So, I found this site, saw the debate section, and noticed that there aren't really too many defenders of markets--much less of statelessness. I even saw one thread in this forum where a guy was advocating further, larger stimuli. Eesh. I came from a previous debate site which basically went under in terms of quality (both of argumentation and of membership), and have been looking for new places to set up shop. So, I've come up with a list of "demands" on the part of the underrepresented anarcho-capitalists (or AnCaps, for short):
1. No government
2. Unrestrained markets
3. A general fundamental respect for the nonaggression principle
4. Property rights
5. A commitment to rationality and communication, rather than violence
6. An autonomy bounded only by others' free agency
I'd rather answer your objections than sit here and make a positive case for any of these propositions. Either you agree with me, in which case no argument is necessary, or you disagree, which means you disagree for reasons. It's these reasons which I seek to challenge and erode, as they're the only thing separating your politics and mine. Maybe you oppose free markets because you support regulation. Maybe you want state-sponsored police because you don't trust their private alternatives. Maybe you oppose full civil liberty because you think self-harm should be limited or banned. If I'm doing everything correctly, dispatching all possible objections leaves you with no other choice than to agree with me, so I seek to rectify the gap between us, rather than preemptively building a comprehensive case (which would take a LONG time and a LOT of space to be thorough).
...but there are enough differences stated here that I think I am free to post here instead.
Questions:
1. Without a government, wouldn't we just be smallish groups? How does an anarchistic society work when there is no National Guard to call in case of natural disaster or, heaven forbid, one of our less-than-friendly neighbor nations decides to invade?
2. Autonomy of the individual is a great goal, but it seems hopelessly wishful thinking. I don't think I'd enjoy a society where people are allowed to do whatever they wish, especially when some crackhead who doesn't realize he's being 'aggressive' decides to hassle me. It seems to me that policing is an important role of government.
3. It seems hypocritical to me that there can be a society based on non-aggression. The only answer to aggression is counter-aggression (in a large scale society, of course), and people are, by dint of being people, bound to be aggressive sooner or later. To put it bluntly, if someone breaks the rules, how are we going to stop them from continuing to break the rules besides tackling them to the ground and punishing them?
...but there are enough differences stated here that I think I am free to post here instead.
Questions:
1. Without a government, wouldn't we just be smallish groups? How does an anarchistic society work when there is no National Guard to call in case of natural disaster or, heaven forbid, one of our less-than-friendly neighbor nations decides to invade?
First of all, I do sort of expect the scale of anarchic societies to be "smaller" in terms of geographic area. But I don't think that it's as problematic as it's made out to be because anarchist societies don't really have formal borders anyway. Additionally, since communities typically aren't self-sufficient (and are much better off in benefiting from comparative advantage than in trying to be the best at everything), I think that smaller-scale societies will still be hooked together largely for economic reasons. It may not be as tightly knit because there's no governmental structure legally binding areas together, but that doesn't seem problematic to me. It's just decentralization.
Second of all, with regard to natural disasters, they'd be handled in much the same way as they're currently handled. Many of the people volunteering to help, whether donating time or money, are doing so of their own volition. Governments typically aren't that great that cleaning up after disasters as it is. Personally, I think that the problem can be resolved, financially speaking, by insurance networks within which participation is incentivized by the absence of state-sponsored safety nets and the uncertainty of whether one can be saved by charity alone (especially given that an individual or family is likely to be bankrupted by a disaster if they rely on their own income as a primary source for rebuilding).
Also, if you look back to economic dependence like I mentioned earlier, there seems to be an incentive to help rebuild communities on which you depend for some kind of resources. If one region is heavily invested in pharmaceutical research, and other neighboring regions all import their drugs from there, they're in serious trouble if the pharmaceutical region gets hit, because these other regions have their capital focused on different industries. It's likely that they largely lack the infrastructure, manpower, etc. to have their own bustling pharmaceutical industry to pick up the slack after losing their source of imports. It's probably cheaper, and overall more beneficial, to contribute to the rebuilding of that region so that production can resume.
Plus, it's an interesting point that, either people are willing to lend a hand, in which case state intervention is unnecessary, or they aren't willing to help, in which case you're just forcing your personal values on everyone else by taxing them to fund relief.
Third of all, I don't see the whole "military takeover" scenario as being realistic. One, anarchist societies aren't threatening, so there's not really a direct incentive to invade. Two, I think private military firms are totally viable as replacements for state-sponsored militaries. They may not spend nearly as much on weapons, huge troop levels, and R&D, but I see that as largely a good thing. Three, states are actually easier to take over because the legal and tax structures already exist. Anarchic societies are so decentralized that the costs of establishing a sufficiently dominant government, quelling insurgencies, etc. is a pretty good disincentive to potential invaders (especially when you consider that, if the United States is having problems with quelling insurgency and setting up its preferred government, the problem will probably be compounded for other belligerents, given that US military spending is many times over what other countries are spending). Four, even if we grant that, say, 25% of developing AnCap societies will be taken over by aggressive neighbors, that's not really sufficient to discount the ideology. We don't dismiss medicine simply because people are likely to get sick again, or because they're guaranteed to die eventually.
Quote from Misclick »
2. Autonomy of the individual is a great goal, but it seems hopelessly wishful thinking. I don't think I'd enjoy a society where people are allowed to do whatever they wish, especially when some crackhead who doesn't realize he's being 'aggressive' decides to hassle me.
Anarchists don't advocate "absolute freedom". A crackhead doesn't really have the liberty of committing an aggressive action against you. If he does, you're welcome to defend yourself, even if that means personally incapacitating him. The point of the nonaggression principle is that, though you have a legal immunity to violence, that immunity becomes void as soon as you initiate force against someone else. The nonaggression principle basically captures when people accept legal liability/responsibility (which is whenever they commit an act of aggression against another individual).
Quote from Misclick »
It seems to me that policing is an important role of government.
I think that policing is important, but it's an entirely different argument to say that government is necessary for (or superior at) policing.
Quote from Misclick »
3. It seems hypocritical to me that there can be a society based on non-aggression. The only answer to aggression is counter-aggression (in a large scale society, of course), and people are, by dint of being people, bound to be aggressive sooner or later. To put it bluntly, if someone breaks the rules, how are we going to stop them from continuing to break the rules besides tackling them to the ground and punishing them?
I think you're misconstruing what's meant by "aggression". When I use the word, I mean the initiation of violence (or fraud, which only really comes up when we're talking about contracts, and is its own sort of violence). Punching me in the face would be aggression. Me punching you in the face in retaliation would not be aggression. Once it's understood that aggression refers to initiation, and not retaliation, that objection basically goes away.
First of all, I do sort of expect the scale of anarchic societies to be "smaller" in terms of geographic area.
How small are we talkin', here? M*A*S*H* unit size or "only probably half a state" or what?
But I don't think that it's as problematic as it's made out to be because anarchist societies don't really have formal borders anyway.
And that would be fine were the whole world, or at least the whole continent, were made AnCaps, but all societies that now exist have rather rigid borders; more to the point, they'd want those borders not in a constant state of flux. Which brings up another point, what does an AnCaps do about foreign policy, since it doesn't seem as good at determining the will of the people?
My apologies, by the way, if I'm misusing "AnCaps".
Additionally, since communities typically aren't self-sufficient (and are much better off in benefiting from comparative advantage than in trying to be the best at everything), I think that smaller-scale societies will still be
hooked together largely for economic reasons. It may not be as tightly knit because there's no governmental structure legally binding areas together, but that doesn't seem problematic to me. It's just decentralization.
"It may not be as tightly knit" in there worries me. America, where I reside, is already facing major problems with social communication because there's simply not enough to bind us together. Decentralization here comes too close to separationism.
Second of all, with regard to natural disasters, they'd be handled in much the same way as they're currently handled. Many of the people volunteering to help, whether donating time or money, are doing so of their own volition. Governments typically aren't that great that cleaning up after disasters as it is. Personally, I think that the problem can be resolved, financially speaking, by insurance networks within which participation is incentivized by the absence of state-sponsored safety nets and the uncertainty of whether one can be saved by charity alone (especially given that an individual or family is likely to be bankrupted by a disaster if they rely on their own income as a primary source for rebuilding).
1. I'm going to dispute that people would get help with recovering from a natural disaster at the same rate (or faster) without government backup. We don't all break from our daily routines to go help other people now, and under an AnCaps system we'd actually have more incentive to let them sort their own problems out and get back to work. Again, this smacks of wishful thinking: if the situation depends on 'human decency' and 'long-term planning' to accomplish its goals, then why are these initiatives (largely) failing under the current governemental system? And you want to remove the government overseeing what help there is to give?
2. What about the people who can't afford/ don't want to afford insurance? Are we simply going to let them suffer? Or would we somehow eliminate the poor and stupid? If there were no taxation to take care of these people, what would keep everybody from simply dodging the insurance premiums and then, when the disaster strikes, what would keep everyone from demanding help and overloading the fiscal system?
Also, if you look back to economic dependence like I mentioned earlier, there seems to be an incentive to help rebuild communities on which you depend for some kind of resources. If one region is heavily invested in pharmaceutical research, and other neighboring regions all import their drugs from there, they're in serious trouble if the pharmaceutical region gets hit, because these other regions have their capital focused on different industries. It's likely that they largely lack the infrastructure, manpower, etc. to have their own bustling pharmaceutical industry to pick up the slack after losing their source of imports. It's probably cheaper, and overall more beneficial, to contribute to the rebuilding of that region so that production can resume.
Sure, and if that community is the only place where I can harvest dilithium, I'd probably be more than willing to give a neighbor a hand, but if there's a dilithium deposit in the town to the other side? I simply don't get this point, please elucidate: if the whole point of the system is to let everyone do whatever they can to improve their own lives, where is the incentive to help out the neighbor at one's own expense?
Plus, it's an interesting point that, either people are willing to lend a hand, in which case state intervention is unnecessary, or they aren't willing to help, in which case you're just forcing your personal values on everyone else by taxing them to fund relief.
I'm sorry, so your personal values include not helping people in crisis? I pretty much assumed that this wasn't much of a moral crisis for most people.
Third of all, I don't see the whole "military takeover" scenario as being realistic. One, anarchist societies aren't threatening, so there's not really a direct incentive to invade. Two, I think private military firms are totally viable as replacements for state-sponsored militaries. They may not spend nearly as much on weapons, huge troop levels, and R&D, but I see that as largely a good thing. Three, states are actually easier to take over because the legal and tax structures already exist. Anarchic societies are so decentralized that the costs of establishing a sufficiently dominant government, quelling insurgencies, etc. is a pretty good disincentive to potential invaders (especially when you consider that, if the United States is having problems with quelling insurgency and setting up its preferred government, the problem will probably be compounded for other belligerents, given that US military spending is many times over what other countries are spending). Four, even if we grant that, say, 25% of developing AnCap societies will be taken over by aggressive neighbors, that's not really sufficient to discount the ideology. We don't dismiss medicine simply because people are likely to get sick again, or because they're guaranteed to die eventually.
1. Well that's just silly. "Maybe if we hide our heads in the sand, nobody will attack us! They can trust us when we say we're nonaggressive! Quick, let's tear apart all of our weapons so we can prove we're not a threat!"
2. So, if I'm Scrooge McDuck, what incentive do I have to fund my own private army besides protecting my own wealth and/or lording it over the other people? When the enemy's tanks roll in, what incentive do I have to help everyone else? Human decency? I'm a duck! (by which I mean, there is no reason to assume the rich ol' guy on the hill has the moral scruples to protect the populace) And if there's a backlash from the community? Who cares! I have my own friggin' army!
3. Because an AnCaps society has looser affiliations with adjoining communities, it's harder to take over? Care to go over that again? Or are you seriously saying that an AnCaps community has so little governance that nobody would want it?
4. Sure, a more decentralized nation would be more capable of sustaining the shock of an invasion. I'll grant you that one.
Anarchists don't advocate "absolute freedom". A crackhead doesn't really have the liberty of committing an aggressive action against you. If he does, you're welcome to defend yourself, even if that means personally incapacitating him. The point of the nonaggression principle is that, though you have a legal immunity to violence, that immunity becomes void as soon as you initiate force against someone else. The nonaggression principle basically captures when people accept legal liability/responsibility (which is whenever they commit an act of aggression against another individual).
But without governance there is no way to truly tell how much free liberty I can grant myself when protecting myself and my property, right? So what's to prevent me from stabbing the crackhead if he punches me in the arm? Everyone has differing opinions of how far they can and should go in the protection of self, wouldn't laws need to be inducted to prevent abuse of the system?
I think that policing is important, but it's an entirely different argument to say that government is necessary for (or superior at) policing.
True enough. An excellent point.
I think you're misconstruing what's meant by "aggression". When I use the word, I mean the initiation of violence (or fraud, which only really comes up when we're talking about contracts, and is its own sort of violence). Punching me in the face would be aggression. Me punching you in the face in retaliation would not be aggression. Once it's understood that aggression refers to initiation, and not retaliation, that objection basically goes away.
It is true, I have only a limited understanding of the concept of what this style of 'governance' entails. That wasn't what I was calling hypocritical, though: I used a really bad example, and for that I apologize, but to elucidate, I was questioning the autonomy of the person vs. justice. If I'm a crackhead, and prone to punching people because of my addiction, you have 3 options: 1. Put me in jail, which restricts my autonomy, or 2. Treat me, which forces the burden onto the populace against their will and preventing them from most effectively maintaining their own autonomy, or 3. Let me do it again. All of these seem like bad, somewhat hypocritical options. Is there one that I'm missing? The problem here is that you can't really come back with "We would do what we are doing now under the current system" because then I see no reason to change systems.
3. A general fundamental respect for the nonaggression principle
4. Property rights
5. A commitment to rationality and communication, rather than violence
Yeah, good luck with #'s 3-5 without #1 to enforce it. Don't come back at me with something about a citizen's coalition or local watchdog groups. Those are just ways of saying "government without a constitution", which isn't not-government, it's just amateurish government.
Anything worth screwing up is worth screwing up right.
Maybe you oppose free markets because you support regulation.
Since there is still ample growth and profit to be had with moderate regulation, and regulation protects the public from the possible excesses of unregulated business, yes.
Maybe you want state-sponsored police because you don't trust their private alternatives.
For the majority of people, there IS no private alternative. Let's be honest here, most people can't afford to hire mercenaries or bodyguards. And I've never heard of a rich, anti-government, crime victim who, in a fit of ethics said, "no, taxpayer-funded policeman whose job I have advocated for the elimination of, don't investigate the person who stole my car; I'll hire a private investigation team instead." They pay for bodyguards - but they also expect to layer that protection with the public option, too.
Maybe you oppose full civil liberty because you think self-harm should be limited or banned.
This statement leads me to be concerned about your ability to detect grey areas. One person's civil liberties are another person's moral wrongs. The abortion issue is a key example where a difference in definitions of terms lead to people of good heart to be in utter, outraged opposition to one another. How can you paint either side as being "against civil liberties"? There is not, in every issue, a "pro-liberty" side and an "anti-liberty" side. In fact, usually there are two or more "pro-liberty" sides, who define liberties differently.
If I'm doing everything correctly, dispatching all possible objections leaves you with no other choice than to agree with me, so I seek to rectify the gap between us, rather than preemptively building a comprehensive case (which would take a LONG time and a LOT of space to be thorough).
While it was nice of you to admit it, it doesn't make it a less insulting thing to say. People always have a choice other than agreeing with you. And you can't just "dispatch objections" when it comes to something as subjective as differing people's differing ideals of what society should be like. No amount of logic or argument can do that, since you're coming from entirely different starting-points. Obviously you may sway undecideds, but not everyone out there IS undecided.
This site makes me very happy. On the site I came from, forum posts were limited to 8,000 characters (which got very annoying in prolonged discussions). This new arrangement is pretty baller, no lie.
Quote from Misclick »
How small are we talkin', here? M*A*S*H* unit size or "only probably half a state" or what?
I dunno. How big will nations be? There's not really a straight answer, because societies are homogeneous. North Korea, China, the United States, and Chile are all different sizes and shapes. The same rule applies to anarchism.
Quote from Misclick »
And that would be fine were the whole world, or at least the whole continent, were made AnCaps, but all societies that now exist have rather rigid borders; more to the point, they'd want those borders not in a constant state of flux.
Those societies' borders would continue to end where they end. Beyond those borders, though, a state doesn't really have any say.
Quote from Misclick »
Which brings up another point, what does an AnCap do about foreign policy, since it doesn't seem as good at determining the will of the people?
