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People don't really care about people they don't even know the names of. De Beers funded African wars by buying conflict diamonds, did the wealthy care enough to stop buying their shiny status symbols? Trafigura was responsible for dumping toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, western outrage seemed oddly muted. Do you care about the high suicide rate of people working in the Foxconn factory or are you more interested in cheap electronics?
DeBeers is undeniably in bed with governments. I understand that's not your point; it's that rich people still buy diamonds regardless. But again, I never said that my argument against evil companies arising in an ancap society was only contingent on managing to organise a peaceful boycott against them. If that's the only power we would have against coercion then we're probably fucked, but I'm not a pacifist. So, in the same way that you want the government to use force in order to hold the members of these types of companies accountable for their actions, I want individuals and private agencies to do it. And fat chance for you anyway, since they're far more protected by governments than actually held accountable by them.
I only said that a boycott can be a factor, and especially so in this one example where whole swathes of people are dying down a mere river and nobody seems to give a crap for some reason? Even when they know the company is causing it, people still don't give a crap? Who are these people? And if they don't know then how does a government anyway? Is government the only entity that can perform an investigation? A boycott would undoubtedly happen in this scenario. So I do understand the point you're making with DeBeers, etc, but it has nothing to do with the specific hypothetical situation that was brought up, which was the context of my boycott statement.
Just because one voluntary solution might not work in every possible given circumstance isn't really an argument against voluntarism. And it's not really an argument in favour of government either, where a one-size fits all solution to problems is always imposed regardless of whether there are better solutions under certain sets of circumstances. Markets lead to a multiplicity of solutions.
Foxconn thing I read was a myth anyway? Dodgy statistics? Why do people agree to work for Foxconn if it's so damn bad that it literally drives them to suicide? Makes no sense. I mean, wouldn't it be easy for another company to simply NOT drive their employees to suicide and gobble up all the labour force?
The Swiss militia is funded by taxation and maintains its numbers via conscription.
Do you honestly believe I said that Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because IT was a peaceful ancap society? Of course not. I know you don't actually think that's what I said, so come on man. Forcing people to into armies and to forcing people to keep guns is not the only reason that people will have guns. I'm sure most people would keep guns voluntarily in an ancap society. So the same point still applies.
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On August 29 2010 20:10 Jameser wrote:
because it only takes 1 instance for an apple to turn bad, while it takes many bad apples for a government body to do wrong
if the risk of an apple going bad is less than 50% (it is much less) and you need a majority to make decisions, then most (all) decisions made by 2 or more people will be good, and the freedom for bad apples to do what they want is removed from them, which (you can argue) is wrong.
anarcho-capitalism alternative:
each apple decides whether it wants to go bad or not, which (you can argue) is their right, however, the decisions made by those bad apples affect the other apples (to their detriment)
in the end the power balance lies with the majority. and they don't want to be affected by bad apples
Market institutions follow the logic of rational entities trying to act in their own best interest. People trying to act in the best interest of themselves and their loved ones, and voluntarily associating with others that are trying to do the same, are usually able to create a decently attractive society. The reason for that has to do with supply and demand, price theory, and all kinds of mechanisms that get people to act efficiently.
Those mechanisms do not always work. There are cases where people trying to act in their own best interest and voluntarily associating do not cause an attractive result. Such cases are called market failures. In the areas where market failures are common, the case for government regulation is the strongest. For example, people theorize that people would not take good care of the environment without regulation.
However, I don't think it's true that the government necessarily produces an attractive result. Government institutions, just like market institutions, follow the logic of rational entities trying to act in their own best interest. A government institution might completely waste a part of its budget that it doesn't need, because it worries that if it doesn't spend all of its budget, it won't get as much money next year, when it does need it. This is one of the reasons government spending rarely, if ever, shrinks, and instead increases every year.
There is a bigger problem with democracy. Even if governments were to efficiently act out the preferences expressed by the majority through their votes, people might not vote in their best interest. My friends and colleagues generally do not spend much time and effort deciding their vote. They tend to vote for the most charismatic politician, or vote for the party they have been voting for all their lives. From what I can see, a completely insignificant percentage of people actually makes an in-depth decision weighing pros and cons of voting for various politicians.
You might say that this is not democracy's fault but a fault of the population. I think that's a cop-out. With perfect people, it doesn't matter if we choose anarcho-capitalism, government institutions, or whatever institutions. Perfect people will make perfect choices and we'll have a perfect society.
It is more useful trying to figure out WHY people don't put as much effort into their votes as they do into other decisions. I think it's because people have learned that who you vote for doesn't really matter. If you choose to buy a different house, or a different car, that decision has a lot of effect on your life. If you choose to vote democratic instead of republican, how much really improves for you? You are just one vote out of millions.
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On August 29 2010 21:13 Phrujbaz wrote:
... a big monopoly that cuts prices below the market level is losing money 100 times as fast as the competitor he's trying to force out.
That's not true. A big monopoly can cut prices in some regions where competitor start ups have happened and keep the prices high everywhere else. They can also stock capital in a way that no competitor can which will keep them alive longer in a price battle.
There are lots of other reasons why the market its self will not solve monopolies and always strives to create more of them. If one company owns all the infrastructure he can keep the competitors from using it. The competitor would them have to create his own set of infrastructure which in some cases would be infeasible. Why would anyone want to use the telecom, roads or railways from a company that only covers a fraction of the country when the other company covers all of it. How would a company make enough capital to create a network of country wide infrastructure in order to compete? Even if he was able to you would then have one redundant set of infrastructure. Imagine two railway systems covering the entire country. Reeks of inefficiency.
