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On August 30 2010 17:30 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 17:15 MiraMax wrote:
The main "problem" with anarchic systems is their instability whenever there are agents which can plan ahead sufficiently. They don't "work" (or only temporarily) because there will always be substantial incentive for individuals to unite in order to enforce their ideas/needs on others or simply take advantage over others. In order to retain this control this minority will establish a set of rules (laws) and enforcement agencies (police), which finally means that the state of anarchy is left. So even if it would be the most efficient system, there is simply no way to stabilize it. I think there's a big factor of luck. If you think about it, it's as ridiculous to think that a democracy could be stable as it is to think ancap would be. What is to stop the army from taking over the government? Theoretically, nothing prevents the army from taking over the government. In practice, that doesn't happen.
Actually, it does happen in practice ... it is usually referred to as "war", if it is the army of another country and "coup d'etat" (is this really the english word!?), if it is the army of the same country. My point was, that the former political system is always replaced by another non-anarchic political system. Now, why is that so? That's exactly what I was adressing in my post.
On August 30 2010 17:30 Phrujbaz wrote:
In ancap, theoretically nothing stops a group of people getting together and trying to create a state, but there are a few things that make that unlikely to happen.
As a protection agency, you have to deal with A) your customers, B) customers of other protection agencies, and C) other protection agencies. Treating A) badly will lose you customers. Losing customers means you lose money. So you can expect protection agencies to at least take good care of their customers.
Treating B) or C) badly will set bad blood with other protection agencies. Disputes with other protection agencies are costly, especially violent ones, so harassing people other protection agencies have a contractual obligation to protect can't be good for business. You will have to raise your rates an inordinate amount if you want to keep fighting, and doing so will lose you your customers and your money.
Peaceful resolution of conflict is the most sustainable business model for protection agencies. So if we can assume people under ancap will have freedom to choose among multiple protection agencies, the equilibrium would be multiple protection agencies (police forces) doing peaceful resolution of conflict through third party arbitrators (courts). Rogue protection agencies will have a hard time to survive.
The "problem" here is to assume that any "enforcement agency" would remain neutral with regard to the incountable decisions a society has to take and the needs and interests of its members and simply see itself as a service agency. Historical evidence (and psychological studies) indicate that humans usually don't act like that. Power corrupts, in the sense that even if your motives are good, as soon as power is granted to you, you will use it to influence others and enact what you deem right. And if you don't, your neighbour will. In other words, while any government agency has a clear incentive to maintain its power and authority, an institution/person with any form of power in an "ancap" society has no incentive to maintain the status quo, but rather to change it to their advantage. It is the "monopoly of power" claimed by governing institutions which stabilizes the system. By definition an anarchic system lacks this stabilizing factor.
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On August 30 2010 16:19 Tuneful wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 14:03 Yurebis wrote:On August 30 2010 12:57 Matrijs wrote:On August 30 2010 12:12 Tuneful wrote:
Re: anarcho-capitalism
How is fraud punished in such a system?
How are contracts enforced?
How is a currency created and maintained?
What entity creates and maintains peace so that market operations can happen with relative frequency and low risk?
How does such a system guarantee the reproduction of labor?
