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On March 11 2008 00:37 nA.Inky wrote: Captain Murphy, you seem to take a very pro-capitalist position, yet identify with "anarchism." What is interesting to note is that most anarchists are highly critical of capitalism, just as they are critical of the state. This is not to say your position is "wrong." It is merely an observation, as you represent yourself as "anarchist" and most anarchists would not side with your post here. I wouldn't say most anarchists. The anarcho-capitalist position is more prominent than you think. Check http://www.mises.org if you're interested in learning more about it.
The other thing is that you seem to spend all your post talking about free markets, when the main point of anarchy in general is to disable systems of rule, to work for the greatest possible freedom. You can of course argue that laissez faire capitalism is the best way to go about that, but from my perspective, arguing for laissez faire can, at best, only be a small part of making a case for anarchy. The argument for laissez faire is the crutch of the anarcho-capitalist argument. If the anarcho-capitalist can demonstrate that laissez-faire is the most efficient means of production for any good, the only logical conclusion to draw is that the state is unnecessary.
As to free markets themselves, there is a good quote: "free markets mean that those who don't have enough money to buy what they need do not have a right to live." This is troubling to me, and to many other people. This does not, of course, mean I am automatically in favor of a welfare state. See the post I just made above this one. This line of thought commonly used to advocate welfare puts the desires of poor people above the desires of everyone else, and does more harm than good for society.
Another thing that troubles me is that I see no reason to think corporations would be any more just or humane than governments. Indeed, much of what is going on today reflects the fact that governments are increasingly run in the interest of corporate power and profit. To think that corporations might run amok, completely free of regulation is scary for me. Whether it is corporations or the state, it is still the same people, and with the same goals. Neither case looks particularly good to me! The big difference is that on the free market, the wants of corporations coincide with the wants of consumers. Firms want to make money. The only way they can make money (aside from robbing people) is to produce the best product at the lowest price, because that is what the consumers want to buy. Since corporations, unlike government, can't force consumers to buy their product, they must make it appealing so that the consumer wants to buy their product.
Government, on the other hand does not have the same incentives to do well. Since they force consumers to pay taxes regardless of their job performance, and jail any competition, they are not forced to respond to market demand in the same way that corporations are. We can not know how many thousands of lives have been unnecessarily lost due to inefficient police work that might've been stopped by a better motivated and equipped PDA.
Corporate corruption cannot hold a candle to government corruption.
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Anarchy means "no rule." It is an ideal, an extreme, and an abstraction - a pure thing with no basis in reality. Still, we can be closer or further from the purity of anarchy. If you identify as an anarchist, and you favor laissez faire, you have to make the case that laissez faire better matches anarchy than some other school of anarchy (and there are many). Technically I would argue that the other schools of anarchy don't really qualify as such. Most of them are communistic in nature, but if you're forcing people to cooperate, then you have government. If you don't force people to cooperate, it's not really left-anarchy at all.
Anarchists are, of course, critical of power. Anarchists want freedom from coercion. Along these lines, anarchists are critical of the state. It makes sense. Why should the government have all this authority over us, to tax us, to wage war in our name, etc? But is the state the only source of domination and coercion? Of course not! So what other structures or institutions might exist that perpetuate coercion and domination?
Anarchists tend to see heirarchy in general as the problem. With heirarchy comes domination and coercion. So, as a laissez faire capitalist, you have to make the case for laissez faire being the system that best reduces heirarchy. I see coercion as the biggest problem; as a side note it's ironic that government takes away your property rights in order to protect them. But yes, artificial hierarchy is also a problem.
Now, we all know that capitalism concentrates wealth and power - this has always been true. This lends itself directly to heirarchy. Those who own the means of production own the means to life; they hold all the bargaining chips. Those with nothing must surrender to those who have everything, or else die. Power corrupts. In any system, there has to be someone who owns the means of production. In a statist system, that control is handed over to a coercive monopoly. In a free market system, it is unlikely there would even be a monopoly, but if there was it would be a natural monopoly, which I don't see as a problem or market failure in any way.
