouldnt be taxed
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: First, most people are generally moral and if someone comes in who needs an operation, they will likely be able to get it.
You are NAIVE. What about generic AIDS drugs in Africa ? For sure firms are moral ^^
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: But the reason I don't like this line of reasoning is that it doesn't take into account all the negative effects of not letting the free market act. Socialized healthcare will necessarily be inefficient since the market doesn't set the price and the government bars any competition.
Who cares if it is economic efficient ? The goal is to save people or to help them.
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: As we hear about in other places that have socialized medicine, there are very long wait times to see a doctor or get an operation. People have died waiting for operations in Canada.
You should come to France, it works not that bad here...
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: Your argument is equivalent to me saying that socialized medicine is bad because people have died from being on the waitlist for too long. So coercing citizens to help the poor ended up hurting society at large. Yes it is possible for people to die in anarcho-capitalist society, but it is also possible and can be caused by socialized healthcare. The question is, which system is net better for every member of society, not just the poor, and that is capitalism.
Lol flawless reasoning
On March 11 2008 03:08 CaptainMurphy wrote: The question you haven't answered is, if you believe that healthcare (a clearly private good under any standards) can be more efficiently provided by the state, why not have all private goods be produced by the state?
Because i think that even poor people have the right to have a good health ( education is another example ) and State is the only organization who can provide it for free. On the contrary i dont care if they have an Ipod or a car, they dont need it to live. And please dont say " duh you are always talking about morality " because a society with huge inequalities and without morality can hardly persist. Soon or later poor people will make a revolution. But anyway the society that you describe will never exist because poor people ( they are quite numerous ) arent stupid and they wont vote for a politician with this kind of ideas ( it isnt their interest ).
By the way sorry if i'm a bit inquisitive but i would like to know what is your age and your job/studies. Can you pm me please ? ( it is just curiosity )
that just seems like a fairytale utopia that would never work because of all the failures and abuses. i guess the best historical evidence would be that the world started in anarchy and governments started up independently all over the place. so here's blah:
The world started with communistic tribes.
you realize that markets won't prevent overfishing. they'll just make them more expensive until they are all gone. e.g. buffalo/bison in north america... whales...
Ok
i don't see understand how intellectual/property rights work in anarchy. the person who uses it owns it or the person who owns it owns it? im not sure. so if i own a plot of land, then it's mine forever?
If you own a plot of land, it's yours until you sell it. Same how if you own a car its yours until you sell it, if you own a house it's yours until you sell it, etc
if i owned a chunk of a river, i would build a dam on it and make lots of money supplying energy to people close to me and the people a lot farther down the river would be screwed since the part of the river they use is all dried up now.
so i'm kind of confused by what they mean by property rights. surely, no one owns the river? i mean if i build a huge net and catch all the fish upstream are the downhill fishermen allowed to blame me? i'm just better at catching fish. and surely they don't own the water itself. if i used it all to power my generators how could they blame me? the water is mine too.
There is no such thing as a system where no one gets screwed. There aren't unlimited resources. Some people are invariably going to get more than others, unless you want communism. The idea that it's somehow okay to steal from everyone at the point of a gun to promote 'fairness' doesn't make much sense to me.
[quote]free market courts seems very stupid to me. obviously if fair courts were what people wanted then there would be no problem. but if i committed to a crime, I would never agree to be taken to a court that would find me guilty and likewise, the accuser would never agree to be taken to a court that would find me innocent.
private armies can be built just as easily as private security. furthermore private security has the implication that they would go to the highest bidder and they would have a lot more to gain by joining the people who want to shoot you and take your stuff.
obviously people don't want to go to a fair court, they want to go to a court that will rule in their favor... You definitely didn't read the link, both these were covered. It's silly to think you can't have defense services or arbitration services without stealing from citizens.
my statist immorality is less painful than your callous immorality.
I'm callous because I think stealing is wrong? I think you're callous to say that stealing is okay. And if you haven't noticed, the government isn't this Robin Hood figure that takes from the rich to give to the poor. They take from everyone to fund themselves, and give some crumbs to the poor.
to solve this problem, just attach a please to every irs statement.
You mean make tax paying voluntary? I agree. As soon as you do that, you cease to have a government and you have an efficient privately run service.
I dont care if Bill Gates can earn more money because of tax cuts. He doesnt need it to live. On the other hand there are many people who struggle to survive because of poverty. So yea i guess that their lifes are more important than tax cuts.
It's not just Bill Gates. Taxes are stealing from everyone, poor people included. Every time anyone purchases an item or receives a paycheck, the government takes money from you at the threat of violence. Poor people get fucked over too, especially poor people in other countries when government sees fit to subsidize domestic industries or invade to 'protect their economic interests'. But if you did see a poor person on the street, no one in an anarcho-capitalist society is going to prevent you from giving them money or food.
Pure ideology. Economic efficiency doesnt mean benefits to everyone. You need more knowledge about economics, you should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency Efficient =/= fair.
What do you mean by fair? The way I see it, fair allocation of resources means either let consumers make their own decisions on the free market with no coercion, or distribute all resources equally ala communism.
Yea let them starve because they are expensive -.-
I wouldn't let them starve. Nothing is stopping people from voluntarily giving charity. If I saw a starving person on the street I would gladly feed them. What I'm saying is, don't rob people who don't choose to give their money to others. Not to mention how many people are starving and have been killed because of government.
For once you have a good idea. Poor people should be exempted of taxes. But this doesnt mean that rich people shouldnt be taxed
I don't think there is a cut off point where it is suddenly okay to steal from someone.
You are NAIVE. What about generic AIDS drugs in Africa ? For sure firms are moral ^^
Aids treatment in Africa is on the rise, but the reason the drugs are so expensive is because of government granted patents for the drug companies. But hey, I guess governments are moral, right? Not like governments have ever committed senseless killing or caused millions of people to be poor through domestic subsidization, or jobless through minimum wage laws (which hasn't stopped us from spending massively overseas). If you think people are immoral, why on earth would you want government? Government is made up of people, people with the authority to steal.
Who cares if it is economic efficient ? The goal is to save people or to help them.
Again, people are free to help voluntarily under anarcho-capitalism. The goal is to have the best system for everyone, and a system that steals from everyone isn't the best way to do that. Socialized medacine has caused people to die that had to wait too long to see a doctor, and there's a reason Canadians come down to the US to use our healthcare. If socialization is best for healthcare, why not every other industry as well?
You should come to France, it works not that bad here...
I'll stick with American healthcare, thanks. Unfortunately looks like ours is about to become socialized as well.
Lol flawless reasoning
Good counterpoint.
Because i think that even poor people have the right to have a good health ( education is another example ) and State is the only organization who can provide it for free. On the contrary i dont care if they have an Ipod or a car, they dont need it to live.
Why don't poor people have a right to cars or Ipods? Education and health care are not necessities. They are highly desirable, more so than cars sure, but I don't think people have a right to anything they don't own. I don't think poor people are more important than the rest of society, such that it is okay to steal from everyone to help a few, I think everyone has an equal right to be secure in their property.
And please dont say " duh you are always talking about morality " because a society with huge inequalities and without morality can hardly persist. Soon or later poor people will make a revolution. But anyway the society that you describe will never exist because poor people ( they are quite numerous ) arent stupid and they wont vote for a politician with this kind of ideas ( it isnt their interest ).
