I think a lot of the competitive spike-grinders out there, at least the successful ones, are very scientific minded. You see a lot of cross-over in competitive poker with MTG sometimes (David Williams) - I'm purely speaking in the psychological aspect here, that there are similarities between the competitive crowds.
Hehe... well in poker there is not the expectation that you have to win every hand
You play with your awesome sideboard cards for the CHANCE to be awesome against deck X or Y. You don't always see it, and a lot of effort went into figuring out that sideboard, for instance. There is a bit of expectation that follows the preparation and work involved in competitive magic. And consequently, we as human beings tend to remember humiliation/defeat/loss more strongly than the "smooth outcomes" like winning (if you expected to, anyway). Everyone does this, and we all remember our bad beat stories vividly.
I am actually pretty obsessed with being rational and don't place a lot of stock in my bad beat stories. What I remember most of all is just losing a lot in general despite doing everything I could to outplay bad opponents. MTGO has reasonable opponents but in your local game stores there are a lot of very... special... people who would be straightforward opponents in any sort of reasonable contest of skill. I remember losing to these people a lot less than I remember how I lost. Something about a bad draw... idk.
The logical/scientific/cold "overly rational" minded spikes I believe are that way, because it's the only way to stay in the game / not get burnt out on the losses. Ask Brian Kibler how to go pro, his response has always simply been "Get good at losing". The opportunities to learn, the minute and subtle gameplay decisions DO matter, but the times that they don't seem to stand out more in our minds. The more games you play (pro level grinders here), the more you start to just see probabilities, and can be like, okay, whatever, when carefully laid plans don't pan out right.
Yeah I definitely agree with all of this. I think Kibler also said that if you can't lose, you can't play MTG (paraphrasing). The thing is that this would also be true if I started playing chess. I would lose a lot at first but thoughtful grinding would get me better. It's just that if I become a top tier magic player, I put my win rate from 65% to 75%. That doesn't seem like a huge incentive to get better.
It all matters, sideboard, preparation, playskill, experience, even if it isn't evident at the time to you. And some of us competitive folks, I don't speak for anyone but myself here, but I'm motivated by the challenge. In the face of all these bad odds, it makes me want to try that much more. Whether I'll get there or not is completely beside the point, the point is that I'm having fun going for it - being too outcome oriented on matchup percentage will absolutely burn out any competitive player (another nugget of wisdom from Kibler, he stresses to just keep learning).
I mean any game is going to be a huge challenge. It's just that in magic you're trying to outthink the randomness of your deck and I'd rather win or lose because I am asked to outthink my opponent.
And then you start to see, that a lot of the pros and top placing people have consistently done so for years, you say it's because they just go to so many events (well, logically why shouldn't they, then?) - I say it's probably because these same people that continue to consistently perform well are doing something right.
I agree. They're way better than the people they play against. But you also have to grind out a lot of tournaments to even have a hope of getting what you deserve. The odds are always against you even if you are the best player in the room by a factor of 2.
EDIT: In conclusion regarding how you say "maybe you just feel dumb for believing" - well, I don't think it's dumb, in all seriousness. I know it sounds anal to suggest looking for another game, but it sounds like you want to play with less variance, and let skill be the major deciding factor(s).
Yeah this seems like it's going to be part of "how I talked myself into selling all my magic cards and playing X".
I was actually going to speculate that there might be less luck in limited since you have a lot more choices to make when constructing or drafting your deck.
It could be argued that there's some skill in selecting a standard deck, but like BBD and a bunch of other pros have started recommending this new Esper control list, and I seriously doubt anyone could fault you for just doing whatever they seem to agree on.
I agree that your library behaves better the further back you go in constructed formats, but I don't know if this means there's less luck to it. Are the win rates of the best players appreciably different for modern vs standard?
There's just too much luck in the game. Not even talking about my own play experiences, if you just watch the videos on channelfireball or SCG, the best players in the world struggle on to win a consistent basis. Owen and Huey just recently did those couple of BTT drafts and got destroyed. Two of the best magic minds in the world, probably several times better than their opponents, and it doesn't matter because of luck.
The only reason the pros are able to place at events is because they go to tons of them. If I show up at a PTQ of 200 people and have an 80% chance to win every game, I still probably won't even top 8. You have to really grind out lots big tournaments to even start placing a few times a year.
MTG just does not have enough choices for you to make to consistently allow you to win events. Every deck has a matchup where there's just not much you can do because your opponent's cards match up very well against you. In fact, MTG rewards playing non-interactive strategies because the less your opponent is able to do, the better.
MTG is a game where you flip a coin, if heads, you get to make a meaningful choice that improves your position in the game. Then you flip another coin, if heads, this choice actually matters. Why does anyone put up with a game that has so much randomness in it?
I feel like part of the problem too is that the MTG community is very outcome oriented. There's a lot of pressure to put up straight wins both in the swiss tournament structure and in general the player culture judges you based on the results you put up. This is kind of exacerbated by the fact that everyone walks around bragging about their wins but shuts up about the time they went 1-3 and lost to some little kid playing a green deck. But WOTC also can't change the tournament structures to be more permissive of losses because then tournaments would go foreverrrr and it would be an implicit admission that there's a ton of variance in the game so you have to play a hundred matches to find out who truly deserves #1.
Overall I feel like MTG is marketed and perceived as being a lot more skill oriented than it really is. I think people would have a lot less incentive to play it if they had to really internalize how much luck their is in any given match. MTG players seem to sustain themselves by patting themselves on the back when they win, and blaming luck when they lose. While it's true that you will occasionally get the opportunity to make interesting and game altering decisions, more often than not, the monoblack mirror comes down to who can draw underworld connections first. I've seen Turtenwald lose to some scrub who forgot his Erebos was active on camera because his opponent had UWC and he didn't. Owned Turtenwasted.
I guess I'm just dumb for feeling like you should always be able to win a strategy game against opponents who have a double digit IQ.
Another user, dcartist, posted this. http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=6991257&postcount=79 Not only does it betray incredible ignorance, it is also CLEARLY more significant flaming than anything I have been infracted for. He's calling an ideology "horse****", among other things. And yet he receives no infraction, even after using the built in report function.
The long and short is that the I am being scrutinized and held to a much higher behavioral standard than older users. The mods seem to be using their powers to ideological ends by flagging my infractions within minutes, while leaving others untouched. So much for objectivity. I'm posting in the hopes that there's another layer of moderation that can put a stop to this abuse.
Are there REAL professors at REAL accredited universities that teach this horse**** as a viable system? (I could see teaching this as a giant "FAIL" to demonstrate why govt is NECESSARY. But really, this is really laughable stuff)
Since I have already received two "infractions" for poor behavior, I want to see you get an infraction because this is several times worse than what I've done. You are clearly flaming/trolling.
To answer your question, yeah. There are "accredited" universities that teach this "horse****". Your total ignorance on the topic should at least give you pause, but far be it from me to expect intellectual honesty from my fellow man.
Then you also have Robert P Murphy, Tom DiLorenzo, Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Walter "moderate" Block, Michael Rozeff... I could go on. There are many ancap professors who do quite well in "accredited" universities. They often also have notable private careers in consulting and finance, and have even been called to testify before congress.
Wow. What a fringe ideology.
I'm really interested to see how far you will shift the goalposts in your response. Are you going to claim that these professors are ignorant hacks? Are you going to compare them to "esteemed" statist professors? Who knows! Whatever argumentative gymnastics you pull, your question has been answered more than adequately, and you have betrayed total ignorance on the subject (while making an appeal to authority nonetheless).
Double post merged, user warned. Please edit existing posts rather than double posting.