So, most anarchists agree with you - the state must go. But they take the critique further. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power, and sets the stage for domination and coercion. Therefore, capitalism must go, too.
Anarchist critique can go even deeper than this. Some anarchists argue that technology itself leads to domination. Consider time, which is a technology, and how time is used to dominate and coerce. Time itself is used to synchronize the movements of masses of people - something obviously useful to large scale heirarchical systems. Some anarchists argue that agriculture was the step that led to massive imbalances of power, so they argue for a return to the "primitive" state.
My point here is not to advocate any particular position at all, but to point out that anarchism is about eliminating rule, eliminating heirarchy and domination and all that stuff. As you said yourself, there are different types of anarchy. I'm only defending the type I favor, anarcho-capitalism, the elimination of the state in favor of a pure capitalist society.
What you seem to have done is read up on economic theory, and base your anarchism entirely on the economic sphere. This is a good first step, but to think that domination and coercion are located only in the government is short sighted. Look beyond economics. I recommend getting into sociology and culture studies, and you'll see many other dimensions to critiques of power. My advocation of anarchism is indeed based in economic theory. One that I've been thus far convinced has no flaws. If you want to bring up a particular example of coercion that you think I am overlooking, I would be curious to know what you're referring to.
On the other hand, you may freely admit that laissez faire is not really anarchist, but is still the best possible solution to X problem. Many people do this, just as many people would prefer the state to whatever "real" anarchy might be. I make no such admission. If one believes that people have ownership over their property, anarcho-capitalism is the only sensible form of anarchy, or any government.
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I'm not sure you read me closely. I was not talking about efficiency of production for any good. I was talking about anarchist critique. We can disagree on the meaning of "anarchy," but if you take it to mean "without rule/rulers," which is how it is used in most anarchist literature and the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought, then anarchy must be critical of power in general, whether corporate or state or otherwise. Efficiency is not at issue.
I'm not arguing here with your economic thinking at all (I don't agree with it, but I'm not arguing it.) I am arguing that what you present as anarchism does not best represent anarchy. It is anarchist in the sense that it dispenses with the state. But again, if you take anarchy to be a state without rules and rulers, a state without domination or heirarchy, it must go beyond the state. The state is not the only thing that has ever dominated and oppressed people. Theoretically, an anarchist thinking might be used to critique some unknown african tribe just as quickly as it would critique capitalism or a particular government.
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can you elaborate on what quasi-socialist means? I haven't met a single liberal who didn't believe in the free market. Lilberal perspective: I believe in the free market except in the production of healthcare, education, food, defense, and housing.
Quasi-socialist.
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On March 11 2008 03:40 nA.Inky wrote: I'm not sure you read me closely. I was not talking about efficiency of production for any good. I was talking about anarchist critique. We can disagree on the meaning of "anarchy," but if you take it to mean "without rule/rulers," which is how it is used in most anarchist literature and the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought, then anarchy must be critical of power in general, whether corporate or state or otherwise. Efficiency is not at issue. I guess we are not reading the same anarchist literature. The Austrian definition does not mean 'without rule', it means 'without government'. Anarcho-capitalism thinks rules against the initiation of violence could be enforced could be better provided without government.
I'm not arguing here with your economic thinking at all (I don't agree with it, but I'm not arguing it.) I am arguing that what you present as anarchism does not best represent anarchy. It is anarchist in the sense that it dispenses with the state. But again, if you take anarchy to be a state without rules and rulers, a state without domination or heirarchy, it must go beyond the state. The state is not the only thing that has ever dominated and oppressed people. Theoretically, an anarchist thinking might be used to critique some unknown african tribe just as quickly as it would critique capitalism or a particular government. When I say 'anarchism' I mean 'anarcho-capitalism', not any other type of anarchical system.
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Captain Murphy, I am not ignorant when it comes to economics. I am a class short of my BA in economics.
