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On August 29 2010 18:23 leve15 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 16:29 dvide wrote:On August 29 2010 16:21 leve15 wrote:
It won't work because not every country is as well off as Western powers.
Maybe partly due to oppressive governments [PDF], perhaps?
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.
Why would living in Russia be so difficult compared to anywhere else? And why does that give legitimacy to initiate violence against peaceful people?
Through hardship, a selfish attitude yields little sympathy.
And through prosperity, selfish attitudes are born.
So ancap is being selfish, I take it? Ok, but that's not really an argument and therefore not particularly compelling. Any reasoning? Every country cannot be as developed as the west. There aren't enough resources. I was making a satirical point that these anarcho-capitalist ideas seem to stem from upper-middle class white people who don't take a second to think about other people. How's AC working out in Somalia? Why don't developing nations try it out? Because it's impossible is why. Well, in Russia 1/8 of the soil is usable for growing crops. When the weather permits. (Maybe you've read the news this summer... if you haven't, the outlook for this year's harvest is.. bad) Also, maybe you've you heard of the Russian winter? Famine occurs every 10 years in Russia. They're nearly landlocked as well, which in history was more detrimental than it is today.. Must I continue? Ancap is selfish. If you really believe you've earned your lifestyle of sitting behind a computer and working a safe and easy job or going to school, or whatever it is you do in peace, then you are selfish. The world didn't start in 1980-something, it's been spinning long before you were here.
How do countries develop? How did the west develop? Was it by coercion, or voluntary activity? Think. Hard.
Somalia has been a hellhole and only recently became an-cap. They have a completely different culture, one not so individualistic at that. You're born into a family, and the family basically arbitrates disputes with other families in your place. It's not completely free, I would call it more of a panarchy or IDK. Not quite what I advocate, nor is it proper to say that "they suck hur dur" when they've only gotten rid of the state a few decades ago; plus there's still statist warlords trying to submit people back into their reign (as opposed to decentralized families' reigns, which is still better for the purposes of capital accumulation as there is more competition amongst them, but I still don't advocate it, being a born-into system). Don't compare apples and oranges.
I suspect people don't try it because there's statist everywhere using tradition fallacies and arguments from ignorance. Much like there were theocracies everywhere because everyone thought it was the best thing since breakfast. It's an information problem, and it will be resolved sooner or later. Later if you don't help of course. MY THEORY.
Of course the world didn't start in 1980, and I'm not the one acting like it did. But I'm no empiricist so I'd rather not claim whether I "understand history better", even though I will try to reject perspectives that go completely opposite to catallactics, praxeology. Because they're demonstrably dumb.
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On August 29 2010 18:27 vetinari wrote:
Anarcho-capitalism won't work, because I will use my money to take over the world and slaughter everyone in my way.
And if you band together to stop me, congratulations. You just formed a government.
Not really. Defense is a private resource. Not unlike bread. Just because the government monopolizes great part of it, doesn't mean it can't be privately administered. Like bread.
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On August 29 2010 18:27 iNfuNdiBuLuM wrote:
Anarcho-capitalism is a misnomer. Capitalism is antithetical to Anarchism.
Good point.
So can I enter your house and sleep in your bed anytime I want, because you consider private property oppression?
Or is that your personal belongings, and private property is also a misnomer?
Why do you have exclusive control over your personal belongings, your house, but a capitalist can't have exclusive control over his factory?
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If the state were to wither away, what would you propose be done about existing unjust ownership? i.e. the kind of ownership the that comes about through partnering or colluding with the state?
Does Lockheed Martin just get to keep the massive amounts of wealth accumulated at the expense of others through cooperation with governments?