Well, anarchy is, by definition, the absence of a state, so there isn't really any "foreign policy" to speak of. There might be an organization of anarchist communities/regions similar to how homeowners' associations crop up in neighborhoods, but there's not any formal governmental structure that deals with foreign policy.
Quote from Misclick »
"It may not be as tightly knit" in there worries me. America, where I reside, is already facing major problems with social communication because there's simply not enough to bind us together.
Such as?
Quote from Misclick »
Decentralization here comes too close to separationism.
You mean separatism? I don't really see that as being problematic.
Quote from Misclick »
1. I'm going to dispute that people would get help with recovering from a natural disaster at the same rate (or faster) without government backup. We don't all break from our daily routines to go help other people now, and under an AnCap system we'd actually have more incentive to let them sort their own problems out and get back to work.
I think one of the reasons why people don't get up and go help other people is precisely because they expect the government to go do it for them. It may not be the case that someone from across the continent comes to help, but I think that local and regional neighbors will have a greater incentive to assist because of economic co-dependence. It may be the case that people buy from other sources during the interim, but the incentive to help rebuild provides long-term advantages which are sufficient to stimulate restorative investment.
For the sake of argument, though, I'll grant your contention that nobody comes to help, and the community basically withers and dies. It may be hard to bear emotionally, but I don't think this is necessarily problematic. When that sort of disaster occurs, it's similar to what happens to a big company that gets busted in the marketplace. It rapidly loses market share, revenue tanks, jobs are eliminated, and the firm goes under. It's a sad sight, sure, but it's also a catalyst for a reallocation of capital. Similarly, if no one comes to help rebuild the community (which, for the sake of the question, we presume to be a bad investment), then that community is never coming back. The capital, e.g. workers, investors, production capacity, will be distributed elsewhere by the market. People will go where they think they have the best chance at prosperity, investors will recoil and invest in different areas, comparative advantage changes as a section of the market tanks, and, generally speaking, things readjust themselves. So, even granting the worst-case scenario, things have a way of working themselves out. The only difference is that you don't get the same emotional closure of seeing an army of volunteers rush to the aid of the affected (wclalhich I still think is a massively unlikely scenario), but that's not really an argument for state intervention as much as an appeal to pity.
Quote from Misclick »
Again, this smacks of wishful thinking: if the situation depends on 'human decency' and 'long-term planning' to accomplish its goals, then why are these initiatives (largely) failing under the current governemental system?
A couple of reasons. First, governments are awful at managing resources. Classic calculation problem is a good demonstration of that. Second, governments aren't benevolent messiahs which only have peoples' best interests in mind. Typically, legislators cater to political pressures more than anything (like lobbyists and campaign financiers), and those who do care are typically misguided, because they just want to know which government solution is best, rather than whether the government has the capacity to help in the most effective way possible. I mean, they could definitely guess what the most efficient/economic solution is, but it's extremely unlikely, and it's just a bad gamble to bet all your chips on the government guessing correctly a majority of the time. This doesn't say anything, by the way, about regulators and bureaucrats, who typically get captured by the industries they're supposed to be regulating (the ICC and railroads, the USDA and agriculture, the FDA and pharmaceuticals, the EPA and bottled water companies, etc.). Typically, the response is "well, we should just fix it"/"reform", but that's not really a solution because the incentive structure is deformed. This is what I've come to call the "Magic Wand Theory of the State", where people pretend like the government will just do whatever statists advocate because they're statists. It's like arguing "criminals shouldn't be criminals". It's true, but "good government is good, we need more of it" is a useless argument.
Quote from Misclick »
And you want to remove the government overseeing what help there is to give?
Yes sir.
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2. What about the people who can't afford/ don't want to afford insurance? Are we simply going to let them suffer?
There are ways of dealing with that. People owning less property/having lower net worth would probably pay less, because they represent lower claims. The opposite is true for people with more property. If they can't afford it, though, they can probably ask for loans from family and friends, or loan agencies, or something like that. For people who somehow have absolutely no way to afford it, it's not likely that they had much property to insure to begin with. Plus, it's the same argument for food, housing, a vehicle, a job, and so on. That someone lacks something, or is incapable of getting something, does not imply an obligation to provide that something.
For those who refuse to purchase insurance, that's their own fault.
Quote from Misclick »
Or would we somehow eliminate the poor and stupid? If there were no taxation to take care of these people, what would keep everybody from simply dodging the insurance premiums and then, when the disaster strikes, what would keep everyone from demanding help and overloading the fiscal system?
If I don't pay my medical insurance premiums, my insurance company isn't going to give me coverage. Similarly, people that don't pay for property insurance (for homes, cars, personal electronics, etc.) won't have their claims recognized by the company with which they're trying to file those claims.
Quote from Misclick »
Sure, and if that community is the only place where I can harvest dilithium, I'd probably be more than willing to give a neighbor a hand, but if there's a dilithium deposit in the town to the other side?
Then it's possible you could buy from them while supporting the rebuilding of the other town (maybe under the stipulation that you get ludicrous discounts for a year or something). If not, then it's likely that capital will flow from the destroyed town to this other town in the dilithium business, at which point everyone wins anyway.
Quote from Misclick »
I simply don't get this point, please elucidate: if the whole point of the system is to let everyone do whatever they can to improve their own lives, where is the incentive to help out the neighbor at one's own expense?
The problem is that your assumption is really simplistic. It's not that you lose, they gain, and you're worse off as a result. If you gain overall from helping them rebuild, then you'll do that (even if the gain is solely psychological). If you gain overall from letting the town die and the capital shift elsewhere, then you'll do that. You may not be helping by rebuilding the town, but you'll be helping by paying his wages when he moves and gets a job somewhere else. You're only looking at the superficial nominal losses, which doesn't really account for long-term and non-monetary gains.
Quote from Misclick »
I'm sorry, so your personal values include not helping people in crisis? I pretty much assumed that this wasn't much of a moral crisis for most people.
First of all, I'm actually a moral nihilist.
Second of all, you're not attacking the argument. If everybody values helping other people in a crisis, you don't need government, because literally every person will lend a hand. The only reason you could claim to need government is if you think that not everyone will help, at which point you're just forcing people to do what you want because it satisfies your conscience to pool money to crisis victims.
It actually seems like you're contradicting yourself, since part of your argument is that people won't break routine to help, but that helping people is also morally obvious to basically everyone. You can't have it both ways.
Quote from Misclick »
1. Well that's just silly. "Maybe if we hide our heads in the sand, nobody will attack us! They can trust us when we say we're nonaggressive! Quick, let's tear apart all of our weapons so we can prove we're not a threat!"
This isn't an argument.
Quote from Misclick »
2. So, if I'm Scrooge McDuck, what incentive do I have to fund my own private army besides protecting my own wealth and/or lording it over the other people?
Nobody said anything about owning an army. Private military contractors already exist.
Quote from Misclick »
When the enemy's tanks roll in, what incentive do I have to help everyone else? Human decency? I'm a duck! (by which I mean, there is no reason to assume the rich ol' guy on the hill has the moral scruples to protect the populace)
Like I said, you don't own your own army. Companies provide the service. Even if you're the CEO, "doing nothing" will probably bankrupt you. Maintaining a force of only 3,000 people at $65,000 a year is $195 million a year in expenses. If you're getting basically zero revenue, and you're draining your personal fortune, you're probably not going to be in business too long (especially with other companies competing for market share and such). The effect is compounded as you add soldiers and fight in a conflict.
Quote from Misclick »
And if there's a backlash from the community? Who cares! I have my own friggin' army!
Okay. Despite my belief that this is an absurd oversimplification which seeks to caricature anarchism rather than argue against it, I have to ask: for all the incentive problems you can point out with companies that provide military/defensive services, how can you ignore the way in which those problems are compounded for governments, which maintain a monopoly on force, law, and arbitration? Why doesn't the state just oppress everyone? Damn the backlash, damn human decency, damn voluntary contribution. You really seem to be operating on this presumption of businessmen as evil deceivers and government officials and benevolent saviors.
Quote from Misclick »
3. Because an AnCaps society has looser affiliations with adjoining communities, it's harder to take over? Care to go over that again? Or are you seriously saying that an AnCaps community has so little governance that nobody would want it?
It's harder to establish dominance. If you take over a state, all the structures are already in place. You have a centralized power structure, a legal system, a tax code, a static border, and all that. You don't have any of that when you approach anarchy. You have to REALLY work to wage an aggressive war, work even harder to quell dissent, rebellion, and insurgency, even harder to establish all the structures necessary for governance, and even harder to do it all in a way that's cheap and efficient, otherwise you end up screwing yourself over and spending a ton of money to take a huge loss. I just don't think the incentives are that strong to invade an anarchic society. They aren't threatening or hostile, you don't really gain economically from trying to conquer them, you'll probably piss a lot of people off for attacking, and goodness only knows what your chances of success are. Those are just a couple of problems off the top of my head, but the overall point I want to make is that geopolitics is not like Risk.
Quote from Misclick »
4. Sure, a more decentralized nation would be more capable of sustaining the shock of an invasion. I'll grant you that one.
Okie dokie.
Quote from Misclick »
But without governance there is no way to truly tell how much free liberty I can grant myself when protecting myself and my property, right? So what's to prevent me from stabbing the crackhead if he punches me in the arm?
Prima facie? Nothing. I do think that there's potential for a lot of structures to manifest which inhibit individual retaliatory power. Since all property would be private, for example, violence would be more difficult outside the realm of the home. If a crackhead and I are in a bar, and he hits me, it's likely that the bar will have rules acting as a disincentive to more extreme degrees of force. It's possible that the bar might have a rule against carrying while you're on the property. Maybe I can incapacitate him, but I'm transgressing against the bar owner's property if I full-on murder my aggressor. Maybe I'm willing to pay thousands of dollars to the owner for excessive retaliation, but it's more likely that I'm not going to be willing to part with that kind of money. I think the same can be said for insurance companies, who would have an incentive to charge higher premiums for owning and carrying weapons. The possibilities are numerous.
Quote from Misclick »
Everyone has differing opinions of how far they can and should go in the protection of self, wouldn't laws need to be inducted to prevent abuse of the system?
Even if I grant that, my counterargument would be that a monopoly on law isn't required for what you're proposing.
Quote from Misclick »
It is true, I have only a limited understanding of the concept of what this style of 'governance' entails. That wasn't what I was calling hypocritical, though: I used a really bad example, and for that I apologize, but to elucidate, I was questioning the autonomy of the person vs. justice. If I'm a crackhead, and prone to punching people because of my addiction, you have 3 options: 1. Put me in jail, which restricts my autonomy
Autonomy restriction isn't really relevant when you've committed an act of aggression. Rights don't exist in a vacuum--they're only in play so long as people interact without using force against each other.
Quote from Misclick »
or 2. Treat me, which forces the burden onto the populace against their will and preventing them from most effectively maintaining their own autonomy
Treating someone doesn't require forcing the burden onto anyone else. Without government, there isn't an entity to socialize the nominal costs, so that argument is irrelevant when talking about anarchy.
Quote from Misclick »
or 3. Let me do it again. All of these seem like bad, somewhat hypocritical options. Is there one that I'm missing? The problem here is that you can't really come back with "We would do what we are doing now under the current system" because then I see no reason to change systems.
We should do what we do under the current system, but not suck at it. Similar to my argument that policing is good, that the current system does it, but that the state isn't necessary in obtaining it. Retributive systems of justice historically are really ineffective at cutting recidivism, and are even worse at treating drug addiction, because those systems are designed for retribution over restoration. I think that the key to an anarchist society is creating a network of long-term relationships and such, especially using intermediaries. Like signing an employment contract that requires probation, mandatory rehab, and drug tests if one is found to be a drug user. And insurance contracts that up premiums significantly for drug use. And communication between intermediaries which incentivizes desirable behavior (i.e. non-use) by people who are clients on several different points of the network.
Most people usually end up afflicted with Mad "How?" Disease, sitting and asking for pages how exactly X, Y, and Z will work, when they're asking the wrong questions. It's not about the particular mechanisms a society is sporting as much as the social theory, and what makes coexistence work in the first place.
Yeah, good luck with #'s 3-5 without #1 to enforce it. Don't come back at me with something about a citizen's coalition or local watchdog groups. Those are just ways of saying "government without a constitution", which isn't not-government, it's just amateurish government.
The defining feature of a government is that it's a territorial monopoly on force, law, and arbitration. Also, the whole taxation thing, which is absent in private defense organizations. It's a good buzzword for dismissing private alternatives to the state, but it's not an argument.
Quote from Kasreyn »
Anything worth screwing up is worth screwing up right.
Except governments don't do it "right".
Quote from Kasreyn »
Since there is still ample growth and profit to be had with moderate regulation, and regulation protects the public from the possible excesses of unregulated business, yes.
This isn't an argument for regulation. It's a presupposition that regulation is good, and that the solution to bad government is more good government. That's the Magic Wand Theory of the State I mentioned in my other post. I would also definitely note the super-prevalent problem of regulatory capture.
Quote from Kasreyn »
For the majority of people, there IS no private alternative. Let's be honest here, most people can't afford to hire mercenaries or bodyguards.
This is really negative stereotyping, because it presumes that, without the government, "defense" consists of a bunch of people with guns sitting around and waiting to be hired. I mean, for obvious reasons, there isn't a private alternative right now--there's a government whose business is a monopoly on that sort of thing. But in the case of private defense/policing, it's not as if you have to fund everything yourself. In fact, I would imagine that the "public good" nature of police and military services will result in local intermediaries purchasing in bulk, so to speak. It's sort of like how you pay into a mutual fund and have the people working there do the work for you, except you're pooling your money with a bunch of other people to invest. It's hard to say how exactly it would play out, though, because societies aren't homogeneous. Even if the services are, the financing probably won't be.
Quote from Kasreyn »
And I've never heard of a rich, anti-government, crime victim who, in a fit of ethics said, "no, taxpayer-funded policeman whose job I have advocated for the elimination of, don't investigate the person who stole my car; I'll hire a private investigation team instead." They pay for bodyguards - but they also expect to layer that protection with the public option, too.
That isn't an argument against private defense and policing. That's just pointing out that the state exists, and that people use its services. At best, you're arguing that some people want one thing but make do with what options they have. It's like arguing against national health care on the basis that many of its advocates have private insurance. It's just a big red herring.
Quote from Kasreyn »
This statement leads me to be concerned about your ability to detect grey areas. One person's civil liberties are another person's moral wrongs.
So? That's their cue to A) debate me on why X is wrong, and B) why X being wrong necessitates a legal ban.
Quote from Kasreyn »
The abortion issue is a key example where a difference in definitions of terms lead to people of good heart to be in utter, outraged opposition to one another.
Personally, I think people are making the wrong arguments in the abortion debate. I can grant the fetus personhood and still justify abortion rights. Your example seems to suppose that grey areas are irresolvable and should be let alone, when my claim is that you should do your best to investigate and clear up those grey areas. That's the point of debate.
Quote from Kasreyn »
How can you paint either side as being "against civil liberties"? There is not, in every issue, a "pro-liberty" side and an "anti-liberty" side. In fact, usually there are two or more "pro-liberty" sides, who define liberties differently.
1. I'm concerned with political liberty, which refers to the absence of coercion. Based on that, I can argue that people are anti-liberty.
2. It's true that there's not always pro/anti-liberty in every argument. Some people are indifferent to it.
3. With regard to a particular definition, two opposing sides cannot simultaneously be pro-liberty in the same respect. Your argument basically affirms equivocation as a valid strategy, because it's claiming that we can't identify pro/anti-liberty advocacy based on definitional pluralism. I think that the differences in definitions/political theories can be debated, though, to demonstrate that one theory or the other is inconsistent, self-contradicting, or even that it has incoherent definitions. It doesn't really matter, though, since meaning is determined by use. You're concentrating too much on the label, when my point is that I'll keep defending the same ideas regardless of what they're called.
Quote from Kasreyn »
While it was nice of you to admit it, it doesn't make it a less insulting thing to say. People always have a choice other than agreeing with you.
If I debate someone, I counter all their objections, and they have no further arguments to present, then it would be intellectually dishonest to keep holding the position they're holding.
Quote from Kasreyn »
And you can't just "dispatch objections" when it comes to something as subjective as differing people's differing ideals of what society should be like. No amount of logic or argument can do that, since you're coming from entirely different starting-points. Obviously you may sway undecideds, but not everyone out there IS undecided.