An even worse example is when the monopoly is based on natural resources. What if one company buys up all the other oil companies in the world or all the iron mines. What is the competitor going to do then? Summon oil and iron out of thin air?
You don't even need one company owning everything for a situation like that to happen. In a system where no one is controlling the companies they will cooperate whenever possible. It is far more profitable for them to agree to keep prices high if there are only a few competitors. There is no reason for them to compete if no one forces them to.
Competition in completely free capitalism is just a dream. If you don't have a government there to keep the corporations in check they will just rape the economy and the population. I am in no way a statist but capitalism with no checks and balances is far worse than government. The main reason for government to exist is to protect the population from the corporations. If we want to get rid of government (I'm not sure we would want to) we have to get rid of corporations first.
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DrainX, you make a lot of good arguments. Let me try to discuss your theoretical points and the discuss some history.
There are three kinds of monopoly. Natural monopoly, artificial monopoly, and state monopoly.
Increasing the size of a firm has two effects. One, it can use economies of scale to produce more efficiently. I don't think this needs any explanation. Two, it becomes a lot harder to administer it. The further removed the guys at the top are from what actually happens at the bottom, the easier it is to make disastrous decisions. A lot of very large firms try to split up into multiple, basically autonomous units to try and mitigate this problem, but it doesn't help much.
You might imagine that a firm would increase to some optimum point, where becoming even larger doesn't give you much added efficiency, but does make the firm a lot harder to administer. A natural monopoly arises when this optimum point is a firm that controls almost all of the market. There do exist natural monopolies. Google is an example. For a search engine goes: the bigger you are the more efficiently you can work. The more data you have to tune your algorithms, etc.
Natural monopolies have some leeway to try and screw customers over, but not too much. Google controls almost all of the search engine market, but what would happen if it doubled the amount of ads on the search engine and the ads became obnoxious? For some percentage of people, that would be a reason to use bing or yahoo, or various of the smaller, in comparison crappy search engines. Google's market share might drop from almost all of the market to 60%, and the more they make their product suck, the more people will flee to other search engines, which will suddenly be able to use economies of scale to bring their product up to the quality google used to have. For Google to maintain its monopoly, it needs to keep ads to a level that is as profitable as possible but not obnoxious, limiting its ability to screw us over.
Natural monopolies can raise prices a little bit, but in general that won't be that worrisome.
What you are worried about is an artificial monopoly. An artificial monopoly is where multiple firms of optimum size fuse to one giant firm to try and control the market and raise prices. First of all, because the size is now above optimum, this new firm will produce less efficiently. Second, because they tried to control the market, so they could raise their profits, they raise their prices. In effect, what used to be a good product at a reasonable price is now a product with a price that's way above market level.
At this point, a competitor can step in, produce efficiently, keep prices at market level and put the giant out of business. If there need to be made significant up-front investments, the entrepreneur can work together with some large customers of the monopoly, to ask if they want to invest in the new firm. It will be in the interest of those customers to agree, so he will be able to raise money for the significant up-front investment.
In history, where artificial monopolies have been tried, they always failed miserably. US Steel, Standard oil, etc, are all examples of artificial monopolies that eventually got caught up by the competition. Even in the cases where they succeeded in controlling the market, they were often less profitable than the original non-monopolistic before-the-fusion firms, pissing off stakeholders that eventually would break them apart.
The most effectively monopoly in history, the one that has been able to maintain itself across multiple years, has been the state monopoly. In fact, almost any monopoly that you see today is supported by the state either indirectly through patent laws, or directly through subsidies or regulation that give the monopoly a competitive advantage.
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OP's point about cops being men and therefore as likely to be violent are flawed. Police officers are motivated by salaries which are paid by governing bodies. You can't simply discount violence. That's absurd.
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On August 29 2010 17:25 Kishkumen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 17:02 dvide wrote:On August 29 2010 16:51 Kishkumen wrote:
Go talk to a non-crazy economist about your "theories" and report back with your findings. Even the Austrian school thinks you need some sort of government supporting an economy. Any actual arguments or just empty appeals to authority and sanity? You caught me being lazy. I just didn't want to write a long post arguing with something that few people who know much about economics would support. There are so many problems with not having a government to regulate an economy. Lack of information, collusion, externalities, public goods, human irrationality, fraud, lack of a judicial system to arbitrate disputes, intellectual property, etc. are all major issues that non-regulated economies do a terrible job of compensating for. Any one of those is reason enough to relegate anarcho-capitalism to the intellectual garbage bin.
Oh, your post just reminded me of a huge flaw in some of the OP's retorts up until now. He often mentioned the idea of "suing" in AC... but how does this come about? Aren't courts of law governing bodies?
OP also mentions how we're "coerced" by the government into giving taxes and such... but didn't we agree to such a system in the first place when we created governments and allowed payments for defenses and such back in the middle ages?
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On August 29 2010 22:55 ghrur wrote:
OP also mentions how we're "coerced" by the government into giving taxes and such... but didn't we agree to such a system in the first place when we created governments and allowed payments for defenses and such back in the middle ages?
I did not agree to it. Did you?