I'd like to see answers to these questions, plus a few more of my own: How are externalities dealt with? How do large-scale infrastructure improvements occur without a state to resolve the inherent free rider problem in such an undertaking? How does anarcho-capitalism deal with monopoly/monopsony problems? Is it ethical to allow a juvenile (unable to work due to youth) to die for want of resources when such resources are plentiful and available but merely owned by someone else? If so, why? If not, how does anarcho-capitalism avoid this outcome? -Externalities are dealt with, number one and foremost, stopping the most lecherous organization that steals half the country's GDP and creates the most externalities of all. The.... mafia. Large scale infrastructure that can't deal with free riders are retarded and should go bankrupt. The free-riding issue you see today over public property aka state property is an issue of the state. They're dumb and don't know how to make users pay. Even with all the technology today, they're just too dumb to figure it out. Not like they care anyway. It's not like they paid the property to be built, it's the taxpayer that's paying for it, and he can't not-pay for it. So, good luck next election? LOL I probably made like five posts on monopolies all saying the same thing. Monopoly is a misnomer. You are a monopolist of your own body. You're a monopolist of your property. Companies are always monopolies of their capital, products and services. To sue someone from being a monopolist is as retarded as suing some chick who didn't give you the time, because SHES MONOPOLIZING HER ASS, NO FAIR. Cry more. You think a service is overpriced? Go to the next one down the street.. You think companies are colluding? go to the next one down the street. You're dumb and pays for an overpriced product, because there's no other? Then it's your own damn choice. If it wasn't for the monopoly, the product wouldn't even exist. Understand that if you think you own your shit because you bought it and made it, then every firm has the same exact right over the stuff that they bought, they produced. There are no hostage customers, because the customer is not entitled to buy whatever the fuck they want for the price they want. If you want a more moderate and pacific explanation search monopoly around some pages. You'll find something in no time. It is ethical to let the boy work if he wants to. You have no issues sending kids to school to do stupid chores and learn nothing. Forcing parents to pay for that trash and this time INDEED cornering them with a subsidized service that they CANT afford to pay an alternative to, because they were STOLEN from that opportunity. That is much, MUCH cruel to me than a subsistance farmer sending a kid to work because otherwise he would DIE or go to PROSTITUTION. Meh, I won't even go there. Economics is a matter of choice. No one does dumb shit and works for 16 hours a day VOLUNTARILY because they're retarded. No parent wishes that his kid would start working when they're 4. If they send them, I trust their judgment more than any fucking bureaucrat in an ivory building that wants to RESTRICT the threshold of human options that people have. YOU DONT MAKE THOSE KIDS ANY BETTER BY RESTRICTING WHAT THEY CAN DO. ONE DOES NOT IMPROVE QUALITY OF LIFE BY HAVING APPEALS TO EMOTION AND RESTRICTING VOLUNTARY HUMAN INTERACTIONS. K ty. See my other posts of monopoly, listen to this for a thorough explanation http://mises.org/media/1160, the whole series. There are no other choices in monopsony, and sometimes in monopoly as well, (e.g, monopoly is so large and has an effective monopsony within your ability to travel to a job). With a monopoly, the choices of one firm vastly affect your ability to make transactions. As regards "voluntary" work, it's as "voluntary" as choosing not to feed yourself, especially when the monopsonist is the only supplier of jobs. Denying that there are "hostage customers" defies logic. Speaking of emotional appeals, haven't you just stated, and quite loudly, that "bureaucrats are dumb, private interests always know better," without a shred of evidence? Private enterprise can certainly restrict one's quality of life and choices quite effectively with no interference from your boogie-man style "ivory tower bureaucrat." I'd also like to note that in the real world, many of the same business leaders who posit themselves as "market fundamentalists" are generally the same ones who can buy themselves economic protection through lobbying in ways that are far more vast and sweeping than any union could hope to acquire. Without going into it too much further, it seems that "Acap" is a rather utopian idea, where all participants are rational agents who act perfectly in the interests of their clients and the world obeys the market's "natural" laws.
Okay, if the monopolist is the only one who can feed you, like, you're on a desert island with some guy who has the ability to create food out of thin air, and you can't do nothing on your own, then I'd say you should be very very glad to have such an amazing individual that has such a power. Because if it wasn't for him, you'd be dead for sure. So again, no, the monopolist doesn't have to feed you because you're going to die, if you're going to die, it's your own fault idiot. That you need to steal to stay alive says more about your inability of doing anything even remotely productive enough that people could give you a piece of bread. I'm sorry but it's true.
I mean, not even that. There's charity even today, and for the social services and help for the homeless that exist coercively today, there is some market demand for them, there had to be some at least for the government to convince people into stealing from everyone to pay for it. I mean, if absolutely no one could even pretend to want to donate, then I doubt the government could implement such massive payoffs to the poor. There IS market demand for charity. There ARE and there have been private charities that are not subsidized or would keep going even if they weren't. Why there is such demand? I don't know well, maybe people don't like seeing people dying indeed, and would rather donate out of good will. Yeah, sometimes I forget there is such a thing as human empathy even though I so very hard vouch for it. Maybe it's because I should have been sleeping 2 hours ago.