Econ is all well and good, but explore other social sciences and philosophy in general. Econ has suffered in many ways because it has isolated itself from psychology and sociology and ecology and so on. In some ways, it is working off of psychology that has been discredited for hundreds of years. I say these things not as an argument against anything you've said, but to encourage you to dig deeper. Economics isn't everything.
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[in response to your response to my earlier post in this thread]
Well, I am unconvinced. In history "no state authority" has led, in almost all cases, to "bad anarchy" rather than "good anarchy", so I think the position is defensible that the objective to just discontinue government is a silly one. If you want market anarchy, it is hardly as simple as that. It is so complicated, in fact, that I wonder if it's not best to let go of the idea entirely and to be satisfied with what we've got - a democratic society is an immense improvement over both "bad anarchy" and oppressive government - worth the trouble even of fighting civil wars over it. How much better is market anarchy than democracy?
Of course, you might think that after everybody has been "properly" educated, it will actually be as simple as discontinuing government, as everybody would then proceed to do the right thing. Unlikely, but I'll concede that perhaps then we might at least have a shot at a more coordinated effort to create a stable anarchist society.
At any rate, education shouldn't hurt, and we should be able to talk about things, but I don't think the circumstances here are right. Our government today is everywhere. It does so many things! Many bad things I'm sure, but also many things that people will hold crucial for a well-functioning society. There isn't enough space here in a single thread to go through every issue and convincingly argue that government intervention there is not only not crucial but also not desirable. Assuming, of course, that said position is even possible to convincingly defend.
What you might do here is plant a seed of doubt. People might concede that coercion and extortion are not the most elegant solutions to society's problems. They might be willing to investigate whether - at least for one particular issue - "laissez faire" might magically do just as well as government intervention or perhaps even better. There is, however, a not entirely unreasonable fear that if we don't do anything about certain kinds of problems, disaster follows. To break through this, you will have to argue rigorously. A few light lines here and there as response won't do. You need sound theoretical arguments backed up by solid research (but at least do some paragraphing ).
I propose the following. Every so often, you will highlight one especially irritating (to you) government intervention in your blog (or take requests). We will then try to gather facts and discuss whether it is a crucial or unwelcome intervention. If we take our time and give the opposing view an honest chance, we might actually see this go somewhere. Your job is done when you have demonstrated that every government intervention is unwelcome. Perhaps then we can talk about controlled anarchy and PDAs.
For example:
- How will roads get built?
- How will people get educated?
etc. Dedicating a couple of days and a thread to a smaller issue will make it much easier for us to have meaningful discussions.
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To offer more of my own political perspective, in case you are interested, Murphy, I'll say this:
I think the problem is deeper than capitalism or government or communism or what have you. It has to do with how humans relate to other humans. We run into problems when there is too great a division of labor, or too many middle men. What happens is that causes are very isolated from their effects. This causes a breakdown in morality. This causes an erosion of humanity. This is why, I believe, welfare states don't work. This is why communism didn't work. This is why capitalism today is not working (unless your idea of "working" means having a lot of consumer merchandise available.)
Even pure capitalism will have this flaw if it is practiced on a large scale. If you look into health issues and things of that nature before certain regulations took effect, you'll see that capitalist firms had no problem with poisoning their consumers, offering up all kinds of dangerous products. You'll see that people worked in extremely unsafe working conditions. The free market does not protect people. IT does not necessarily give them what they want.
Of course, today, with regulations and so on, in some ways things have improved, but there are ways to circumvent the system. The issue is not government or corporations - the issue is scale. Things are so big now that there is an erosion of humanity. People will sacrifice the environment, or human and animal wellbeing in the interest of profit, and they can and will consistently get away with it.
Communist governments were no better - perhaps worse.
In short, I am not invested in communism or capitalism... I see big problems with both. I think a lot of it has to do with scale. I don't see this in black and white, but there is some level of technological development, some level of division of labor, etc, that leads to big problems.