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On August 29 2010 22:55 ghrur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 17:25 Kishkumen wrote:On August 29 2010 17:02 dvide wrote:On August 29 2010 16:51 Kishkumen wrote:
Go talk to a non-crazy economist about your "theories" and report back with your findings. Even the Austrian school thinks you need some sort of government supporting an economy. Any actual arguments or just empty appeals to authority and sanity? You caught me being lazy. I just didn't want to write a long post arguing with something that few people who know much about economics would support. There are so many problems with not having a government to regulate an economy. Lack of information, collusion, externalities, public goods, human irrationality, fraud, lack of a judicial system to arbitrate disputes, intellectual property, etc. are all major issues that non-regulated economies do a terrible job of compensating for. Any one of those is reason enough to relegate anarcho-capitalism to the intellectual garbage bin. Oh, your post just reminded me of a huge flaw in some of the OP's retorts up until now. He often mentioned the idea of "suing" in AC... but how does this come about? Aren't courts of law governing bodies? OP also mentions how we're "coerced" by the government into giving taxes and such... but didn't we agree to such a system in the first place when we created governments and allowed payments for defenses and such back in the middle ages?
Private courts, man.
(LOL)
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On August 29 2010 21:30 dvide wrote:Show nested quote +The Swiss militia is funded by taxation and maintains its numbers via conscription. Do you honestly believe I said that Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because IT was a peaceful ancap society? Of course not. I know you don't actually think that's what I said, so come on man. Forcing people to into armies and to forcing people to keep guns is not the only reason that people will have guns. I'm sure most people would keep guns voluntarily in an ancap society. So the same point still applies.
Of course not. Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because its like invading afghanistan before 9/11. There was nothing there that Hitler wanted (basically, it wasn't on the road to anywhere and had no oil) and the mountains make it a pain in the ass to conquer and hold. I don't think people really appreciate how much of a difference terrain makes to the difficulty of holding a place after the standing army is defeated.
I'm just making the point and I believe it to be the correct one, that a "peaceful ancap society" has absolutely no chance against the army of a state (or quasi-state). The state can simply direct resources towards war much, much better than an ancap society and generally, if you will pardon the pun, better resourced armies win.
As a result, ancap cannot exist as anything other than a transitory period between one state and another.
On August 29 2010 22:57 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 22:55 ghrur wrote:
OP also mentions how we're "coerced" by the government into giving taxes and such... but didn't we agree to such a system in the first place when we created governments and allowed payments for defenses and such back in the middle ages? I did not agree to it. Did you?
You did, by not renouncing your citizenship and emigrating when you reached age of majority.
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I didn't say they won't. I said you don't know that they will. They will tend to buy those services that best satisfy their ends. Not I nor you can tell what the specifics are, without background or context, and without the government in reality allowing such a thing to occur. We'll only know for sure how it works when it's go-time. I'm presenting you ideas on how it could work, but it is not my obligation to predict how it will, nor even that it will "work" in some arbitrary standard. The slave didn't have to show the whitey where would he be working at to be freed. The founding father didn't have to tell everyone how a minarchy would work as opposed to a monarchy. No, the first step is to recognize what now exists is coercion. It doesn't matter what is done next, if you know that what's going on now is absolutely wrong and subpar to what people themselves want to do.
In fact, if I could show to you every single answer, it would be more of an argument in favor of a flavor of statism, as I the ultimate central planner, was able to devise the exact plans in which society can best be ran. The truth of the matter is that I don't, the central planners don't either. The ones who know best is Everyone, free to chase their own ends. And it just so happens that humans are empathetic enough to cooperate without the need of coercion. It is unnecessary at this point; and that's my point.
Yes, I do know they will, because human history has shown people with common interests settle together in EVERY SINGLE TIME WITH EXCEPTION.
Can you find a reason why this precedent would stop in ancap?
You don't know that they inevitably conflict, as for the rest, so what?
By conflict I don't mean (necessarily) physical confrontation. By conflict I mean that these values are inherently going to be incompatible with each other.
Strawman, and again, lack of perspective. Even with different laws, people can still respect each other to the degree that conflict is unnecessary. You have your house and I have mine, as long as you leave me alone, what evil can you do to me? You talk like different people living to each other necessarily makes them incompatible and want to force one another to do things. That's ridiculous, be more specific on the incentives there are for one to do so, and we can actually debate something useful like arbitrage, property contracts, dispute resolutions, etc. All I'm saying is if you have 12 houses on a block, and their are two sets of drastically different governing rules on each, 6 for one and 6 for the other, humans would inherently gravitate towards each side of the block having one rules. On a large scale this leads to the formation of states within an ancap. Show nested quote +
Also the lack of perspective again, is not comparing your scenario in a statist world vis-a-vis. What's there stopping people wanting to kill one another in the state? Public Police? Laws? And why do you feel those things don't exist in ancap...?
Thats not what I'm saying at all lol. [quite] Dissidents are marginalized. Okay. What kind of dissidents do you picture in ancap, as opposed to statism? Tax avoiders? well, there are no taxes in ancap, so that's one less. Black marketeers? no such thing in the free market. Drug dealers and users? drugs aren't illegal as much as rat poison isn't. Victimless crime offenders? there is no dispute to settle in a victimless crime, so no crime is committed. Prostitutes and pimps? Consensual sex isn't illegal. So I say, if you're worried about people being picked at by PDAs, I'd say you should be more worried about the people that are unjustly jailed TODAY all over the world. If you wanted to be any consistent that is. If you just want to cling to your believes and arguments from ignorance, then that's fine too, but at least be honest that you have no clue.