Well, obviously. A dictator who wants to oppress everyone and extort wealth isn't going to care about political freedom, economic efficiency, or anything like that. But I think that, insofar as I share political goals with people, I can demonstrate AnCap to be superior. In areas where goals aren't shared, you'd be surprised how many political theories devolve into "I want to use force against other people to achieve my agenda to make myself feel better". Usually, this applies in cases where people appeal to empathy or compassion as a justification for using force, but are really just tugging at emotional straws because having their ideal system enacted would provide satisfying closure to their personal political narrative.
What exactly inforces "value" of any given currency in your system? Without a large goverment type oversite saying what does and does not have value, whats stopping me from printing "funny money" and paying all my bills in that? with no overall currency and ruleing body/oversites in place to ensure that currency is honored nothing would hold any true value. Also whats stopping me from doing some terrable things in the name of profit? Example as a drug company I could just dump expermental drugs in too one area's water supply and "see what happens" There is no goverment or regulation body stopping me from doing this. Hell I could do it while lieing saying I am putting vitimins in your water too make you healthyer show you HUGE amounts of BS reserch backing what I am doing all the while putting posion in its place, What holds me accountable for my actions? You say the military is going to be privised, whats too stop me from doing the dirtyest war tactics known? (gas, Biological weapons/Biochemical/Nuclear weapons ect) you need over site and regulation that the government provides.
What exactly inforces "value" of any given currency in your system?
Nothing "enforces the value" per se, because value isn't determined by the use of force. The same forces that determine value in any market (e.g. supply and demand) determine the value of money.
Quote from draftguy »
Without a large goverment type oversite saying what does and does not have value, whats stopping me from printing "funny money" and paying all my bills in that?
1. Governments don't dictate what does and doesn't have value. That's not how economics works.
2. Our banking system already plays with "funny money", since A) it can arbitrarily increase and decrease the money supply at will, without B) having to worry about tying it to a commodity, like gold (i.e. fiat currency).
3. As far as actual protections are concerned, financial security is becoming increasingly sophisticated (which will accelerate when the currency market is privatized, because there's a bigger incentive to make sure your only product doesn't get counterfeited. Most checks, for example, have multiple security measures to make sure that like checks can't be reprinted by whoever).
Quote from draftguy »
with no overall currency and ruleing body/oversites in place to ensure that currency is honored nothing would hold any true value.
Like I said, markets determine value, not governments. Money is just another commodity (albeit a convenient medium of exchange), and is subject to the same market forces as other commodities.
Quote from draftguy »
Also whats stopping me from doing some terrable things in the name of profit? Example as a drug company I could just dump expermental drugs in too one area's water supply and "see what happens" There is no goverment or regulation body stopping me from doing this.
1. If your company owns that water supply, you're fine in doing that. If you don't, you're opening yourself up to some serious legal liability.
2. Your argument, as has been made other times in this thread, is just "Bad companies are bad, so we need good regulation to prevent them from doing bad things", which isn't actually an argument. It's just a thought experiment treating the state like a magic wand.
Quote from draftguy »
Hell I could do it while lieing saying I am putting vitimins in your water too make you healthyer show you HUGE amounts of BS reserch backing what I am doing all the while putting posion in its place
Okay, then you're committing massive fraud/violence against a bunch of people, and are legally liable for what you're doing.
Quote from draftguy »
What holds me accountable for my actions?
Arbitrators designed to deal with liability/tort claims?
I mean, honestly. If you're going to posit a massive pharmaceutical conspiracy so well-covered that no one will find out about it, you can't pretend that replacing private organizations with a state is somehow going to fix everything.
Quote from draftguy »
You say the military is going to be privised, whats too stop me from doing the dirtyest war tactics known? (gas, Biological weapons/Biochemical/Nuclear weapons ect)
What's to stop governments from doing it?
Private agencies definitely have bigger disincentives. Less capital, higher costs, that sort of thing. Governments can just print and borrow more money pay for stuff they need. Project Manhattan, for example, cost about $20 billion. In the UK, their nuclear program, Trident, costs about $4 billion a year to keep running, and would cost almost $160 billion to revamp and replace. Pharmaceutical R&D, which is considered EXTREMELY expensive, can range in the millions. For one company to even open up a nuclear program, it would probably have to liquidate most of its other assets and divert a significant chunk of capital to a weapon for which it probably has zero use most of the time (assuming that, by itself, it commanded billions of dollars). And keep in mind that it probably has to raise costs to consumers to keep this well-funded, as it can't just type numbers into a computer and instantly get more money. No company is stupid enough to put all its chips on that kind of program (much less in combination with chemical/biological weapons programs), and any one that is is almost guaranteed to tank.
Quote from draftguy »
you need over site and regulation that the government provides.
I dunno. How big will nations be? There's not really a straight answer, because societies are homogeneous. North Korea, China, the United States, and Chile are all different sizes and shapes. The same rule applies to anarchism.
You were the one that said you expected AnCaps nations to be smaller. It's relevant; I think that a smaller cooperative is much more feasible.
Those societies' borders would continue to end where they end. Beyond those borders, though, a state doesn't really have any say.
Right, but you said that AnCaps nations would not have defined borders. It would be up to the AnCaps nation to figure out what to do with a border that is edged up against another nation. I'm wondering what the solution to that would be. I assume they would treat it as we do now, but I was asking for clarification, since I don't really get the idea of a 'borderless' society.
Well, anarchy is, by definition, the absence of a state, so there isn't really any "foreign policy" to speak of. There might be an organization of anarchist communities/regions similar to how homeowners' associations crop up in neighborhoods, but there's not any formal governmental structure that deals with foreign policy.
So there would be no exportation or importation?
Such as?
Living in Minnesota, I don't have much in common with someone who lives in New York State or California. It is currently one of the duties of the government to set laws that can govern all of us, something which it struggles to do because of our differences. If we remove the government from that equation, then it would be difficult to set overarching socially-agreed limits on what a person can and cannot do that would take into account all of these differences. I get that there would be limits enforced within local communities, but these could vary wildly (for instance, the punishments for aggressive behavior), and I wonder if that would make inter-nation travel significantly more difficult.
You mean separatism? I don't really see that as being problematic.
Right, sorry.
I disagree. Separatism is disruptive, possibly dangerously so. If (for instance) Florida were to up and pull out of the USA, I am of the idea that it would cause more problems while reasserting its new union than could possibly be worth it. Reallocation of federal and state property, re-educating the populace, etc., as well as redefinition of the whole social structure, to name but a few.
I think one of the reasons why people don't get up and go help other people is precisely because they expect the government to go do it for them. It may not be the case that someone from across the continent comes to help, but I think that local and regional neighbors will have a greater incentive to assist because of economic co-dependence. It may be the case that people buy from other sources during the interim, but the incentive to help rebuild provides long-term advantages which are sufficient to stimulate restorative investment.
I'll cede this point, I guess. It's hard to make an argument against neighbors helping neighbors when you volunteer at a soup kitchen. :/
A couple of reasons. First, governments are awful at managing resources. Classic calculation problem is a good demonstration of that. Second, governments aren't benevolent messiahs which only have peoples' best interests in mind. Typically, legislators cater to political pressures more than anything (like lobbyists and campaign financiers), and those who do care are typically misguided, because they just want to know which government solution is best, rather than whether the government has the capacity to help in the most effective way possible. I mean, they could definitely guess what the most efficient/economic solution is, but it's extremely unlikely, and it's just a bad gamble to bet all your chips on the government guessing correctly a majority of the time. This doesn't say anything, by the way, about regulators and bureaucrats, who typically get captured by the industries they're supposed to be regulating (the ICC and railroads, the USDA and agriculture, the FDA and pharmaceuticals, the EPA and bottled water companies, etc.). Typically, the response is "well, we should just fix it"/"reform", but that's not really a solution because the incentive structure is deformed. This is what I've come to call the "Magic Wand Theory of the State", where people pretend like the government will just do whatever statists advocate because they're statists. It's like arguing "criminals shouldn't be criminals". It's true, but "good government is good, we need more of it" is a useless argument.
You're leveling an awful lot of unfounded accusations. I'm not arguing that corruption exists, I'm wondering why it wouldn't if this were an AnCaps nation.
There are ways of dealing with that. People owning less property/having lower net worth would probably pay less, because they represent lower claims. The opposite is true for people with more property. If they can't afford it, though, they can probably ask for loans from family and friends, or loan agencies, or something like that. For people who somehow have absolutely no way to afford it, it's not likely that they had much property to insure to begin with. Plus, it's the same argument for food, housing, a vehicle, a job, and so on. That someone lacks something, or is incapable of getting something, does not imply an obligation to provide that something.
For those who refuse to purchase insurance, that's their own fault.
If I don't pay my medical insurance premiums, my insurance company isn't going to give me coverage. Similarly, people that don't pay for property insurance (for homes, cars, personal electronics, etc.) won't have their claims recognized by the company with which they're trying to file those claims.
Just so we're clear, here, your basic stance is that everyone is responsible for their own property and safety and if they are the victim of unfortunate circumstances they will have to find their own solutions? To be honest, I don't have so much of a problem with that as opposed to how you're going to get people to agree to give up the current system that provides for them in such a state of distress.. especially the part where they'd have to borrow the money from their family or something.
Then it's possible you could buy from them while supporting the rebuilding of the other town (maybe under the stipulation that you get ludicrous discounts for a year or something). If not, then it's likely that capital will flow from the destroyed town to this other town in the dilithium business, at which point everyone wins anyway.
Fair enough.
The problem is that your assumption is really simplistic. It's not that you lose, they gain, and you're worse off as a result. If you gain overall from helping them rebuild, then you'll do that (even if the gain is solely psychological). If you gain overall from letting the town die and the capital shift elsewhere, then you'll do that. You may not be helping by rebuilding the town, but you'll be helping by paying his wages when he moves and gets a job somewhere else. You're only looking at the superficial nominal losses, which doesn't really account for long-term and non-monetary gains.
Yes, but by investing my time and effort into my own personal gain, it would almost assuredly give me better 'dividends' than if I spent my time helping the community grow. Frankly, I would think I wouldn't even bother pondering the possible outcomes of my actions in this instance, I would just do what was in my own best interest.
Perhaps, though, you're right, and I'm just looking at this from too narrow a view. What non-monetary gains would there had to be made?
First of all, I'm actually a moral nihilist.
Interesting. Care to give me a quick rundown of what that philosophy espouses?
Second of all, you're not attacking the argument. If everybody values helping other people in a crisis, you don't need government, because literally every person will lend a hand. The only reason you could claim to need government is if you think that not everyone will help, at which point you're just forcing people to do what you want because it satisfies your conscience to pool money to crisis victims.
This would be part of the earlier giving of the point, as I would be hypocritical to keep talking about people like they never do volunteer work. Thank you for helping me understand a little better.
It actually seems like you're contradicting yourself, since part of your argument is that people won't break routine to help, but that helping people is also morally obvious to basically everyone. You can't have it both ways.
Because under the current system, however flawed it may be, I can continue to both carry on my daily routine and support a government who helps people.
This isn't an argument.
Nor was it supposed to be. I was refuting your assertion that neighboring countries would just assume that an anarchist union would be non-aggressive.
Nobody said anything about owning an army. Private military contractors already exist.
Like I said, you don't own your own army. Companies provide the service. Even if you're the CEO, "doing nothing" will probably bankrupt you. Maintaining a force of only 3,000 people at $65,000 a year is $195 million a year in expenses. If you're getting basically zero revenue, and you're draining your personal fortune, you're probably not going to be in business too long (especially with other companies competing for market share and such). The effect is compounded as you add soldiers and fight in a conflict.
Okay. Despite my belief that this is an absurd oversimplification which seeks to caricature anarchism rather than argue against it, I have to ask: for all the incentive problems you can point out with companies that provide military/defensive services, how can you ignore the way in which those problems are compounded for governments, which maintain a monopoly on force, law, and arbitration? Why doesn't the state just oppress everyone? Damn the backlash, damn human decency, damn voluntary contribution. You really seem to be operating on this presumption of businessmen as evil deceivers and government officials and benevolent saviors.
My apologies for being so flippant.
I'm an environmentalist and I own a small hobby shop (i.e. a businessman). I'm actually about the opposite of what you seem to be making me out to be. My concern here, and what you've probably been reading into, is that, as far as I can see, I'd be the first against the wall once the revolution comes. I'd love less government restrictions on my business, and the elimination of forced growth of corporate sectors. That's why I'm here to learn about this. It intrigues me. But so far I haven't seen much more than a focused anti-government stance that wouldn't care much about what happens to my business (in fact I've been wondering how I'd be able to afford bodyguards and come to the conclusion that I simply wouldn't be able to) or my untrampled forests. I get that it all might work out in the end, but I'm currently of the idea that I and my ideals wouldn't make the transition, at least intact. And that worries me a great deal. At least with a government in place I can depend on being able to take a walk, see a chipmunk, and pay my taxes.
It's harder to establish dominance. If you take over a state, all the structures are already in place. You have a centralized power structure, a legal system, a tax code, a static border, and all that. You don't have any of that when you approach anarchy. You have to REALLY work to wage an aggressive war, work even harder to quell dissent, rebellion, and insurgency, even harder to establish all the structures necessary for governance, and even harder to do it all in a way that's cheap and efficient, otherwise you end up screwing yourself over and spending a ton of money to take a huge loss. I just don't think the incentives are that strong to invade an anarchic society. They aren't threatening or hostile, you don't really gain economically from trying to conquer them, you'll probably piss a lot of people off for attacking, and goodness only knows what your chances of success are. Those are just a couple of problems off the top of my head, but the overall point I want to make is that geopolitics is not like Risk.
Monopoly, then? To be honest, I don't consider a hostile attack from China likely, I consider it far more likely that they'd simply quietly buy us out. You're right, we're not in an emperialist world anymore, but we are in a global economy, and especially in the formative years we'd be vulnerable to all sorts of fiscal shenanigans. Again, this is what concerns me, if I'm trying to put together a working business against a government-backed competitor I don't think it looks too good for me.
Prima facie? Nothing. I do think that there's potential for a lot of structures to manifest which inhibit individual retaliatory power. Since all property would be private, for example, violence would be more difficult outside the realm of the home. If a crackhead and I are in a bar, and he hits me, it's likely that the bar will have rules acting as a disincentive to more extreme degrees of force. It's possible that the bar might have a rule against carrying while you're on the property. Maybe I can incapacitate him, but I'm transgressing against the bar owner's property if I full-on murder my aggressor. Maybe I'm willing to pay thousands of dollars to the owner for excessive retaliation, but it's more likely that I'm not going to be willing to part with that kind of money. I think the same can be said for insurance companies, who would have an incentive to charge higher premiums for owning and carrying weapons. The possibilities are numerous.
This is where the idea of corruption really hits home. I'm in a bar, some dude punches me, and I murder him. Okay, I have to pay lots of money to the bar for breaking their rules. But since the bar owner can set whatever standard he wants, what's to prevent him from posting a sign that makes the murder of a black man only worth $5? Or asking for my daughter in trade? If the bar owner has absolute dominion over what occurs in his bar, especially when he's serving alcohol, what keeps him from abusing his power?
Autonomy restriction isn't really relevant when you've committed an act of aggression. Rights don't exist in a vacuum--they're only in play so long as people aren't interacting by using force against each other.
Okay. You cover this one below so I'll adress it there.
Treating someone doesn't require forcing the burden onto anyone else. Without government, there isn't an entity to socialize the nominal costs, so that argument is irrelevant when talking about anarchy.
Who pays the doctor for the treatments they administer?
We should do what we do under the current system, but not suck at it.
An excellent argument.
Similar to my argument that policing is good, that the current system does it, but that the state isn't necessary in obtaining it. Retributive systems of justice historically are really ineffective at cutting recidivism, and are even worse at treating drug addiction, because those systems designed for retribution over restoration. I think that the key to an anarchist society is creating a network of long-term relationships and such, especially using intermediaries. Like signing an employment contract that requires probation, mandatory rehab, and drug tests if one is found to be a drug user. And insurance contracts that up premiums significantly for drug use. And communication between intermediaries which incentivizes desirable behavior (i.e. non-use) by people who are clients on several different points of the network.
This is an interesting take on it. The idea is fascinating but I feel out of my depth, so I will research and possibly come back to it.
Most people usually end up afflicted with Mad "How?" Disease, sitting and asking for pages how exactly X, Y, and Z will work, when they're asking the wrong questions. It's not about the particular mechanisms a society is sporting as much as the social theory, and what makes coexistence work in the first place.
Yes, but I'm not an electorate. I'm a guy on the internet. I must ask personal, in-depth questions about issues that concern me.
Nothing "enforces the value" per se, because value isn't determined by the use of force. The same forces that determine value in any market (e.g. supply and demand) determine the value of money.