I'll say here at the end that I would be very skeptical of any school of thought that passes itself off as absolute. Nothing is perfect. Laissez faire is not perfect. It is tempting in its purity, but there is no purity. No pure state. We cannot devise some philosophy and say "this is perfection - if only things were this way, all would be well." Such philosophies are tempting because they free us of responsibility. We can just fall back on God, on Laissez Faire, on Communism, on Anarchy, and say "well, this is the way it is meant to be... it's perfect. If you have a problem with it, it's probably you that is the problem."
There is no purity. There is only gray, and we must continually find balance in a shifting world.
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Well, I am unconvinced. In history "no state authority" has led, in almost all cases, to "bad anarchy" rather than "good anarchy", so I think the position is defensible that the objective to just discontinue government is a silly one. If you want market anarchy, it is hardly as simple as that. It is so complicated, in fact, that I wonder if it's not best to let go of the idea entirely and to be satisfied with what we've got - a democratic society is an immense improvement over both "bad anarchy" and oppressive government - worth the trouble even of fighting civil wars over it. How much better is market anarchy than democracy? Depending who you ask, anywhere from somewhat better to alot better. In regards to historical precedent, though, the dissolution of a state is often a sudden chaotic event, when no one has really wanted anarcho-capitalism.
Of course, you might think that after everybody has been "properly" educated, it will actually be as simple as discontinuing government, as everybody would then proceed to do the right thing. Unlikely, but I'll concede that perhaps then we might at least have a shot at a more coordinated effort to create a stable anarchist society. How to transition to anarcho-capitalism is another debate all together.
At any rate, education shouldn't hurt, and we should be able to talk about things, but I don't think the circumstances here are right. Our government today is everywhere. It does so many things! Many bad things I'm sure, but also many things that people will hold crucial for a well-functioning society. There isn't enough space here in a single thread to go through every issue and convincingly argue that government intervention there is not only not crucial but also not desirable. Assuming, of course, that said position is even possible to convincingly defend. Right, that is specifically what I'm trying to avoid discussing in this blog. I've discussed it at length with others in my first blog which you can check out, and the handling of specifics is also discussed in this online book I linked to: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp
What you might do here is plant a seed of doubt. People might concede that coercion and extortion are not the most elegant solutions to society's problems. They might be willing to investigate whether - at least for one particular issue - "laissez faire" might magically do just as well as government intervention or perhaps even better. There is, however, a not entirely unreasonable fear that if we don't do anything about certain kinds of problems, disaster follows. To break through this, you will have to argue rigorously. A few light lines here and there as response won't do. You need sound theoretical arguments backed up by solid research (but at least do some paragraphing ). I propose the following. Every so often, you will highlight one especially irritating (to you) government intervention in your blog (or take requests). We will then try to gather facts and discuss whether it is a crucial or unwelcome intervention. If we take our time and give the opposing view an honest chance, we might actually see this go somewhere. Your job is done when you have demonstrated that every government intervention is unwelcome. Perhaps then we can talk about controlled anarchy and PDAs. For example: - How will roads get built? - How will people get educated? etc. Dedicating a couple of days and a thread to a smaller issue will make it much easier for us to have meaningful discussions. This is kind of what I did in my first blog posts, where I opened it up to any and all questions. Roads and education are discussed thoroughly, as are many other industries people think we need government intervention in. Also, the link I posted above details the answers to these questions as well.
The point of this blog is to put the burden of proof on the statist. If you believe the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources for private goods, prove to me what is so special about education that it needs to be handled by the state.
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On March 11 2008 04:03 nA.Inky wrote: To offer more of my own political perspective, in case you are interested, Murphy, I'll say this:
I think the problem is deeper than capitalism or government or communism or what have you. It has to do with how humans relate to other humans. We run into problems when there is too great a division of labor, or too many middle men. What happens is that causes are very isolated from their effects. This causes a breakdown in morality. This causes an erosion of humanity. This is why, I believe, welfare states don't work. This is why communism didn't work. This is why capitalism today is not working (unless your idea of "working" means having a lot of consumer merchandise available.) I agree that what you point out is a flaw of communism, I don't see how it is a flaw of capitalism.