Except laws DO exist in an Ancap. They're just private. I mean, ok, you can call them "rules" if you want, but they're functionally just private applied sets of laws. And as private property holders organize and make macrostates or microstates, certain common values are going to marginalize people who do not hold them.
You seemed to have missed the gist of my argument.
When you put two groups of people with opposing values together...they may not fight...they may not physically conflict. But you can bet that these people will self segregate so they hang with people with similar values. On a large scale, this is what makes communities, and eventually, this is what makes states.
For example.
Your not going to have cities where you have 6 "no Muslim" properties interspersed within 6 "muslim allowed" properties. No, these six properties will be close to each other. Maybe not with no exception, there are always anomalies, but in a city of millions, people with common values will seek to cooperate with each other.
@Divide
Why would there be a block with an explicit murder and rape allowed rule. And if it there were for some strange reason, would people not defend themselves from murder and rape regardless of some stupid, arbitrary nonsense rule?
It was just an example, not entirely serious. The point is people would have social pressures to make their laws vaguely conform. Which some would take as why the system would work, but thats just the thing, the "system working" is indistinguishable from a libertarian government with ez immigration laws.
Yes. 10 security companies enforcing 10 different sets of arbitrary bullshit laws on one block would be chaos. But why would this happen?
Thats my entire point. IT WON'T HAPPEN, because it would be a shit place to live and these 10 people would find sub communities with people with similar laws/values.
Ok, but that's not a bunch of little states. A state has the supposed authority to initiate force in a given geographical area (in order to supposedly solve social problems like rape).
Huh? So would these substates. As people with common interests will stick together, you get vast patches of land with unilateral law.
Defensive force is not the initiation of coercion; it is a response to it. So therefore security companies are not states.
um...ok. So you're saying they cannot wage war? Yes they can. Now that we have substates revolving around a single security corporation and common interests, whats to stop us from paying our security companies to say, "overtextend their boundaries" into another areas jurisdiction? And sure, they can fight back, but that by definition, is war.
Cooperation being a euphemism for violence? Cooperation to me conjures up images of peaceful people working together, where as apparently you think human slaves being beaten to build pyramids constitutes cooperation too.
By definition, it is. I understand that sentimentally, you don't like that, and I agree, its "wrong", but it still a form of cooperation.
And its not the only form of cooperation fyi.
Your boss tells you what to do. You have little say in following that order.
Would states emerge if there is an inter-subjective consensus that it is not legitimate to initiate coercion in any circumstance?
Yes, because not everyone shares the same definition of coercion. Is it coercion if its voluntary? It still is voluntary. Its "If you want to use these advantages WE have built for you, with tax money, YOU pay us tax, otherwise, gtfo". Nobody is going to bother you for tax money in a random island in the middle of the pacific, or in a forest somewhere.
Defensive agencies are no longer defensive agencies if they subsidise rape (or collect taxes to fund themselves), and even then they wouldn't necessarily be states because people wouldn't automatically think they have any legitimacy to do that. But there wouldn't be fucking neighbourhoods where rape is deemed ok, and other neighbourhoods where rape is not. That's just retarded. We're talking about defence agencies, not aggressive rape agencies.
Once again I'm using extremes. We could use non-extremes like where "religion isn't ok", etc.
On August 29 2010 23:02 leve15 wrote:
Private courts, man. LOL
But do I go to my court or your court?
On August 29 2010 21:20 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
capitalism is doomed to failure because capitalism requires continual growth yet there is a set amount of resources on earth
Which just means capitalism encourages humans to get the fuck off this rock.
Good plan imo.
On August 29 2010 16:21 leve15 wrote:
Russians didn't become communists because they're lazy, they became communists because living in Russia is hard, and they had to rely on each other for survival.
Through hardship, a selfish attitude yields little sympathy.
And through prosperity, selfish attitudes are born.
Armchair economists are hilarious. Go outside. Meet people. And maybe then you'll understand for yourself why Anarcho-capitalism doesn't work.
I like this post.
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On August 29 2010 21:32 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 20:10 Jameser wrote:
because it only takes 1 instance for an apple to turn bad, while it takes many bad apples for a government body to do wrong
if the risk of an apple going bad is less than 50% (it is much less) and you need a majority to make decisions, then most (all) decisions made by 2 or more people will be good, and the freedom for bad apples to do what they want is removed from them, which (you can argue) is wrong.
anarcho-capitalism alternative:
each apple decides whether it wants to go bad or not, which (you can argue) is their right, however, the decisions made by those bad apples affect the other apples (to their detriment)
in the end the power balance lies with the majority. and they don't want to be affected by bad apples Market institutions follow the logic of rational entities trying to act in their own best interest. People trying to act in the best interest of themselves and their loved ones, and voluntarily associating with others that are trying to do the same, are usually able to create a decently attractive society. The reason for that has to do with supply and demand, price theory, and all kinds of mechanisms that get people to act efficiently.
the prerequisite for these people to associate freely with like-minded individuals is that there has not formed another rogue government (otherwise known as the maffia), employing 'divide and conquer' for example, for their own personal gains and interests; this can only be achieved with a police force, with a police force comes the need to regulate and establish what laws and rules need to be enforced, which has to be decided by someone (the government)
in an anarcho-capitalistic society a 'mercenary police force' would have it in their best interest for there to exist a reason for their continued operation (crime) which in turn leads to problems of corruption etc etc. so a body of interests (a government) is needed that can agree to pay the police force a fix sum each payday.
why anarcho-capitalism does not work
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However, I don't think it's true that the government necessarily produces an attractive result. Government institutions, just like market institutions, follow the logic of rational entities trying to act in their own best interest. A government institution might completely waste a part of its budget that it doesn't need, because it worries that if it doesn't spend all of its budget, it won't get as much money next year, when it does need it. This is one of the reasons government spending rarely, if ever, shrinks, and instead increases every year.