As a second problem, don't backseat moderate. If you have a problem with a post, report it using the Report Button at the lower left corner of each post. - Harkius
In all of history every single powerful group gained their power from a roaming barbaric society by controlling supplies, becoming the sole provider of certain needs, and simply using their position to leverage a body that controls the people living in that area until they lose power and are usurped. That's the reality all of history shows us, not a Utopian land where everyone is happy. Another thought: a group sets up control over the Panama Canal by making a violent and rudimentary government that cannot be pressured by other larger government to stay in line. You now destroy trade East to West.
I'm too tired rebutting this with the "special guy" above. The long and short of it is that the burden goes to you to show that past examples of "failed" anarchism are sufficient to categorically disprove anarchism, particularly in light of modern technology.
The persistence of microstates shows that big-guys don't walk around automatically beating up small-guys.
The examples I cite are modern day examples where money trumps government, not the other way around. A source of money supplies a militia and pays off the government, the militia gains the advantage by cutting off all trade in the area and subjugating the people through drugs and violence, and then the source of money gets what they are looking for (say coltan). Your ridiculous assertion that an individual (or group) would be able to defend their supply from roaming groups of bandits or militias while maintaining a food supply and morale and population under siege has no bearing on history or reality.
First, this seems like you're saying government is impossible.
Second, even if governments are bribed, they still repress non-gang/militia activity. They're holding a monopoly on arbitration and sometimes security, so they're preventing alternative organizations from competing with them. It is these alternative organizations that would form the resistance against roaming bands of militia and the like.
The government is the only thing that prevents this from happening in this country. We have laws that uphold the peace, infrastructure that provides free travel across the land, protection from foreign bodies, protection of your land and its natural riches, etc. There's no hand waving in it.
Actually that is hand waving. You didn't explain why it turned out that way, you just pointed out that it did.
Using Panama as an example again, look at how much that country gets paid to simply hold a government there and keep that portion of land carved out by government for corporations around the world. It's government that completely controls the private enterprises that require that passage for international trade. You can simply look at the buildings there and see Japan built a giant fresh fish market there or Canada built these buildings to provide cheap rent to business or residents.
Panama is a better example of a small decentralized entity. It is technically a government, but the ability of foreign corporations to come and go means that the principle of "free association" is working, at least on the corporate level. The fruits of this relationship take place in a backdrop of non-aggression.
I mean ethnic gangs in NY and other major cities at the turn of the century.
We don't claim there would be no gangs under anarchy. We just think there would be less crime. Particularly we see no reason for there to be increased drug crime over the status quo.
Merged double post.
Pretend that I am not smart enough to see how that answers my question at all, and try explaining again.
Pointing out that something COULD happen is irrelevant. Lots of things CAN happen.
Do you mean states with respect to Texas and Idaho? Or states with respect to Luxembourg and China? In the former case, the federal government certainly steps in, in the latter case, the UN probably could, and more stringent means are being formulated as NGO's all of the time. Robert Wright does a good job of demonstrating why it's nigh inevitable for it to happen. The world is tending toward less anarchy, not more.
No. I mean with respect to all government entities (states). Consider majoritarian democracy. Anarchy is resolved between the majority and minority, but democracy cannot resolve conflicts originating within the majority.
I think that a better one is, "Why should we have anarchy for all people?"
No. Ancap claims only innocent people have rights. I don't think there's any reason to grant true criminals rights.
Do you have a typo in this sentence, or does it just not make any sense?
Do you have a smudge on your screen or is your brain just malfunctioning?
Ugh.
A zero sum game is one where my win is perfectly balanced by your loss. For example, if there is only one nugget of gold, we can't both have it.
Conversely, if I rub your back and you rub mine, that is a positive-sum game.
If our lives revolve around ZSG, we have little reason to respect each other's rights. We are more likely to attack each other over gold nuggets. If our lives revolve around positive sum games, then there's no reason to attack each other. We want to preserve a mutually beneficial long term relationship.
Defection actually has a great number of controls, even in a democracy. Gossip is one. State and federal statutes against fraud is another.
Oh yeah those are effective. No one in a democracy has an incentive to pay attention to what's going on in the first place because their vote has a zero chance of mattering. Literally zero. I could flip a coin at the polls and the world would be the same place.
You'd need to be able to objectively establish controls for retaining cooperation amongst large-scale societies. So far, we've never seen any non-legislative mechanism to ensure that.
Cooperation can't be legislated. It stems from physical reality - whether gold nuggets are scarce and limited, or can be produced in greater number with cooperation.
Except that you would be arguing that we should adopt a dangerous and malfunctional system to replace a system that is more functional and less dangerous. And that's a ludicrous thing to expect people to accept.
Well that's the last time I make my analysis holistic. Zzzzzzzz. You in fact just rephrased what I said - since I set up my argument even permitting that anarchy would fail - and then elaborated on its failure as if I weren't aware of it.
Again, reiterating, as a political philosophy, we think anarcho capitalism is the only coherent option. It may be that coherence is impractical. So deal with it.
And which of those statements do you perceive as applying to the US?
Well since the US isn't an anarchy, none of them.
Uh, perhaps. But there are still very good reasons to think that it would destabilize the entire system and tear out the cooperation that it would need in order to survive.
No. There are not very good reasons to think it would destabilize the entire system and tear out the cooperation that it would need in order to survive. There I just matched your level of analysis.
'Pointing it out' is not the same as demonstrating that the principle is applied equally across all. You've done one, not the other.
I'm just carrying an argument over. The person obviously did not address it. But thanks for pointing out that a "tag" does not itself contain the full proof of its argument.
Prove it or it didn't happen.
Self evident. Try to define state. (I'm facepalming as I ask you to do this. It will result in quite a lot of derailment because I've never seen anyone give a remotely coherent answer)
I haven't seen you give a coherent definition of the "non-agression axiom" or how you would solve social problems in light of said axiom. Have I missed it?
You could try the wikipedia article. I would have thought someone who got a BS in philosophy from Cornell would know about the NAP.
That wasn't an "analysis". It was an "assertion". There's a significant difference.
Actually it is an analysis. Go back and read it. I've also given it again here since it confused you so hard.
Really? Who owns the county library? Or the road that your house is on?
The state. The state.
Mfw you think ownership has to be individual.
It's at least as justified as most of the comments of yours that I've referenced here.
Troll harder. Most of the comments you cherry picked out of their original context and then complained that they're devoid of substance.
Moreover, you might not be able to withhold supply if you can withhold the rarest, necessary component. For example, if you had all of the world's sodium (as a hypothetical and acknowledged as impossible example), then suddenly you have done a pretty effective job of cornering the market on table salt, haven't you?
Yes. Good job figuring out that an unconstrained thought experiment can be used to come to extreme conclusions. Will you grant me the same leisure? What if aliens come to earth and claim they'll destroy all societies starting with "D"? Does that disprove democracy?
What a high level of thinking.
You're assuming that there would be a walmart, that the prices would be cheap, and that the same products would be available. None of these assumptions are more reasonable than the idea of someone hoarding all of the sudafed.
Well I'm assuming that there would be significant trade of resources and resource-organizations where division of labor becomes appropriate. This is because of profit opportunity. And don't even bother pointing out something to do with state currency, because currency isn't required for profit, and precious metals serve easily as non state currency.
Possibly. But that fifty dollars wouldn't keep everyone from shooting you in the head. And that AK probably wouldn't stay yours long unless you were willing to kill others to keep it.
Yeah. People would really risk their lives for $50 coming to try and take my AK. That's kind of self defeating.
The point is that there are easy ways to increase the cost of other people attacking you. Traditional self defense is one way. I'm not going to bother enumerating other ways because this conversation is tedious enough as is. Everyone ITT seems content to cherry pick their responses, expanding into rapidly increasing volumes in an attempt to catch 1 mistake out of 100 arguments so they can blow it out of proportion and claim victory. Tiresome.