1. Governments don't dictate what does and doesn't have value. That's not how economics works.
Actuly our Goverment DOES dictate what has value, the whole "legal tender issue" I can't pay a bill with Monoply money. I HAVE too pay in USD becuase the law says I have too.
2. Our banking system already plays with "funny money", since A) it can arbitrarily increase and decrease the money supply at will, without B) having to worry about tying it to a commodity, like gold (i.e. fiat currency).
Notice that they all use the same money? that has forced regulation on its creation, try creating 100 different currencys for the same general landmass and see how that goes.... Humans are inately greedy.
3. As far as actual protections are concerned, financial security is becoming increasingly sophisticated (which will accelerate when the currency market is privatized, because there's a bigger incentive to make sure your only product doesn't get counterfeited. Most checks, for example, have multiple security measures to make sure that like checks can't be reprinted by whoever).
Your setting us away from the standard unit. A check is no good if only the bank of X will honor it. While the bank of Y will only honor bank of Y checks ect.
Like I said, markets determine value, not governments. Money is just another commodity (albeit a convenient medium of exchange), and is subject to the same market forces as other commodities.
Its a commodity that can be instantly made via proper counter fitting. with no controls in place "money" will be worth literal the paper its printed on. we will revert almost exclusively too barter.
1. If your company owns that water supply, you're fine in doing that. If you don't, you're opening yourself up to some serious legal liability.
yes and who is going too stop me? your goverment oh it doesn't exsist, so neither does your local law inforcement which the goverment pays for.
2. Your argument, as has been made other times in this thread, is just "Bad companies are bad, so we need good regulation to prevent them from doing bad things", which isn't actually an argument. It's just a thought experiment treating the state like a magic wand.
No no my argumet is ALL companys are bad, There only "legal" obligation is too make money. If laws were not in place we would have a thriving organ market if the money was there. Same deal with a slave market and Narcotic drugs. With no goverment regulation nothing can stop me from walking around and shooting children with darts lanced in haroin. If my coprorate goon who I hired to do this gets caught or died I don't care the damage has been done. I as Heroin corp will get a bunch of new costumers.
Okay, then you're committing massive fraud/violence against a bunch of people, and are legally liable for what you're doing.
Again what legal battle are you waging, with no goverment there are no laws.
Arbitrators designed to deal with liability/tort claims?
I mean, honestly. If you're going to posit a massive pharmaceutical conspiracy so well-covered that no one will find out about it, you can't pretend that replacing private organizations with a state is somehow going to fix everything.
The difference if after the fact the government can FORCE the company too be pay for its crimes. They set up rules and have the stablility too enforce them, you can't I will just set up shop in a new different section of the nation lather rise repeat. With your no foren policy you can't even do much too stop me.
What's to stop governments from doing it?
international agreements with other nations that these things are "too evil or detrimental" too ever be used. these nations take active measures too ensure that no one does these terrable things.
Private agencies definitely have bigger disincentives. Less capital, higher costs, that sort of thing. Governments can just print and borrow more money pay for stuff they need. Project Manhattan, for example, cost about $20 billion. In the UK, their nuclear program, Trident, costs about $4 billion a year to keep running, and would cost almost $160 billion to revamp and replace. Pharmaceutical R&D, which is considered EXTREMELY expensive, can range in the millions. For one company to even open up a nuclear program, it would probably have to liquidate most of its other assets and divert a significant chunk of capital to a weapon for which it probably has zero use most of the time (assuming that, by itself, it commanded billions of dollars). And keep in mind that it probably has to raise costs to consumers to keep this well-funded, as it can't just type numbers into a computer and instantly get more money. No company is stupid enough to put all its chips on that kind of program (much less in combination with chemical/biological weapons programs), and any one that is is almost guaranteed to tank.
Unless of coruse its a company like say a relgion that wants too purge the world of infidals so the cost factor doesn't matter there end goal is kill nonbelievers.
No I don't.
You seem to misunderstand the reason for invasions, I don't want YOU or your culture I want your resources. How do you entend to defend yourself from larger nations that are set up in the current way of doing things? your small states of anarchy can't really compeat with a whole nation. I will stright up have more resoruces then you and take what I want. You have no "real" military to compeat with me and no allies. Ripe for the picking.
First of all, I do sort of expect the scale of anarchic societies to be "smaller" in terms of geographic area. But I don't think that it's as problematic as it's made out to be because anarchist societies don't really have formal borders anyway. Additionally, since communities typically aren't self-sufficient (and are much better off in benefiting from comparative advantage than in trying to be the best at everything), I think that smaller-scale societies will still be hooked together largely for economic reasons. It may not be as tightly knit because there's no governmental structure legally binding areas together, but that doesn't seem problematic to me. It's just decentralization.
Community A hates Community B
Community A attacks Community B
Community A takes over Community B's government
That's basic imperialism, and if we look at Athens vs. Sparta we have coalitions and factions forming leading to empire. What makes a people stop being imperialistic? "More people?" Then we have a republic.
Second of all, with regard to natural disasters, they'd be handled in much the same way as they're currently handled. Many of the people volunteering to help, whether donating time or money, are doing so of their own volition. Governments typically aren't that great that cleaning up after disasters as it is. Personally, I think that the problem can be resolved, financially speaking, by insurance networks within which participation is incentivized by the absence of state-sponsored safety nets and the uncertainty of whether one can be saved by charity alone (especially given that an individual or family is likely to be bankrupted by a disaster if they rely on their own income as a primary source for rebuilding).
Or collapses the civilization such as what occurred with Easter Island, Minoan Civilization, and a handful of others though out time. Furthermore, you're talking about corporatization which has it's own flaws. Corporatization is just another way of saying "chartered private government." And whose going to pay up if the corporation decides not to pay out?
Also, if you look back to economic dependence like I mentioned earlier, there seems to be an incentive to help rebuild communities on which you depend for some kind of resources. If one region is heavily invested in pharmaceutical research, and other neighboring regions all import their drugs from there, they're in serious trouble if the pharmaceutical region gets hit, because these other regions have their capital focused on different industries. It's likely that they largely lack the infrastructure, manpower, etc. to have their own bustling pharmaceutical industry to pick up the slack after losing their source of imports. It's probably cheaper, and overall more beneficial, to contribute to the rebuilding of that region so that production can resume.
So how do you deal with pirates and brigands? The Templars were created to protect people on pilgrammages and to protect their gold. This was one of the first "international" banking systems created. The Templars became extremely successful until the king of France decided to consolidate power and ax them out of existence. What stops one "good organization" such as the Templars from being destroyed by a "bad organization?"
In terms of pharmaceutical drugs, you have limitations such as anti-rejection medication that comes from a Norwegian fungus. Science takes sometimes decades to find an application to basic research. The diversity of free trade offered up by Ricardo is the reason to increase living standards, total localism collapses the level of complexity in a society.
Plus, it's an interesting point that, either people are willing to lend a hand, in which case state intervention is unnecessary, or they aren't willing to help, in which case you're just forcing your personal values on everyone else by taxing them to fund relief.
Why not it's worked for thousands of years? What makes the individual so special that they can't get taxed by a state that educated and protects them?
Third of all, I don't see the whole "military takeover" scenario as being realistic. One, anarchist societies aren't threatening, so there's not really a direct incentive to invade. Two, I think private military firms are totally viable as replacements for state-sponsored militaries. They may not spend nearly as much on weapons, huge troop levels, and R&D, but I see that as largely a good thing. Three, states are actually easier to take over because the legal and tax structures already exist. Anarchic societies are so decentralized that the costs of establishing a sufficiently dominant government, quelling insurgencies, etc. is a pretty good disincentive to potential invaders (especially when you consider that, if the United States is having problems with quelling insurgency and setting up its preferred government, the problem will probably be compounded for other belligerents, given that US military spending is many times over what other countries are spending). Four, even if we grant that, say, 25% of developing AnCap societies will be taken over by aggressive neighbors, that's not really sufficient to discount the ideology. We don't dismiss medicine simply because people are likely to get sick again, or because they're guaranteed to die eventually.
1. Every anarchist society cited by anarchists has been heavily violent and either equally to or more so than modern areas with a lower population, plus their judicial systems tend to suck.
2. This presumes that everyone wants to be an anarchist.
3. This presumes that such societies can be founded quickly and easily, and for the most part they cannot. Communities take generations to build and frankly, this presumes that people won't revert back to the ways they knew.
No, except that anything that smells like "bad anarchism" that happens in anarchism is either dismissed as "not true to intellectual anarchism" or handwaved as the "community can handle it."
A crackhead doesn't really have the liberty of committing an aggressive action against you. If he does, you're welcome to defend yourself, even if that means personally incapacitating him. The point of the nonaggression principle is that, though you have a legal immunity to violence, that immunity becomes void as soon as you initiate force against someone else. The nonaggression principle basically captures when people accept legal liability/responsibility (which is whenever they commit an act of aggression against another individual).
And crackhead's Daddy gets a shovel and goes after the "you." Then that spirals off into a blood feud such as what happened in Ireland and Iceland.
I think you're misconstruing what's meant by "aggression". When I use the word, I mean the initiation of violence (or fraud, which only really comes up when we're talking about contracts, and is its own sort of violence). Punching me in the face would be aggression. Me punching you in the face in retaliation would not be aggression. Once it's understood that aggression refers to initiation, and not retaliation, that objection basically goes away.
Retaliation escalates without an external force, as seen with mobs and other random acts of violence. The human "herd instinct" is still there and quite strong. Furthermore, humans have different modes of thought during emotional states. Get enough people "frenzied" and they behave stupidly.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
The defining feature of a government is that it's a territorial monopoly on force, law, and arbitration. Also, the whole taxation thing, which is absent in private defense organizations. It's a good buzzword for dismissing private alternatives to the state, but it's not an argument.
Private defense firms include the Pinkertons and Blackwater right off the top of my head. There's also the Italian mercenary armies, but considering modern warfare tends to be urban and relies on terrorism we wouldn't see the same peace that the Italian peninsula had.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
Except governments don't do it "right".
Seems more or less like you don't like government, and think like communists that if "only way less" or "way more" of government can "fix the situation to be more palatable to an ideology." I'm just going to make the argument that these "private defense firms" are a "floating government" or chartered private government that with enough capital adds a layer of permanency to have a "real government."
Quote from Cody Franklin »
This isn't an argument for regulation. It's a presupposition that regulation is good, and that the solution to bad government is more good government. That's the Magic Wand Theory of the State I mentioned in my other post. I would also definitely note the super-prevalent problem of regulatory capture.
Or we change the bureaucratic mechanisms to suck less like we do any other time. In terms of anarchism and localism, the rise of Redemption in the US provides me a real clue to what tyranny of the majority looks like without federal intervention that wasn't corrected until the Second Reconstruction. As a minority, for all the flaws of the federal government, that at least I don't have to bow to whites.
In all frankness, the anarchist tradition in the US is mingled with the Confederate cause, which is the Lost Cause based on extreme individualism and state's rights. The best managed states so far are places such as Singapore, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and a few other places. Going based on this either Ingsol or Confucianism seems to be the "top dog" rather than anarcho capitalism.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
the financing probably won't be.
Which is solved through a progressive income tax and general taxes on consumption that are leveraged in such a way as to not favor any particular business. Again that's free market taxation as understood by Friedman and other such people and you know what? It worked here in the late 1990's, and works in Canada and Australia.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
That isn't an argument against private defense and policing. That's just pointing out that the state exists, and that people use its services. At best, you're arguing that some people want one thing but make do with what options they have. It's like arguing against national health care on the basis that many of its advocates have private insurance. It's just a big red herring.
This also presumes, like Hayek, of spontaneous generation of communities and institutions in the absence of government. Government is the oldest "corporation" and has successfully been the only one to be able to transfer an upswing in prosperity and stability for mankind at large. Communities, especially efficient ones, take generations to build and build upon old edifices.
The issue for example with prescription fire departments is that the uneven distribution of services causes moral problems such as if a man's house burns down and the firefighters are there and he's trying to pay out of pocket to save his home. Is that "fair?" Is that "moral?"
In terms of the Pinkertons, they were used in several human rights violations and often exploited to work as union breaks and other such things. Mercenary groups fair not much better, either. Furthermore, the Pinkertons never perpetuated a corporate culture necessary to ensure the peace, where as police forces that have existed for decades now have done so quite peaceably.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
1. I'm concerned with political liberty, which refers to the absence of coercion. Based on that, I can argue that people are anti-liberty.
Yet your system still has coercion, and therefore has anti-liberty aspects to it. The question is what forces are best to use "anti-liberty" aspects to preserve the greatest amount of individual liberties from those that want to take away liberty. Anarchism has laughable failed at this.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
2. It's true that there's not always pro/anti-liberty in every argument. Some people are indifferent to it.
And often go with what they feel is "right" culturally. People are creatures of habit and it is often natural to revert to specialization of labor. As population increases and the amount of knowledge becomes vast, people specialize more.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
3. With regard to a particular definition, two opposing sides cannot simultaneously be pro-liberty in the same respect. Your argument basically affirms equivocation as a valid strategy, because it's claiming that we can't identify pro/anti-liberty advocacy based on definitional pluralism. I think that the differences in definitions/political theories can be debated, though, to demonstrate that one theory or the other is inconsistent, self-contradicting, or even that it has incoherent definitions. It doesn't really matter, though, since meaning is determined by use. You're concentrating too much on the label, when my point is that I'll keep defending the same ideas regardless of what they're called.
Private-public partnerships built the Early Republic and was maintained through much of the 19th century. Those capitalists were socialists. So even the most ardent rugged capitalists still relied on the government and created their own microgovernments in the form of company towns. So even in a state granted monopoly system with an anarcho-capitalist model people were able to create their own currencies, used coercion, and ect.
Quote from Cody Franklin »
Well, obviously. A dictator who wants to oppress everyone and extort wealth isn't going to care about political freedom, economic efficiency, or anything like that. But I think that, insofar as I share political goals with people, I can demonstrate AnCap to be superior. In areas where goals aren't shared, you'd be surprised how many political theories devolve into "I want to use force against other people to achieve my agenda to make myself feel better". Usually, this applies in cases where people appeal to empathy or compassion as a justification for using force, but are really just tugging at emotional straws because having their ideal system enacted would provide satisfying closure to their personal political narrative.
Somalia, prior to partitioning, versus Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was the dictator for multiple decade of that city-state for quite a number of decades, yet his mighty little island is light years ahead of Somalia or Ireland or even Iceland.
With AnCap you have no such models to go by, unlike democracy as we understand it today that had Athens, Rome, and a few other examples in history. Republics have spread world wide and most of them are thriving. The most "socialist" ones such as rising Australia, Brazil, and Canada and two of those are Ingsol.
Every form of government or "pseudo government" is going to behind the 8 ball in dealing with problems, the question is mostly one of structure and having "enough decentralization" within a centralized format to allow for innovation and necessary reactions to take place.
So I question, is AnCap even worth the time when it has failed to provide the basic services we take for granted today and never has a lot of staying power? The answer is a lot like communism, it looks great on paper, yet never quite comes off right.
Now, if you want to argue permanency and stability within a min-anarchistic society you could argue for city-states like Milan, Venice, Athens, Sparta, or even Singapore. Even the question in those models becomes what is the "minimum government necessary for that society to properly function?" Hence, min-anarchism relative to socio-cultural and demographic limitations provides a better transference of knowledge and power from one generation to the next while allowing for rapid recovery and permanency of these communities.
Either way there's been a few anarchists:
-ijosspiere-Smart guy, tends to lean more towards min anarchism than anarchism as a libertarian it seems.
-XDaarkangelX-Socialist or communist anarchist, eventually got banned for some personality defects. Still ran into deficits on arguments, but was intelligent and made for interesting conversation.
-Shining Blue Eyes-anarcho capitalist that degenerated into the "quote king" and extremely doctrinaire. He's fairly much disappeared lately, and probably for the better as he was boring even when being poked at with a stick at different angles. It was just always another damned quote.
There's a few other libertarians of different varieties that each have different ideas on what "free markets" mean. I think dcartist is a type of libertarian, and tends to be good like ijoss at debate. The worst one I ever encountered had to be Shining Blue Eyes, but as far as libertarianism goes it's the anarcho-capitalist brand that lacks the agility as argued thus far here.
As for my own conclusions, anarchism is just a stage in development of societies that allows for proto-societies to experiment while instituting and building a civil society. Economics and social interactions require a minimum amount of activity by government relative to size, scope, economics, demographics, and scale of said civil society.
Some problems I see in your thinking (some have been pointed out, please forgive me I just skimmed over the wall of text.)