No, I wouldn't expect a poor person to vote out someone who says "I'm going to steal from your neighbor to give to you", nevermind that the government is perfectly willing to steal from you as well and build shoddy housing projects. But hopefully there will be a revolution against government, when people realize that they don't need to be threatened by violence to live their lives. I think you're wrong though, an immoral society can persist as long as enough people are apathetic about it. The modern nation-state proves this.
By the way sorry if i'm a bit inquisitive but i would like to know what is your age and your job/studies. Can you pm me please ? ( it is just curiosity )
19/econ major. I have two questions for you; why is it okay for one person to decide how to spend another persons money? This isn't just a Bill Gates thing, we've handed the judgment over to a small group of people (government) and they are allowed (by powers granted to them by them) to spend everyone's money how they see fit.
Second question; do you advocate a one world government?
and let us assume my community is fertile with an abundance of natural resources and so we hire a private security force to defend ourselves from bandits, who would want to rob us. now there is also another community nearby that also has many desirable resources. now, let us pretend that my community is much stronger because we have more people and resources and better technology thereby we can hire a bigger and better security force. We realize that we can gain much more by killing them and taking their natural resources than trading with them and so we do. So we go in with our larger and better army and start killing them off and taking their property. Obviously they aren't happy about that so they take it to a court made up of many other communities. The court obviously rules in their favor, but is it able to enforce their ruling? do they have the armies to back their decision? Perhaps, i made deals with other communities to share the "spoils" of conquering that smaller community in return for protection from any disciplinary actions. the article mentions national defense and that the community will choose to build defense on its own and will take to guerrilla warfare on its own. Obviously the ability for a community to defend itself is correlated with its own resources. If it has fewer resources, its defense will be weaker. As to guerrilla warfare, it is more often the case that they become swallowed up by the larger more powerful country than actually succeed in fighting them off especially when the conquerors care more about the land and resources than the people living there.
i will argue that it is impossible for anarchy to exist because at least some sort of government will have to be created--whether it's a monarchy or democracy or what have you. you could say that there is a market demand for leadership to command the armies and secure resources for its own people.
if you look at things in terms of game theory, it's almost always better to conquer weaker peoples and steal their resources than it is to trade with them. and in order to do that you have to have some sort of decision making process in place (government). there is a demand for an army, but if you look at who's demanding it...it is someone or a group of people who will use it to establish control.
furthermore, the advantages to conquering vast areas leads to "peace." For example the pax romana and pax mongola where the Roman Empire spread across the world or the Mongol Empire extended across asia and enabling easier trade because of the dissolving of boundaries within the empire and the crushing of bandit gangs that would attack merchants.
because of the imbalance of resources, there would inevitably be the creation of regional governments through conquest to secure additional resources. only when people aren't able to conquer their neighbors will they be willing to trade. if everybody was happy with their own little plot of land then there would be no problem. but obviously, everyone wants oil fields and the most fertile soil and the part of the ocean with the most fish. And the easiest way, if you can, to obtain it is through force.
On March 12 2008 08:14 geometryb wrote: let us assume that we live in anarchy.
and let us assume my community is fertile with an abundance of natural resources and so we hire a private security force to defend ourselves from bandits, who would want to rob us. now there is also another community nearby that also has many desirable resources. now, let us pretend that my community is much stronger because we have more people and resources and better technology thereby we can hire a bigger and better security force. We realize that we can gain much more by killing them and taking their natural resources than trading with them and so we do. So we go in with our larger and better army and start killing them off and taking their property. Obviously they aren't happy about that so they take it to a court made up of many other communities. The court obviously rules in their favor, but is it able to enforce their ruling? do they have the armies to back their decision? Perhaps, i made deals with other communities to share the "spoils" of conquering that smaller community in return for protection from any disciplinary actions. the article mentions national defense and that the community will choose to build defense on its own and will take to guerrilla warfare on its own. Obviously the ability for a community to defend itself is correlated with its own resources. If it has fewer resources, its defense will be weaker. As to guerrilla warfare, it is more often the case that they become swallowed up by the larger more powerful country than actually succeed in fighting them off especially when the conquerors care more about the land and resources than the people living there.
An anarchic society would not be entirely absent of fighting. But it would be lessened from the perpetual warfare that embodies statist society. Back to the hypothetical in anarchic society; if one firm tried to attack land that was protected by another firm, not only would that firm fight back, but others would likely fight back as well, since they see what this outlaw firm is capable of and would thus be very distrustful of it. You say that they would make deals with the other firms in the surrounding area, but what other firm would be that foolish? This outlaw firm is saying 'I don't abide by moral principles, I have no problem stealing land and resources to suit my purposes; but if you join with me, I promise not to take your land!" no one would beleive them, and the surrounding firms would support the firm whos rights were being encroached upon. For this same reason, customers of the outlaw firm would turn against it. The land grab doesn't benefit them, and they would fear that if their firm is capable of stealing land and coercing others, what would stop them from doing the same to them? Every rational person would fight against the outlaw firm.
i will argue that it is impossible for anarchy to exist because at least some sort of government will have to be created--whether it's a monarchy or democracy or what have you. you could say that there is a market demand for leadership to command the armies and secure resources for its own people.
If there is a market demand for oppression, then there will be oppression. That is why I personally think (other anarchists might disagree) that before anarchy can be successfully implemented, the general public first has to accept it.
if you look at things in terms of game theory, it's almost always better to conquer weaker peoples and steal their resources than it is to trade with them. and in order to do that you have to have some sort of decision making process in place (government). there is a demand for an army, but if you look at who's demanding it...it is someone or a group of people who will use it to establish control.
If conquering is always better than trading, how do you explain all the trade that goes on in global society? Trading is extremely efficient; conquest is risky and expensive. Although, if a political leader is able to convince his citizens using rhetoric about nationalism and patriotism to induce fear that it is in their interest for each person to dump thousands into a war effort to 'protect American interests', then war can break out. Only government could trick people like this to fund such a massively expensive operation. The only people who benefit are government, or those with personal ties to government.
furthermore, the advantages to conquering vast areas leads to "peace." For example the pax romana and pax mongola where the Roman Empire spread across the world or the Mongol Empire extended across asia and enabling easier trade because of the dissolving of boundaries within the empire and the crushing of bandit gangs that would attack merchants.
Examples of wiping out one type of violence to replace it with another. How stable were those empires? They collapsed into violence. No government has ever been able to maintain, let alone create peace. The very nature of government is non-peaceful. Or rather, peaceful if you do exactly as it says. All governments do is expand their authority (restrict individuals freedoms) and create war.
because of the imbalance of resources, there would inevitably be the creation of regional governments through conquest to secure additional resources. only when people aren't able to conquer their neighbors will they be willing to trade. if everybody was happy with their own little plot of land then there would be no problem. but obviously, everyone wants oil fields and the most fertile soil and the part of the ocean with the most fish. And the easiest way, if you can, to obtain it is through force.