ABSTRACT The hypothesis that population pressure causes increased war- fare has been recently criticized on the empirical grounds. Both studies focusing on specific historical societies and analyses of cross-cultural data fail to find positive correlation between popula- tion density and incidence of warfare. In this paper we argue that such negative results do not falsify the population-warfare hy- pothesis. Population and warfare are dynamical variables, and if their interaction causes sustained oscillations, then we do not in general expect to find strong correlation between the two variables measured at the same time (that is, unlagged). We explore mathe- matically what the dynamical patterns of interaction between population and warfare (focusing on internal warfare) might be in both stateless and state societies. Next, we test the model predic- tions in several empirical case studies: early modern England, Han and Tang China, and the Roman Empire. Our empirical results support the population-warfare theory: we find that there is a ten- dency for population numbers and internal warfare intensity to oscillate with the same period but shifted in phase (with warfare peaks following population peaks). Furthermore, the rates of change of the two variables behave precisely as predicted by the theory: population rate of change is negatively affected by warfare intensity, while warfare rate of change is positively affected by population
More people means more warfare, so the Bushmen living in an "affluent society" may have a happy anarchist society, however as population increases with the number of peoples thanks to farming practices we entertain more warfare as populations increase in density.[/quote] Wow. You really like academic papers. Nevermind the underlying logic.
My analysis of zero sum games is superior. It ties in with the increase-in-population hypothesis because as population increases, resources become more scarce per capita. At least in primitive societies.
This is NOT true in modern societies because of division of labor. More people means disproportionately more stuff. Particularly, intellectual products can be scaled across infinitely many people at no cost. So your study fails hard at disproving modern anarchy.
At best, it lays out a case for decentralization because setting up a government doesn't increase per capita resources. It just means that some people are going to be permanently poor slaves of the political class. That's not an improvement over the vagabond lifestyle.
The "modern" quelling of such violent impulses among nation-states has come through state coercion. The latest was during the Second Reconstruction to purge forms of de jure and partially eradicate de facto segregation, equally and previously there were other actors acting according to law minimally to fight these laws and change them.
Uh no it hasn't. There's more aggression now than ever. The US steals, on average, 40% of everyone's income. That's more than any other criminal organization in history. They also commit aggression via special privileges and protectionist regulations. Oh and they also murder hundreds of thousands of people OUTSIDE the country. Never mind that mass-murder and genocide aren't nearly as prevalent under anarchy. Exterminating an entire race gets expensive.
The social change came through a combination of grass roots and top down pressures to "smooth out the middle." Again this is one way in which a "tragedy of the commons" is solved in a federal system to squish the defective local government into submission without having blacks resort to outright violent rebellion. This in part is the separation and balance of powers.
Its not much of a separation of powers if the federal government just automatically squishes local government. Its also worth noting that the federal government was also in danger of signing a law that would guarantee slavery wherever it already existed in order to prevent civil war, indicating that the state's goal was never to outlaw slavery.
But that's cool. I find your regurgitation of mainstream history really enthralling and relevant.
What anarchy as "classically defined" is the breakdown and failure to enforce the rules to "act non aggressively to other people." Anarchy in the current population matrix lacks the mechanisms to properly distribute such justice as you could with Bushmen in a tribal or family structure to enforce exile, shunning, or some other punishment such as a simple chastising. Quite simply the Jivaro have a statistic to have a murder rate of 60% of their men in an anarchistic society, yet the modern American republic has a death rate for men is 5 per 100,000. Apparently having a police force does something good. As people fear death in "bad anarchy" there is far less production.
I mean you're literally comparing a bunch of backward tribals to modern white people. How biased can you get? Why don't you compare backward tribals in anarchy to backward tribals under statism.
Even within the framework of Ireland, there was a lot of blood feuds and most of the knowledge was caught up in the monasteries, and as various invaders came they eviscerated those defenseless monasteries thus destroying and evading the "non aggression axiom." You can't have a "non aggression axiom" if you can't enforce it or protect your property rights or have someone protect them for you.
Jesus christ. You are just randomly jumping through history. Can you focus on any one example? Can you focus on any one concept? No.
I'll point out that blood feuds, while they may have been common internally in ireland, were common on the international level in monarchical europe. See like... all the wars.
however as mentioned earlier those forces that we cannot deploy readily and require to pay frequently will be more loath to fight than those that are on a constant payroll only accomplished through a tax or subscription. However, if the rich are the only ones that can continue to pay to protect "their stuff" it leaves the poor open to exploitation. With the state functioning under the principle that a person is taxed relative to how much protection they need, the rich pay more for said protection and the poor pay less however each benefits from the lack of getting their stuff plundered by invaders. Which is the strength of a progressive tax policy and not theft, as said rich require more protecting than the poor. This is equally why the US transitioned from a no standing army policy with a navy to one with five different branches to protect itself, allies, and others from the USSR since communists weren't going to "leave us alone" for about 50 years. Yet, after the Civil Rights Movement we enjoyed better living standards and more rights than the conquered areas of Eastern Europe. This is why being weak in state power or lacking strong allies is necessary to preserving liberty, as liberty is only earned through strife and hard work not a "non aggression axiom."
Rant rant rant rant. Do you ever get tired of your fashionable ad hoc historical cherry picking? There are numerous problems with this account, both factual and theoretical. Its a giant TLDR block of text that I could spend my time tearing apart but I don't see the point. You'll just talk past me again and again and again until you've spammed me into submission. Here wait:
Lying in the North Atlantic between Norway and Greenland, its northern shores brushing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is a stark and desolate landscape of basalt and frozen lava, punctuated by volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers – eerily beautiful for tourists, though a wearying challenge for farmers. Such a harsh natural environment might have attracted few immigrants, were it not for a still harsher political climate back on the mainland. Iceland’s first settlers – Norse and Celto-Norse refugees from King Harald Fairhair’s attempt in the late ninth century to impose centralized control and property taxes on all of Norway – established what historians call the Icelandic Free State, or Icelandic Commonwealth, around the year 930. In Diamond’s words, "they privatized government beyond Ronald Reagan's wildest dreams" (since Reagan dramatically increased the size and expense of government over the course of his administration, this is quite an understatement), "and thereby collapsed in a civil war that cost them their independence."
This "thereby" is somewhat misleading, however, since civil strife did not become a serious problem in Iceland until around 1220, nearly three centuries after the system was established – and the system’s final collapse did not come until 42 years after that. As I have written elsewhere: "We should be cautious in labeling as a failure a political experiment that flourished longer than the United States has even existed." Indeed, given Diamond’s criterion of instability, the United States cannot be called stable until it survives the year 2108. (Though one could argue that it has already failed the test: the United States had to wait only 85 years from its founding before plunging into a catastrophic civil war, by contrast with Iceland’s 290 years.)
How did the Icelandic Free State work? The 11th-century historian Adam von Bremen described Iceland as having "no king but the law." The legal system’s administration, insofar as it had one, lay in the hands of a parliament of about 40 officers whom historians call, however inadequately, "chieftains." This parliament had no budget and no employees; it met only two weeks per year. In addition to their parliamentary role, chieftains were empowered in their own local districts to appoint judges and to keep the peace; this latter job was handled on an essentially fee-for-service basis. The enforcement of judicial decisions was largely a matter of self-help (hence Iceland’s reputation as a land of constant private feuding), but those who lacked the might to enforce their rights could sell their court-decreed claims for compensation to someone more powerful, usually a chieftain; hence even the poor and friendless could not be victimized with impunity.
The basis of a chieftain’s power within the political order was the power he already possessed outside it, in civil society. The office of chieftaincy was private property, and could be bought or sold; hence chieftaincies tended to track private wealth. But wealth alone was not enough. As economic historian Birgir Solvason notes in his masterful study of the period, "just buying the chieftainship was no guarantee of power"; the mere office by itself was "almost worthless" unless the chieftain could "convince some free-farmers to follow him." Chieftains did not hold authority over territorially-defined districts, but competed for clients with other chieftains from the same geographical area.
That should keep you busy. Just kidding. You'll ignore it. I didn't even read it so its okay though. Just C&P for illustrative purposes.