Anyway, you on a desert island with another man who can save your life doesn't make you a hostage. You're not his hostage because he didn't inflict upon you the state of being you are right now. It's not his fault you need him to survive. He didn't coerce, force, fool you into going into that island, say, you both fell from a plane. No different than the poor miserable bums you so imply to defend (by stealing from everyone with the monopolist state). It's not particularly anyone's fault that they're poor. Man was raised in the mud. He had to climb up and work to get any capital accumulation going. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Claiming that you have control over that which you didn't create nor buy is stealing. So is what the bureaucrats do. Plain stealing. And I've said what kind of problems arise from a failed private property scheme. People invest less. People build less, because they can't keep what they make. They can't keep higher order capital goods, so those aren't created either. You will have to rely entirely on central planners to make things happen, and to even think for a second that a bureaucrat, with the best intentions of the world, can even remotely be more inovative, reactive, adaptive, than free assembling people in a market, is a sad joke. They can't. They don't have the brainpower, the price inputs, the incentive inputs, the coordination necessary to make a complex economy like today happen. They would be stuck at making nails, or making a single chip that would be outdated in a month. Higher order capital that can't be used, too much or too few. It's plain and simple impossible for the central planner figure out something that the market can't do better.
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Read the 3 first pages and it was basicly: "it wont work because people will kill each other" countered by "No, they wont" or "they already do" or "just pay some guy to take care of security".
Maybe I should read the other 16 pages, but CBA right now.
There is no reason why anarcho-capitalism can't WORK, hell fascism and stalinism WORKED, they just didn't work in a nice way. And that really is the main problem with anarcho-capitalism. Capitalism is a system that inherently puts profit above people, and therefor it has an inbuilt tendency towards oppression on the weakest. However in our current system the state can be democraticly controlled to counteract the worst symptoms of this disease. It can for example require employers to treat their workers with some kind of respect, minimum wages and so on.
If you look at the beginnings of capitalism where the states were generally weaker you see horrible things going on in the factories. Ford, for example had his won police force, that enforced HIS law in the factories.
The workers can of course strike their way out of that if they organize themselves really well, but if there is no state to transform their victories into laws, then they will need to be on constant strike, which could and probably would lead to either one of the following scenarios:
1) The workers victory = communism or some other form of worker controlled community (which would never be capitalistic),
2) The capitalists victory = total and violent oppression of the working class (basicly fascism)
3) Or if by some strange reason neither of them won it would just be constant and ever growing class conflict, probably ending in civil wars.
TL.DR.: Anarcho-Capitalism can work, but unless you are a rich bastard you wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. And if you are a rich selfish bastard then stop talking about social-reform, the current society is already spoon-feeding you with wealth.
Basicly anarcho-capitalism is just social-darwinism which really is a stupid and heartless way to organize a society
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On August 30 2010 17:55 MiraMax wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 17:30 Phrujbaz wrote:On August 30 2010 17:15 MiraMax wrote:
The main "problem" with anarchic systems is their instability whenever there are agents which can plan ahead sufficiently. They don't "work" (or only temporarily) because there will always be substantial incentive for individuals to unite in order to enforce their ideas/needs on others or simply take advantage over others. In order to retain this control this minority will establish a set of rules (laws) and enforcement agencies (police), which finally means that the state of anarchy is left. So even if it would be the most efficient system, there is simply no way to stabilize it. I think there's a big factor of luck. If you think about it, it's as ridiculous to think that a democracy could be stable as it is to think ancap would be. What is to stop the army from taking over the government? Theoretically, nothing prevents the army from taking over the government. In practice, that doesn't happen. Actually, it does happen in practice ... it is usually referred to as "war", if it is the army of another country and "coup d'etat" (is this really the english word!?), if it is the army of the same country. My point was, that the former political system is always replaced by another non-anarchic political system. Now, why is that so? That's exactly what I was adressing in my post.
Defense from foreign nations is a massive issue for anarchism, and it's true that a stable anarchist society could experience a "hostile takeover" from an imperialist nation. In history, it's almost always this that broke up an anarchist society, not internal pressures. There are some things that may be done to mitigate the problem, but as you say ancap would also unstable without foreign pressures, let's focus on that first.
Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 17:30 Phrujbaz wrote:
In ancap, theoretically nothing stops a group of people getting together and trying to create a state, but there are a few things that make that unlikely to happen.
As a protection agency, you have to deal with A) your customers, B) customers of other protection agencies, and C) other protection agencies. Treating A) badly will lose you customers. Losing customers means you lose money. So you can expect protection agencies to at least take good care of their customers.
Treating B) or C) badly will set bad blood with other protection agencies. Disputes with other protection agencies are costly, especially violent ones, so harassing people other protection agencies have a contractual obligation to protect can't be good for business. You will have to raise your rates an inordinate amount if you want to keep fighting, and doing so will lose you your customers and your money.