I don't belive the creation of governments is inevitable for reasons listed above, nor do I accept that conquest is always the most efficient means. Although it is more likely if government is involved.
obviously not every land grab will be worth it, but there will still be many that are. the community will have to weigh the consequences of invasion with the gains. i believe that rational people will act to achieve the most gain so they won't be stopped by "moral principles" against theft. the power of the court rests in the armies, or force, of the membership community. i think history will show that there are many aggressors that go unpunished by the international community because others have more to gain by siding with the aggressor or that people can't do anything about it.
cortez was able to defeat the aztecs with a handful of men and that gave the spaniards a great supply of rare metals and sugar plantations and the like. the united states was able to crush the indians. undoubtedly, the colonial powers were able to amass great wealth through the seizing of lands and the enslaving populations that they would not have access to otherwise. obviously trying to take over someone else that is as strong as you is fairly difficult, so in that case it would be more beneficial to trade.
i'm not making the case that governments are good, but rather that they are inevitable because people tend to form communities and that communities need to make decisions that will benefit themselves the most. i would argue that the demand for an army to conquer other peoples or defend yourself entails a leader because otherwise they would just be men with guns. furthermore, a leader that has an army has power. it doesn't matter whether the army is controlled democratically or by one person, it still leads to government. i dont know how you would argue a market controlled army. given that it could provide the existence of an army, once it's made whoever controls it will seize power as long as he's rational. even if there's somehow a "free market" for many armies, the one you give the right to enforce your court rulings, defend your community, and extend your borders becomes the one that rules you.
in conclusion, i feel like government (arguably poor government) is inevitable. that people act out of personal gain and that markets do not deter the theft of property (conquest).
I don't believe governments are inevitable. Governments have formed in the past, but rarely has there been a society where people wanted anarchocapitalism. The fact that governments have formed doesn't mean that they are inevitable, and I have listed my reasons above for why I think this. But all this is of secondary importance. Imagine we were living in prehistoric times, and I was trying to convince you that western democracies were the best form of government. Would you tell me that there haven't been any in the past, therefore they cannot exist? Of course not. They require first that the idea develop and be accepted. Also, you would be right to point out that whether they could or couldn't exist is secondary to the point of whether they should exist.
For you and everyone, an Anarchist FAQ, discussing everything from dispute resolution organizations to the funding of roads, to collective security, to the potential for government reemergence and more:
if you think that no one will use violence or force, then i think you're very naive.
and i think that any society based on the notion that no one will use force can not work.
i think that the threat of some sort of force is the only thing that will uphold any contract or agreement. i.e. the reason why person X owns this big piece of nice land is because he has the means to defend it.
i think this is the easiest way to show that anarchism isn't feasible rather than talking about economics that we don't understand. i think i've already outlined in detail why i think those things are true. furthermore, i feel like you've failed to address my fundamental points--how could markets control an army, or how they could prevent a powerful community from seizing a weaker territory, or that fundamentally markets will not solve depletion, blah blah blah.
if everyone was an angel and would be willing to bend over backwards, then obviously we wouldn't need government. i don't feel like the notion that people act out of their own best interest is all that suprising (considering it's one of the assumptions of economics). i don't feel like the scenarios i've described are unlikely considering the wars that have been fought over trade routes and resources in the past.
p.s. what he says about education is kind of false. our literacy rate is >99% not less than 90%. and you could look at the rarity of discoveries of the 19th and 18th century along with the fact that high school kids are able to rape the shit out of anything discovered during those time periods.
On March 12 2008 15:32 geometryb wrote: if you think that no one will use violence or force, then i think you're very naive.
and i think that any society based on the notion that no one will use force can not work.
I never said no one will use violence, what I said is that anyone who tried would likely (at least, more likely than in statist society) be stopped. Such an organization would lose customers and funding and would be fought against by other people and organizations.
i think that the threat of some sort of force is the only thing that will uphold any contract or agreement. i.e. the reason why person X owns this big piece of nice land is because he has the means to defend it.
Defense of property is crucial to anarcho-capitalism. I think this defense can be much better provided by a company that a person voluntarily enters into contract with then by a company that extorts people to protect property (how ironic the very idea of it is).
i think this is the easiest way to show that anarchism isn't feasible rather than talking about economics that we don't understand. i think i've already outlined in detail why i think those things are true. furthermore, i feel like you've failed to address my fundamental points--how could markets control an army, or how they could prevent a powerful community from seizing a weaker territory, or that fundamentally markets will not solve depletion, blah blah blah.
These points are not fundamental, they are secondary. The fundamental point is that government is evil. Just as slavery was an evil institution and had to be abolished- the question wasn't "where will the blacks work? What if they start acting violent?"- all those are of secondary importance to abolishing the institution.
To present again, the brief argument for anarchism from morality: Morality must be objective. If morality was subjective, then anyone could decide that it was moral for them to kill anyone else, and etc etc you have chaos. So morality must be objective. If morality is objective, then the one and by necessity only moral truth must be the nonaggression axiom; that it is never acceptable to initiate violence against anyone else ('initiation' implying that it is okay to use violence in self-defense). This is one and the same as the right to be secure in ones property. The reason this can be the only moral absolute is because to claim anything else as a moral right will out of necessity infringe on the nonaggression principle. Say, for example, you wish to claim that education is a right for everyone. If someone can't afford an education, you would then be permissing them to use violence to force others to fund their education. And you lose property rights as an objective moral truth, and thus throw them into the realm of subjectivity. But why should your subjective judgment reign supreme? Because *you* decide it should? You can't logically decide that your judgment is the best, unless you want to make the case for a totalitarian dictatorship controlled by you. So you must admit that no ones subjective morality can reign over anyone elses, and you are back into the spot of justifying that anyone can do anything if they personally deem it to be moral. So the conclusion that must be accepted is that the nonaggression principle, the right to be secure in ones property, is the only moral truth, and it cannot be infringed upon. Any form of government is by necessity an infringement on this moral truth, therefore any form of government is immoral.
So that's the important stuff. To answer your questions, the market could control an army the same way the government can, minus the use of extortion to fund it. If a powerful community tried to seize a weaker one, the weaker one would fight back or call in others who would want to help the weaker state since an aggressive state (ala Nazi Germany) cannot be appeased, it must be dealt with. As for depletion, I'm not sure what you mean. And I would also note that statism has failed to prevent communities from engaging in hostilities and from using an army only for defensive purposes.
if everyone was an angel and would be willing to bend over backwards, then obviously we wouldn't need government. i don't feel like the notion that people act out of their own best interest is all that suprising (considering it's one of the assumptions of economics). i don't feel like the scenarios i've described are unlikely considering the wars that have been fought over trade routes and resources in the past.
Even if you assume (against all empirical precedent) that everyone is is pure evil, how does it make any sense to give a small group of these people virtually unlimited power to use violence against everyone else in the form of taxation, and allow their moral judgments to dictate law for everyone else? Do you see how that's just asking to introduce more corruption and problems? Politicians don't just fall from the sky free of human nature. They are just as self-interested as everyone else, and they are likely to be filthy liars as well if they have managed to become successful politicians.
hurricane katrina and the evacuation pretty much created an anarchic environment absent of government. were people like, "let's set up DARs and mutually beneficial trade." No, they were like "let's loot walmart" obviously people want resources they don't have so they steal them! why trade for something when you could take it by force?
perhaps walmart found a private army to defend its stores. is it more beneficial to them to leave it as defense or would they use it to take from other stores?
perhaps walmart controlled the only supplies of food. would it be more beneficial to other people to band together, try and kill walmart defenders, and steal the food or to trade with walmart? what if the people were poor and had nothing to offer?
would the private army defending the stores gain more by seizing control of the stores or by simply defending it? you could make the argument that no one else would want to hire them after they do such a thing...but i would just say it happens once they reach the maximum number of defendable stores as in it can't possible defend any more stores. it's better for them to just seize the stores because they would still be serving the purpose of defense, but now the store and all its monies belongs to them. i will now add that there is no market mechanism that causes other defense "companies" to collude against it. in fact, it may be possible that they follow the example and seize the stores that they were defending.
courts are only good if they are able to enforce their rulings and to enforce their rulings they must hold more power than the people, which won't always be the case in anarchy. the ideal court would have an army to enforce its rulings, right? should justice only be available to those who can afford it? does that make it okay to steal from the poor, who can't afford to go to a court or a lawyer?
anyhow, i think it's wrong of anarchocapitalists to think that demand creates supply. just because i demand justice doesn't mean there will be a supply of courts. just because i demand police doesn't mean there will be police. just because i demand a time machine, doesn't mean there will be a time machines. etc.