If you cannot enforce a philosophy, it is inherently useless as humanity through out each stage of existence has shown to be violent. The "new world" that exists now was built off of the back of the old colonial empires, and there are multiple fake states that do not coincide with "healthy borders" such as tribe, geographical obstructions, or war or diplomatically(by the natives) established borders. As such we have the Arab Spring, multiple failed states in Africa, and some specific rising powers in South America and Asia.
Most of the new emergent states clamor for democracy, rather than anarchy. Forms of capitalism are more state oriented rather than anarchist based. There exists nor has there existed an anarchistic plurality with the level of material and social prosperity and same level of freedoms that exists. At best in the States at times we have established the requisite "min anarchism" by which to exist under relative to our population density. As these other nations have high population densities, it is logical for them to follow some sort of republican form of government. Even the city-states such as Singapore, while more authoritarian, live better than the Jivaro. This is because the state using coercion enforces the non aggression axiom for the em-betterment rather than the embitterment of the people. To embitter the people is to invite anarchy and therefore regime change and transition into a new form of government.
Many English speakers incorrectly assume[11] "begs the question" means "raises the question" and use it accordingly:[12] for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Many experts deem such usage incorrect.[13]
[edit]
[/quote] Good! Since you've quoted it I'll presume that you know what it means. So when I say "anarchy gets conquered", I ask "why?", and all you can answer back is "well ireland got conquered", you can see how you are begging the question.
Except cities which tend to live the longest and even outlive tribes, which reinforces an argument for more city-states, not necessarily any particular forms of anarchism but rather reinforcing localism which is compatible with a federal republic.
Anarchy is a form of societal breakdown that allows for more violence and less cooperation to exist, theoretical anarchism allows for the persistence of cooperation under the guise that the non aggression is hitherto followed. When that axiom is not enforced, "good anarchy" breaks down into "bad anarchy" which is the norm rather than the exception.
No. Anarchy does not assume that the NAP is enforced. It seeks to prove that cooperation and non-aggression are more likely under anarchy than under states. If you were paying attention you would have at least tried to rebut this instead of just talking past me. Seriously. Here I'll do it too.
"We can see that states cause the breakdown of social cooperation and create poverty and war. It is far inferior to anarchy because privilege and absolute power of the state apparatus has a corrupting effect. The office itself is a moral hazard because the state head is essentially judge in his own case."
Because you have yet to deal with the primary problem with the non-aggression axiom presents, how do you deal with deviants in a society most effectively? How do you dispose of a hierarchy unwilling to leave or transition?
The NAP does not present any problems. At least none that you've shown. You've just complained about tribes versus cities, which is totally irrelevant.
And now you're asking "how". Well. How do you open a can of beans? It depends on physics. So do all your other "how" questions. Physics isn't relevant to political philosophy, so you can drop it.
I said Augustus Caesar, and upon the death of Julius Caesar those people were either willing to join the new Caesar in arms out of loyalty or were persuaded by coin. Legions equally weren't all conscripts, especially during the civil wars.
Wow this is sooooooooo irrelevant. I can't even think of any way this would plug in to the conversation.
Furthermore, not everything is "private" or "owned." For example, Antarctica is not "owned" nor are the claimants to stars or faraway planets cannot enforce their scraps of paper.
Those people that claim to "own Mars" or portions of Mars are often ignored by various countries since these people cannot enforce their claims. I can say "I own Blinking Spirit" or "I am Blinking Spirit," but without proving it or being able to sustain my claim to the "Blinking Spirit identity and property" therefore there is no "property to be held at."
How about a more clear criterion, since you seem intent on deliberately misunderstanding me. If there is any property at all, it is private. There is no alternative to private property. Whether the majority owns it, ceaser owns it, or an individual who has homesteaded it owns it, the property is private.
The relevance is that you need to stop complaining about private property. See? I made myself relevant to something you said a while back, but which you have since dropped since you are intent on skipping around through the favorite events in undergraduate liberal arts.
Another instance is an idea or thought or reproducible work, which is why we have a monopoly system set up to incentivize exploration and creation of works through trademark and patent. The only reason the idea or work exists as "private property" yet "mass produced" is because a party can enforce those laws to protect the rights of the original owner. However, these patents have a life of the owner and some years after their death, extended thanks to Disney under the Bono Law, yet they still become "public property."
Oh jesus christ. No I am not starting an IP argument with you. Your historical account of IP is just false. Completely false. I dare you to try and find citations for it.
Okay I can't resist - if IP were a true "property" right, it wouldn't expire after 10 years.
It is your own strict definition of "property" that becomes the "falsity." For example, American Indians did not have a concept of "private property" in terms of land and as such did not conceptualize nor exploit that conceptualization of "private property" in the realm as the Europeans did. It was not until the concept of "private property" in the realm of land ownership proffered an impetus to Indians to engage in contract and other English institutions. The same goes for whenever the Spanish introduced the concept of law suits to the South American Indians and numerous other examples.
TLDR - American Indians did have property even if they owned it in common and did not call it property.
And the State is the people in a democracy, therefore the people have final dispute resolution.
Wow. You're right. Oh wait just kidding. The majority resolve disputes how? By voting on it? But if they have a conflict within the majority there's no way they can resolve their problem... unless they take a majority of the majority which eventually isn't democracy anymore.
Corporations equally have a funny way of acting awfully like governments:
-corporate towns
-corporate espionage
-lobbying groups (a form of diplomacy)
-private security forces that have the power to arrest on the specific property
Corporate genocides? Oh wait, no. Just kidding.
Corporations have a completely different incentive structure from states. States have a captive body of "consumers" who are tethered from birth. Corporations have to persuade people to join their organization, and those people can very often change corporations very quickly. Coke, pepsi, RC cola, etc.
State = aggressive monopoly on final arbitration =/= Corporations.
George Clooney is a rich man and can afford to do stuff like this:
The question is whether we should have "Cloonies" be able to control Blackwater special forces and able to enforce their own foreign policies under an anarcho framework.
I'm just going to point out that the frequency of rich guys engaging in hostile military action is very small compared to that of states. In particular, this is aimed at preventing genocide, while the vast majority of government interventions are not. When the government does prevent genocide, it is also not out of ideological concern or human compassion, it is out of self interest. See special interest groups/military industrial complex.
You are just a huge pain in the ass to talk to by the way. Seriously. You are just talking past me. If your next post is similarly incoherent I'm just going to respond to you with a couple of lines. I'm not going to bother addressing post-civil war reconstruction, especially if you're just going to present a biased ad hoc account.
Unless they simply withhold other supplies aside from the drug, or the supplies to manufacture the drugs.Just look at other parts of the world where cartels and warlords reign supreme because of domination of the area and then make their subjects easy to handle with drugs. It's not a fantasy, it's what would most likely happen without anyone else policing them.
You can't just withhold supply if there's competition. You're assuming there wouldn't be. You haven't justified this. Its not hard to imagine that any criminal organization would be able to muster the resources to prohibit international production of meth, which you can make from cheap walmart products.
Your example of other countries are just as muddled by government intervention. Local governments themselves participating in the trade, international government organizations restricting trade. Anti-weapons proliferation policies and laws also skew arms acquisition whereas in free markets you'd be able to defend yourself and buy an AK for $50.
Its also not clear how government is supposed to solve this problem... unless you just snap your fingers and chant "liberal democracy", which has never been shown to work in controlled studies.
And look at the way immigrants to the US were treated by the precursors to organized crime for how they could easily hoard a population completely reliant on them for survival.
Its worth pointing out that immigration restrictions contribute to organized crime. (I think what you're getting at is human trafficking? I can't really tell because your sentence structure is wonky.)
Specialization of labor and convection of political leaders allows to channel the natural impulse for human hierarchy and the natural disgust people eventually face with their officials is again channeled in a constitutional nation-state/republic.