1) Currency would be a thing of the past. With no central government regulating the value of paper and coin one faction could value the coin more then paper, the other faction would have different values. Bartering would become the norm.
2) Privatized defense is asking for problems. Whom ever controled the defense would control the people. In time what you would have is defense companies fighting for territory. Seems bad for the common man/farmer/handyman/property owner.
3) Without a central government who doles out punishment for those who commit crimes? Are you going to let the private defense company dole out the punishments? At what price? Who deceides the punishments? Seems like a bad idea.
All in all your idea of a no government smaller tribe world who lead to just a bunch of infighting. If one tribe had a better harvest or more cattle or cleaner water, there would be a battle for said supplies. In the end those that controled the drinking water and food supply would be in control and if they were not in bed with the private defense company they would have a huge target on them to be taken out.
One last thing, who would control the harvesting of wild animals? Seems like under this system it would allow for people to over harvest edible meat in turn killing off many. Not only animals but people too.
You were the one that said you expected AnCaps nations to be smaller. It's relevant; I think that a smaller cooperative is much more feasible.
My point is that there isn't a "standard size" for AnCap societies, just as there isn't one for statist societies. Also, free markets don't preclude the existence of cooperatives/worker-owned businesses. If that model is more successful (which empirical data suggests may well be the case), it would become more prevalent because it's more profitable and affords better working conditions.
Quote from Misclick »
Right, but you said that AnCaps nations would not have defined borders. It would be up to the AnCaps nation to figure out what to do with a border that is edged up against another nation. I'm wondering what the solution to that would be. I assume they would treat it as we do now, but I was asking for clarification, since I don't really get the idea of a 'borderless' society.
Right, AnCap societies wouldn't really have borders of their own, but they're really unlikely to try and expand into an area claimed by a government for all the havoc it would cause.
Quote from Misclick »
So there would be no exportation or importation?
Sure there would--it just wouldn't be conducted or facilitated by governments.
Quote from Misclick »
Living in Minnesota, I don't have much in common with someone who lives in New York State or California.
I live in Oklahoma.
Quote from Misclick »
It is currently one of the duties of the government to set laws that can govern all of us, something which it struggles to do because of our differences. If we remove the government from that equation, then it would be difficult to set overarching socially-agreed limits on what a person can and cannot do that would take into account all of these differences. I get that there would be limits enforced within local communities, but these could vary wildly (for instance, the punishments for aggressive behavior), and I wonder if that would make inter-nation travel significantly more difficult.
The defining trait of an AnCap society is the nonaggression principle, though. All policies and such enacted by defensive/policing agencies would be responsive to acts of aggression. Personal questions, like music, drug use, ice cream flavors, movies, premarital sex, and so on, are questions of personal taste, and are only relevant here to the extent to which engaging in some activity can be considered aggression against another individual. Differences in opinion become largely irrelevant because people don't have the legal power to intrude on other peoples' autonomy. Plus, it's true that there likely wouldn't be totally homogeneous codes between companies. But that's the point--competition always beats out monopolies.
I don't know how you would construe that as making international travel more difficult, though. Companies providing commercial and passenger flights would continue to operate as normal.
Quote from Misclick »
Right, sorry.
I disagree. Separatism is disruptive, possibly dangerously so. If (for instance) Florida were to up and pull out of the USA, I am of the idea that it would cause more problems while reasserting its new union than could possibly be worth it. Reallocation of federal and state property, re-educating the populace, etc., as well as redefinition of the whole social structure, to name but a few.
1. "Separatism is disruptive" <-- Disruptive to what?
2. What you're arguing is more just a question of convenience. So Florida would have to pay for stuff that the Federal Government put there. That's fine. So it wouldn't have US public education. Probably for the best. So it would have to redefine its social structure. That's what AnCap is all about anyway.
Quote from Misclick »
I'll cede this point, I guess. It's hard to make an argument against neighbors helping neighbors when you volunteer at a soup kitchen. :/
Cool beans.
Quote from Misclick »
You're leveling an awful lot of unfounded accusations.
Such as?
Quote from Misclick »
I'm not arguing that corruption exists, I'm wondering why it wouldn't if this were an AnCaps nation.
I never said that corruption would be totally absent in an AnCap society. I'm arguing that AnCap is comparatively superior to statism in that regard, and that markets are better at dealing with corruption than governments are (especially when it's the governments which are corrupted). Plus, political pressures and regulatory capture don't really play a role in an anarchist society, because markets don't possess the legal power which allows the conferral of privileges to favored interests. An arbitrator could potentially take a bribe from a murderer and let him off, but it stands to lose the good reputation that keeps clients flowing in if and when it gets out that the company deals in bribes. Plus, insurance companies are likely to raise premiums just because the murderer was accused, regardless of whether he's convicted, since he represents a more serious threat of liability than other clients. So it's not as if a faulty acquittal leaves no scars. Those are a couple results that I can pull off the top of my head.
Quote from Misclick »
Just so we're clear, here, your basic stance is that everyone is responsible for their own property and safety and if they are the victim of unfortunate circumstances they will have to find their own solutions?
Right. There's no legally-enforced safety net (i.e. no unemployment, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, or any other entitlements).
Quote from Misclick »
To be honest, I don't have so much of a problem with that as opposed to how you're going to get people to agree to give up the current system that provides for them in such a state of distress.. especially the part where they'd have to borrow the money from their family or something.
I think I can convince people that they don't actually need entitlement programs, and that those things are so economically toxic that their situation is actually worse as a result. Even granting that they refuse to give up on their welfare, I'm fine just ripping the rug of entitlements out from under their feet. I don't really think a vote is necessary.
Quote from Misclick »
Yes, but by investing my time and effort into my own personal gain, it would almost assuredly give me better 'dividends' than if I spent my time helping the community grow.
Whether you intend to "help the community grow", you necessarily have to help unless you plan to try and be totally self-sufficient. Paying for anything is supporting the business from which you're buying.
Quote from Misclick »
Frankly, I would think I wouldn't even bother pondering the possible outcomes of my actions in this instance, I would just do what was in my own best interest.
Well, people always pursue their self-interest. Psychologically, there's no avoiding that. Whether you seek immediate gratification or delay consumption is dependent on your time preference.
Quote from Misclick »
Perhaps, though, you're right, and I'm just looking at this from too narrow a view. What non-monetary gains would there had to be made?
Well, since we've both more or less agreed to go forward on the premise that most people are inclined to willingly help others, the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from doing good (which I presume you're familiar with if you volunteer at a soup kitchen) is a pretty good example.
Quote from Misclick »
Interesting. Care to give me a quick rundown of what that philosophy espouses?
Nothing is right or wrong.
Quote from Misclick »
This would be part of the earlier giving of the point, as I would be hypocritical to keep talking about people like they never do volunteer work. Thank you for helping me understand a little better.
Sure thing. You're much nicer than the people on the site I came from. It was a debate site where most of the people were trolls or pompous douches. You're very refreshing.
Quote from Misclick »
Because under the current system, however flawed it may be, I can continue to both carry on my daily routine and support a government who helps people.
You don't need to support the state to support an organization that helps people (especially when it spends much more of your money screwing people over). There are plenty of good charities, and you obviously enjoy donating your time, so it seems like you could get by without supporting the state, which forces other people to help, regardless of whether they want to give up part of their income.
Quote from Misclick »
Nor was it supposed to be. I was refuting your assertion that neighboring countries would just assume that an anarchist union would be non-aggressive.
It's not just an assertion. Unlike a state, anarchic societies would have an overwhelmingly difficult time waging an aggressive war because of the financial and geopolitical costs, at the very least. They're just not threatening compared to states, even if they act hostile.
Quote from Misclick »
I'm an environmentalist and I own a small hobby shop (i.e. a businessman). I'm actually about the opposite of what you seem to be making me out to be. My concern here, and what you've probably been reading into, is that, as far as I can see, I'd be the first against the wall once the revolution comes. I'd love less government restrictions on my business, and the elimination of forced growth of corporate sectors. That's why I'm here to learn about this. It intrigues me. But so far I haven't seen much more than a focused anti-government stance that wouldn't care much about what happens to my business (in fact I've been wondering how I'd be able to afford bodyguards and come to the conclusion that I simply wouldn't be able to) or my untrampled forests.
Well, AnCap honestly doesn't care what happens to your business. There's no one to provide subsidies, or tax breaks, or tariffs on foreign countries. The point of markets is that you provide a quality service for a reasonable price, and compete with anyone who intends to draw business away from you. It's not necessarily that you'd have to buy bodyguards or whatever as much as just draw up a contract with a good defense agency, maybe a property insurer, and whatever other relevant business, and be on your way. I don't understand why people keep making references to bodyguards and mercenaries, personally. I don't constantly have police waiting around in my house for burglars--there's no logical reason why we suddenly need bodyguards when the monopoly on policing is busted.
As far as the environmental concerns, I don't think any honest political philosophy can purport to solve every conceivable problem. There are great technologies out there right now that work for solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, super-efficient biofuels like sugar ethanol, and so on. But I honestly don't think many of those products will become cheap and mainstream (though some will probably come through, I'm sure) until we've burned through almost all of our fossil fuels. As the supply depletes, the pricing mechanism responds by driving the market value of each unit of a resource up, until the cost of staying on fossil fuels becomes significantly higher than investment in alternative energy. We can complain about how companies won't pour money into large-scale R&D because it isn't profitable, but it doesn't really matter how much government you have as a response--the same result is very likely, albeit much uglier because of government responses to shortages, like rationing or (heaven forbid) price controls. Politicians will pay good lip service to alternative energy, but it'll basically end up like corn ethanol, which was a crappy investment that came out of a need to do something with all the surplus corn produced by corn subsidies (and sugar tariffs).
Quote from Misclick »
I get that it all might work out in the end, but I'm currently of the idea that I and my ideals wouldn't make the transition, at least intact. And that worries me a great deal. At least with a government in place I can depend on being able to take a walk, see a chipmunk, and pay my taxes.
Governments aren't really good at protecting the environment. Generally, legislators pass superficial bills with titles suggesting reform, but it doesn't really do much of anything, especially by the time that it gets to the bureaucrats. Hell, in third-world countries where corporate multinationals are exploiting resources and letting pollution go everywhere, it's usually local and national governments imposing petty fines or granting free passes (usually in exchange for a tidy sum) for all the destruction. Legal caps on corporate liability and licenses to operate in destructive ways are probably worse environmental policy than anything the worst free market could come up with.
Quote from Misclick »
Monopoly, then? To be honest, I don't consider a hostile attack from China likely, I consider it far more likely that they'd simply quietly buy us out.
I honestly don't think that China has the economic power to do that much buying. Its financial situation is already shaky enough (especially given its dependence on the US to keep it afloat, which explains the continual loaning), but trying to buy--and prop up--that many companies would probably bankrupt them (assuming that the Chinese government didn't tank from the US's transition to anarchy). I dunno, no pun intended, but I don't buy that as being any more likely than military aggression.
Quote from Misclick »
You're right, we're not in an emperialist world anymore, but we are in a global economy, and especially in the formative years we'd be vulnerable to all sorts of fiscal shenanigans. Again, this is what concerns me, if I'm trying to put together a working business against a government-backed competitor I don't think it looks too good for me.
I don't see why they'd bother buying anyone out if the only way it can stay afloat is through state subsidies, especially given the number of businesses and the fact that, given the likely geographic structuring of anarchist communities, companies backed by foreign governments would probably fail anyway, because, in the big picture, private companies who fail free up capital which moves somewhere else to settle in a more efficient use, whether that be other companies buying each other (which sort of precludes purchase by states, and is more likely given the relative proximity of these companies to one another) or new companies popping up in other cities, which reduces incentive to buy from the state-backed company since comparative advantage is shifting to favor the cities in which capital in a particular industry increases, since competition is increasing in those areas, driving down prices, allowing for greater productive capacity/efficiency, and overall offering a better deal than the state-sponsored company could.
Quote from Misclick »
This is where the idea of corruption really hits home. I'm in a bar, some dude punches me, and I murder him. Okay, I have to pay lots of money to the bar for breaking their rules.
I don't know that you can classify it as "murder", since you weren't the aggressor. It would just be really extreme self-defense.
Quote from Misclick »
But since the bar owner can set whatever standard he wants, what's to prevent him from posting a sign that makes the murder of a black man only worth $5? Or asking for my daughter in trade? If the bar owner has absolute dominion over what occurs in his bar, especially when he's serving alcohol, what keeps him from abusing his power?
What prevents him from just straight barring black people from entering his bar? Nothing. It's probably a bad business strategy, because he'll get a reputation for being a racist, he'll lose business (both from blacks and from people irritated with him being a racist), and he'll be the worse for it. That a person can do undesirable things on his property doesn't imply that his property rights should be compromised.
Quote from Misclick »
Who pays the doctor for the treatments they administer?
Typically, insurance companies do. But that isn't "socializing the cost", because you're not forcing people to pay for you. Everyone contracts to pay into a common pool, pays a certain premium based on risk to the company, and has license to draw from that pool under conditions laid out in the contract.
Quote from Misclick »
This is an interesting take on it. The idea is fascinating but I feel out of my depth, so I will research and possibly come back to it.
Okie dokie.
Quote from Misclick »
Yes, but I'm not an electorate. I'm a guy on the internet. I must ask personal, in-depth questions about issues that concern me.
What I mean is that asking "how" questions doesn't advance the discussion, because there's no way to answer how specifically something will be accomplished. I can speculate and tell you what's really likely to happen, but it's not as if everything I say is going to translate exactly into what an anarchic society is like.
*To everyone else*
Since I have like 4 other posts to respond to, including one very large one, and also given that I haven't been to sleep in a very long time, I'm going to bed, will return later, and will cover those (and whatever other posts are likely to crop up).
I have no doubt whatsoever that he does. But the stronger his argument for moral nihilism, the weaker his argument for a non-aggression principle. You'll note I asked him to justify the latter, not the former.
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Argumentation presupposes non-aggression. So if he has an argument for nihilism (or anything)...
If engaging in argument (somehow) establishes a non-aggression principle, all this shows us is that an argument for moral nihilism is inherently self-defeating. And in contrast, if moral nihilism is true, then discourse ethics is a non-starter.
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I assume you are making creating a scenario where the whole world is populated by anarchist capitalistic social structures. If you do not propose such a scenario then some of your points fall flat. For example you could look at the European countries as large highly regulated governmental structures and Africa as a loose knit group of tribes. One conquered the other. A large organized government structure will have the incentive and the capability of conquering a smaller government structure.
So in my scenario i will grant to you the entire world is populated with small scale anarcho capitalist.
There are three tribes that have wandered the same basic terrain for a long time now. These tribes know of each other, they are trade partners and they has even been intermingling of the tribes in rare occasions. The reason these tribe stay in that same basic geographical area is because of a shared water source. In this area there are no resources of value besides the land and water. These tribes are subsistence farmers, hunters, and gatherers.
Due to lack of money these tribes have very little commutation with the outside tribes and no electricity. These tribes cannot afford to trade there food and/or water to receive electricity and communication devices. Their main source of power comes from windmills. The outside tribes are more advanced and they look down on these simple farmers.
This area is now entering its 5th straight year of drought. These tribes know that there is no rain god and that rain is a product of the earth's natural processes and that these processes are subject to change. This area is now starting to bend under the pressure of the drought. There is less wildlife, smaller crop yields, and the tribesmen are starting to get worried. When members of the tribes go for help the outside tribes respond with what do you have to trade. At this point the tribes have not enough food and water for themselves so they have nothing to trade. The outside tribes don't even want the land because the outside tribes view crop less lands as worthless. To top it all of the outside tribes will not even let tribesmen assemble into their society because they are thought of as ignorant savages.
In these five years tribe A has been siphoning off more ans more water to prepare for the current drought. At this moment tribe A has produce producing farms and enough water to satiate it's people. Tribe B and Tribe C have been taken a laissez faire attitude towards the drought in the hope that the drought would end. At this moment Tribe B and Tribe C are beginning to starve and a few children have died. The water source is almost depleted and each tribe fears what is coming. Out of hunger Tribe B invades and attempts to conquer Tribe A's land for food. Tribe A successfully defends their land but before they can repair the damage tribe C successfully invades. Now that a lot of people have died this area can finally sustain the amount of people present.
That tuned into a longer story than i thought it would be. This is a common tale of tribal war. People tend to look at the big moments in history like the world wars and they seem to overlook the small parts of history like the history of the African tribes. If you focus on the large parts of history i can understand why you would hate large governments, but trust me small scale governments are just as bad.