Even pure capitalism will have this flaw if it is practiced on a large scale. If you look into health issues and things of that nature before certain regulations took effect, you'll see that capitalist firms had no problem with poisoning their consumers, offering up all kinds of dangerous products. You'll see that people worked in extremely unsafe working conditions. The free market does not protect people. IT does not necessarily give them what they want. I would argue that regulation does not have to be provided by the government. It could be provided by a private, independent regulating body. You might object that nothing would stop a company from disobeying the regulations, but if a company did this, they would surely lose their business to comapnies that meet the regulatory standards.
Of course, today, with regulations and so on, in some ways things have improved, but there are ways to circumvent the system. The issue is not government or corporations - the issue is scale. Things are so big now that there is an erosion of humanity. People will sacrifice the environment, or human and animal wellbeing in the interest of profit, and they can and will consistently get away with it.
Communist governments were no better - perhaps worse.
In short, I am not invested in communism or capitalism... I see big problems with both. I think a lot of it has to do with scale. I don't see this in black and white, but there is some level of technological development, some level of division of labor, etc, that leads to big problems. Interesting.. I'm not trying to claim that capitalism is utopian. No system can be utopian since the world has limited resources. But I do think that a system that doesn't rely on initiating violence is better than any system that does.
I'll say here at the end that I would be very skeptical of any school of thought that passes itself off as absolute. Nothing is perfect. Laissez faire is not perfect. It is tempting in its purity, but there is no purity. No pure state. We cannot devise some philosophy and say "this is perfection - if only things were this way, all would be well." Such philosophies are tempting because they free us of responsibility. We can just fall back on God, on Laissez Faire, on Communism, on Anarchy, and say "well, this is the way it is meant to be... it's perfect. If you have a problem with it, it's probably you that is the problem."
There is no purity. There is only gray, and we must continually find balance in a shifting world. There may not be purity, but I do believe in objective morality. I believe that it is never acceptable to initiate violence against a person who has done no wrong, and no government system can escape breaking this moral truth.
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Captain Murphy, again your arguments are always well prepared, but since I have finals this week, I haven't the time to read all of them.
However, as to my previous post, our positions are less different than you think. I think the state is an outdated relic and will inevitably be abolished; the reason I say you are coming to fallacious conclusions based on pro-mixed market / big state views is that in order for good debate, you have to see that the other side is not entirely unreasonable.
For many people in western nations, the current system has worked reasonably well. And it's due to the current system we have. It's very flawed, but it does not reduce to the ridiculous situations you're describing. Unless these are rhetorical tools. If there's one thing I love, it's high rhetoric. But just dismissing alternate arguments as you are doesn't seem good for progress or understanding.
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On March 11 2008 04:43 Ancestral wrote: Captain Murphy, again your arguments are always well prepared, but since I have finals this week, I haven't the time to read all of them. You have finals now? I just got done with my mid-terms last week :o
However, as to my previous post, our positions are less different than you think. I think the state is an outdated relic and will inevitably be abolished; the reason I say you are coming to fallacious conclusions based on pro-mixed market / big state views is that in order for good debate, you have to see that the other side is not entirely unreasonable. I think it is up to you to show why you're view is reasonable. Do you deny that government, by its very nature, must coerce and extort its citizens?
For many people in western nations, the current system has worked reasonably well. And it's due to the current system we have. It's very flawed, but it does not reduce to the ridiculous situations you're describing. Unless these are rhetorical tools. If there's one thing I love, it's high rhetoric. But just dismissing alternate arguments as you are doesn't seem good for progress or understanding. No one engages in high rhetoric more than politicians ;D. I'm just calling a spade a spade. I am not dismissing arguments, I have been providing counter points to them. The only arguments I have dismissed are ones that I declared from the outset where outside the scope of this blog, and pointed them to my first blog.
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i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
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On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote: i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp Short answer: the market can address all these concerns.
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On March 11 2008 07:02 CaptainMurphy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote: i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.
markets don't address emissions the governance of the open seas, skies, or space climate change endangered species ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use) murder, theft, and other crimes protection of intellectual and private property
What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.aspShort answer: the market can address all these concerns.
i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me?