Irrelevant. I pointed out that anarchy was persistent through political systems, so you can cross apply most of the supposed disadvantages of anarchy to states.
The balance of powers equally serves as a vis-a-vis between the differing institutions, however this is in the form of a social contract rather than an "anarchy."
What balance of powers? You sound like you're reading from some arcane prophecy.
Perhaps a "min-anarchistic" status to allow for specialization of labor to take place, but anarchy no as even within the state there are institutions. Only within the framework of the international order is there a state of nature.
Wrong. State agents are in anarchy vis-a-vis each other. For example, in a pure majoritarian democracy, the majority see each other in anarchy.
On the opposite point, that immediacy of consequences for actions reduces the likelihood of actions being committed again which creates an equilibrium for security stability that allows for markets to exist with minimal coercion.
What? You can't just say "there's equilibrium" because actions have immediate consequences.
Anarchism is a form of breakdown and transition as classically defined.
Oh good. You're talking past me. Obviously I do not define anarchy as "breakdown". See we're talking about anarcho capitalism which is defined as adherence to the non aggression axiom.
Any form of government is always inadequate to preempt and prevent "all bad things," the question is what is the most efficient and distributive of justice of all the systems. Democracy requires a lot of work.
Again, talking past me. You're ignoring the "cooperation/zero sum game" analysis. When you catch up let me know.
Or we just discard balance and "true equilibrium" altogether as a part of the discussion and meter out the merits of a democratic nation-state versus an anarcho-capitalist state.
Err, this is a framework point. You have to decide whether you're talking about political philosophy or pragmatics. If you are talking about pragmatics you also have to specify agent relativity. As is, your question is poised to rocket out in infinitely many directions.
1. Iceland
-Blood feuds
2. Celtic Ireland
-Conquered
3. American West
-Human right violations, massive culling of wildlife, and subsequent conquest
4. Spanish Civil War
-Conquered
5. Colonial Rhode Island
-State eventually cropped up, subsequent conquests
6. Colonial Pennsylvania
-State cropped up as more people moved in, while the Indians moved out and conquests.
Begging the question. If you don't explain why those countries were conquered you don't explain anything.
"Anarchy" replaced with a coercive government that minimizes conflict or conquers the anarchist state altogether.
Well you're missing the point again, which is that even if those bodies of people had utilized a state to organize themselves, they'd have died out too. So simply pointing out that a society is conquered or fell apart doesn't matter because the same fate awaits all states.
Ostrom's work on non state actors and state actors provides a context on the balance of powers approach to dealing with the complexities of shared resources. I would furthermore argue that in such a structured society in a multi actor society approaches more towards Jeffersonian democracy than anarchy.
As man has a tendency for hierarchy and specialization of labor, utilizing a balance of powers allows for "lock down" through gridlock to allow for min anarchism to prevail. Equally, separation of powers brings forward a way for others to focus on other pursuits than governance all the time.
Hierarchy is compatible with anarchy and the non-aggression axiom. You have to directly address why some groups attacking innocent people is a superior plan for society.
Equally, the Athenian Assembly which was the most "democratic" institution of city-state was still able to be swayed to war through words and emotion. Rallying a people to war isn't that difficult, especially in the smaller areas. Furthermore, flash mobs do show a "swarm" instinct in humans, and there's been research enough to provide context that humans behave psychologically different under different frames of mind and emotions. So mutualism under the context of the Ricardo principle and other free trade ideology that pervaded the ideas of the early 20th century did not dissuade the Great Powers from engaging in WWI nor did it stop Athens from conquering it's neighbors.
If the "source code" for humanity and war does not stop mobs from formulating and did not stop wars from escalating like WWI a century ago, what makes us so different today in the face of the various fake states that are breaking up like in South Sudan? Sudan itself was considered "anarchy" and is still considered as such as two states.
In South Sudan there are six rebel groups vying for power still against the embryonic state. Each of those rebels are "private" companies and self-governing, which again provides a context to which why people tend to view anarchism as a "bad thing." As states centralize power and use coercion there are fewer private armies ready to usurp power. This is what happened in particular Southern states that slowed down Redemption such as Texas where a militia was formed to counter insurgents. However, as power was consolidated back to whites and less frequent use of federal power so did increase abuses to black back to pre Civil War levels until the Second Reconstruction. The blacks were a local population, partially interbred with the local white population, and economically connected.
Again, you are exploiting a false dichotomy. Everything is "private". You cannot eliminate private property. It will always be owned by someone. Julius Ceaser's army is an example of a "private" army but it is not an anarcho-capitalist army because it was acquired aggressively and used aggressively. The question of property rights is how they are allocated, not simply observing that people can abuse them.
Economics without social justice and counter veiling forces and usages of coercion by a state or "similar power" degenerates the potential of a society by man's inherent violence. I will furthermore argue that incorporatizations of power do indeed constitute a type of governance as corporations function under a charter which is a similar governing document like a constitution. The only difference is that a constitution is generational and has been more successful to survive generational power transitions than charters as seen in colonies such as the aforementioned Pennsylvania.
Okay. But corporations are not governments. Even corporations larger than entire countries are not governments. There must be some key feature you're missing... oh wait. States an aggressive monopoly on final dispute resolution.
Then we have to utilize historical models and hypothesize and extrapolate those models, therefore in the context of Italy as the "world" and the Italian mercenaries as the "private armies." We can therefore presume with the amount of capital that a single person could today, for example, enter into a binding agreement with Blackwater to imbue their will upon place such as Sudan to quell the violence. However, after funds run out, there's no occupying force and violence resumes if there is no transitional authority and begets more violence. It does not bode for the Sudanese either way. The major difference in the hypothetical Sudan model is that the Italian city-states had far better functioning governmental systems and most war was still restricted to the field thus curbing violence into urban centers. Yet, modern warfare is becoming increasingly urbane as demographics shift from rural to city with the rise of mega-cities and 50% of the human population now resides there within.
All military entities have financial incentives to promote destabilisation of regions so that they may sell arms and soldiers to the affected groups. Except it costs money to have a military in the first place, and its harder to raise the money yourself than if you can just tax your citizens for it. This becomes an even more attractive option when you can destabilise regions that are rich in natural resources and use the confusion and lack of central authority to get some really sweet contracts for mines and the like (perhaps in return for the weapons and soldiers).
Hm. This sounds awfully familiar... But none of this necessarily happens because profit-motivated entities think on the margin. Opportunity costs must be considered before the financially optimal course of action can be determined.
Fix'd
As a warning for those of you who are new here, DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
It is A) disrespectful and B) misleading. It is within the forum-specific rules for Debate that this behavior is strongly discouraged, and I, personally, will discourage it with infractions. It is a big problem, and I will not tolerate it. - Harkius
In either case, there's theory and practice, and anarcho capitalism has yet to provide a context for a society that homo sapien sapien have existed in for long stretches of time and during those stretches of time weren't very healthy as populations increased.
This study provides a context using Malthus for internal warfare:
First, its a myth that states are an "alternative" to anarchy. They are an alternative to universal anarchy, but state agents themselves are in a state of anarchy vis-a-vis each other, and interstate affairs are also anarchic. So the relevant question of anarcho capitalism is "why we can't have anarchy for all innocent people", or "why we should restrict anarchy to a privileged political class". I think those are good questions.
Second, there is a good case to be made that anarchy is unstable in primitive societies. As you play more and more "zero sum games", defecting on mutual rights becomes more attractive.
I should make it clear that this is not specific to anarchism, but rather provides circumstances under which cooperation breaks down. Therefore, all the disadvantages cross-apply to other cooperative organizations, such as democracies and less so to dictatorships which depend on relatively lower levels of cooperation.
I'll extend to say that if you think democracies are stable, then it proves that cooperation isn't breaking down for some reason, and we can revisit the case for anarchism because democracy has so many defects.