You may think that this scenario is far fetched but i assure you it is common. You may believe that the outside tribes would do the right thing and help, but any real look at human history would prove you wrong. One fact people overlook in the slavery issue was that Europeans did not go and get the slaves. Instead they paid other tribes to go and get the slaves. It did not take much effort to convince a tribe to invade conquer and capture other humans. Many tribes die off in the survival of the fittest landscape of small scale communities. What has happened will always happen too many people will be present on some piece of land and the most common way to solve that problem will be murder. People do not have logic when they are hungry, people do not have logic when they are thirsty.
The anarcho capitalist has no solution for this problem outside of hope that people will do the right thing. It is a false premise to believe that people will view the world as you do.
If engaging in argument (somehow) establishes a non-aggression principle, all this shows us is that an argument for moral nihilism is inherently self-defeating. And in contrast, if moral nihilism is true, then discourse ethics is a non-starter.
First, you're confused about what "ethics" in discourse ethics means, and "moral" in moral nihilism means. If you understood the argument, you would realize that discourse ethics meant he literally CAN'T argue (for nihilism) without presupposing non-aggression. Nothing he can do about it. It just happens. This is in contrast to the kinds of prescriptive morals Cody denies in moral nihilism, where you existentially do have an option about whether or not to follow them.
Second, that's not a counterargument. Even if it were self-defeating that doesn't mean you've found a problem with his actual derivation. The burden goes to you to show that the logical handling of morality MUST yield a cohesive solution.
First, you're confused about what "ethics" in discourse ethics means, and "moral" in moral nihilism means. If you understood the argument, you would realize that discourse ethics meant he literally CAN'T argue (for nihilism) without presupposing non-aggression. Nothing he can do about it. It just happens. This is in contrast to the kinds of prescriptive morals Cody denies in moral nihilism, where you existentially do have an option about whether or not to follow them.
Second, that's not a counterargument. Even if it were self-defeating that doesn't mean you've found a problem with his actual derivation. The burden goes to you to show that the logical handling of morality MUST yield a cohesive solution.
(a) Watch your tone.
(b) I reject the conclusion of discourse ethics. Maybe that's because I don't fully understand the argument for it, but (while we're on the subject of burdens) the burden is on you to make the case for it; you can't simply link to Wikipedia's summary and expect everyone to take it as canonical. That discussion, however, should probably be taken to a new thread. What's most relevant to this thread is that the inevitable non-aggression posited by discourse ethics is of a far more anemic constitution than the non-aggression principle required by this brand of anarcho-capitalism. This latter concept does indeed allow people the option whether or not to follow it, as is evident by the anarcho-capitalists' complaint that the state doesn't follow it. You may say this is because the state doesn't engage in discourse. I'd disagree - the state engages in discourse and "aggression" side-by-side, which right there serves as counterexample to discourse ethics - but even if I'm wrong about this, and what the state does is not proper discourse, that only serves to clarify the core problem here: that agents can choose whether or not to engage in the sort of discourse that discourse ethics considers "proper". Whether he's saying "One ought not to initiate aggression" or "One ought to engage in proper discourse", the anarcho-capitalist is unavoidably advocating some moral imperative. Which is inconsistent with moral nihilism. And if the logical handling of morality doesn't yield a cohesive solution, that only heaps more problems on our hapless ancap.
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To avoid straying off-topic, let us just note that there are justifications of the nonaggression principle that do not rest on ethics in a conventional sense. Depending on what arguments you subscribe to, you could believe that the NAP is justified and be a moral nihilist without contradiction. If you don't think that's possible, it's because you disagree with one of the philosophical arguments (either for discourse ethics or moral nihilism) which is off-topic relative to this thread. If lots of people are curious I will post a thread on the philosophy forum about discourse ethics.
(b) I reject the conclusion of discourse ethics. Maybe that's because I don't fully understand the argument for it, but (while we're on the subject of burdens) the burden is on you to make the case for it; you can't simply link to Wikipedia's summary and expect everyone to take it as canonical.
I linked the wikipedia article so you could glean a basic understanding. I don't see why I have to physically type the text out myself.
That discussion, however, should probably be taken to a new thread. What's most relevant to this thread is that the inevitable non-aggression posited by discourse ethics is of a far more anemic constitution than the non-aggression principle required by this brand of anarcho-capitalism.
Wrong. Anarcho capitalism is a philosophy. The "anemic" NAP of discourse ethics applies to it with full force.
This latter concept does indeed allow people the option whether or not to follow it, as is evident by the anarcho-capitalists' complaint that the state doesn't follow it. You may say this is because the state doesn't engage in discourse. I'd disagree - the state engages in discourse and "aggression" side-by-side, which right there serves as counterexample to discourse ethics -
Discourse is not simply the act of talking. Argumentation categorically presupposes that you are attempting to procure the consent of your audience. So you can never give an argument for aggression the same way you can't have voluntary slavery or a square circle.
but even if I'm wrong about this, and what the state does is not proper discourse, that only serves to clarify the core problem here: that agents can choose whether or not to engage in the sort of discourse that discourse ethics considers "proper". Whether he's saying "One ought not to initiate aggression" or "One ought to engage in proper discourse", the anarcho-capitalist is unavoidably advocating some moral imperative. Which is inconsistent with moral nihilism. And if the logical handling of morality doesn't yield a cohesive solution, that only heaps more problems on our hapless ancap.
No. Cody's non-aggression is not morally imperative. Again, I point you to the distinction I brought up between "ethics" (rules) and "morals" (prescriptions). It is only ethically imperative if you are trying to argumentatively justify yourself.
As far as I can see, Cody does not have any free-floating prescriptive moral claims. According to him, no one does. Hence moral nihilism.
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1. No government
2. Unrestrained markets
3. A general fundamental respect for the nonaggression principle
4. Property rights
5. A commitment to rationality and communication, rather than violence
6. An autonomy bounded only by others' free agency
I'd rather answer your objections than sit here and make a positive case for any of these propositions. Either you agree with me, in which case no argument is necessary, or you disagree, which means you disagree for reasons. It's these reasons which I seek to challenge and erode, as they're the only thing separating your politics and mine. Maybe you oppose free markets because you support regulation. Maybe you want state-sponsored police because you don't trust their private alternatives. Maybe you oppose full civil liberty because you think self-harm should be limited or banned. If I'm doing everything correctly, dispatching all possible objections leaves you with no other choice than to agree with me, so I seek to rectify the gap between us, rather than preemptively building a comprehensive case (which would take a LONG time and a LOT of space to be thorough).
Also, hi.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=325059
...but there are enough differences stated here that I think I am free to post here instead.
Questions:
1. Without a government, wouldn't we just be smallish groups? How does an anarchistic society work when there is no National Guard to call in case of natural disaster or, heaven forbid, one of our less-than-friendly neighbor nations decides to invade?
2. Autonomy of the individual is a great goal, but it seems hopelessly wishful thinking. I don't think I'd enjoy a society where people are allowed to do whatever they wish, especially when some crackhead who doesn't realize he's being 'aggressive' decides to hassle me. It seems to me that policing is an important role of government.
3. It seems hypocritical to me that there can be a society based on non-aggression. The only answer to aggression is counter-aggression (in a large scale society, of course), and people are, by dint of being people, bound to be aggressive sooner or later. To put it bluntly, if someone breaks the rules, how are we going to stop them from continuing to break the rules besides tackling them to the ground and punishing them?
First of all, I do sort of expect the scale of anarchic societies to be "smaller" in terms of geographic area. But I don't think that it's as problematic as it's made out to be because anarchist societies don't really have formal borders anyway. Additionally, since communities typically aren't self-sufficient (and are much better off in benefiting from comparative advantage than in trying to be the best at everything), I think that smaller-scale societies will still be hooked together largely for economic reasons. It may not be as tightly knit because there's no governmental structure legally binding areas together, but that doesn't seem problematic to me. It's just decentralization.
Second of all, with regard to natural disasters, they'd be handled in much the same way as they're currently handled. Many of the people volunteering to help, whether donating time or money, are doing so of their own volition. Governments typically aren't that great that cleaning up after disasters as it is. Personally, I think that the problem can be resolved, financially speaking, by insurance networks within which participation is incentivized by the absence of state-sponsored safety nets and the uncertainty of whether one can be saved by charity alone (especially given that an individual or family is likely to be bankrupted by a disaster if they rely on their own income as a primary source for rebuilding).
Also, if you look back to economic dependence like I mentioned earlier, there seems to be an incentive to help rebuild communities on which you depend for some kind of resources. If one region is heavily invested in pharmaceutical research, and other neighboring regions all import their drugs from there, they're in serious trouble if the pharmaceutical region gets hit, because these other regions have their capital focused on different industries. It's likely that they largely lack the infrastructure, manpower, etc. to have their own bustling pharmaceutical industry to pick up the slack after losing their source of imports. It's probably cheaper, and overall more beneficial, to contribute to the rebuilding of that region so that production can resume.
Plus, it's an interesting point that, either people are willing to lend a hand, in which case state intervention is unnecessary, or they aren't willing to help, in which case you're just forcing your personal values on everyone else by taxing them to fund relief.
Third of all, I don't see the whole "military takeover" scenario as being realistic. One, anarchist societies aren't threatening, so there's not really a direct incentive to invade. Two, I think private military firms are totally viable as replacements for state-sponsored militaries. They may not spend nearly as much on weapons, huge troop levels, and R&D, but I see that as largely a good thing. Three, states are actually easier to take over because the legal and tax structures already exist. Anarchic societies are so decentralized that the costs of establishing a sufficiently dominant government, quelling insurgencies, etc. is a pretty good disincentive to potential invaders (especially when you consider that, if the United States is having problems with quelling insurgency and setting up its preferred government, the problem will probably be compounded for other belligerents, given that US military spending is many times over what other countries are spending). Four, even if we grant that, say, 25% of developing AnCap societies will be taken over by aggressive neighbors, that's not really sufficient to discount the ideology. We don't dismiss medicine simply because people are likely to get sick again, or because they're guaranteed to die eventually.
Anarchists don't advocate "absolute freedom". A crackhead doesn't really have the liberty of committing an aggressive action against you. If he does, you're welcome to defend yourself, even if that means personally incapacitating him. The point of the nonaggression principle is that, though you have a legal immunity to violence, that immunity becomes void as soon as you initiate force against someone else. The nonaggression principle basically captures when people accept legal liability/responsibility (which is whenever they commit an act of aggression against another individual).
I think that policing is important, but it's an entirely different argument to say that government is necessary for (or superior at) policing.
I think you're misconstruing what's meant by "aggression". When I use the word, I mean the initiation of violence (or fraud, which only really comes up when we're talking about contracts, and is its own sort of violence). Punching me in the face would be aggression. Me punching you in the face in retaliation would not be aggression. Once it's understood that aggression refers to initiation, and not retaliation, that objection basically goes away.
How small are we talkin', here? M*A*S*H* unit size or "only probably half a state" or what?
And that would be fine were the whole world, or at least the whole continent, were made AnCaps, but all societies that now exist have rather rigid borders; more to the point, they'd want those borders not in a constant state of flux. Which brings up another point, what does an AnCaps do about foreign policy, since it doesn't seem as good at determining the will of the people?
My apologies, by the way, if I'm misusing "AnCaps".
"It may not be as tightly knit" in there worries me. America, where I reside, is already facing major problems with social communication because there's simply not enough to bind us together. Decentralization here comes too close to separationism.
1. I'm going to dispute that people would get help with recovering from a natural disaster at the same rate (or faster) without government backup. We don't all break from our daily routines to go help other people now, and under an AnCaps system we'd actually have more incentive to let them sort their own problems out and get back to work. Again, this smacks of wishful thinking: if the situation depends on 'human decency' and 'long-term planning' to accomplish its goals, then why are these initiatives (largely) failing under the current governemental system? And you want to remove the government overseeing what help there is to give?
2. What about the people who can't afford/ don't want to afford insurance? Are we simply going to let them suffer? Or would we somehow eliminate the poor and stupid? If there were no taxation to take care of these people, what would keep everybody from simply dodging the insurance premiums and then, when the disaster strikes, what would keep everyone from demanding help and overloading the fiscal system?
Sure, and if that community is the only place where I can harvest dilithium, I'd probably be more than willing to give a neighbor a hand, but if there's a dilithium deposit in the town to the other side? I simply don't get this point, please elucidate: if the whole point of the system is to let everyone do whatever they can to improve their own lives, where is the incentive to help out the neighbor at one's own expense?
I'm sorry, so your personal values include not helping people in crisis? I pretty much assumed that this wasn't much of a moral crisis for most people.
1. Well that's just silly. "Maybe if we hide our heads in the sand, nobody will attack us! They can trust us when we say we're nonaggressive! Quick, let's tear apart all of our weapons so we can prove we're not a threat!"
2. So, if I'm Scrooge McDuck, what incentive do I have to fund my own private army besides protecting my own wealth and/or lording it over the other people? When the enemy's tanks roll in, what incentive do I have to help everyone else? Human decency? I'm a duck! (by which I mean, there is no reason to assume the rich ol' guy on the hill has the moral scruples to protect the populace) And if there's a backlash from the community? Who cares! I have my own friggin' army!
3. Because an AnCaps society has looser affiliations with adjoining communities, it's harder to take over? Care to go over that again? Or are you seriously saying that an AnCaps community has so little governance that nobody would want it?
4. Sure, a more decentralized nation would be more capable of sustaining the shock of an invasion. I'll grant you that one.
But without governance there is no way to truly tell how much free liberty I can grant myself when protecting myself and my property, right? So what's to prevent me from stabbing the crackhead if he punches me in the arm? Everyone has differing opinions of how far they can and should go in the protection of self, wouldn't laws need to be inducted to prevent abuse of the system?
True enough. An excellent point.
It is true, I have only a limited understanding of the concept of what this style of 'governance' entails. That wasn't what I was calling hypocritical, though: I used a really bad example, and for that I apologize, but to elucidate, I was questioning the autonomy of the person vs. justice. If I'm a crackhead, and prone to punching people because of my addiction, you have 3 options: 1. Put me in jail, which restricts my autonomy, or 2. Treat me, which forces the burden onto the populace against their will and preventing them from most effectively maintaining their own autonomy, or 3. Let me do it again. All of these seem like bad, somewhat hypocritical options. Is there one that I'm missing? The problem here is that you can't really come back with "We would do what we are doing now under the current system" because then I see no reason to change systems.
Yeah, good luck with #'s 3-5 without #1 to enforce it. Don't come back at me with something about a citizen's coalition or local watchdog groups. Those are just ways of saying "government without a constitution", which isn't not-government, it's just amateurish government.
Anything worth screwing up is worth screwing up right.
Since there is still ample growth and profit to be had with moderate regulation, and regulation protects the public from the possible excesses of unregulated business, yes.
For the majority of people, there IS no private alternative. Let's be honest here, most people can't afford to hire mercenaries or bodyguards. And I've never heard of a rich, anti-government, crime victim who, in a fit of ethics said, "no, taxpayer-funded policeman whose job I have advocated for the elimination of, don't investigate the person who stole my car; I'll hire a private investigation team instead." They pay for bodyguards - but they also expect to layer that protection with the public option, too.
This statement leads me to be concerned about your ability to detect grey areas. One person's civil liberties are another person's moral wrongs. The abortion issue is a key example where a difference in definitions of terms lead to people of good heart to be in utter, outraged opposition to one another. How can you paint either side as being "against civil liberties"? There is not, in every issue, a "pro-liberty" side and an "anti-liberty" side. In fact, usually there are two or more "pro-liberty" sides, who define liberties differently.
While it was nice of you to admit it, it doesn't make it a less insulting thing to say. People always have a choice other than agreeing with you. And you can't just "dispatch objections" when it comes to something as subjective as differing people's differing ideals of what society should be like. No amount of logic or argument can do that, since you're coming from entirely different starting-points. Obviously you may sway undecideds, but not everyone out there IS undecided.
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I dunno. How big will nations be? There's not really a straight answer, because societies are homogeneous. North Korea, China, the United States, and Chile are all different sizes and shapes. The same rule applies to anarchism.
Those societies' borders would continue to end where they end. Beyond those borders, though, a state doesn't really have any say.
Well, anarchy is, by definition, the absence of a state, so there isn't really any "foreign policy" to speak of. There might be an organization of anarchist communities/regions similar to how homeowners' associations crop up in neighborhoods, but there's not any formal governmental structure that deals with foreign policy.
Such as?
You mean separatism? I don't really see that as being problematic.