I would like to see reported instances of this and I don't know how this would even work in practice, I don't know how things work in other countries but in my country the budget of the government is open for review by the opposition and other agencies, 'filling out' empty room like this would clearly leave a vulnerability in a debate
imagine an electorial debate where one side says
"well you spent half your budget on icecream trucks this entire year, we can promise to cut taxes in favour of buying icecream trucks if we get elected"
the example is ridiculous but you get my drift
it is in the government's best interest to spend the tax money wisely so that they can justify their tax rates to the public
There is a bigger problem with democracy. Even if governments were to efficiently act out the preferences expressed by the majority through their votes, people might not vote in their best interest. My friends and colleagues generally do not spend much time and effort deciding their vote. They tend to vote for the most charismatic politician, or vote for the party they have been voting for all their lives. From what I can see, a completely insignificant percentage of people actually makes an in-depth decision weighing pros and cons of voting for various politicians.
You might say that this is not democracy's fault but a fault of the population. I think that's a cop-out. With perfect people, it doesn't matter if we choose anarcho-capitalism, government institutions, or whatever institutions. Perfect people will make perfect choices and we'll have a perfect society.
It is more useful trying to figure out WHY people don't put as much effort into their votes as they do into other decisions. I think it's because people have learned that who you vote for doesn't really matter. If you choose to buy a different house, or a different car, that decision has a lot of effect on your life. If you choose to vote democratic instead of republican, how much really improves for you? You are just one vote out of millions.
that the voter base in many democracies is becoming near-apathetic in regard to politics is in my opinion (and as you point out) due to the fact that their vote counts for so little in the mass of votes.
you see much more involvement from voters in smaller population countries (like my own) while you see disinterest in larger countries (like the US) and this is a known problem I think.
in the states they have tried to solve it by dividing the country into smaller states, the only problem with this is that the purpouse of these states seems to have been denied as the federal government piece by piece has claimed greater and greater power, making the state-elections uninteresting to the voters
(media and press also has blame in this; they hype presidential elections to bolster national identity and patriotism/pride while drawing attention away form the elctions that have most impact on the individual voter)
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On August 30 2010 01:10 Jameser wrote:
the prerequisite for these people to associate freely with like-minded individuals is that there has not formed another rogue government (otherwise known as the maffia), employing 'divide and conquer' for example, for their own personal gains and interests; this can only be achieved with a police force, with a police force comes the need to regulate and establish what laws and rules need to be enforced, which has to be decided by someone (the government)
In anarcho-capitalism, multiple, competing private private agencies negotiate law amongst themselves. It's unreasonable to think that an agency stealing from its customers (as the Mafia does) would have very many customers: those it had would soon flee to other protection agencies, which would not allow the thieves to continue. The protection agencies will compete on how well they protect you, price, and the deals they have negotiated with other protection agencies. The last one is important because that's effectively the law you live under.
in an anarcho-capitalistic society a 'mercenary police force' would have it in their best interest for there to exist a reason for their continued operation (crime) which in turn leads to problems of corruption etc etc. so a body of interests (a government) is needed that can agree to pay the police force a fix sum each payday.
That's like saying a baker has it in his best interest for people to be hungry, so he will make bread that doesn't feed people properly. It doesn't work that way in the market for food, and there is no reason to expect things to work that way in the market for protection. Competition will make protection agencies offer high quality protection or make them lose their customers to agencies that do.
I would like to see reported instances of this and I don't know how this would even work in practice, I don't know how things work in other countries but in my country the budget of the government is open for review by the opposition and other agencies, 'filling out' empty room like this would clearly leave a vulnerability in a debate
imagine an electorial debate where one side says
"well you spent half your budget on icecream trucks this entire year, we can promise to cut taxes in favour of buying icecream trucks if we get elected"
the example is ridiculous but you get my drift
it is in the government's best interest to spend the tax money wisely so that they can justify their tax rates to the public
There is no second government to spend tax money more efficiently than the first. There is no way for people to stop paying and find some alternative way of doing things on their own. That means that normal market pressures to create efficient spending practices are absent - with predictable consequences. Yes, politicians have their own internal logic to control spending, but it does not seem to work as well. For example, the opposition offering to reduce spending and reduce tax rates does not seem to be very common. The general theme is that there is never enough money, and the opposition simply wants to give a different use to it.
that the voter base in many democracies is becoming near-apathetic in regard to politics is in my opinion (and as you point out) due to the fact that their vote counts for so little in the mass of votes.
you see much more involvement from voters in smaller population countries (like my own) while you see disinterest in larger countries (like the US) and this is a known problem I think.
in the states they have tried to solve it by dividing the country into smaller states, the only problem with this is that the purpouse of these states seems to have been denied as the federal government piece by piece has claimed greater and greater power, making the state-elections uninteresting to the voters
(media and press also has blame in this; they hype presidential elections to bolster national identity and patriotism/pride while drawing attention away form the elctions that have most impact on the individual voter)
Agreed. There is hardly any nation with a small enough population for democracy to work well, though. The closest you can get is "less bad".