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On August 29 2010 18:31 adrenaline.CA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:21 Yurebis wrote: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. - Lack of information, check, the government is the BEST at that no problem. - Collusion, check, government facilitates it by raising barriers of entry and punishing "cut-throat competition", brought to you by the more inefficient competitors' lobby - Externalities, check, taxation, subsidies, monopolies of his own, leases, environmental hazards on their property, tragedy of the commons on every public property... - Public goods, check, the shittiest public goods you can ever get, the worst roads you can ever find, hospitals people will die on, and schools that children will spend twelve years and not learn a single thing that's useful. That's the service that I like. Yep. - Human irrationality, check, at it's best, courtesy of Washington D.C. - Fraud, check, trillions of dollars in debt, unfunded liabilities, social security a clear ponzy scheme, coercing the population for their own good, lies in foreign policy and internal policy as well, no transparency at all, federal reserve. Pretty good at fraud I'd say. - Lack of a judicial system, check, shit is so useless that firms and business don't even rely on it anymore; people that are threatened to go to court are more worried about the costs than the actual lawsuit. - IP, check, it's a great thing to force people to pay you tribute for something you created ten years ago. Coercively controlling their material private property on the claim of infinitely reproducible patterns, yep, artificial scarcity is a pretty nifty idea. Any one of those is enough of a reason to be infuriated against the state I'd say, let alone debating the prospect of having a working system in place otherwise. I like how all the things you blamed on government are things the private sector would do worse on, or are responsible for. Next Bear Stearns, please! EDIT: Hey guys, corporations are people too! Please vote for this company into Congress http://murrayhillweb.com/new_day/index.html
Again, I'm no empiricist, but the case is made by other empiricist austrians that the failure of finance firms was not entirely their fault, but the housing bubble's that the FED helped create after the .com bubble. Obviously if the government forces everyone to lower the PRICE OF TIME, aka interest rates, the future seems much more prosper, and people invest in things that wouldn't be invested. It twists the stages of production both in the direction of consumption, because consumers do take loans too, and long term investment (and I say long term, because I consider any spending to be investment, but that's confusing so I should just call it investment yeah), which is unsustainable; there either won't be enough consumption to account for the many more products delivered in the future, or there won't be future products because of the overconsumption today.
What interventionists don't understand is that prices mean something. If a coal mine collapses, coal prices go up. It would be retarded for the government to artificially lower the price of coal, as that would cause coal to deplete. Kind of the same deal with interest rates. They mean something - the availability of savings in the market. Not only do banks already fiddle with that through fractional reserve banking, and using savings accounts and time deposits intermittently for loaning out, but with a lower than 1% fixed interest rate, the banks basically get money for free. Then you add in regulations that could give anyone with a job a "free house" (because equity was expected to go up up up), then you have the perfect recipe, coercively made, for a bubble that is doomed to pop someday (four years later this time.)
For more, google austrian view on housing bubble or something like that. or austrian business cycle theory.
On August 29 2010 18:31 adrenaline.CA wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:28 Yurebis wrote:
Aw fuck it I'm going to sleep. I might as well have opened a thread on monopoly first because people seem to be so indoctrinated on the idea that "monopoly bad", and can't elaborate any more than that...
"collusion... uhhh.... price fixing..."
Yeah, so what? you price fix your own labor too. Unions collude with members to price fix labor. That's all swell right? Even worse; a scab comes along, and you think the union is justified in using gov't to stop them. Ridiculous double standards. Corporations are evil for colluding, but unions aren't. Corporations are evil for using coercion, unions aren't. I know no one specifically said unions are fine, and it may be a strawman, but seeing that they readily accept the mainstream idea that "monopolies bad", whoever claim such nonsense probably defends that "union backed by government good", without noticing it's the exact type of collusion they're against when it comes to companies. Such hypocrisy. Wow you are such a modern-day Tea Party caricature. companies = good individuals = good unions = bad communities = bad government = bad In case you didn't know, in the framework of anarcho-capitalism, there is literally no difference between a union and a corporation. Organized labour = organized capital
You obviously didn't get my point. I'm the consistent one. I'm against coercion period. However usually the people who are against "monopolies" are not only hypocritical that they're fine with the biggest coercive monopoly of coercion (lol), but they're fine with unions using coercion to stop competitors. They're blind to "monopolies" using government to raise barriers of entry, and that much I understand, it's not something quite talked about. But unions using government is an obvious obvious contradiction with the idea that "monopolies" are always bad.
I don't care about unions as long as they don't coerce, by proxy in the case of union-related regulations. Unions are usually silly though, because (just like an oligopoly) the individuals (or companies) that could cheat on the group to profit under the table on more efficient sales, have a huge incentive to do so, and so the collusion goes broke. Collusions can only happen when companies are already selling at a close rate, or close to the market equilibrium rate, in which case, it's not really collusion, just an average, relatively stale market. Can you do better? Then enter it. A market being stale is no reason to regulate it. It's as innovative as entrepreneurs can figure out, as innovative as consumers demand...
Regulations can only hurt the relation between entrepreneur and consumer, it never helps... and if it did help, it's not really help, as it's something they'd do anyway, and adds bureaucratic costs on top.