Third, there's an extent to which it doesn't matter if anarcho-capitalism "works". There's nothing that says being coherent is practical. It might be that there's some super-effective system out there but it would fail philosophical justification for cohesive reasons.
Fourth, you may be reading in to political structures too much. There's an extent to which group outcomes do not depend on the local legal apparatus. Maybe you are familiar with Milton Friedman's statistic that the poverty rate among ethnic Swedes is the same in America as it is in Sweden. So to chalk up a nation's failure to anarchy or having some kind of defective state isn't automatically correct. Unless you can explain in advance why anarchy will systematically fail, your study is just an exercise in ad hoc "I told you so", and fails to elucidate any political or practical concepts.
In the great long run of history three trends come to mind:
1. Bigger population
2. Bigger government
3. Cities outlast everything
Now the basic historical counter examples tend to be:
1. Iceland
2. Celtic Ireland
3. American West
4. Spanish Civil War
5. Colonial Rhode Island
6. Colonial Pennsylvania
There's a few others that can eek in, but overall unless if you're going to argue for city-states globally or something more nuanced then this ground has been fairly much covered and remains bloodied. Anarcho-capitalism as such compared to min-anarchism, federalism and ect. relative to the size, state, and nature of the given population has yet to provide a pertinent way to deal with the tragedy of the commons.
First, comparison bias. If all those examples of anarchy had actually been states, they'd have died out by now too. Maybe they would have died out faster. The point is you can't just say that "anarchy was replaced" because most governments get replaced in similar timeframes.
Second, selection bias. The countries that actually wind up as anarchies do so for a reason. They are either too small and undeveloped for external states to bother with, or they are so backwards that their own state has collapsed. In the former case, you're just saying small undeveloped groups who use anarchy fail vs strong developed groups who use states, which is trivial. In the latter case, it isn't an example of the superiority of statism because those people already tried a state and failed. They're probably just screwed for non-organizational reasons.
Third, I already agree there are good reasons why anarchy will be organizationally inferior to non-cooperative states whenever circumstances disincentivize cooperation. What I'm getting at is that anarchy has its best chance to work in modern times when incentives for cooperation are high and on an international level.
I didn't see what I feel the biggest flaw in pro-anarchy types rationale broached yet, so here it goes:
Why wouldn't violent drug based economies take over?
Because if everyone can make meth in their basement, its price will fall to its cost of production. This means that drug industries aren't going to be profitable, and there isn't going to be an incentive to get a lot of people hooked on a drug because they can always just go and buy it from someone else.
You should also consider that state agents are in a state of anarchy vis-a-vis each other. So the question isn't really "do we want anarchy?" the question is "do we want anarchy for all innocent people?".
I am actually pretty obsessed with being rational and don't place a lot of stock in my bad beat stories. What I remember most of all is just losing a lot in general despite doing everything I could to outplay bad opponents. MTGO has reasonable opponents but in your local game stores there are a lot of very... special... people who would be straightforward opponents in any sort of reasonable contest of skill. I remember losing to these people a lot less than I remember how I lost. Something about a bad draw... idk.
Yeah I definitely agree with all of this. I think Kibler also said that if you can't lose, you can't play MTG (paraphrasing). The thing is that this would also be true if I started playing chess. I would lose a lot at first but thoughtful grinding would get me better. It's just that if I become a top tier magic player, I put my win rate from 65% to 75%. That doesn't seem like a huge incentive to get better.
I mean any game is going to be a huge challenge. It's just that in magic you're trying to outthink the randomness of your deck and I'd rather win or lose because I am asked to outthink my opponent.
I agree. They're way better than the people they play against. But you also have to grind out a lot of tournaments to even have a hope of getting what you deserve. The odds are always against you even if you are the best player in the room by a factor of 2.
Yeah this seems like it's going to be part of "how I talked myself into selling all my magic cards and playing X".
It could be argued that there's some skill in selecting a standard deck, but like BBD and a bunch of other pros have started recommending this new Esper control list, and I seriously doubt anyone could fault you for just doing whatever they seem to agree on.
I agree that your library behaves better the further back you go in constructed formats, but I don't know if this means there's less luck to it. Are the win rates of the best players appreciably different for modern vs standard?
The only reason the pros are able to place at events is because they go to tons of them. If I show up at a PTQ of 200 people and have an 80% chance to win every game, I still probably won't even top 8. You have to really grind out lots big tournaments to even start placing a few times a year.
MTG just does not have enough choices for you to make to consistently allow you to win events. Every deck has a matchup where there's just not much you can do because your opponent's cards match up very well against you. In fact, MTG rewards playing non-interactive strategies because the less your opponent is able to do, the better.
MTG is a game where you flip a coin, if heads, you get to make a meaningful choice that improves your position in the game. Then you flip another coin, if heads, this choice actually matters. Why does anyone put up with a game that has so much randomness in it?
I feel like part of the problem too is that the MTG community is very outcome oriented. There's a lot of pressure to put up straight wins both in the swiss tournament structure and in general the player culture judges you based on the results you put up. This is kind of exacerbated by the fact that everyone walks around bragging about their wins but shuts up about the time they went 1-3 and lost to some little kid playing a green deck. But WOTC also can't change the tournament structures to be more permissive of losses because then tournaments would go foreverrrr and it would be an implicit admission that there's a ton of variance in the game so you have to play a hundred matches to find out who truly deserves #1.
Overall I feel like MTG is marketed and perceived as being a lot more skill oriented than it really is. I think people would have a lot less incentive to play it if they had to really internalize how much luck their is in any given match. MTG players seem to sustain themselves by patting themselves on the back when they win, and blaming luck when they lose. While it's true that you will occasionally get the opportunity to make interesting and game altering decisions, more often than not, the monoblack mirror comes down to who can draw underworld connections first. I've seen Turtenwald lose to some scrub who forgot his Erebos was active on camera because his opponent had UWC and he didn't. Owned Turtenwasted.
I guess I'm just dumb for feeling like you should always be able to win a strategy game against opponents who have a double digit IQ.
All the trolls and intellectual hacks (you know who you are) can stay here and stew in your self satisfying self-pleasuring activity.
Yup, flame infraction. - BS
Also, let's keep this safe for work. - Harkius
At any rate, do you have any thoughts on the OP?
Feel free to browse it. But essentially I received a flame infraction for poking fun at the way one of the mods manually signs his name to the end of his messages. http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=6989827&postcount=67
Its snarky. I admit it. Fine.
Another user, dcartist, posted this. http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=6991257&postcount=79 Not only does it betray incredible ignorance, it is also CLEARLY more significant flaming than anything I have been infracted for. He's calling an ideology "horse****", among other things. And yet he receives no infraction, even after using the built in report function.
The long and short is that the I am being scrutinized and held to a much higher behavioral standard than older users. The mods seem to be using their powers to ideological ends by flagging my infractions within minutes, while leaving others untouched. So much for objectivity. I'm posting in the hopes that there's another layer of moderation that can put a stop to this abuse.
Err, philosophy consists of a string of arguments. Therefore argumentation ethics applies with full force to anarcho capitalism (any argument really).
*unashamed by ignorance of liberal arts programs*
Since I have already received two "infractions" for poor behavior, I want to see you get an infraction because this is several times worse than what I've done. You are clearly flaming/trolling.
To answer your question, yeah. There are "accredited" universities that teach this "horse****". Your total ignorance on the topic should at least give you pause, but far be it from me to expect intellectual honesty from my fellow man.
Here is David D Friedman's academic page. It shows he has worked at many accredited universities and published extensively on the topic http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Academic.html
Here is Bryan Caplan's CV. Same as above http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/cv.html
The above are economists, so here's an ancap philosopher. Roderick T Long's academic page. http://praxeology.net/webbio.htm
Then you also have Robert P Murphy, Tom DiLorenzo, Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Walter "moderate" Block, Michael Rozeff... I could go on. There are many ancap professors who do quite well in "accredited" universities. They often also have notable private careers in consulting and finance, and have even been called to testify before congress.