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On August 30 2010 03:35 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 01:10 Jameser wrote:
the prerequisite for these people to associate freely with like-minded individuals is that there has not formed another rogue government (otherwise known as the maffia), employing 'divide and conquer' for example, for their own personal gains and interests; this can only be achieved with a police force, with a police force comes the need to regulate and establish what laws and rules need to be enforced, which has to be decided by someone (the government) In anarcho-capitalism, multiple, competing private private agencies negotiate law amongst themselves. It's unreasonable to think that an agency stealing from its customers (as the Mafia does) would have very many customers: those it had would soon flee to other protection agencies, which would not allow the thieves to continue. The protection agencies will compete on how well they protect you, price, and the deals they have negotiated with other protection agencies. The last one is important because that's effectively the law you live under. if this were true, how do you explain the existance of maffias? obviously the maffia would not conduct itself in a way that short-circuits it's operation, that would be defeating the purpose of forming the crime syndicate in the first place...
Show nested quote +
in an anarcho-capitalistic society a 'mercenary police force' would have it in their best interest for there to exist a reason for their continued operation (crime) which in turn leads to problems of corruption etc etc. so a body of interests (a government) is needed that can agree to pay the police force a fix sum each payday.
That's like saying a baker has it in his best interest for people to be hungry, so he will make bread that doesn't feed people properly. It doesn't work that way in the market for food, and there is no reason to expect things to work that way in the market for protection. Competition will make protection agencies offer high quality protection or make them lose their customers to agencies that do.
Show nested quote +I would like to see reported instances of this and I don't know how this would even work in practice, I don't know how things work in other countries but in my country the budget of the government is open for review by the opposition and other agencies, 'filling out' empty room like this would clearly leave a vulnerability in a debate
imagine an electorial debate where one side says
"well you spent half your budget on icecream trucks this entire year, we can promise to cut taxes in favour of buying icecream trucks if we get elected"
the example is ridiculous but you get my drift
it is in the government's best interest to spend the tax money wisely so that they can justify their tax rates to the public There is no second government to spend tax money more efficiently than the first. There is no way for people to stop paying and find some alternative way of doing things on their own. That means that normal market pressures to create efficient spending practices are absent - with predictable consequences. Yes, politicians have their own internal logic to control spending, but it does not seem to work as well. For example, the opposition offering to reduce spending and reduce tax rates does not seem to be very common. The general theme is that there is never enough money, and the opposition simply wants to give a different use to it.
well I simply don't agree with that, sweden is currently going through an election and there are plenty of promises for tax cuts, also in the states it seems like republicans do nothing but promise tax cuts
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On August 29 2010 17:55 adrenaline.CA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 16:34 Yurebis wrote:On August 29 2010 15:27 adrenaline.CA wrote:On August 29 2010 15:24 Thereisnosaurus wrote:
TL,DR: works in theory, if certain assumptions are made, and there are definite ways to reach a place where they can be made, but at this time, in this environment, any attempt to switch to an AC system would fail to improve anything, if not make things worse. Methodological individualism is an incredibly terrible assumption because people aren't even born that way. Such an assumption literally ignores all the empirical evidence in social science for the sake of philosophy. Okay, now shit just got personal. Are you serious? Really? The individual's preferences and actions are irrelevant for you? All it matters is macro? And I'm the one who's assuming too much? I think you're the one completely abstracting a concept that you don't understand at it's most basic levels. You're trying to tell how planets will behave in a solar system without understanding how the atom behaves. Trying to build a house with no bricks. Trying to tell what a forest without the trees. Aaaaabsurd. Meh I really don't care what you say anymore, and you don't care what I say. Can you shut up or do I have to shut up first? I really don't care at this point. lol wow. Do you understand any philosophy whatsoever? Just because you're hardcore individualist doesn't mean you have to ignore the very existence of collectivism or anything outside of your atomistic world. Right now your argument for anarcho-capitalism is like arguing that a 6-pool zergling build is optimal economic behaviour, when it is clearly not. Sure it is "possible", but it's not exactly smart, efficient, or equitable. By your own stupidity, we would all be studying physics instead of chemistry, biology, computer science, or anything of "higher order", because you think everything can be broken down into the lowest denomination of "individuals". Your worship of individualism is short-sighted, and your personal insults only show how emotional you get on this subject matter, detracting from your already weak rational arguments to begin with.
See my other thread where I tried to refute collectivism.
Most people realized there isn't such a thing as a "common good", because only individuals can feel "good". Collectivism is a misnomer for what the individual expects from and to others.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121813
This of course ties in with the idea that no single central planning entity can ever be as efficient as multiple, independent acting entities, even with all the power in the world.
Also, on starcraft analogies, I can't think of a way to represent the calculation problem, but it would be like someone trying to win without looking at the resource count. The statist could have all the money in the world, but he doesn't know how much he can or should tax because he doesn't react to market demand; he doesn't know how many real resources there are because he ignores the price mechanisms, and his money may run out before he starts a big project; his money may be stockpilling, what's otherwise just another form of misuse (unless the saving has an intent; but the state never saves anyway so... yeah). In any case, it's a weak analogy because it's by the time the capital is extorted that it becomes misused; everything else is secondary and can't give back to the extorted exactly that which he would have bought or done with it. Coercion is irrevesible, even if it can be restitution (which almost never is. Lol@tax returns. "I stole thousands of dollars from you. Here, have a few hundred back. I'm so nice!")