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On August 29 2010 18:35 Kishkumen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:21 Yurebis wrote: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. - Lack of information, check, the government is the BEST at that no problem. - Collusion, check, government facilitates it by raising barriers of entry and punishing "cut-throat competition", brought to you by the more inefficient competitors' lobby - Externalities, check, taxation, subsidies, monopolies of his own, leases, environmental hazards on their property, tragedy of the commons on every public property... - Public goods, check, the shittiest public goods you can ever get, the worst roads you can ever find, hospitals people will die on, and schools that children will spend twelve years and not learn a single thing that's useful. That's the service that I like. Yep. - Human irrationality, check, at it's best, courtesy of Washington D.C. - Fraud, check, trillions of dollars in debt, unfunded liabilities, social security a clear ponzy scheme, coercing the population for their own good, lies in foreign policy and internal policy as well, no transparency at all, federal reserve. Pretty good at fraud I'd say. - Lack of a judicial system, check, shit is so useless that firms and business don't even rely on it anymore; people that are threatened to go to court are more worried about the costs than the actual lawsuit. - IP, check, it's a great thing to force people to pay you tribute for something you created ten years ago. Coercively controlling their material private property on the claim of infinitely reproducible patterns, yep, artificial scarcity is a pretty nifty idea. Any one of those is enough of a reason to be infuriated against the state I'd say, let alone debating the prospect of having a working system in place otherwise. Evidence that government contributes to market inefficiency does not mean that it is worse than a purely free market. Sure, the government creates its fair share of market inefficiencies. The point is that the government can fix all of those problems I listed much more efficiently and easily than the free market can. If the free market is so perfect, why were things like collusion and externalities a much bigger problem during the gilded age when there were far less laws regulating business? Why were workers essentially enslaved to their employers? Do you really think that the market back then was so much more efficient without all the regulation we have now preventing these problems?
Certainly not, and as I said, I'm no empiricist, because deeply into empiricism, lies a-priori motives to reject or accept the theories anyway. That is why I prefer talking a-priori. If there's any agreement with a set of premises, something can always be built. The problem is with the people that have absurd premises like "man is stupid so it needs another man to rule it", or "man has incomplete knowledge so it needs another man with even more incomplete knowledge to rule it". I mean... such failure... at least argue something that makes sense. I'd prefer an appeal to tradition anytime TBH. Or empiricist claims...
The government can't fix your problems without creating more, because for anything the government does, it is already being paid for by coercive measures. It's not a solution. It's like saying, "I can make your pain go away by killing you", or "I can make your sadness go away by giving you this pill that inhibits all emotions". There's always more externalities when the government interrupts a natural process. It's always better if you don't shoot people. I hope you don't disagree.
I've addressed collusion repeatedly, and externalities too. Guilded age...? Lol, I wikipedia'd it and it says "n American history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States"
LOL empiricist fail?
Workers can't logically be said to be enslaved if they chose to work for the employer he chose; it means he values that work better than any other work available to him at the time. Not something bad at all. Catallactics please.
The market back them was as efficient as people could manage it to be. I'm sure of that. You ask if it's more efficient than it could have been if the magical all-knowing central planner had even better ideas and forced people into complying for their own good? Well, I don't believe in miracles, so no.
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On August 29 2010 19:10 alexanderzero wrote:
This point has probably been made already, but anarchy can't really exist for long. People will eventually realize that by banding together to gain power they will be more benefited, and groups of people will form and exert control over others.
Anarchy as a transition, yes. Anarchism as an understanding of economics, no. People have been born into a system where all they know is that they have a ruler, and that's how it's always been. It's not unnatural for those same people to band and form a new ruling class once the previous has fallen. Yet that's not the same type of transition that would happen if an-cap were to rise. It has to come from an understanding that: the need for a product or service by the part of others to youself, is not enough of a reason to coerce them to pay you or work for you. Voluntarism > coercion.
Aaand private property. Which usually isn't understood too well in history either.
I appreciate the argument.
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On August 29 2010 19:20 vetinari wrote:
edit: @dvide
You are just missing one thing: a voluntarily funded defensive organisation will lose.
Because I am taxing the population of my territories, I have the funding to have a larger, better equipped and better trained army than any volunteer army.
The only way to win is to have a better army and the only way to do that is to coerce your people into supporting the army. This is also called "taxation" and "conscription".
This is a decent argument. And you may win; Even with superior market efficiency, a foreign state could be more efficacious by drawing from a much larger pool of slaves, er, taxpayers.