I think one of the reasons why people don't get up and go help other people is precisely because they expect the government to go do it for them. It may not be the case that someone from across the continent comes to help, but I think that local and regional neighbors will have a greater incentive to assist because of economic co-dependence. It may be the case that people buy from other sources during the interim, but the incentive to help rebuild provides long-term advantages which are sufficient to stimulate restorative investment.
For the sake of argument, though, I'll grant your contention that nobody comes to help, and the community basically withers and dies. It may be hard to bear emotionally, but I don't think this is necessarily problematic. When that sort of disaster occurs, it's similar to what happens to a big company that gets busted in the marketplace. It rapidly loses market share, revenue tanks, jobs are eliminated, and the firm goes under. It's a sad sight, sure, but it's also a catalyst for a reallocation of capital. Similarly, if no one comes to help rebuild the community (which, for the sake of the question, we presume to be a bad investment), then that community is never coming back. The capital, e.g. workers, investors, production capacity, will be distributed elsewhere by the market. People will go where they think they have the best chance at prosperity, investors will recoil and invest in different areas, comparative advantage changes as a section of the market tanks, and, generally speaking, things readjust themselves. So, even granting the worst-case scenario, things have a way of working themselves out. The only difference is that you don't get the same emotional closure of seeing an army of volunteers rush to the aid of the affected (wclalhich I still think is a massively unlikely scenario), but that's not really an argument for state intervention as much as an appeal to pity.
A couple of reasons. First, governments are awful at managing resources. Classic calculation problem is a good demonstration of that. Second, governments aren't benevolent messiahs which only have peoples' best interests in mind. Typically, legislators cater to political pressures more than anything (like lobbyists and campaign financiers), and those who do care are typically misguided, because they just want to know which government solution is best, rather than whether the government has the capacity to help in the most effective way possible. I mean, they could definitely guess what the most efficient/economic solution is, but it's extremely unlikely, and it's just a bad gamble to bet all your chips on the government guessing correctly a majority of the time. This doesn't say anything, by the way, about regulators and bureaucrats, who typically get captured by the industries they're supposed to be regulating (the ICC and railroads, the USDA and agriculture, the FDA and pharmaceuticals, the EPA and bottled water companies, etc.). Typically, the response is "well, we should just fix it"/"reform", but that's not really a solution because the incentive structure is deformed. This is what I've come to call the "Magic Wand Theory of the State", where people pretend like the government will just do whatever statists advocate because they're statists. It's like arguing "criminals shouldn't be criminals". It's true, but "good government is good, we need more of it" is a useless argument.
Yes sir.
There are ways of dealing with that. People owning less property/having lower net worth would probably pay less, because they represent lower claims. The opposite is true for people with more property. If they can't afford it, though, they can probably ask for loans from family and friends, or loan agencies, or something like that. For people who somehow have absolutely no way to afford it, it's not likely that they had much property to insure to begin with. Plus, it's the same argument for food, housing, a vehicle, a job, and so on. That someone lacks something, or is incapable of getting something, does not imply an obligation to provide that something.
For those who refuse to purchase insurance, that's their own fault.
If I don't pay my medical insurance premiums, my insurance company isn't going to give me coverage. Similarly, people that don't pay for property insurance (for homes, cars, personal electronics, etc.) won't have their claims recognized by the company with which they're trying to file those claims.
Then it's possible you could buy from them while supporting the rebuilding of the other town (maybe under the stipulation that you get ludicrous discounts for a year or something). If not, then it's likely that capital will flow from the destroyed town to this other town in the dilithium business, at which point everyone wins anyway.
The problem is that your assumption is really simplistic. It's not that you lose, they gain, and you're worse off as a result. If you gain overall from helping them rebuild, then you'll do that (even if the gain is solely psychological). If you gain overall from letting the town die and the capital shift elsewhere, then you'll do that. You may not be helping by rebuilding the town, but you'll be helping by paying his wages when he moves and gets a job somewhere else. You're only looking at the superficial nominal losses, which doesn't really account for long-term and non-monetary gains.
First of all, I'm actually a moral nihilist.
Second of all, you're not attacking the argument. If everybody values helping other people in a crisis, you don't need government, because literally every person will lend a hand. The only reason you could claim to need government is if you think that not everyone will help, at which point you're just forcing people to do what you want because it satisfies your conscience to pool money to crisis victims.
It actually seems like you're contradicting yourself, since part of your argument is that people won't break routine to help, but that helping people is also morally obvious to basically everyone. You can't have it both ways.
This isn't an argument.
Nobody said anything about owning an army. Private military contractors already exist.
Like I said, you don't own your own army. Companies provide the service. Even if you're the CEO, "doing nothing" will probably bankrupt you. Maintaining a force of only 3,000 people at $65,000 a year is $195 million a year in expenses. If you're getting basically zero revenue, and you're draining your personal fortune, you're probably not going to be in business too long (especially with other companies competing for market share and such). The effect is compounded as you add soldiers and fight in a conflict.
Okay. Despite my belief that this is an absurd oversimplification which seeks to caricature anarchism rather than argue against it, I have to ask: for all the incentive problems you can point out with companies that provide military/defensive services, how can you ignore the way in which those problems are compounded for governments, which maintain a monopoly on force, law, and arbitration? Why doesn't the state just oppress everyone? Damn the backlash, damn human decency, damn voluntary contribution. You really seem to be operating on this presumption of businessmen as evil deceivers and government officials and benevolent saviors.
It's harder to establish dominance. If you take over a state, all the structures are already in place. You have a centralized power structure, a legal system, a tax code, a static border, and all that. You don't have any of that when you approach anarchy. You have to REALLY work to wage an aggressive war, work even harder to quell dissent, rebellion, and insurgency, even harder to establish all the structures necessary for governance, and even harder to do it all in a way that's cheap and efficient, otherwise you end up screwing yourself over and spending a ton of money to take a huge loss. I just don't think the incentives are that strong to invade an anarchic society. They aren't threatening or hostile, you don't really gain economically from trying to conquer them, you'll probably piss a lot of people off for attacking, and goodness only knows what your chances of success are. Those are just a couple of problems off the top of my head, but the overall point I want to make is that geopolitics is not like Risk.
Okie dokie.
Prima facie? Nothing. I do think that there's potential for a lot of structures to manifest which inhibit individual retaliatory power. Since all property would be private, for example, violence would be more difficult outside the realm of the home. If a crackhead and I are in a bar, and he hits me, it's likely that the bar will have rules acting as a disincentive to more extreme degrees of force. It's possible that the bar might have a rule against carrying while you're on the property. Maybe I can incapacitate him, but I'm transgressing against the bar owner's property if I full-on murder my aggressor. Maybe I'm willing to pay thousands of dollars to the owner for excessive retaliation, but it's more likely that I'm not going to be willing to part with that kind of money. I think the same can be said for insurance companies, who would have an incentive to charge higher premiums for owning and carrying weapons. The possibilities are numerous.
Even if I grant that, my counterargument would be that a monopoly on law isn't required for what you're proposing.
Autonomy restriction isn't really relevant when you've committed an act of aggression. Rights don't exist in a vacuum--they're only in play so long as people interact without using force against each other.
Treating someone doesn't require forcing the burden onto anyone else. Without government, there isn't an entity to socialize the nominal costs, so that argument is irrelevant when talking about anarchy.
We should do what we do under the current system, but not suck at it. Similar to my argument that policing is good, that the current system does it, but that the state isn't necessary in obtaining it. Retributive systems of justice historically are really ineffective at cutting recidivism, and are even worse at treating drug addiction, because those systems are designed for retribution over restoration. I think that the key to an anarchist society is creating a network of long-term relationships and such, especially using intermediaries. Like signing an employment contract that requires probation, mandatory rehab, and drug tests if one is found to be a drug user. And insurance contracts that up premiums significantly for drug use. And communication between intermediaries which incentivizes desirable behavior (i.e. non-use) by people who are clients on several different points of the network.
Most people usually end up afflicted with Mad "How?" Disease, sitting and asking for pages how exactly X, Y, and Z will work, when they're asking the wrong questions. It's not about the particular mechanisms a society is sporting as much as the social theory, and what makes coexistence work in the first place.
Merged double post.
The defining feature of a government is that it's a territorial monopoly on force, law, and arbitration. Also, the whole taxation thing, which is absent in private defense organizations. It's a good buzzword for dismissing private alternatives to the state, but it's not an argument.
Except governments don't do it "right".
This isn't an argument for regulation. It's a presupposition that regulation is good, and that the solution to bad government is more good government. That's the Magic Wand Theory of the State I mentioned in my other post. I would also definitely note the super-prevalent problem of regulatory capture.
This is really negative stereotyping, because it presumes that, without the government, "defense" consists of a bunch of people with guns sitting around and waiting to be hired. I mean, for obvious reasons, there isn't a private alternative right now--there's a government whose business is a monopoly on that sort of thing. But in the case of private defense/policing, it's not as if you have to fund everything yourself. In fact, I would imagine that the "public good" nature of police and military services will result in local intermediaries purchasing in bulk, so to speak. It's sort of like how you pay into a mutual fund and have the people working there do the work for you, except you're pooling your money with a bunch of other people to invest. It's hard to say how exactly it would play out, though, because societies aren't homogeneous. Even if the services are, the financing probably won't be.
That isn't an argument against private defense and policing. That's just pointing out that the state exists, and that people use its services. At best, you're arguing that some people want one thing but make do with what options they have. It's like arguing against national health care on the basis that many of its advocates have private insurance. It's just a big red herring.
So? That's their cue to A) debate me on why X is wrong, and B) why X being wrong necessitates a legal ban.
Personally, I think people are making the wrong arguments in the abortion debate. I can grant the fetus personhood and still justify abortion rights. Your example seems to suppose that grey areas are irresolvable and should be let alone, when my claim is that you should do your best to investigate and clear up those grey areas. That's the point of debate.
1. I'm concerned with political liberty, which refers to the absence of coercion. Based on that, I can argue that people are anti-liberty.
2. It's true that there's not always pro/anti-liberty in every argument. Some people are indifferent to it.
3. With regard to a particular definition, two opposing sides cannot simultaneously be pro-liberty in the same respect. Your argument basically affirms equivocation as a valid strategy, because it's claiming that we can't identify pro/anti-liberty advocacy based on definitional pluralism. I think that the differences in definitions/political theories can be debated, though, to demonstrate that one theory or the other is inconsistent, self-contradicting, or even that it has incoherent definitions. It doesn't really matter, though, since meaning is determined by use. You're concentrating too much on the label, when my point is that I'll keep defending the same ideas regardless of what they're called.
If I debate someone, I counter all their objections, and they have no further arguments to present, then it would be intellectually dishonest to keep holding the position they're holding.
Well, obviously. A dictator who wants to oppress everyone and extort wealth isn't going to care about political freedom, economic efficiency, or anything like that. But I think that, insofar as I share political goals with people, I can demonstrate AnCap to be superior. In areas where goals aren't shared, you'd be surprised how many political theories devolve into "I want to use force against other people to achieve my agenda to make myself feel better". Usually, this applies in cases where people appeal to empathy or compassion as a justification for using force, but are really just tugging at emotional straws because having their ideal system enacted would provide satisfying closure to their personal political narrative.
I'm an anarchist, dawg. I DO WHAT I WANT!
Nothing "enforces the value" per se, because value isn't determined by the use of force. The same forces that determine value in any market (e.g. supply and demand) determine the value of money.
1. Governments don't dictate what does and doesn't have value. That's not how economics works.
2. Our banking system already plays with "funny money", since A) it can arbitrarily increase and decrease the money supply at will, without B) having to worry about tying it to a commodity, like gold (i.e. fiat currency).
3. As far as actual protections are concerned, financial security is becoming increasingly sophisticated (which will accelerate when the currency market is privatized, because there's a bigger incentive to make sure your only product doesn't get counterfeited. Most checks, for example, have multiple security measures to make sure that like checks can't be reprinted by whoever).
Like I said, markets determine value, not governments. Money is just another commodity (albeit a convenient medium of exchange), and is subject to the same market forces as other commodities.
1. If your company owns that water supply, you're fine in doing that. If you don't, you're opening yourself up to some serious legal liability.
2. Your argument, as has been made other times in this thread, is just "Bad companies are bad, so we need good regulation to prevent them from doing bad things", which isn't actually an argument. It's just a thought experiment treating the state like a magic wand.
Okay, then you're committing massive fraud/violence against a bunch of people, and are legally liable for what you're doing.
Arbitrators designed to deal with liability/tort claims?
I mean, honestly. If you're going to posit a massive pharmaceutical conspiracy so well-covered that no one will find out about it, you can't pretend that replacing private organizations with a state is somehow going to fix everything.
What's to stop governments from doing it?
Private agencies definitely have bigger disincentives. Less capital, higher costs, that sort of thing. Governments can just print and borrow more money pay for stuff they need. Project Manhattan, for example, cost about $20 billion. In the UK, their nuclear program, Trident, costs about $4 billion a year to keep running, and would cost almost $160 billion to revamp and replace. Pharmaceutical R&D, which is considered EXTREMELY expensive, can range in the millions. For one company to even open up a nuclear program, it would probably have to liquidate most of its other assets and divert a significant chunk of capital to a weapon for which it probably has zero use most of the time (assuming that, by itself, it commanded billions of dollars). And keep in mind that it probably has to raise costs to consumers to keep this well-funded, as it can't just type numbers into a computer and instantly get more money. No company is stupid enough to put all its chips on that kind of program (much less in combination with chemical/biological weapons programs), and any one that is is almost guaranteed to tank.
No I don't.
You were the one that said you expected AnCaps nations to be smaller. It's relevant; I think that a smaller cooperative is much more feasible.
Right, but you said that AnCaps nations would not have defined borders. It would be up to the AnCaps nation to figure out what to do with a border that is edged up against another nation. I'm wondering what the solution to that would be. I assume they would treat it as we do now, but I was asking for clarification, since I don't really get the idea of a 'borderless' society.
So there would be no exportation or importation?
Living in Minnesota, I don't have much in common with someone who lives in New York State or California. It is currently one of the duties of the government to set laws that can govern all of us, something which it struggles to do because of our differences. If we remove the government from that equation, then it would be difficult to set overarching socially-agreed limits on what a person can and cannot do that would take into account all of these differences. I get that there would be limits enforced within local communities, but these could vary wildly (for instance, the punishments for aggressive behavior), and I wonder if that would make inter-nation travel significantly more difficult.
Right, sorry.
I disagree. Separatism is disruptive, possibly dangerously so. If (for instance) Florida were to up and pull out of the USA, I am of the idea that it would cause more problems while reasserting its new union than could possibly be worth it. Reallocation of federal and state property, re-educating the populace, etc., as well as redefinition of the whole social structure, to name but a few.
I'll cede this point, I guess. It's hard to make an argument against neighbors helping neighbors when you volunteer at a soup kitchen. :/
You're leveling an awful lot of unfounded accusations. I'm not arguing that corruption exists, I'm wondering why it wouldn't if this were an AnCaps nation.
Just so we're clear, here, your basic stance is that everyone is responsible for their own property and safety and if they are the victim of unfortunate circumstances they will have to find their own solutions? To be honest, I don't have so much of a problem with that as opposed to how you're going to get people to agree to give up the current system that provides for them in such a state of distress.. especially the part where they'd have to borrow the money from their family or something.
Fair enough.
Yes, but by investing my time and effort into my own personal gain, it would almost assuredly give me better 'dividends' than if I spent my time helping the community grow. Frankly, I would think I wouldn't even bother pondering the possible outcomes of my actions in this instance, I would just do what was in my own best interest.
Perhaps, though, you're right, and I'm just looking at this from too narrow a view. What non-monetary gains would there had to be made?
Interesting. Care to give me a quick rundown of what that philosophy espouses?
This would be part of the earlier giving of the point, as I would be hypocritical to keep talking about people like they never do volunteer work. Thank you for helping me understand a little better.
Because under the current system, however flawed it may be, I can continue to both carry on my daily routine and support a government who helps people.
Nor was it supposed to be. I was refuting your assertion that neighboring countries would just assume that an anarchist union would be non-aggressive.
My apologies for being so flippant.
I'm an environmentalist and I own a small hobby shop (i.e. a businessman). I'm actually about the opposite of what you seem to be making me out to be. My concern here, and what you've probably been reading into, is that, as far as I can see, I'd be the first against the wall once the revolution comes. I'd love less government restrictions on my business, and the elimination of forced growth of corporate sectors. That's why I'm here to learn about this. It intrigues me. But so far I haven't seen much more than a focused anti-government stance that wouldn't care much about what happens to my business (in fact I've been wondering how I'd be able to afford bodyguards and come to the conclusion that I simply wouldn't be able to) or my untrampled forests. I get that it all might work out in the end, but I'm currently of the idea that I and my ideals wouldn't make the transition, at least intact. And that worries me a great deal. At least with a government in place I can depend on being able to take a walk, see a chipmunk, and pay my taxes.