Peaceful resolution of conflict is the most sustainable business model for protection agencies. So if we can assume people under ancap will have freedom to choose among multiple protection agencies, the equilibrium would be multiple protection agencies (police forces) doing peaceful resolution of conflict through third party arbitrators (courts). Rogue protection agencies will have a hard time to survive. The "problem" here is to assume that any "enforcement agency" would remain neutral with regard to the incountable decisions a society has to take and the needs and interests of its members and simply see itself as a service agency. Historical evidence (and psychological studies) indicate that humans usually don't act like that. Power corrupts, in the sense that even if your motives are good, as soon as power is granted to you, you will use it to influence others and enact what you deem right. And if you don't, your neighbour will.
I agree that not all people are goody two-shoes, and greed and power is a big factor in this. If you assume that protection agencies will go after profit, and I think that is a reasonable assumption to make, then there will be market pressures keeping them in check. Power corrupts, just like money corrupts, and the agencies being after power and money is exactly what will cause them to offer the highest quality service and negotiate peacefully with other protection agencies. That is exactly what brings you money and power in that environment.
In other words, while any government agency has a clear incentive to maintain its power and authority, an institution/person with any form of power in an "ancap" society has no incentive to maintain the status quo, but rather to change it to their advantage. It is the "monopoly of power" claimed by governing institutions which stabilizes the system. By definition an anarchic system lacks this stabilizing factor.
If you run a very profitable protection agency, why would you want to change the status quo? Entering in violent conflict with other protection agencies or screwing your customers over is incredibly risky and likely to spoil a perfectly good source of profit. It will be tried at first, of course, and we'll have our share of scandals in ancap, but that's just not as profitable. And it's not sustainable as a source of profit. A greedy, money-grubbing capitalist will go for high quality protection and peaceful resolution of conflict.
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I agree that not all people are goody two-shoes, and greed and power is a big factor in this. If you assume that protection agencies will go after profit, and I think that is a reasonable assumption to make, then there will be market pressures keeping them in check. Power corrupts, just like money corrupts, and the agencies being after power and money is exactly what will cause them to offer the highest quality service and negotiate peacefully with other protection agencies. That is exactly what brings you money and power in that environment.
If you run a very profitable protection agency, why would you want to change the status quo? Entering in violent conflict with other protection agencies or screwing your customers over is incredibly risky and likely to spoil a perfectly good source of profit. It will be tried at first, of course, and we'll have our share of scandals in ancap, but that's just not as profitable. And it's not sustainable as a source of profit. A greedy, money-grubbing capitalist will go for high quality protection and peaceful resolution of conflict.
Go read up on the mercenary armies of the 17th century and their role in what actually became a semi worldwar in Europe. They didn't accept status quo, they didn't just sit idlely by and wait. They fought for the guy who paid them most, and when he didn't pay they ravaged his country. It was actually the peace negotiations after the 30-years war that established the states as the cornerstone of international politics.
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On August 30 2010 16:49 Phrujbaz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 16:46 Yurebis wrote:On August 30 2010 15:30 figq wrote: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 have no major reasons to think anarcho-capitalism can't work, but so what? Is it good? I think not paying taxes would be preferable to paying taxes/going to jail. BUT WE ALL GOT OUR CHOICES TO MAKE BANG What kind of argument is that? If you don't have a good reason to expect ancap to create a more attractive society then we shouldn't be arguing in favor of it. Most people don't care that much about paying taxes. In one way or another, you're going to be paying anyway. Tell me how governing bodies being unable to confiscate anything by force is going to create a more attractive society.
Oh really, they care about saving $300 on car insurance a semester, getting one or two thousand dollars tax refund a year, but wouldn't care if their wages went up 20%, income tax went away, state taxes went away?
Sure you'd have to pay certain services anyway, but they would be at the market price, not the coercive monopolist price (where are the anti-monopoly people at, when it comes to true, government monopolies?... such hypocrites), so it would be considerably cheaper.
Perhaps the reason why you think most people don't care about taxes is because you and most people haven't stopped to think how much money you would save. Because you take slavery for granted. But that is, would, and will be, a major reason when people stop paying taxes someday.
Do you own society? Are you entitled to society? What is society?
IMO society is the market, the interactions of people. The state at this current age feeds of society and has no more reason in existing as information isn't as scarce as it was in the middle ages. Man isn't afraid of its own kind, the wilderness, religion superstitions, nor anything else in this world anymore. The state could have served a function in times where the choice was between the least coercive ruler, but this trend will someday end at no ruler at all. Because that way, each man is fully entitled to it's earnings, not obliged to pay anyone tribute, and can best utilize his capital however it wants (as long as you don't make too much noise because my neighbors are sleeping).