Anyway, your particular example of 6 pool would be best represented not by the thousands of entrepreneurs attempting their own builds and strategies - those are more akin to the thousands of players figuring out optimal ways to solve a problem - the opponent's build and strategy. The one-size-fits-all-build-that-I-try-every-time, is very very more analogous to the monopolistic central planner. It takes great dishonesty in your part to switch sides, like the central planner is the smart guy who is diverse and openly competes with everyone, and the entrepreneur is the old timer, stale dumbass who would only 6 pool every game. No sir, the state is exactly the one who does the same thing every game: Coercion. That's all. That's his build. He coerces to stay in power; coerces to collect funds; coerces to regulate people's business; coerces to give his friends subsidies and monopolies; coerces to destroy his enemies, including non-lobbying companies if the lobbyists pay him enough; coerces the world and back. That is his only build.
Your worship of collective coercion is short-sighted, I can see both the forest for the trees, and the trees for the forest. You my friend, only sees a blob of green. And I was mad yesterday. Spending hours after midnight trying to knock some sense into collectivists-that-disregard-even-themselves-yet-not-quite-because-they're-still-individuals and anti-monopolists-yet-not-anti-biggest-monopoly-of-all? It gets to you.
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On August 29 2010 18:01 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
I mean really the argument here isn't that it can't work but that it would suck if it did work. You're acting like all of these cheap goods and services come without having a bunch of slaves whose lives suck balls.
Cheap goods and services are better for everyone. Higher-than-market wages only benefit the laborer of a product or service at the cost of every consumer. Cheaper goods and services signal better efficiency, less cost-per-unit, and higher standards of living. Higher wages mean higher costs-per-product.
You've seen the worker side of the story, now, how about you consider every other side, and what happens to every other entity in the market? When the worker works for less or more, what's happening? When the entrepreneur sells for less or more, what's happening? When the consumer buys for less or more, what's happening?
Think a little.
When the government raises barriers of entry, what's happening? When the government punishes entrepreneurship, what's happening? When the government prohibits lower-than-x-rate wages, what's happening?
Think some more.
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On August 29 2010 18:02 adrenaline.CA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 17:59 dvide wrote:Sure. Let's go with externalities. Say a company can turn a tremendous profit making a product, but at the price of everyone in a small town downriver from the company being killed by the pollution the manufacture of the product causes. In a society with no government, who stops this company from killing all the people downriver? Obviously this is an extreme example, but it illustrates the basic problem with not having a government to control somewhat for externalities.
And this is just one example from that long list of other problems. Who prevents the company? Well, how about the people down the river who are being killed for a start? Would they not want to protect themselves from being killed? How about the people up the river who have even a small amount of empathy for their fellow man, and who therefore wouldn't even buy the product from the evil killing company in the first place? You said it yourself, this is just an extreme scare scenario and has little basis in reality. Because the people don't have money to move, and everyone else in the world doesn't care, and still buys the product.Consumers up the river don't care, because they don't know (imperfect information). Politicians don't care, because the company can buy them out. You ask more questions than you give solutions, which is exactly the problem with anarcho-capitalism. People aren't going to boycott corporate bad behaviour, because people aren't aware about the problems, don't care about them, and want someone else will fix it. That's why we there's always government to clean up after corporate messes, like the BP oil spill in New Orleans. Imagine if there were no laws in place to require them to clean up their own mess. Do you think BP would willingly give up their own money if they weren't forced to for the environment?
Complete ignorance of catallactics. Don't act like you have a better solution when you don't. Yes, it may be that they were in horrible conditions of living, can't move, and are fighting every other day for food. But the reason why they take shitty jobs it's because it's BETTER for them, PERIOD. If it weren't for the employer OFFERING (NOT FORCING) them a job, they'd be back to their even more miserable lives. If someone makes the choice of working for someone, it's NOT exploitation, it CANT be. It can only be exploitation in the case of fraud, arguably invalid contracts, or threat of violence toward the employee. Which, if any of those happen, then the employer is obviously in the wrong. But that DOESNT happen because usually it's not WORTH the backslash that may come from doing such a thing. And there are plenty of subsistence people out there that they do want to work for less. They WANT to be given the chance to accumulate capital through harsh times, just like the US and Europe did. Thankfully when the government started involving then, it had been quite a few decades of hard work and increased standards of living already.
Again I refer to this http://mises.org/media/1160
The statist solution is to DISMANTLE those factories and sweatshops. Completely denying those people the VOLUNTARY OPPORTUNITY TO WORK IF THEY CHOSE TO. What happens then? They go back to subsistence farming, parents sell their children to child rape rings. Sure that's better, better a child getting raped all over the world than working at a factory. The state knows what's best, and only steals and denies us stuff for our own good. God bless regulations.
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On August 29 2010 18:10 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 07:38 Yurebis wrote:
Posit any reason why you think anarcho-capitalism can't work, and I'll try to answer.
I'll start saying that whatever you have against "human nature", cannot apply to anarcho-capitalism and not the state at the same time. If people cannot be trusted to behave non-violently the majority of the time, then the state cannot be trusted to behave just the same. A man with a badge is still a man. And I would argue, even more so, that an institution that gives full, monopolistic, coercive power to a man over the course of an election, is much more prone to lure the worst of man to office.
I will make little empirical arguments, but my premises are very agreeable on so don't worry. Okay also under anarcho-capitalism unchecked human nature is a lot worse than under, say, a representative democracy.
See OP.