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On March 10 2008 15:36 CaptainMurphy wrote:Note: I will no longer, in this blog entry, be entertaining questions that fall under the the format "how would good so-and-so be provided if not by the state?" My answer to all these is simply that the private sector can provide it more efficiently. The burden of proof is on you to argue why a particular good should be taken off the free market and given to a coercive monopoly. You cannot take this as a premise unless you are advocating communism. If people do want to bring up these questions, I would point them to my first blog entry, where all conceivable situations of the aforementioned type have already been raised. For the anarchist perspective on the provision of the most commonly disputed points, I direct you to this link: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p215See Chapter 12 on police, the law, and the courts.
There already are private defence agencies and they only protect those who can afford them. Why don't they serve the poor. The rich already have better security and the gap will only get bigger with free market. Thats right the poor have to rely on the cops. Better then nothing what they will get in anarcho capitalism where the PDA are more likely to be their muggers. The goverment provides services people would be deprived from in the free market. The goverment maintains these services to be available to everybody. So also to the people who can't afford it privately. The free market makes write offs. I don't expect charity to help people with their basic needs. Millions of people will be living at the grace of the whim of their benifactors who factually decide if they are worth to live another week.
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There already are private defence agencies and they only protect those who can afford them. Why don't they serve the poor. The poor already have police, which they along with everyone else help pay for.
The rich already have better security and the gap will only get bigger with free market. Thats right the poor have to rely on the cops. Better then nothing what they will get in anarcho capitalism where the PDA are more likely to be their muggers. The goverment provides services people would be deprived from in the free market. The goverment maintains these services to be available to everybody. So also to the people who can't afford it privately. The free market makes write offs. I don't expect charity to help people with their basic needs. Millions of people will be living at the grace of the whim of their benifactors who factually decide if they are worth to live another week. The result of privatizing security is that it would help more people than it hurt. Society as a whole would benefit even if some extremely poor suffered (which wouldn't necessarily have to happen, because there is a good chance that caring folks such as yourself would be happy to subsidize the poor voluntarily). So you are saying that the poor are more important than the less poor. But again, when you say that poor people might be hurt by privatizing security, you're not taking into account all the people who are hurt by having socialized security. By virtue of the fact that socialized security is a coercive monopoly, it is going to be inefficient. We don't know how many innocent civilians have been killed due to public police inefficiency that could've been saved uner a privatized system.
It's like saying, why not socialize the automobile industry. Some poor people can't afford cars. Socializing the automobile industry would help them, but at the expense of everyone else. Same with every industry. The free market is the best tool to produce goods for society. Security is no exception.
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i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me? Look again. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 address these issues (except for climate change, but you could consider that an extension of pollution. Endangered species, too is not mentioned, I don't really see the issue with that though). If you read that and still aren't satisfied, then we can discuss it.
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To advocate any form of government is to say that you(or a governing body) should have the right to spend other peoples money in a way you see fit to. From my perspective, that is grossly unethical.
Here is a quote I like on morality from a libertarian website: "The first thing that philosophers must do is lead by example. A key ingredient in the moral ideal of a stateless society is that there is no such thing as positive obligations. Being born in a country does create a moral obligation to pay taxes. Being poor does not create a moral obligation for others to give you money. Being successful does not make you a slave; failure does not give you the right to be a parasite. Having children does not create a moral obligation for others to give them an education. Getting old does not create a moral obligation for others to pay for your retirement." http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/06/freedomain-radio-faq-part-2.html
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Youre right. There are no moral obligations. But the social darwinism would make a very harsh world. With zero artifical (non-market) redistribution of wealth there would be law of the economic jungle. This may be efficient but it will weed out the weak. It would be efficient missery. The problem of poverty won't disappear IMO. There are also examples of privatized companies that failed to become more efficient then its staterun form. These are natural monopolies in witch case it is a sellers market with a huge entry barrier for competition by nature of the product.
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