But then what has the statist to gain? Will he just kill everyone? Well, not much to gain from that, apart from natural resources that he could have spent much less than billions of dollars invading them for. Well, t's a possibility, the state is stupid anyway, but a bit unlikely. Will they expropriate all the ancaps capital, and bring it back to his state? Okay, but that's quite a short term thought. The ancaps are going to be pissed and retaliation is possible. Will they enslave the ancaps and become their new state? Well, seeing that the ancaps must have overthrown the previous government, I think they would be much smarter than allow a state back; there would be constant terrorism and retaliation against the occupancy, costing the statist proportionally as much as it costs the US to stay in Iraq, if not more, because Iraq doesn't rebel for nearly as big of a reason as fighting coercion period; they fight the coercion they don't like, but don't mind coercion that much. They were ruled by a dictator after all. Not downplaying Iraqis, but just trying to compare. Anyway, ancap would turn into a quagmire, and at worst, just return back to a state.
Then, I feel that there aren't enough profits to be done for the statist to invade ancap apart from perhaps taking over natural resources and creating artificial scarcity over it (similar as it was done to Iraq - the oil isn't being extracted, wells were destroyed, oil was burnt, still are? I don't know. But point is, prices of oil go up, and they eliminated competitors. Well, from all my talk of collusion and barriers of entry, you should understand what happens when you kill off the competition, that is literally, kill the competition.)
Would be very circumstantial and unlikely, and if you want to elaborate what better incentives a statist might have do so.
Even then; the worst that happens is ancap going back to statism, which isn't that that that bad. It's bad, but yeah.
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On August 29 2010 19:45 ShroomyD wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 17:55 adrenaline.CA wrote: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. 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. It's totally more like team-melee.
More like team-melee, 7v1 against the statist.
Except the statist uses cheat codes.
And hacks people's computers to make their mice not work, screens turn off.
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On August 29 2010 19:51 Fireflies wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:57 dvide wrote: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.
Again let's discuss a concrete example and the circumstances behind it, and how government could (or did) solve the problem (or how they may have actually contributed to it). Use your best example because I'm open to being convinced.
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.
Do you care? Everybody I talk to would claim to care, I'm sure. Where are all these people who wouldn't give a shit that a company is literally killing the people down river? And the company would have enough to be able to wage a war on people, without losing profit at all? What about their competitors who don't put their profits into funding their own aggressive armies, but use it to sell cheaper goods, raise wages for their employees and innovate their products, etc? Would that company not drive the stupid evil killing company out of business? Or would the evil killing company wage war on them too I suppose? 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?
I don't know what's up in those cases. I will investigate with my leet google and mises searching skills.
But a few questions arise. 1-Who owns the diamond mines, 2- who owns the ivory coast, 3- who owns the 'people working in the foxconn fact.' and do you mean they suicided or "got suicided"? In the former, what's wrong with that, in the latter, wow what really? I'm using a foxconn motherboard right now, so cheap LOL
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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
Oh, so there are more apples in government than in the whole society?
I did not know that! thanks for the... ooooh you just wait right there. You tried to fool me huh? Saying that the government has less people in it... haaaahahaha, good one. Almost got me.
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On August 29 2010 21:13 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 18:24 Kishkumen wrote:On August 29 2010 18:18 adrenaline.CA wrote: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!!! Seriously, just look at Rockefeller for an example of how to drive all competition into the ground and not let anyone get a leg up because you control every possible means of getting a leg up in the business. People don't give enough credit to the effects of volume and size in a free market. Walmart can afford to take a loss in some areas in order to come up ahead in other areas. Smaller businesses don't have that luxury. Rockefeller was an excellent businessman that built his empire by introducing efficient business methods into the oil industry. So long as a monopoly is producing more for less, we don't mind! Rockefeller did try to cut prices to force out competitors, and soon learned that 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.
I don't understand what people's deal is. Complaining that rich guys are selling stuff at a loss, below market price? Really? What's next, you're going to complain that people donate money to charity too? Such a disregard for property rights...
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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
Capitalism doesn't require continual growth, it is driven by profit, at which case there exists concepts such as diseconomies of scale and marginal utility that limit how much one can profit from producing too much.
In the case of monetary policy, ancap suffers no problem, as it isn't bound to any one policy; money is free, people will choose which banks to trust and which policy is best for them. It is likely time deposits and demand deposits would be much more transparent, and fractional reserve banking inexistant as it is a contract breach due to the promise of immediate withdraw anytime by the bank. Unless it's a time deposit, in which case you should be fine with it.
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On August 30 2010 05:51 Yurebis wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 19:51 Fireflies wrote:On August 29 2010 18:57 dvide wrote: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.