In ancap, you've got 100%, not 70% or less of your capital to engage in your desired aesthetic pursuit (that best be what you mean by "attractive society"), and you can turn society as pretty as others share equivalent goals, and cooperate with you... but that's probably not what you mean by attractive...
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On August 30 2010 16:53 SkytoM wrote:
I think it can't work because the majority of the people are REALLY dumb and aren't able to do anything themselves and need leadership.
If the majority of the people are dumb, then the majority of leaders are dumb
Or the majority of people will choose dumb leaders
And be dumbly enslaved
dumbly dumb dumb dumb
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On August 30 2010 17:15 MiraMax wrote:
The main "problem" with anarchic systems is their instability whenever there are agents which can plan ahead sufficiently. They don't "work" (or only temporarily) because there will always be substantial incentive for individuals to unite in order to enforce their ideas/needs on others or simply take advantage over others. In order to retain this control this minority will establish a set of rules (laws) and enforcement agencies (police), which finally means that the state of anarchy is left. So even if it would be the most efficient system, there is simply no way to stabilize it.
That's transitional anarchy. The anarchy or rather anarchism I talk of is purposefully installed. Or rather, the state is purposefully gotten rid of. Transitional anarchy is unstable because the government was gotten rid off without people having a solid understanding of private property and private law yet. They are waiting for some new ruler to pick it up where the last left off. I can blame social conditioning. Culture. Yeah.
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On August 30 2010 17:20 Tuneful wrote:
I really don't know why I keep F5'ing this thread when the op is one of the most dedicated trolls I've seen. (Speaking of humans as rational actors)
Ty
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On August 30 2010 18:09 Hasudk wrote:
Read the 3 first pages and it was basicly: "it wont work because people will kill each other" countered by "No, they wont" or "they already do" or "just pay some guy to take care of security".
Maybe I should read the other 16 pages, but CBA right now.
There is no reason why anarcho-capitalism can't WORK, hell fascism and stalinism WORKED, they just didn't work in a nice way. And that really is the main problem with anarcho-capitalism. Capitalism is a system that inherently puts profit above people, and therefor it has an inbuilt tendency towards oppression on the weakest. However in our current system the state can be democraticly controlled to counteract the worst symptoms of this disease. It can for example require employers to treat their workers with some kind of respect, minimum wages and so on.
If you look at the beginnings of capitalism where the states were generally weaker you see horrible things going on in the factories. Ford, for example had his won police force, that enforced HIS law in the factories.
The workers can of course strike their way out of that if they organize themselves really well, but if there is no state to transform their victories into laws, then they will need to be on constant strike, which could and probably would lead to either one of the following scenarios:
1) The workers victory = communism or some other form of worker controlled community (which would never be capitalistic),
2) The capitalists victory = total and violent oppression of the working class (basicly fascism)
3) Or if by some strange reason neither of them won it would just be constant and ever growing class conflict, probably ending in civil wars.
TL.DR.: Anarcho-Capitalism can work, but unless you are a rich bastard you wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. And if you are a rich selfish bastard then stop talking about social-reform, the current society is already spoon-feeding you with wealth.
Basicly anarcho-capitalism is just social-darwinism which really is a stupid and heartless way to organize a society
What is profit, and how does one profit?
A few questions. And I don't know about that story. But anyway:
Did the workers go in every day voluntarily to such horrible horrible damage working conditions? What was the second best choice? Why did they move close to the factory, or did they move exactly to work in it? What happened to the other businesses if here were any?
I'm a rich mofo. If the current system is already spoon-feeding me with wealth, why would it be more profitable for me to be in a free market? I'd have to raise my own oppressive police force as opposed to bribing the one that already is, and risk competition as it wouldn't be monopolistic anymore; I'd have to recruit my own soldiers if I wanted to invade other countries, and risk retaliation against my own person. I'd have to make my own federal reserve from the bottom up, and can't count on the legal monopoly of coin issuance; I'd have to do away with the subsidies, barriers of entry, exclusive leases of infrastructure, every other legal monopoly, and have to deal with competition in every field that I've lobbied the government to shelter me. Why the fuck I would do that, and how the fuck would that be more profitable to me?