There are man in the state, and there are sociopaths in the state as well. The state is like fire to the moth, power to those who want it. All they have to do is run a successful campaign, boom, they're in. As much valiant as the efforts of minarchism are, it still fails when sociopaths manage their way in, calculation problems and inefficiencies aside even.
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On August 29 2010 18:13 Kishkumen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 17:59 dvide wrote:Sure. Let's go with externalities. Say a company can turn a tremendous profit making a product, but at the price of everyone in a small town downriver from the company being killed by the pollution the manufacture of the product causes. In a society with no government, who stops this company from killing all the people downriver? Obviously this is an extreme example, but it illustrates the basic problem with not having a government to control somewhat for externalities.
And this is just one example from that long list of other problems. Who prevents the company? Well, how about the people down the river who are being killed for a start? Would they not want to protect themselves from being killed? How about the people up the river who have even a small amount of empathy for their fellow man, and who therefore wouldn't even buy the product from the evil killing company in the first place? You said it yourself, this is just an extreme scare scenario and has little basis in reality. History is not on your side. Plenty of companies have used negative externalities to their benefit while leaving those who are at the receiving end of those externalities to suffer. An anarcho-capitalistic society would be absolutely riddled with negative externalities. History has shown us that free markets cannot correct for externalities on their own. As much as you'd like to believe that in your perfect world people would be altruistic and care about where their products come from, the truth is that doesn't often happen in real life. Do you know where all your products come from? I certainly don't know where all of mine come from. And it's not like the people being affected by something can always stand up for themselves. If the company is making enough money off of their products, they can afford to boss around those who are being negatively affected by their actions.
Give me examples, and I'll see if the state helped, not stopped them, which is usually the case.
People don't understand that the state is the greatest producer of externalities. You want to drill some oil in the middle east? Don't have enough money to contract private militia? No problem, lobby the government at a few million, and you got a million dead Iraqi.
It is far far cheaper to use the apparatus of power in place, subsidized by the taxpayer, and the go-to-place for all the power of the land, than building your own army and getting dirty yourself.
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On August 29 2010 18:18 adrenaline.CA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:10 Yurebis wrote:On August 29 2010 17:23 DrainX wrote:Pure capitalism is a joke. It only leads to corruption, monopolies and stagnation. The biggest obstacle for peoples freedom and prosperity are large corporations, not government. Anarcho-capitalism would just take the power that is now in the hands of a somewhat accountable government and place it in the hands of Coprorations that are in no way accountable. It wouldn't really be Anarchism since we would still have leaders except now they were leaders of our large corporations. When monopolies are formed then there is no chance at all for us to vote for them. Before they have been formed our only chance to change who are in control of us is in how we use our money. i.e. the rich have more votes. The media would still be owned by the same corporations that we are voting for and the average Joe wouldn't have time to understand all the issues with all the corporations in the world. He would just buy what is cheapest for him. The majority would be driven into poverty and would essentially be wage-slave-labor for the upper class. Society would slowly drift towards something closer to an absolute dictatorship than anything else. The economy would crumble and crime, poverty, income inequality and bad health would skyrocket If you are searching for an anarchistic system that actually has some merit to it just take a look at Libertarian Socialism/Social Anarchism. Well I think you could learn a bit about monopolies, but I'm so tired of debating that point already... Just... try to picture how monopolies arise, and what keeps a new one from arising to compete with it. There's nothing. Unless the state raises barriers of entry, or imprisons anyone trying to compete, the monopoly isn't really a monopoly. As soon as it raises prices to any considerable degree, it becomes second best to any entrepreneur that can come in and undercut it. Either what the monopoly does is so efficient and inovative that it doesn't matter how much it charges - it deserves it. An inventor is a monopolist of his invention, does it mean he has an obligation to sell it for cheap? No, he sells it for whatever price he wants, and he has full rights to. If he did not have such rights, then no invention would be made that he can't profit off (at least the first batch yo). Or then if what it does it so trivial, anyone can come in and compete with it. In the former, you can't blame it, in the latter, you can overcome it. Non-coercive monopolies are a non-issue... Government is the greatest monop... aw fuck it why do I care Right, because mom-and-pop shops can compete with Walmart, even if Walmart forces suppliers to sell them at the lowest possible price by the bulk and puts all the other stores in the city out of business! These mom-and-pop shops just need to be more entrepreneurial, but right now they're just too stupid and can't ever be capitalist enough to compete with Walmart. And if people keep buying from Walmart, it's clearly because Walmart is so innovative and efficient, not big bullies!!! They're not abusing subsidies and cheap Chinese exports and unequal contracts at all!!!
Mom-and-pops can't compete with walmart for a simple reason: they're less efficient. Consumers GENERALLY want low prices - efficiency, and even if they DIDN'T, they could still go to mom-and-pops and buy there. MOM-AND-POPS ARENT ENTITLED TO THE CUSTOMER. The customer chooses which businesses are the successful ones. EXTERNALITIES INCLUDED.
Now for the STATE, THERE you have the best example you can get of UNFAIR, COERCIVE competition. How about you be consistent for once and criticize them for once, huh?
God damnit, people complain about voluntary aspects of the economy, but take it in the ass any day for the state. So... sad.
And of COURSE, if walmart takes subsidies and supports from ANY government, I'M AGAINST IT. And you know I'm against it. Don't act like I'm not. You're the one more prone to be in favor of it. "The government is the people", isn't it right? NO IT AINT. >
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