==== democracy has worked out pretty well i think. ambition counters ambition? at least we have secure borders and police rather than debating whether or not there would be one or not. i'm actually fine with helping to pay for other people's education and food and medicine. but i don't think my arguments for that would be able to convince you because it's more of a value judgment than any thing theoritical.
On March 12 2008 18:16 geometryb wrote: hurricane katrina and the evacuation pretty much created an anarchic environment absent of government. were people like, "let's set up DARs and mutually beneficial trade." No, they were like "let's loot walmart" obviously people want resources they don't have so they steal them! why trade for something when you could take it by force?
perhaps walmart found a private army to defend its stores. is it more beneficial to them to leave it as defense or would they use it to take from other stores?
perhaps walmart controlled the only supplies of food. would it be more beneficial to other people to band together, try and kill walmart defenders, and steal the food or to trade with walmart? what if the people were poor and had nothing to offer?
would the private army defending the stores gain more by seizing control of the stores or by simply defending it? you could make the argument that no one else would want to hire them after they do such a thing...but i would just say it happens once they reach the maximum number of defendable stores as in it can't possible defend any more stores. it's better for them to just seize the stores because they would still be serving the purpose of defense, but now the store and all its monies belongs to them. i will now add that there is no market mechanism that causes other defense "companies" to collude against it. in fact, it may be possible that they follow the example and seize the stores that they were defending.
Obviously a region that is suddenly plunged into chaos by a natural disaster is going to be trouble. That is very different then a conscious movement toward anarcho-capitalism.
courts are only good if they are able to enforce their rulings and to enforce their rulings they must hold more power than the people, which won't always be the case in anarchy.
They don't need to hold more power than people, people just need to agree to abide by their rulings. What happens if someone doesn't? Well for one his PDA would stop protecting him since he is violating their rules (which would state that clients must agree to abide by arbitration) and the PDA of the client who took him to court would be able to forcibly recoup their losses. No other PDA would want to do business with the man who doesn't abide by the rulings, it would hurt their reputation signifigantly. And the local media would make it known to everyone that this person doesn't abide by arbitration.
the ideal court would have an army to enforce its rulings, right? should justice only be available to those who can afford it?
You mean kind of like how it is now? The court process is very expensive if you want to hire a good lawyer. Having a government betrays the ideals of justice from the get go by stealing from its citizens, its hypocritical to suggest we have such an institution to uphold justice.
does that make it okay to steal from the poor, who can't afford to go to a court or a lawyer?
No, it does not make stealing okay. Anyways, people like you (concerned citizens) would gladly pay for the defense services of poor people.
anyhow, i think it's wrong of anarchocapitalists to think that demand creates supply. just because i demand justice doesn't mean there will be a supply of courts. just because i demand police doesn't mean there will be police. just because i demand a time machine, doesn't mean there will be a time machines. etc.
Your third example is a dramatic aberration from the first two. We don't have time machines because the technology for them doesn't exist. Demand for courts and police does create the supply for them (well, theoretically demand and supply curves exist independent of each other, but for the actual product to be sold on the market, demand must exist).
==== democracy has worked out pretty well i think. ambition counters ambition? at least we have secure borders and police rather than debating whether or not there would be one or not.
What does 'ambition counters ambition' mean? And sure democracy has worked better than communism or fascism, that doesn't make it the best system by default.
i'm actually fine with helping to pay for other people's education and food and medicine. but i don't think my arguments for that would be able to convince you because it's more of a value judgment than any thing theoritical.
If you're fine paying for other peoples services, then good for you. Nobody would stop you from doing this in anarcho-capitalist society. The only difference is that people who don't want to pay for other peoples education, aggressive armies, the DEA, corrupt politicians, and all the government departments, would be allowed to opt out. Anarcho-capitalism just means that stealing would not be legal.
You should be able to find a flaw in my argument from morality if you believe democracy is a moral form of government. Have you? And you did not answer why it makes sense to give one group of evil people, who are professional liars, authority to restrict the freedoms of everyone else.
i don't see how the removal of government would result in anything different. would the conclusion be that anarchy can't handle natural disasters? that anarchy won't produce chaos? i think it's a fine example of what happens once the government leaves. i think i've done a pretty good job of showing how markets can't stop the use of force or violence through theoritical and historical examples. that the assumption in the video is bad is also false.
meh, i changed my mind. i don't want to pay for poor people's lawyers and courts and defense and no one can make me. in fact, i'll pay people to not pay the poor people so i can take their shit.
you said it yourself. demand and supply are different. demand does not create it's own supply. saying that because you want something so it will exist is a very big fallacy.
if you believe that people are rational and make decisions that benefit themselves, then it makes sense for people to trade certain freedoms for stability and security. obviously there's an incentive for government to appease it's people because otherwise there are rebellions. again, i am not arguing about whether government are immoral or moral but rather whether or not they are beneficial and necessary. in fact, i agree with you that governments are immoral. but i don't believe that immoral things are necessarily bad or that they won't happen. again, "if everyone was an angel, then we wouldn't need government" however, i think people are far from angels. furthermore, you could argue that any sort of punishment by a court is immoral because it is forcefully taking something away from someone, except it has a value judgment of which person is more deserving attached to the ruling. except that's beside the point.
courts are backed by communities. in little rock arkansas, the court ruled that schools had to be desegregated but the community did not want that. obviously, if the court has one decision but the person who lost the case dont want to abide by the ruling, then doesn't it need to send in the army? when the united states wanted to invade iraq, and the united nations was like hold on. but they couldn't do anything. court fairness means nothing when there's disproportionate power. so should courts only make popular decisions rather than wise ones?
just do a thought experiment where you gather up all the anti-government libertarians of the world, have them renounce their citizenships, and ship them (and enough resources to compensate them for their current assets just to be fair) to a deserted island. what do you think will happen?....how will they decide who gets the best fishing spots? the most fertile land? the mines? my answer and the historical answer is through force.
based on the video and the article, libertarians do not believe in force and can not use force to deprive others of "property." they would not have been able to realize the power and wealth that came from the westward expansion and colonization. "i could use this land better but there's already someone there, shit." or "why should ted get the nice land while im stuck with shit" and stuff like that.
On March 13 2008 08:20 geometryb wrote: i don't see how the removal of government would result in anything different. would the conclusion be that anarchy can't handle natural disasters? that anarchy won't produce chaos? i think it's a fine example of what happens once the government leaves. i think i've done a pretty good job of showing how markets can't stop the use of force or violence through theoritical and historical examples. that the assumption in the video is bad is also false.