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On August 30 2010 18:02 Yurebis wrote:
Anyway, you on a desert island with another man who can save your life doesn't make you a hostage. You're not his hostage because he didn't inflict upon you the state of being you are right now. It's not his fault you need him to survive. He didn't coerce, force, fool you into going into that island, say, you both fell from a plane. No different than the poor miserable bums you so imply to defend (by stealing from everyone with the monopolist state). It's not particularly anyone's fault that they're poor. Man was raised in the mud. He had to climb up and work to get any capital accumulation going. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Claiming that you have control over that which you didn't create nor buy is stealing. So is what the bureaucrats do. Plain stealing. And I've said what kind of problems arise from a failed private property scheme. People invest less. People build less, because they can't keep what they make. They can't keep higher order capital goods, so those aren't created either. You will have to rely entirely on central planners to make things happen, and to even think for a second that a bureaucrat, with the best intentions of the world, can even remotely be more inovative, reactive, adaptive, than free assembling people in a market, is a sad joke. They can't. They don't have the brainpower, the price inputs, the incentive inputs, the coordination necessary to make a complex economy like today happen. They would be stuck at making nails, or making a single chip that would be outdated in a month. Higher order capital that can't be used, too much or too few. It's plain and simple impossible for the central planner figure out something that the market can't do better.
So this is basicly just the standard discussion of wether all men are born equal or not. I really didn't think anyone bought into this anymore, how can you claim that Einstein was born as the equal of some mentally handicapped child. Einstein didn't just sit down one day and decided to be a geniuses he was BORN with a better brain then 99,9 % of other people. Therefor when some guy is poor it's NOT his own fault, its:
1) the society around him,
2) his upbringing, his entire history
3) and his genes (or what ever term you want to use for the advantages or disadvantages that is was natuarlly born with)
All of these factors help to explain why the guy you walk past is poor. If everyone could be as rich as Donald Trump if only they really wanted to, then why aren't there like 100% rich people in this world?
And finally do really honestly believe that people would rather die from hunger than "man-up" and get some work? Of course, you don't think so. =) But then lazyness just doens't work as an explanation for poverty and hunger does it?
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On August 30 2010 18:17 Hasudk wrote:Show nested quote +I agree that not all people are goody two-shoes, and greed and power is a big factor in this. If you assume that protection agencies will go after profit, and I think that is a reasonable assumption to make, then there will be market pressures keeping them in check. Power corrupts, just like money corrupts, and the agencies being after power and money is exactly what will cause them to offer the highest quality service and negotiate peacefully with other protection agencies. That is exactly what brings you money and power in that environment.
If you run a very profitable protection agency, why would you want to change the status quo? Entering in violent conflict with other protection agencies or screwing your customers over is incredibly risky and likely to spoil a perfectly good source of profit. It will be tried at first, of course, and we'll have our share of scandals in ancap, but that's just not as profitable. And it's not sustainable as a source of profit. A greedy, money-grubbing capitalist will go for high quality protection and peaceful resolution of conflict.
Go read up on the mercenary armies of the 17th century and their role in what actually became a semi worldwar in Europe. They didn't accept status quo, they didn't just sit idlely by and wait. They fought for the guy who paid them most, and when he didn't pay they ravaged his country. It was actually the peace negotiations after the 30-years war that established the states as the cornerstone of international politics.
Guess who paid them.
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On August 30 2010 18:31 Hasudk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2010 18:02 Yurebis wrote:
Anyway, you on a desert island with another man who can save your life doesn't make you a hostage. You're not his hostage because he didn't inflict upon you the state of being you are right now. It's not his fault you need him to survive. He didn't coerce, force, fool you into going into that island, say, you both fell from a plane. No different than the poor miserable bums you so imply to defend (by stealing from everyone with the monopolist state). It's not particularly anyone's fault that they're poor. Man was raised in the mud. He had to climb up and work to get any capital accumulation going. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Claiming that you have control over that which you didn't create nor buy is stealing. So is what the bureaucrats do. Plain stealing. And I've said what kind of problems arise from a failed private property scheme. People invest less. People build less, because they can't keep what they make. They can't keep higher order capital goods, so those aren't created either. You will have to rely entirely on central planners to make things happen, and to even think for a second that a bureaucrat, with the best intentions of the world, can even remotely be more inovative, reactive, adaptive, than free assembling people in a market, is a sad joke. They can't. They don't have the brainpower, the price inputs, the incentive inputs, the coordination necessary to make a complex economy like today happen. They would be stuck at making nails, or making a single chip that would be outdated in a month. Higher order capital that can't be used, too much or too few. It's plain and simple impossible for the central planner figure out something that the market can't do better.