Again let's discuss a concrete example and the circumstances behind it, and how government could (or did) solve the problem (or how they may have actually contributed to it). Use your best example because I'm open to being convinced.
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.
Do you care? Everybody I talk to would claim to care, I'm sure. Where are all these people who wouldn't give a shit that a company is literally killing the people down river? And the company would have enough to be able to wage a war on people, without losing profit at all? What about their competitors who don't put their profits into funding their own aggressive armies, but use it to sell cheaper goods, raise wages for their employees and innovate their products, etc? Would that company not drive the stupid evil killing company out of business? Or would the evil killing company wage war on them too I suppose? 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? I don't know what's up in those cases. I will investigate with my leet google and mises searching skills. But a few questions arise. 1-Who owns the diamond mines, 2- who owns the ivory coast, 3- who owns the 'people working in the foxconn fact.' and do you mean they suicided or "got suicided"? In the former, what's wrong with that, in the latter, wow what really? I'm using a foxconn motherboard right now, so cheap LOL
Hint: it's not the government that owns Foxconn or blood diamonds
It's those capitalists that you love in the name of your bullshit Austrian "theory" pseudoscience with things like "praxeology".
Go back to George Mason University you troll.
EDIT: For anyone who wants to see why Austrian economics will never work, here is someone that could explain it better than I ever can: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm
I love how Yurebis finds nothing wrong with buying things like blood diamonds. I hope in your next life that you're born into a poor Sub-Saharan African family that's starving and continue talking about "bootstraps."
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On August 29 2010 21:30 dvide wrote:Show nested quote +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, foxconn, blabla] 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.
Well thanks for that, saves me the trouble of writing half a dozen paragraphs myself
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, democracy, blabla]
Thanks
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On August 29 2010 22:35 makopluxx wrote:
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.
I didn't say they're likely. I didn't even say they are more likely (even though I could say it, np), I said that whatever argument that is made against man in general, is just as applicable to men in the state. So human nature is violent -> therefore we can't have ancap, applies just as equally to human nature is violent -> therefore we can't give absolute power to a few men
Ancap solves the "who watches the watchmen" by giving everyone an equal opportunity of solving that issue to the best of their ability. If the current watchmen can't be trusted, they can be replaced immediately, or a third party hired immediately, as opposed to depending on a central planner to solve those issues. He cannot - solve as better as thousands of others. And even if he could, I believe he should be contracted voluntarily, not coerce everyone into giving him money. If he's really good, then he'll be voluntarily and mutually accepted.
Meh I went a bit too far to answer such a short objection.
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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?
There can be such a thing as market law, and there has been such a thing in the past. International trade laws, even from the middle ages. I've explained a bit on page 1 even though I didn't even cover the basics.
Read this for an introduction http://mises.org/daily/4147
I believe that someone signing some document hundreds of years ago doesn't account for me accepting such system. I didn't sign the constitution, nor did you. The idea that someone could sign for you a document hundreds of years in the past, let alone that they're not even your direct relatives (probably), is laughable. I could sign a document here right now that says you have to give me $100. Is that a "social contract"
It's a joke of an excuse. It just goes on because people don't see it for what it is. It won't go on forever.
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On August 29 2010 23:02 leve15 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 22:55 ghrur wrote: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)
Monopolistic courts, man
LOL
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wow yurebis, 9 posts back-to-back in the same thread
nice... ^^
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On August 30 2010 06:06 Yurebis wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2010 22:35 makopluxx wrote:
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. I didn't say they're likely. I didn't even say they are more likely (even though I could say it, np), I said that whatever argument that is made against man in general, is just as applicable to men in the state. So human nature is violent -> therefore we can't have ancap, applies just as equally to human nature is violent -> therefore we can't give absolute power to a few men Ancap solves the "who watches the watchmen" by giving everyone an equal opportunity of solving that issue to the best of their ability. If the current watchmen can't be trusted, they can be replaced immediately, or a third party hired immediately, as opposed to depending on a central planner to solve those issues. He cannot - solve as better as thousands of others. And even if he could, I believe he should be contracted voluntarily, not coerce everyone into giving him money. If he's really good, then he'll be voluntarily and mutually accepted. Meh I went a bit too far to answer such a short objection.
And who watches the watchers of the watchmen? And the watchers of those ad infinitum?
(this is a central problem of anarcho-capitalism)
It becomes so inefficient to police that government arises simply from the utility of public goods -- this is why Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan. He assumes methodological individualism but concludes that its in mutual self-interest to create government, because the alternative -- anarchy -- is not optimal behaviour, and economically costly.
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EPT