Wow. What a fringe ideology.
I'm really interested to see how far you will shift the goalposts in your response. Are you going to claim that these professors are ignorant hacks? Are you going to compare them to "esteemed" statist professors? Who knows! Whatever argumentative gymnastics you pull, your question has been answered more than adequately, and you have betrayed total ignorance on the subject (while making an appeal to authority nonetheless).
Double post merged, user warned. Please edit existing posts rather than double posting.
As a second problem, don't backseat moderate. If you have a problem with a post, report it using the Report Button at the lower left corner of each post. - Harkius
I'm too tired rebutting this with the "special guy" above. The long and short of it is that the burden goes to you to show that past examples of "failed" anarchism are sufficient to categorically disprove anarchism, particularly in light of modern technology.
The persistence of microstates shows that big-guys don't walk around automatically beating up small-guys.
First, this seems like you're saying government is impossible.
Second, even if governments are bribed, they still repress non-gang/militia activity. They're holding a monopoly on arbitration and sometimes security, so they're preventing alternative organizations from competing with them. It is these alternative organizations that would form the resistance against roaming bands of militia and the like.
Actually that is hand waving. You didn't explain why it turned out that way, you just pointed out that it did.
Panama is a better example of a small decentralized entity. It is technically a government, but the ability of foreign corporations to come and go means that the principle of "free association" is working, at least on the corporate level. The fruits of this relationship take place in a backdrop of non-aggression.
We don't claim there would be no gangs under anarchy. We just think there would be less crime. Particularly we see no reason for there to be increased drug crime over the status quo.
Merged double post.
Pointing out that something COULD happen is irrelevant. Lots of things CAN happen.
No. I mean with respect to all government entities (states). Consider majoritarian democracy. Anarchy is resolved between the majority and minority, but democracy cannot resolve conflicts originating within the majority.
No. Ancap claims only innocent people have rights. I don't think there's any reason to grant true criminals rights.
Do you have a smudge on your screen or is your brain just malfunctioning?
Ugh.
A zero sum game is one where my win is perfectly balanced by your loss. For example, if there is only one nugget of gold, we can't both have it.
Conversely, if I rub your back and you rub mine, that is a positive-sum game.
If our lives revolve around ZSG, we have little reason to respect each other's rights. We are more likely to attack each other over gold nuggets. If our lives revolve around positive sum games, then there's no reason to attack each other. We want to preserve a mutually beneficial long term relationship.
Oh yeah those are effective. No one in a democracy has an incentive to pay attention to what's going on in the first place because their vote has a zero chance of mattering. Literally zero. I could flip a coin at the polls and the world would be the same place.
Cooperation can't be legislated. It stems from physical reality - whether gold nuggets are scarce and limited, or can be produced in greater number with cooperation.
Well that's the last time I make my analysis holistic. Zzzzzzzz. You in fact just rephrased what I said - since I set up my argument even permitting that anarchy would fail - and then elaborated on its failure as if I weren't aware of it.
Again, reiterating, as a political philosophy, we think anarcho capitalism is the only coherent option. It may be that coherence is impractical. So deal with it.
Well since the US isn't an anarchy, none of them.
No. There are not very good reasons to think it would destabilize the entire system and tear out the cooperation that it would need in order to survive. There I just matched your level of analysis.
I'm just carrying an argument over. The person obviously did not address it. But thanks for pointing out that a "tag" does not itself contain the full proof of its argument.
Self evident. Try to define state. (I'm facepalming as I ask you to do this. It will result in quite a lot of derailment because I've never seen anyone give a remotely coherent answer)
You could try the wikipedia article. I would have thought someone who got a BS in philosophy from Cornell would know about the NAP.
Actually it is an analysis. Go back and read it. I've also given it again here since it confused you so hard.
The state. The state.
Mfw you think ownership has to be individual.
Troll harder. Most of the comments you cherry picked out of their original context and then complained that they're devoid of substance.
Yes. Good job figuring out that an unconstrained thought experiment can be used to come to extreme conclusions. Will you grant me the same leisure? What if aliens come to earth and claim they'll destroy all societies starting with "D"? Does that disprove democracy?
What a high level of thinking.
Well I'm assuming that there would be significant trade of resources and resource-organizations where division of labor becomes appropriate. This is because of profit opportunity. And don't even bother pointing out something to do with state currency, because currency isn't required for profit, and precious metals serve easily as non state currency.
Yeah. People would really risk their lives for $50 coming to try and take my AK. That's kind of self defeating.
The point is that there are easy ways to increase the cost of other people attacking you. Traditional self defense is one way. I'm not going to bother enumerating other ways because this conversation is tedious enough as is. Everyone ITT seems content to cherry pick their responses, expanding into rapidly increasing volumes in an attempt to catch 1 mistake out of 100 arguments so they can blow it out of proportion and claim victory. Tiresome.
Yes, you are Harkius.
And here's your flame infraction.
More people means more warfare, so the Bushmen living in an "affluent society" may have a happy anarchist society, however as population increases with the number of peoples thanks to farming practices we entertain more warfare as populations increase in density.[/quote] Wow. You really like academic papers. Nevermind the underlying logic.
My analysis of zero sum games is superior. It ties in with the increase-in-population hypothesis because as population increases, resources become more scarce per capita. At least in primitive societies.
This is NOT true in modern societies because of division of labor. More people means disproportionately more stuff. Particularly, intellectual products can be scaled across infinitely many people at no cost. So your study fails hard at disproving modern anarchy.
At best, it lays out a case for decentralization because setting up a government doesn't increase per capita resources. It just means that some people are going to be permanently poor slaves of the political class. That's not an improvement over the vagabond lifestyle.
Uh no it hasn't. There's more aggression now than ever. The US steals, on average, 40% of everyone's income. That's more than any other criminal organization in history. They also commit aggression via special privileges and protectionist regulations. Oh and they also murder hundreds of thousands of people OUTSIDE the country. Never mind that mass-murder and genocide aren't nearly as prevalent under anarchy. Exterminating an entire race gets expensive.
Its not much of a separation of powers if the federal government just automatically squishes local government. Its also worth noting that the federal government was also in danger of signing a law that would guarantee slavery wherever it already existed in order to prevent civil war, indicating that the state's goal was never to outlaw slavery.
But that's cool. I find your regurgitation of mainstream history really enthralling and relevant.
I mean you're literally comparing a bunch of backward tribals to modern white people. How biased can you get? Why don't you compare backward tribals in anarchy to backward tribals under statism.
Jesus christ. You are just randomly jumping through history. Can you focus on any one example? Can you focus on any one concept? No.
I'll point out that blood feuds, while they may have been common internally in ireland, were common on the international level in monarchical europe. See like... all the wars.
That's a little counterproductive if the military force is taking 40% of your income.
Rant rant rant rant. Do you ever get tired of your fashionable ad hoc historical cherry picking? There are numerous problems with this account, both factual and theoretical. Its a giant TLDR block of text that I could spend my time tearing apart but I don't see the point. You'll just talk past me again and again and again until you've spammed me into submission. Here wait:
That should keep you busy. Just kidding. You'll ignore it. I didn't even read it so its okay though. Just C&P for illustrative purposes.
Appeal to popularity/authority/status quo bias.
[/quote] Good! Since you've quoted it I'll presume that you know what it means. So when I say "anarchy gets conquered", I ask "why?", and all you can answer back is "well ireland got conquered", you can see how you are begging the question.
Except I'm not advocating tribes. K?
No. Anarchy does not assume that the NAP is enforced. It seeks to prove that cooperation and non-aggression are more likely under anarchy than under states. If you were paying attention you would have at least tried to rebut this instead of just talking past me. Seriously. Here I'll do it too.
"We can see that states cause the breakdown of social cooperation and create poverty and war. It is far inferior to anarchy because privilege and absolute power of the state apparatus has a corrupting effect. The office itself is a moral hazard because the state head is essentially judge in his own case."