So this is basicly just the standard discussion of wether all men are born equal or not. I really didn't think anyone bought into this anymore, how can you claim that Einstein was born as the equal of some mentally handicapped child. Einstein didn't just sit down one day and decided to be a geniuses he was BORN with a better brain then 99,9 % of other people. Therefor when some guy is poor it's NOT his own fault, its: 1) the society around him, 2) his upbringing, his entire history 3) and his genes (or what ever term you want to use for the advantages or disadvantages that is was natuarlly born with) All of these factors help to explain why the guy you walk past is poor. If everyone could be as rich as Donald Trump if only they really wanted to, then why aren't there like 100% rich people in this world? And finally do really honestly believe that people would rather die from hunger than "man-up" and get some work? Of course, you don't think so. =) But then lazyness just doens't work as an explanation for poverty and hunger does it?
I said you can only blame yourself. You can't blame "history", or dead people, for who you are, because they're either not rational agents, nor alive, so it's pointless to try. Semantics anyways. Apparently you're more advanced into the BLAME GAME than I am. Fuck yeah, blame your genes! those fucking ...spiral... things...
Again, mankind was raised in the mud. We're not at the point where everyone can have plenty of food, but it doesn't mean that coercion can or even does help at all.
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look up profit in a dictionary if you don't know the meaning. The surplus value of labour that is extracted by the seller of the product of the labour.
Also I don't why people didn't choose the second best alternative, maybe because Fords people would kill them (probably not), or maybe because they didn't want to starve to death. Most people will take being abused and opppressed over starvation, but that doesn't mean that we should just embrace oppression as a brilliant thing does it.?
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On August 30 2010 18:32 Yurebis wrote:
Guess who paid them.
Nope that wont work. Guess who will pay the new mercenary armies, yep: big capitalists. There is no real difference here except that the capitalist answers to NO-one but himself, the leaders of the modern state at least has to justify what it does every 4 or so years when there is an election.
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On August 30 2010 18:09 Hasudk wrote:
Read the 3 first pages and it was basicly: "it wont work because people will kill each other" countered by "No, they wont" or "they already do" or "just pay some guy to take care of security".
Maybe I should read the other 16 pages, but CBA right now.
There is no reason why anarcho-capitalism can't WORK, hell fascism and stalinism WORKED, they just didn't work in a nice way.
I think we should define "work" as "creates a society that is, overall, at least as attractive as the one we currently live in." Otherwise, you're right, and there isn't much use in asking the question of whether ancap would work or not.
And that really is the main problem with anarcho-capitalism. Capitalism is a system that inherently puts profit above people, and therefor it has an inbuilt tendency towards oppression on the weakest.
One property of an capitalist society is that people with more wealth have better quality of life. There are a lot of people that this property unattractive, and think a just society is a society where everybody has a similar quality of life. We run into a massive controversy here over just that single point, and I don't think we can resolve it so easily, so let's put that one on hold for a moment.
However in our current system the state can be democraticly controlled to counteract the worst symptoms of this disease. It can for example require employers to treat their workers with some kind of respect, minimum wages and so on.
It is a widely held belief that the government is helping poor people. However, there are not very many poor people any more. The enormous middle class and the upper-class vastly outnumbers poor people. In a democratically controlled society, you'd expect government programs to benefit the middle and upper class at the expense of the poor, and that's exactly what is happening. I can imagine you are skeptical about this, so if you are curious maybe we can discuss some examples of programs currently running in the US that show this trend.
If you look at the beginnings of capitalism where the states were generally weaker you see horrible things going on in the factories. Ford, for example had his won police force, that enforced HIS law in the factories.
In the beginnings of capitalism, there was just not very much wealth. If at that time, you'd take the wealth of all the richest people in society and distributed it amongst everyone equally, people would only very marginally be better off. That was a vastly different society than we live in today, where 90% of the wealth is controlled by 10% of the people.
There is not much you can do to improve the living conditions of those people in that era. You can't conjure up good clothes, good food, good houses, etc out of thin air. You need an enormously richer society to be able to give those people a decent standard of living. We got rich enough for us to be able to consider the living standards in those days inhuman largely because of unregulated capitalism in the meantime.