Obviously if you take out government and a giant hurricane comes through that tears everyones shit up when no one is ready for it its gonna cause chaos. You haven't shown that markets can't stop the use of force. You've taken some guesses at what might happen and I've told you why I think you are wrong. Obviously it can't prevent everyone from using force, but neither can a state society.
meh, i changed my mind. i don't want to pay for poor people's lawyers and courts and defense and no one can make me. in fact, i'll pay people to not pay the poor people so i can take their shit.
Like you can't pay off a cop now... It's not the people who are changing, it's just whether they are allowed to steal from citizens thats changing. But a private company couldn't afford to have a poor reputation, whereas the public police can continue extorting citizens regardless of whether or not it is corrupt. In stateless society, people like yourself who are concerned about the poor can continue to pay for them.
you said it yourself. demand and supply are different. demand does not create it's own supply. saying that because you want something so it will exist is a very big fallacy.
I said the demand and supply curves exist independently of each other, which is true. But in order for a good to actually be produced, there has to be demand for it. Demand causes goods to be supplied. Ipods are sold because there is a demand for them, same with cars, food, houses, healthcare, education, and any other economic good you can think of. Security is no different. The reason your local supermarket doesn't sell sauted dung beatles is because in there isn't much demand for them.
if you believe that people are rational and make decisions that benefit themselves, then it makes sense for people to trade certain freedoms for stability and security.
There's no need to trade freedom for security. There is no logical bridge here connecting your premise to your conclusion. You don't need to force people to pay for security; peoples demand for security demonstrates that people will pay for security. And if a person doesn't want to use your security forces, you have no right to put a gun to his head and demand he pay for them (this is what government does).
obviously there's an incentive for government to appease it's people because otherwise there are rebellions.
Things have to get pretty awful before there's rebellion. Congress has passed all sorts if immoral legislation such as allowing slavery for a while and school segregation, outlawing drugs, starting a war with iraq, etc. Not to mention all the government scandals that make the news every couple weeks. But we all just sit and take it. Private firms would never be able to pull that type of shit and get away with it. They would lose too many customers.
again, i am not arguing about whether government are immoral or moral but rather whether or not they are beneficial and necessary. in fact, i agree with you that governments are immoral. but i don't believe that immoral things are necessarily bad or that they won't happen.
If immoral things aren't bad, then how are they immoral? Or if you're willing to trade morality for "security", that is if you really think the only way you can be secure is to have a coercive monopoly steal from everyone, why not just go all the way and move to a fascist state? Then you'll have more government security then you can shake a stick at. The truth is that this fear is baseless. Governments are not necessary; immorality is not necessary. Our goal should be to eliminate immorality, not foster it.
[Pulls out gun]"Gimme your money! It's for your own good!" Please...
again, "if everyone was an angel, then we wouldn't need government" however, i think people are far from angels.
And again I say, if people aren't angels, why do you elevate a few to the levle of power where they are legally allowed to steal and restrict the freedoms of the other citizens? Even democracies are equally ridiculous; democracies are 51% of the people giving .01% of the people the power to trample the rights of 100% of the people, all the while stealing from them and preventing any competitors from working.
furthermore, you could argue that any sort of punishment by a court is immoral because it is forcefully taking something away from someone, except it has a value judgment of which person is more deserving attached to the ruling. except that's beside the point.
If a court issues a punishment, it's not initiating force; its using force in defense of someone who was aggressed against the initiator of the aggression.
courts are backed by communities. in little rock arkansas, the court ruled that schools had to be desegregated but the community did not want that. obviously, if the court has one decision but the person who lost the case dont want to abide by the ruling, then doesn't it need to send in the army?
Usually two security guards would be sufficient. You seem to think that private security would be inferior to coerced security (mafia style). The free market is the most efficient producer of any good that people demand, security included. There is no reason an army funded voluntarily would be less effective then an army funded through theft.
when the united states wanted to invade iraq, and the united nations was like hold on. but they couldn't do anything. court fairness means nothing when there's disproportionate power. so should courts only make popular decisions rather than wise ones?
Not sure what this has to do with your argument, but no, courts should make wise decisions.
just do a thought experiment where you gather up all the anti-government libertarians of the world, have them renounce their citizenships, and ship them (and enough resources to compensate them for their current assets just to be fair) to a deserted island. what do you think will happen?....how will they decide who gets the best fishing spots? the most fertile land? the mines? my answer and the historical answer is through force.
The general rule of thumb is that when going to a place where no one owns anything, the first person to touch something becomes its owner. I'm not sure why this is relevant. Most things here are already privately owned, there would be no need to perform some kind of mad scramble. The police would probably break off into factions and companies would enter a bidding war to buy the different security services so they could then sell it out to the public like insurance.
based on the video and the article, libertarians do not believe in force and can not use force to deprive others of "property." they would not have been able to realize the power and wealth that came from the westward expansion and colonization. "i could use this land better but there's already someone there, shit." or "why should ted get the nice land while im stuck with shit" and stuff like that.
Yea you're right, if the first Americans practiced libertarian ideals, they wouldn't have gone on a Native American killing spree.
Podcast addressing the inefficiencies of government- "People can solve their own problems without having the state gun pointed at their neck":
rather than saying i have taken guesses at what may happen, it would be more accurate to say that i have given examples of what has happened in the past. in fact it sounds more like you are taking guesses at what's going to happen, unrealistically believing in best case scenarios that have little historical precedent. i have shown why theoritically armies will form and supported that with examples of that from the past. on the other hand, anarchocapitalists claim that they will not form and argue that with very oversimplified "well if shit happens, then this will happen and we won't have a problem." obviously, history has shown that "this didn't happen and there was a big problem."
i don't think it's unreasonable to think of states as players in an anarchy because there is no higher government to govern governments so i don't think it's unreasonable to treat each country as a person living in an anarchy (almost similar to treating a corporation as a person but not quite). obviously governments have the same goals as individuals also (profit/wealth maximization/security). i hope you'll agree with me on this. and states have been killing each other since forever.
immoral does not necessarily mean bad. the decision to drop the atomic bomb killing millions of innocent civilians was immoral. but the decision saved a large number of american lives. as a free market capitalist, you should be thinking more about profit/gain than moral/immoral. the belief that people won't do something because it's immoral and that immoral things won't exist is an assumption you shouldn't make.
====
perhaps i could explain the "social contract" thing in economics terms. there are always terms of trade and there's a range for those terms where an individual can still benefit. "oh, you're willing to give me 10$ great i'll make $9. oh you'll give me $2 i'll still make $1 oh you're not willing to give me anything? hten go away." based on that logic, no matter how oppressive or evil the government it to you, you still benefit from it. if you didn't, you would rebel or move somewhere else. you're not gaining as much as you could, but you're still gaining.
i guess a good example of supply and demand is: you demand an anarchic government. there is, however, no supply of anarchic governments. your demand for that type of government does not lead to anyone starting that kind of government for you to move there. OR i could argue that there is anarchic government in the form of deserted islands and remote areas, but no one moves there SO there is no demand for anarchic governments. so libertarians are just a bunch of bullshitters. if you and every other anarchocapitalist are so confident in your beliefs, why don't you take all your assets and move somewhere else? the fact that you don't means that you're willing to be oppressed by government which makes it a bit hypocritical.
if i lived in your world, i would touch everything first. also, i wouldn't be willing to pay someone to use their land just because they touched it first. it's relevant because there's a certain unfairness attached to this that i fail to see a resolution to without the use of force.