Etc etc
The NAP does not present any problems. At least none that you've shown. You've just complained about tribes versus cities, which is totally irrelevant.
And now you're asking "how". Well. How do you open a can of beans? It depends on physics. So do all your other "how" questions. Physics isn't relevant to political philosophy, so you can drop it.
Wow this is sooooooooo irrelevant. I can't even think of any way this would plug in to the conversation.
Well spotted. You're misinterpreting my point.
How about a more clear criterion, since you seem intent on deliberately misunderstanding me. If there is any property at all, it is private. There is no alternative to private property. Whether the majority owns it, ceaser owns it, or an individual who has homesteaded it owns it, the property is private.
The relevance is that you need to stop complaining about private property. See? I made myself relevant to something you said a while back, but which you have since dropped since you are intent on skipping around through the favorite events in undergraduate liberal arts.
Oh jesus christ. No I am not starting an IP argument with you. Your historical account of IP is just false. Completely false. I dare you to try and find citations for it.
Okay I can't resist - if IP were a true "property" right, it wouldn't expire after 10 years.
TLDR - American Indians did have property even if they owned it in common and did not call it property.
Wow. You're right. Oh wait just kidding. The majority resolve disputes how? By voting on it? But if they have a conflict within the majority there's no way they can resolve their problem... unless they take a majority of the majority which eventually isn't democracy anymore.
Corporate genocides? Oh wait, no. Just kidding.
Corporations have a completely different incentive structure from states. States have a captive body of "consumers" who are tethered from birth. Corporations have to persuade people to join their organization, and those people can very often change corporations very quickly. Coke, pepsi, RC cola, etc.
State = aggressive monopoly on final arbitration =/= Corporations.
I'm just going to point out that the frequency of rich guys engaging in hostile military action is very small compared to that of states. In particular, this is aimed at preventing genocide, while the vast majority of government interventions are not. When the government does prevent genocide, it is also not out of ideological concern or human compassion, it is out of self interest. See special interest groups/military industrial complex.
You are just a huge pain in the ass to talk to by the way. Seriously. You are just talking past me. If your next post is similarly incoherent I'm just going to respond to you with a couple of lines. I'm not going to bother addressing post-civil war reconstruction, especially if you're just going to present a biased ad hoc account.
You can't just withhold supply if there's competition. You're assuming there wouldn't be. You haven't justified this. Its not hard to imagine that any criminal organization would be able to muster the resources to prohibit international production of meth, which you can make from cheap walmart products.
Your example of other countries are just as muddled by government intervention. Local governments themselves participating in the trade, international government organizations restricting trade. Anti-weapons proliferation policies and laws also skew arms acquisition whereas in free markets you'd be able to defend yourself and buy an AK for $50.
Its also not clear how government is supposed to solve this problem... unless you just snap your fingers and chant "liberal democracy", which has never been shown to work in controlled studies.
Its worth pointing out that immigration restrictions contribute to organized crime. (I think what you're getting at is human trafficking? I can't really tell because your sentence structure is wonky.)
What balance of powers? You sound like you're reading from some arcane prophecy.
Wrong. State agents are in anarchy vis-a-vis each other. For example, in a pure majoritarian democracy, the majority see each other in anarchy.
What? You can't just say "there's equilibrium" because actions have immediate consequences.
Oh good. You're talking past me. Obviously I do not define anarchy as "breakdown". See we're talking about anarcho capitalism which is defined as adherence to the non aggression axiom.
Again, talking past me. You're ignoring the "cooperation/zero sum game" analysis. When you catch up let me know.
Err, this is a framework point. You have to decide whether you're talking about political philosophy or pragmatics. If you are talking about pragmatics you also have to specify agent relativity. As is, your question is poised to rocket out in infinitely many directions.
Begging the question. If you don't explain why those countries were conquered you don't explain anything.
Well you're missing the point again, which is that even if those bodies of people had utilized a state to organize themselves, they'd have died out too. So simply pointing out that a society is conquered or fell apart doesn't matter because the same fate awaits all states.
Again, talking past me. I called selection bias. You don't have an answer. Good job.
Except you have to prove it. Go!
Hierarchy is compatible with anarchy and the non-aggression axiom. You have to directly address why some groups attacking innocent people is a superior plan for society.
I'm glad you find this fascinating.
Again, you are exploiting a false dichotomy. Everything is "private". You cannot eliminate private property. It will always be owned by someone. Julius Ceaser's army is an example of a "private" army but it is not an anarcho-capitalist army because it was acquired aggressively and used aggressively. The question of property rights is how they are allocated, not simply observing that people can abuse them.
Okay. But corporations are not governments. Even corporations larger than entire countries are not governments. There must be some key feature you're missing... oh wait. States an aggressive monopoly on final dispute resolution.
Okay. Don't care.
As a warning for those of you who are new here, DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
It is A) disrespectful and B) misleading. It is within the forum-specific rules for Debate that this behavior is strongly discouraged, and I, personally, will discourage it with infractions. It is a big problem, and I will not tolerate it. - Harkius
First, its a myth that states are an "alternative" to anarchy. They are an alternative to universal anarchy, but state agents themselves are in a state of anarchy vis-a-vis each other, and interstate affairs are also anarchic. So the relevant question of anarcho capitalism is "why we can't have anarchy for all innocent people", or "why we should restrict anarchy to a privileged political class". I think those are good questions.
Second, there is a good case to be made that anarchy is unstable in primitive societies. As you play more and more "zero sum games", defecting on mutual rights becomes more attractive.
I should make it clear that this is not specific to anarchism, but rather provides circumstances under which cooperation breaks down. Therefore, all the disadvantages cross-apply to other cooperative organizations, such as democracies and less so to dictatorships which depend on relatively lower levels of cooperation.
I'll extend to say that if you think democracies are stable, then it proves that cooperation isn't breaking down for some reason, and we can revisit the case for anarchism because democracy has so many defects.
Third, there's an extent to which it doesn't matter if anarcho-capitalism "works". There's nothing that says being coherent is practical. It might be that there's some super-effective system out there but it would fail philosophical justification for cohesive reasons.
Fourth, you may be reading in to political structures too much. There's an extent to which group outcomes do not depend on the local legal apparatus. Maybe you are familiar with Milton Friedman's statistic that the poverty rate among ethnic Swedes is the same in America as it is in Sweden. So to chalk up a nation's failure to anarchy or having some kind of defective state isn't automatically correct. Unless you can explain in advance why anarchy will systematically fail, your study is just an exercise in ad hoc "I told you so", and fails to elucidate any political or practical concepts.
k.
First, comparison bias. If all those examples of anarchy had actually been states, they'd have died out by now too. Maybe they would have died out faster. The point is you can't just say that "anarchy was replaced" because most governments get replaced in similar timeframes.
Second, selection bias. The countries that actually wind up as anarchies do so for a reason. They are either too small and undeveloped for external states to bother with, or they are so backwards that their own state has collapsed. In the former case, you're just saying small undeveloped groups who use anarchy fail vs strong developed groups who use states, which is trivial. In the latter case, it isn't an example of the superiority of statism because those people already tried a state and failed. They're probably just screwed for non-organizational reasons.
Third, I already agree there are good reasons why anarchy will be organizationally inferior to non-cooperative states whenever circumstances disincentivize cooperation. What I'm getting at is that anarchy has its best chance to work in modern times when incentives for cooperation are high and on an international level.
Oh existentialism.
Sieben?
Because if everyone can make meth in their basement, its price will fall to its cost of production. This means that drug industries aren't going to be profitable, and there isn't going to be an incentive to get a lot of people hooked on a drug because they can always just go and buy it from someone else.
You should also consider that state agents are in a state of anarchy vis-a-vis each other. So the question isn't really "do we want anarchy?" the question is "do we want anarchy for all innocent people?".