The workers can of course strike their way out of that if they organize themselves really well, but if there is no state to transform their victories into laws, then they will need to be on constant strike(...)
I agree with you that having the workers on constant strike would be a bad thing. But is that really the right way to go about it? Nothing is forcing my employer to pay me a salary well above the minimum wage, and my employer still does it. I didn't need to go on strike for it, I was just offered that. I think in a healthy market, people will be paid what they are worth.
In the early days of capitalism, there would be people that worked 12 hours / day for very little pay. It's a sad thought to think that a person would only be worth 1$ / hour, working his ass off for 12 hours 7 days a week to buy bread for his family. But is that person really helped if you legislate an 8 hour work day? To me, it seems the result would be that that person will have an even harder time feeding his family and would be distinctly unhappy with that law.
Similarly, when minimum wage law was first instituted, the primary effect was that a lot of unskilled laborers lost their jobs, instead of getting paid more. Those people were also very unhappy with minimum wage law. It's very tempting when you see something wrong in society, to make a law to fix it, but it's not that simple. The wealth simply wasn't there. And you can't make laws to create wealth.
When society became richer and richer, we see automatically that workers were paid better, working shorter days, able to spend more money on luxury items, etc.
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I said you can only blame yourself. You can't blame "history", or dead people, for who you are, because they're either not rational agents, nor alive, so it's pointless to try. Semantics anyways. Apparently you're more advanced into the BLAME GAME than I am. Fuck yeah, blame your genes! those fucking ...spiral... things...
Again, mankind was raised in the mud. We're not at the point where everyone can have plenty of food, but it doesn't mean that coercion can or even does help at all.
Thats not a valid argument. Of course you can blame history, the genes and so on. Because then you can make a society that eliminates the "historical" factors leading to poverty and helps alleviate the genetical.
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On August 30 2010 18:39 Hasudk wrote:
look up profit in a dictionary if you don't know the meaning. The surplus value of labour that is extracted by the seller of the product of the labour.
Also I don't why people didn't choose the second best alternative, maybe because Fords people would kill them (probably not), or maybe because they didn't want to starve to death. Most people will take being abused and opppressed over starvation, but that doesn't mean that we should just embrace oppression as a brilliant thing does it.?
Welp, that's quite the big point you forgot to inquire. Like, the first thing that would go in my mind when listening to the story of a man who walked straight into the highway, and got run over by a truck, would be to immediately ask "why". That you did not, impliest to me that you can take your source's explanations and prescriptions without any questions, repeat them to others still without a doubt, and propagate an empiricist claim to which you have never reflected the validity of.
I would just guess to praxeologically say that either:
1- the men had no better second choice
2- they were coerced against, in which case you would be justifiably outraged.
However I doubt Ford's security guards could force people to walk in, work, day in and day out, without them leaving town, or calling the cops, or revolting like you said, etc. etc. soooo, most likely just #1. In which case, theeeeeres nothing wrong.
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On August 30 2010 18:42 Hasudk wrote:Nope that wont work. Guess who will pay the new mercenary armies, yep: big capitalists. There is no real difference here except that the capitalist answers to NO-one but himself, the leaders of the modern state at least has to justify what it does every 4 or so years when there is an election.
Well, you were telling me yet another tale of great inhumane practices of wealthy man. Turned out the men were statists, huh? Paying mercenaries with taxpayer money? That still happens today... there was a time where half the military forces in Iraq were contractors paid by the U.S.
That you expect wealthy man to pay for mercenaries in ancap to do their dirty business completely ignores the fact that they do already through the state, and it's much cheaper that way. The mafia pays off the police to keep non-compliant drug-dealers down. Corporations lobby the government to acquire exclusive leases of "public" infrastructure; make them a legal, true monopoly; to subsidize themselves, to regulate the market and raising barriers of entry; price fixing so there's a legal collusion, and a limit to efficiency. So many things that can't be done in the market...
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I would never claim that the current governments or even the capitalist system that we currently live under if able to abolish poverty, even if they wanted to. You need a radically different society in order to abolish poverty, and if its built on capitalism it isn't radically different, its just more of the same. You need a society controlled by the masses instead of the elite, and anarcho-capitalism WOULD be controlled by the elite.
I really disagree in the whole quality of life vs wealth idea. Im not saying that money makes you happy, but thats not the point either. You can make a system were everyone is happy, but if half of the people is happily starving to death its still not a good society. Wealth should be distributed evenly because we all NEED food, clothes and so on.
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EPT