On March 14 2008 09:42 geometryb wrote: rather than saying i have taken guesses at what may happen, it would be more accurate to say that i have given examples of what has happened in the past. in fact it sounds more like you are taking guesses at what's going to happen, unrealistically believing in best case scenarios that have little historical precedent. i have shown why theoritically armies will form and supported that with examples of that from the past. on the other hand, anarchocapitalists claim that they will not form and argue that with very oversimplified "well if shit happens, then this will happen and we won't have a problem." obviously, history has shown that "this didn't happen and there was a big problem."
The problem with your examples though is that none of them have looked at an anarcho-capitalist society. New Orleans didn't just become anarcho-capitalist when Hurricane Katrina struck, it was plunged into chaos by the sudden elimination of order. The arguments for preventing state reemergence are not oversimplified, they are very logical. If you can bring up a specific argument against any point raised in this article, http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/06/stateless-dictatorships-how-free.html I would be happy to discuss it.
i don't think it's unreasonable to think of states as players in an anarchy because there is no higher government to govern governments so i don't think it's unreasonable to treat each country as a person living in an anarchy (almost similar to treating a corporation as a person but not quite). obviously governments have the same goals as individuals also (profit/wealth maximization/security). i hope you'll agree with me on this. and states have been killing each other since forever.
Right. But where you identify the problem as being the anarchical international structure, (and at this point you must logically propose world government, no?), I identify the problem as being the state.
immoral does not necessarily mean bad. the decision to drop the atomic bomb killing millions of innocent civilians was immoral. but the decision saved a large number of american lives.
That is still highly disputed to this day, and you have no idea how many Americans it may or may not have saved in comparison to the millions who were harmed by the dropping of it. I don't see it as being moral or good. This all sounds very Machiavellian though; are you an ends-justify-the-means type guy?
as a free market capitalist, you should be thinking more about profit/gain than moral/immoral. the belief that people won't do something because it's immoral and that immoral things won't exist is an assumption you shouldn't make.
My advocation for the free market comes from my moral principles. I believe the initiation of violence against another person is universally immoral. I never claimed that immoral things won't exis, but we should pursue the moral path where we can. If we have this immoral institution staring us in the face, holding all of us hostage, we should fight for freedom- not accept it just because "there's always gonna be immorality, so we might as well stop trying."
====
perhaps i could explain the "social contract" thing in economics terms. there are always terms of trade and there's a range for those terms where an individual can still benefit. "oh, you're willing to give me 10$ great i'll make $9. oh you'll give me $2 i'll still make $1 oh you're not willing to give me anything? hten go away." based on that logic, no matter how oppressive or evil the government it to you, you still benefit from it. if you didn't, you would rebel or move somewhere else. you're not gaining as much as you could, but you're still gaining.
The 'social contract' is bullshit. I don't enter into a social contract with government anymore than a shop owner enters into a social contract with the mafia for opening shop on 'their turf'. The only legitimate contracts are ones entered into voluntarily- social contract just means "you agree to this contract because I say you do".
i guess a good example of supply and demand is: you demand an anarchic government. there is, however, no supply of anarchic governments. your demand for that type of government does not lead to anyone starting that kind of government for you to move there.
Obviously it takes more than a few thousand people to carry out a project as large as abolishing the government! Apple wouldn't have made an ipod if only a couple hundred people wanted one.
OR i could argue that there is anarchic government in the form of deserted islands and remote areas, but no one moves there SO there is no demand for anarchic governments. so libertarians are just a bunch of bullshitters. if you and every other anarchocapitalist are so confident in your beliefs, why don't you take all your assets and move somewhere else? the fact that you don't means that you're willing to be oppressed by government which makes it a bit hypocritical.
lol, that's like saying to a shop owner who's store gets robbed: "If you don't sell your shop and move, you obviously don't mind being robbed." *I* shouldn't have to give up my rightfully owned property to live freely; it's the state that should have to give up its tactics of violence.
if i lived in your world, i would touch everything first. also, i wouldn't be willing to pay someone to use their land just because they touched it first. it's relevant because there's a certain unfairness attached to this that i fail to see a resolution to without the use of force.
You would touch everything first? Private property wouldn't go up for grabs. Ownership of private property is already established. The government jobs like mail delivery and security provisions would be taken up by private companies, who would then hire their own employees, probably many of the same ones that were previously working for the government. Government buildings would likely be auctioned off. --
I find it sickening that you can admit government is immoral but still condone it. This absurd delusion you have that if we didn't have an institution that will kill you for refusing to pay it or kill you for opening up a competing business, then we'd be in a real pickle! Clearly we can't be trusted to conduct business ourselves, we need to give a small group of people all the guns and all the power to pass law (cause ya know, they're public servants; they would never put their own interests first!) and let them dictate to us how we can conduct legitimate business as they continue to steal from us so they can pad their pockets.
wouldn't the definition of an anarchocapitalist society be one without government? perhaps you could explain how the absence of government during hurricane katrina would be different from your society. there's nothing inherent about a natural disaster that creates chaos because it only creates the destruction of property. The people there still retained their property rights and they haven't changed except they have less stuff. There was supply (even though its lower) and demand and everything. or perhaps it would hinge on the notion that people are unwilling to be immoral, which is X_X.
The Secret Army: while 1 DRO can afford it in 10 years, 10 DROs can do it in 1 year.
Independantly Wealthy+Defense DROs: how would defense DROs grow? by having more men and more weapons to defend more peoples. this doesn't have to be secret at all. it would be raising an army in plain daylight. why didn't the rest of the world gang up on the united states during it's arms race? how were empires ever allowed to amass their armies?
The Question of profit: saying it's unprofitable doesn't make it unprofitable. it was profitable for GB to take over india and hongkong, for USA to take over indian territories, etc etc. also, the comments on that page are pretty good also.
world government have emerged (i guess you could think of it that way) when the roman empire conquered some gross portion of the world. likewise with the mongols. when you let states(the players in an anarchy) act rationally, there will not always be the means to prevent armies to use to conquer other states (the other players).
is Machevilian bad? if it was trading 1 american for 1 million japanese would it be worth it? 1 for 1? would you steal medicine from a pharmacy to save your sick daughter?
you always have the option of leaving your country. no one forces you to stay. there are many anarchic societies in the world, you could always move to an uncharted, unclaimed island. you would have all your assets with you so that you lose nothing and you would be completely unoppressed. and once you're on that island you can let supply and demand provide all the goods and services that you want. i think 5% of republicans supports ron paul, so there are maybe 7million guys just like you. somewhere out there, there's an island about the size of delaware. would you be willing to go there with 7million friends that share the same beliefs?
people voluntarily giving up power is never going to happen and it's against your morals to take it by force. so it's a bit tough for you to abolish government. but you could always move.
you're not giving up the property, the shop owner selling all of his stuff (he now has things worth everything he's ever produced and can be traded back for). he is giving up nothing except his citizenship. note that geographical location is part of his assets, the price of his shop reflects where it is.
well, in our case power is held by the people. there's a system of checks and balances so that the leaders and laws have to serve the interests of the poeple. furthermore, each person's vote counts the same if your rich or poor and minority rights are protected also. if people disapprove of their actions, they wouldn't be reelected. likewise, the only way to enforce the laws is through force. i think you agree with me on that? the government is a natural monopoly on force and law. and going by what you said earlier that monopolies are efficient, then that's good right?
you said that courts should always make wise decisions, but wouldn't free market courts (assuming that they exist) always make popular decisions because it's the community that gives them its authority and force. and also if they would need to make popular decisions in order for people to keep coming. note that popular decisions and wise decisions are not necessarily the same decision.
there's also the perspective of game theory. a coastal community will benefit from a giant wall that prevents big waves from crashing down on it when hurricanes come. how do we get people to pay for it? I want it, but i could always just let other people pay for it and then it would come for free and i benefit from it whether i use it or not. this will end in no one paying for it!
On March 15 2008 05:24 geometryb wrote: wouldn't the definition of an anarchocapitalist society be one without government? perhaps you could explain how the absence of government during hurricane katrina would be different from your society. there's nothing inherent about a natural disaster that creates chaos because it only creates the destruction of property. The people there still retained their property rights and they haven't changed except they have less stuff. There was supply (even though its lower) and demand and everything. or perhaps it would hinge on the notion that people are unwilling to be immoral, which is X_X.
The state didn't disappear in New Orleans. There were still police, they just had to spend most of their effort rescuing people so they couldn't be policing crime as efficiently. This has nothing to do with anarchocapitalism.
The Secret Army: while 1 DRO can afford it in 10 years, 10 DROs can do it in 1 year.
10 DROs would still run in to all the problems 1 DRO would, including having to convince their customers that this is a good idea, which is a very hard sell to anyone who isn't completely gullible. Furthermore, a new DRO could arise that doesn't try to amass a secret army and thus wouldn't have to charge as much and it would get all the customers.
Independantly Wealthy+Defense DROs: how would defense DROs grow? by having more men and more weapons to defend more peoples. this doesn't have to be secret at all. it would be raising an army in plain daylight. why didn't the rest of the world gang up on the united states during it's arms race? how were empires ever allowed to amass their armies?
To raise an army would require raising rates, and getting all your customers to believe that you wouldn't turn the army on them. Both these issues would cause its customers to join another DRO.
The Question of profit: saying it's unprofitable doesn't make it unprofitable. it was profitable for GB to take over india and hongkong, for USA to take over indian territories, etc etc. also, the comments on that page are pretty good also.
It was profitable for the government, not for the taxpayers. Government already has a taxpayer funded army. A DRO would have to build an army from customer funded money, and if it decided to launch a military campaign that would cause rates to soar, which would lose it customers and then profit and then it wouldn't be able to fund its aggressive war.
world government have emerged (i guess you could think of it that way) when the roman empire conquered some gross portion of the world. likewise with the mongols.
Those aren't world governments by any stretch. But you didn't answer my question- do you support a one world government?
when you let states(the players in an anarchy) act rationally, there will not always be the means to prevent armies to use to conquer other states (the other players).
Right. States can't prevent war.
is Machevilian bad? if it was trading 1 american for 1 million japanese would it be worth it? 1 for 1? would you steal medicine from a pharmacy to save your sick daughter?
I was asking whether you yourself are a consequentialist. Myself I am conflicted as I can see arguments for both deontological and teleological ethics, but I think anarcho-capitalism is superior from either standpoint. It is my belief that capitalism has been the driving force behind technological advances that have helped all of society, and I think any hinderance to capitalism can only hurt progress.
you always have the option of leaving your country. no one forces you to stay. there are many anarchic societies in the world, you could always move to an uncharted, unclaimed island. you would have all your assets with you so that you lose nothing and you would be completely unoppressed. and once you're on that island you can let supply and demand provide all the goods and services that you want. i think 5% of republicans supports ron paul, so there are maybe 7million guys just like you. somewhere out there, there's an island about the size of delaware. would you be willing to go there with 7million friends that share the same beliefs?
So to go back to my example, if I'm the shop owner and my store gets robbed and I go complain to you the chief of police, your response would be; "if you don't like being robbed, go move somewhere else." Ok, great.
But please don't confuse me with being a Ron Paul supporter. I support anarchism, not minarchism.
people voluntarily giving up power is never going to happen and it's against your morals to take it by force. so it's a bit tough for you to abolish government. but you could always move.
Violence is justified in self defense. That is why the nonaggression principle maintains that the initiation of violence against another is wrong. The government maintains its power through violence against its citizens, so people would be justified to abolish government using force.
you're not giving up the property, the shop owner selling all of his stuff (he now has things worth everything he's ever produced and can be traded back for). he is giving up nothing except his citizenship. note that geographical location is part of his assets, the price of his shop reflects where it is.
Again with the "If you don't like it gtfo" argument. This is the worst excuse for government aggression.
well, in our case power is held by the people.
Roffles. People aren't allowed to rob other people. That ability is exclusive to government.
there's a system of checks and balances so that the leaders and laws have to serve the interests of the poeple.
The checks and balances are all within government. They don't protect the interest of the people, they protect the interests of those in government.
furthermore, each person's vote counts the same if your rich or poor and minority rights are protected also. if people disapprove of their actions, they wouldn't be reelected.
Yea, it's a good thing we get to vote on who gets to steal our money and what they can spend the stolen money on.
likewise, the only way to enforce the laws is through force. i think you agree with me on that? the government is a natural monopoly on force and law. and going by what you said earlier that monopolies are efficient, then that's good right?
Government is not a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly can only arise on the free market. Government is a coercive monopoly. It funds itself through theft and it jails any competition. This is guaranteed to be inefficient. This is also the ONLY difference between government and anarchocapitalism.
you said that courts should always make wise decisions, but wouldn't free market courts (assuming that they exist) always make popular decisions because it's the community that gives them its authority and force. and also if they would need to make popular decisions in order for people to keep coming. note that popular decisions and wise decisions are not necessarily the same decision.
The popular decision will usually be popular because it's the right decision. If only a minority of people think the decision should go the other way, there's a good chance it's the wrong decision. But yes, there are some cases where a court won't make a wise decision if it makes all its customers upset. However, this is still better than a government court which has no more incentive than a private court to make a wise decision. Since their salaries are still paid by stealing from all the citizens, they can make a ruling based on anything as small as the lawyers attitude (my dad is a lawyer and I can tell you that things like attitude make a huge difference). The private judge is pressured to rule in favor of the people- who, by in large, will want justice. The pubic judge can rule on whatever grounds he wishes to.
there's also the perspective of game theory. a coastal community will benefit from a giant wall that prevents big waves from crashing down on it when hurricanes come. how do we get people to pay for it? I want it, but i could always just let other people pay for it and then it would come for free and i benefit from it whether i use it or not. this will end in no one paying for it!
And you've hit upon the public goods theory, which the entire OP is dedicated to disproving.
And I still haven't heard you attempt to justify why, if humans are too inept or evil to conduct themselves, it makes any sense to give a tiny group of humans the power to steal money and pass law for all the other humans, as though these people; these elected officers are any less susceptible to corruption or self-interest than the other 99% of people. Have you seen what governments do with power? All they do is pass more and more laws restricting your liberty, raise taxes (or spend on defecit, which your children are going to end up paying for), and spending more of your money to build up armies so that they can launch wars and then all their buddies like haliburton and kbr get rich. But you think it's okay to throw someone in jail who doesn't want to pay for this.
just in case you forgot how our government works, the people elect congressmen every 2 years, senators 6, president 4, not sure about governors and mayors. anyways, if the constituents do not like the laws their elected official passed or the things they did, then he would not be reelected. he would not stay in power. the system tries to align the will of the people with what that of the elected official. i don't know if you really believe what you said, but the iraq war happened because most of the country was willing to go to war during that time, not because they wanted to give haliburton contracts. the president still needed the approval of congress and the people.
perhaps you're right. maybe law would be better if it was a big popularity contest. but, i'm not so sure about that. the beauty of government backed courts is that (my knowledge is actually only limited to supreme court stuff) judges don't have to worry about reelection or anything and can make decisions without worrying about shit. the judges have to be congressionally approved so that they must've had a good history. and they have no means of enforcing their rulings. if was a very terrible ruling, then the executive branch would just be like no. but again, i don't think there's a right answer. i guess court rulings by popularity would work too (i think that's what they did in athens a long long time ago).
if a shop owner was getting robbed and i couldn't stop it, i would advise them to move somewhere else. i think that's the smartest thing to do. i don't see anything wrong with moving some place that has what you want.
the state effectively disappeared in new orleans. no one to arrest you for breaking the law. no one to force you to pay sales tax and stuff like that. there are probably many other parts of the world associated with weak/no government that are very unstable rather than what you describe in your stuff.
i would just like to end by saying you and many other anarchists make very serious assumptions. i would rather you state the assumptions that you make rather than trying to be like "of course, things will turn out great"
1. you assume perfect competition with many firms. there's no reason for this to happen. in fact, there are very few industries that run under perfect competition.
2. you assume monopolies can't form. you assume microsoft(kind of), at&t, standard oil, etc can't form. or you argue that they are coercive monopolies that only form because of the government. that isn't true. government had nothing to do with protecting their monopolies. in fact, it was the government that trustbusted them.
3. you assume that there is an incentive against collusion and mergers. i don't there is.
4. you assume that demand creates supply. i think we went over this. i really don't think is true.
On March 19 2008 13:12 geometryb wrote: just in case you forgot how our government works, the people elect congressmen every 2 years, senators 6, president 4, not sure about governors and mayors. anyways, if the constituents do not like the laws their elected official passed or the things they did, then he would not be reelected. he would not stay in power. the system tries to align the will of the people with what that of the elected official. i don't know if you really believe what you said, but the iraq war happened because most of the country was willing to go to war during that time, not because they wanted to give haliburton contracts.
The Iraq war happened because Bush lied about the intelligence he received. And I never said that we went to war because of halliburton; but it is clear that they have profited enormously from this.
the president still needed the approval of congress and the people.
The president only needs to approval of *some* people to spend *everyone's* money. Do you not see how immoral that is? It's like if me you and Fred Flintstone were sitting around at McDonalds and we each had a meal in front of us. Then you decided to hold a vote, and you and Fred both vote to steal my french fries with me being the only dissenting vote. I complain saying that you guys can't just vote to take my food from me, and you reply "this is democracy, it's the fairest way."
perhaps you're right. maybe law would be better if it was a big popularity contest. but, i'm not so sure about that. the beauty of government backed courts is that (my knowledge is actually only limited to supreme court stuff) judges don't have to worry about reelection or anything and can make decisions without worrying about shit. the judges have to be congressionally approved so that they must've had a good history. and they have no means of enforcing their rulings. if was a very terrible ruling, then the executive branch would just be like no. but again, i don't think there's a right answer. i guess court rulings by popularity would work too (i think that's what they did in athens a long long time ago).
If a judge in a private court makes a clearly biased decision, the defendant can appeal it. Private courts, unlike government courts, don't have the right to make laws that use violence against innocent people. The role of private courts is not to make law, but to find it. Public courts are highly politicized. Since judges, through government, have claimed the authority to rule on matters they have no business ruling on, such as what someone does in their personal life that only affects them, or what consenting individuals choose to do without using violence against any unwilling third parties, judges inject their personal opinion about what others should or shouldn't be able to do and enforce it with violence.
The worst part about democracy though isn't the judges rulings, it's government officials ability to pass law. Morality is decided by taking a vote. If enough people decide activity x is immoral, then no one is allowed to do that otherwise they will be arrested. It's like my McDonalds example. Anything can be banned as long as the people in power vote on it.
if a shop owner was getting robbed and i couldn't stop it, i would advise them to move somewhere else. i think that's the smartest thing to do. i don't see anything wrong with moving some place that has what you want.
You're missing the point. It's not about whether moving is or isn't a good idea for them; it's about you and others using the 'love it or leave it' argument to try and portray me as a hypocrite, claiming that if I don't leave then I am consenting to it. If the shop owner refuses to move it doesn't mean he condones getting robbed.
the state effectively disappeared in new orleans. no one to arrest you for breaking the law. no one to force you to pay sales tax and stuff like that.
In New Orleans, security was impossible to manage because everything was flooded and infastructure was crippled. Neither private nor public security is going to be effective in such a situation.
there are probably many other parts of the world associated with weak/no government that are very unstable rather than what you describe in your stuff.
Great argument.
i would just like to end by saying you and many other anarchists make very serious assumptions. i would rather you state the assumptions that you make rather than trying to be like "of course, things will turn out great"
Obviously we're making assumptions, you can't mathematically prove that anarchism will work.
1. you assume perfect competition with many firms. there's no reason for this to happen. in fact, there are very few industries that run under perfect competition.
I did? Where did I assume perfect competition?
2. you assume monopolies can't form. you assume microsoft(kind of), at&t, standard oil, etc can't form. or you argue that they are coercive monopolies that only form because of the government. that isn't true. government had nothing to do with protecting their monopolies. in fact, it was the government that trustbusted them.
Wrong again. I never assumed they can't form. I said they would be unlikely to form, and I also said that if they did it would be because no other firm can provide a better product at a better price.
3. you assume that there is an incentive against collusion and mergers. i don't there is.
Mergers, no. Collusion, yes; any new firm could come along and make a killing by selling the same product at a lower price than agreed upon by the colluders.
4. you assume that demand creates supply. i think we went over this. i really don't think is true.
No, I said that supply exists independently of demand but in order for the good to actually be produced, there must be demand for it. A good is not going to be supplied if there's no demand for it- there would be no profit to be made. A good will only be supplied if there is demand for it. The more demand, the more of the good produced. What do you think causes goods to be produced if not demand for them?
i'm done.
That's a shame, I was hoping you would finally get to my point about why it makes sense to give one small group of people the power to strip freedom from the entire population, or if you could address my morality argument about how you can justify extortion at gun point.
I don't know if you've been watching any of the videos I'm posting, but here is an important one that highlights one of the most basic flaws of democracy, and also how democracy hurts the poor. It's shorter than most of the others too: Helping the Poor: Analyzing a Banana Republic
On March 20 2008 01:54 Heggie wrote: Captain Murphy, presumably before there was a point before the rise of modern civilisation where mankind lived in a state of anarchy?
From this state, governments have arisen.
What reason do you have to believe that this process would not occur again, and instead the result would be magical-an-cap-happy-land?
This has been addressed numerous times throughout the thread.
EPT
( no offence but i dont like your ideas )
). 