Monopoly, then? To be honest, I don't consider a hostile attack from China likely, I consider it far more likely that they'd simply quietly buy us out. You're right, we're not in an emperialist world anymore, but we are in a global economy, and especially in the formative years we'd be vulnerable to all sorts of fiscal shenanigans. Again, this is what concerns me, if I'm trying to put together a working business against a government-backed competitor I don't think it looks too good for me.
This is where the idea of corruption really hits home. I'm in a bar, some dude punches me, and I murder him. Okay, I have to pay lots of money to the bar for breaking their rules. But since the bar owner can set whatever standard he wants, what's to prevent him from posting a sign that makes the murder of a black man only worth $5? Or asking for my daughter in trade? If the bar owner has absolute dominion over what occurs in his bar, especially when he's serving alcohol, what keeps him from abusing his power?
Okay. You cover this one below so I'll adress it there.
Who pays the doctor for the treatments they administer?
An excellent argument.
This is an interesting take on it. The idea is fascinating but I feel out of my depth, so I will research and possibly come back to it.
Yes, but I'm not an electorate. I'm a guy on the internet. I must ask personal, in-depth questions about issues that concern me.
You seem to misunderstand the reason for invasions, I don't want YOU or your culture I want your resources. How do you entend to defend yourself from larger nations that are set up in the current way of doing things? your small states of anarchy can't really compeat with a whole nation. I will stright up have more resoruces then you and take what I want. You have no "real" military to compeat with me and no allies. Ripe for the picking.
Community A hates Community B
Community A attacks Community B
Community A takes over Community B's government
That's basic imperialism, and if we look at Athens vs. Sparta we have coalitions and factions forming leading to empire. What makes a people stop being imperialistic? "More people?" Then we have a republic.
Or collapses the civilization such as what occurred with Easter Island, Minoan Civilization, and a handful of others though out time. Furthermore, you're talking about corporatization which has it's own flaws. Corporatization is just another way of saying "chartered private government." And whose going to pay up if the corporation decides not to pay out?
So how do you deal with pirates and brigands? The Templars were created to protect people on pilgrammages and to protect their gold. This was one of the first "international" banking systems created. The Templars became extremely successful until the king of France decided to consolidate power and ax them out of existence. What stops one "good organization" such as the Templars from being destroyed by a "bad organization?"
In terms of pharmaceutical drugs, you have limitations such as anti-rejection medication that comes from a Norwegian fungus. Science takes sometimes decades to find an application to basic research. The diversity of free trade offered up by Ricardo is the reason to increase living standards, total localism collapses the level of complexity in a society.
Why not it's worked for thousands of years? What makes the individual so special that they can't get taxed by a state that educated and protects them?
1. Every anarchist society cited by anarchists has been heavily violent and either equally to or more so than modern areas with a lower population, plus their judicial systems tend to suck.
2. This presumes that everyone wants to be an anarchist.
3. This presumes that such societies can be founded quickly and easily, and for the most part they cannot. Communities take generations to build and frankly, this presumes that people won't revert back to the ways they knew.
No, except that anything that smells like "bad anarchism" that happens in anarchism is either dismissed as "not true to intellectual anarchism" or handwaved as the "community can handle it."
And crackhead's Daddy gets a shovel and goes after the "you." Then that spirals off into a blood feud such as what happened in Ireland and Iceland.
Show a society that's superior at it, you have 10,000 years of human history to do so with the sort of population density we have today.
Retaliation escalates without an external force, as seen with mobs and other random acts of violence. The human "herd instinct" is still there and quite strong. Furthermore, humans have different modes of thought during emotional states. Get enough people "frenzied" and they behave stupidly.
Private defense firms include the Pinkertons and Blackwater right off the top of my head. There's also the Italian mercenary armies, but considering modern warfare tends to be urban and relies on terrorism we wouldn't see the same peace that the Italian peninsula had.
Seems more or less like you don't like government, and think like communists that if "only way less" or "way more" of government can "fix the situation to be more palatable to an ideology." I'm just going to make the argument that these "private defense firms" are a "floating government" or chartered private government that with enough capital adds a layer of permanency to have a "real government."
Or we change the bureaucratic mechanisms to suck less like we do any other time. In terms of anarchism and localism, the rise of Redemption in the US provides me a real clue to what tyranny of the majority looks like without federal intervention that wasn't corrected until the Second Reconstruction. As a minority, for all the flaws of the federal government, that at least I don't have to bow to whites.
In all frankness, the anarchist tradition in the US is mingled with the Confederate cause, which is the Lost Cause based on extreme individualism and state's rights. The best managed states so far are places such as Singapore, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and a few other places. Going based on this either Ingsol or Confucianism seems to be the "top dog" rather than anarcho capitalism.
Which is solved through a progressive income tax and general taxes on consumption that are leveraged in such a way as to not favor any particular business. Again that's free market taxation as understood by Friedman and other such people and you know what? It worked here in the late 1990's, and works in Canada and Australia.
This also presumes, like Hayek, of spontaneous generation of communities and institutions in the absence of government. Government is the oldest "corporation" and has successfully been the only one to be able to transfer an upswing in prosperity and stability for mankind at large. Communities, especially efficient ones, take generations to build and build upon old edifices.
The issue for example with prescription fire departments is that the uneven distribution of services causes moral problems such as if a man's house burns down and the firefighters are there and he's trying to pay out of pocket to save his home. Is that "fair?" Is that "moral?"
In terms of the Pinkertons, they were used in several human rights violations and often exploited to work as union breaks and other such things. Mercenary groups fair not much better, either. Furthermore, the Pinkertons never perpetuated a corporate culture necessary to ensure the peace, where as police forces that have existed for decades now have done so quite peaceably.
Yet your system still has coercion, and therefore has anti-liberty aspects to it. The question is what forces are best to use "anti-liberty" aspects to preserve the greatest amount of individual liberties from those that want to take away liberty. Anarchism has laughable failed at this.
And often go with what they feel is "right" culturally. People are creatures of habit and it is often natural to revert to specialization of labor. As population increases and the amount of knowledge becomes vast, people specialize more.
Private-public partnerships built the Early Republic and was maintained through much of the 19th century. Those capitalists were socialists. So even the most ardent rugged capitalists still relied on the government and created their own microgovernments in the form of company towns. So even in a state granted monopoly system with an anarcho-capitalist model people were able to create their own currencies, used coercion, and ect.
Somalia, prior to partitioning, versus Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was the dictator for multiple decade of that city-state for quite a number of decades, yet his mighty little island is light years ahead of Somalia or Ireland or even Iceland.
With AnCap you have no such models to go by, unlike democracy as we understand it today that had Athens, Rome, and a few other examples in history. Republics have spread world wide and most of them are thriving. The most "socialist" ones such as rising Australia, Brazil, and Canada and two of those are Ingsol.
Every form of government or "pseudo government" is going to behind the 8 ball in dealing with problems, the question is mostly one of structure and having "enough decentralization" within a centralized format to allow for innovation and necessary reactions to take place.
So I question, is AnCap even worth the time when it has failed to provide the basic services we take for granted today and never has a lot of staying power? The answer is a lot like communism, it looks great on paper, yet never quite comes off right.
Now, if you want to argue permanency and stability within a min-anarchistic society you could argue for city-states like Milan, Venice, Athens, Sparta, or even Singapore. Even the question in those models becomes what is the "minimum government necessary for that society to properly function?" Hence, min-anarchism relative to socio-cultural and demographic limitations provides a better transference of knowledge and power from one generation to the next while allowing for rapid recovery and permanency of these communities.
Either way there's been a few anarchists:
-ijosspiere-Smart guy, tends to lean more towards min anarchism than anarchism as a libertarian it seems.
-XDaarkangelX-Socialist or communist anarchist, eventually got banned for some personality defects. Still ran into deficits on arguments, but was intelligent and made for interesting conversation.
-Shining Blue Eyes-anarcho capitalist that degenerated into the "quote king" and extremely doctrinaire. He's fairly much disappeared lately, and probably for the better as he was boring even when being poked at with a stick at different angles. It was just always another damned quote.
There's a few other libertarians of different varieties that each have different ideas on what "free markets" mean. I think dcartist is a type of libertarian, and tends to be good like ijoss at debate. The worst one I ever encountered had to be Shining Blue Eyes, but as far as libertarianism goes it's the anarcho-capitalist brand that lacks the agility as argued thus far here.
As for my own conclusions, anarchism is just a stage in development of societies that allows for proto-societies to experiment while instituting and building a civil society. Economics and social interactions require a minimum amount of activity by government relative to size, scope, economics, demographics, and scale of said civil society.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
1) Currency would be a thing of the past. With no central government regulating the value of paper and coin one faction could value the coin more then paper, the other faction would have different values. Bartering would become the norm.
2) Privatized defense is asking for problems. Whom ever controled the defense would control the people. In time what you would have is defense companies fighting for territory. Seems bad for the common man/farmer/handyman/property owner.
3) Without a central government who doles out punishment for those who commit crimes? Are you going to let the private defense company dole out the punishments? At what price? Who deceides the punishments? Seems like a bad idea.
All in all your idea of a no government smaller tribe world who lead to just a bunch of infighting. If one tribe had a better harvest or more cattle or cleaner water, there would be a battle for said supplies. In the end those that controled the drinking water and food supply would be in control and if they were not in bed with the private defense company they would have a huge target on them to be taken out.
One last thing, who would control the harvesting of wild animals? Seems like under this system it would allow for people to over harvest edible meat in turn killing off many. Not only animals but people too.
All in all bad idea in my opinion.
My point is that there isn't a "standard size" for AnCap societies, just as there isn't one for statist societies. Also, free markets don't preclude the existence of cooperatives/worker-owned businesses. If that model is more successful (which empirical data suggests may well be the case), it would become more prevalent because it's more profitable and affords better working conditions.
Right, AnCap societies wouldn't really have borders of their own, but they're really unlikely to try and expand into an area claimed by a government for all the havoc it would cause.
Sure there would--it just wouldn't be conducted or facilitated by governments.
I live in Oklahoma.
The defining trait of an AnCap society is the nonaggression principle, though. All policies and such enacted by defensive/policing agencies would be responsive to acts of aggression. Personal questions, like music, drug use, ice cream flavors, movies, premarital sex, and so on, are questions of personal taste, and are only relevant here to the extent to which engaging in some activity can be considered aggression against another individual. Differences in opinion become largely irrelevant because people don't have the legal power to intrude on other peoples' autonomy. Plus, it's true that there likely wouldn't be totally homogeneous codes between companies. But that's the point--competition always beats out monopolies.
I don't know how you would construe that as making international travel more difficult, though. Companies providing commercial and passenger flights would continue to operate as normal.
1. "Separatism is disruptive" <-- Disruptive to what?
2. What you're arguing is more just a question of convenience. So Florida would have to pay for stuff that the Federal Government put there. That's fine. So it wouldn't have US public education. Probably for the best. So it would have to redefine its social structure. That's what AnCap is all about anyway.
Cool beans.
Such as?
I never said that corruption would be totally absent in an AnCap society. I'm arguing that AnCap is comparatively superior to statism in that regard, and that markets are better at dealing with corruption than governments are (especially when it's the governments which are corrupted). Plus, political pressures and regulatory capture don't really play a role in an anarchist society, because markets don't possess the legal power which allows the conferral of privileges to favored interests. An arbitrator could potentially take a bribe from a murderer and let him off, but it stands to lose the good reputation that keeps clients flowing in if and when it gets out that the company deals in bribes. Plus, insurance companies are likely to raise premiums just because the murderer was accused, regardless of whether he's convicted, since he represents a more serious threat of liability than other clients. So it's not as if a faulty acquittal leaves no scars. Those are a couple results that I can pull off the top of my head.
Right. There's no legally-enforced safety net (i.e. no unemployment, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, or any other entitlements).
I think I can convince people that they don't actually need entitlement programs, and that those things are so economically toxic that their situation is actually worse as a result. Even granting that they refuse to give up on their welfare, I'm fine just ripping the rug of entitlements out from under their feet. I don't really think a vote is necessary.
Whether you intend to "help the community grow", you necessarily have to help unless you plan to try and be totally self-sufficient. Paying for anything is supporting the business from which you're buying.
Well, people always pursue their self-interest. Psychologically, there's no avoiding that. Whether you seek immediate gratification or delay consumption is dependent on your time preference.
Well, since we've both more or less agreed to go forward on the premise that most people are inclined to willingly help others, the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from doing good (which I presume you're familiar with if you volunteer at a soup kitchen) is a pretty good example.
Nothing is right or wrong.
Sure thing. You're much nicer than the people on the site I came from. It was a debate site where most of the people were trolls or pompous douches. You're very refreshing.
You don't need to support the state to support an organization that helps people (especially when it spends much more of your money screwing people over). There are plenty of good charities, and you obviously enjoy donating your time, so it seems like you could get by without supporting the state, which forces other people to help, regardless of whether they want to give up part of their income.
It's not just an assertion. Unlike a state, anarchic societies would have an overwhelmingly difficult time waging an aggressive war because of the financial and geopolitical costs, at the very least. They're just not threatening compared to states, even if they act hostile.
Well, AnCap honestly doesn't care what happens to your business. There's no one to provide subsidies, or tax breaks, or tariffs on foreign countries. The point of markets is that you provide a quality service for a reasonable price, and compete with anyone who intends to draw business away from you. It's not necessarily that you'd have to buy bodyguards or whatever as much as just draw up a contract with a good defense agency, maybe a property insurer, and whatever other relevant business, and be on your way. I don't understand why people keep making references to bodyguards and mercenaries, personally. I don't constantly have police waiting around in my house for burglars--there's no logical reason why we suddenly need bodyguards when the monopoly on policing is busted.
As far as the environmental concerns, I don't think any honest political philosophy can purport to solve every conceivable problem. There are great technologies out there right now that work for solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, super-efficient biofuels like sugar ethanol, and so on. But I honestly don't think many of those products will become cheap and mainstream (though some will probably come through, I'm sure) until we've burned through almost all of our fossil fuels. As the supply depletes, the pricing mechanism responds by driving the market value of each unit of a resource up, until the cost of staying on fossil fuels becomes significantly higher than investment in alternative energy. We can complain about how companies won't pour money into large-scale R&D because it isn't profitable, but it doesn't really matter how much government you have as a response--the same result is very likely, albeit much uglier because of government responses to shortages, like rationing or (heaven forbid) price controls. Politicians will pay good lip service to alternative energy, but it'll basically end up like corn ethanol, which was a crappy investment that came out of a need to do something with all the surplus corn produced by corn subsidies (and sugar tariffs).
Governments aren't really good at protecting the environment. Generally, legislators pass superficial bills with titles suggesting reform, but it doesn't really do much of anything, especially by the time that it gets to the bureaucrats. Hell, in third-world countries where corporate multinationals are exploiting resources and letting pollution go everywhere, it's usually local and national governments imposing petty fines or granting free passes (usually in exchange for a tidy sum) for all the destruction. Legal caps on corporate liability and licenses to operate in destructive ways are probably worse environmental policy than anything the worst free market could come up with.
I honestly don't think that China has the economic power to do that much buying. Its financial situation is already shaky enough (especially given its dependence on the US to keep it afloat, which explains the continual loaning), but trying to buy--and prop up--that many companies would probably bankrupt them (assuming that the Chinese government didn't tank from the US's transition to anarchy). I dunno, no pun intended, but I don't buy that as being any more likely than military aggression.
I don't see why they'd bother buying anyone out if the only way it can stay afloat is through state subsidies, especially given the number of businesses and the fact that, given the likely geographic structuring of anarchist communities, companies backed by foreign governments would probably fail anyway, because, in the big picture, private companies who fail free up capital which moves somewhere else to settle in a more efficient use, whether that be other companies buying each other (which sort of precludes purchase by states, and is more likely given the relative proximity of these companies to one another) or new companies popping up in other cities, which reduces incentive to buy from the state-backed company since comparative advantage is shifting to favor the cities in which capital in a particular industry increases, since competition is increasing in those areas, driving down prices, allowing for greater productive capacity/efficiency, and overall offering a better deal than the state-sponsored company could.
I don't know that you can classify it as "murder", since you weren't the aggressor. It would just be really extreme self-defense.
What prevents him from just straight barring black people from entering his bar? Nothing. It's probably a bad business strategy, because he'll get a reputation for being a racist, he'll lose business (both from blacks and from people irritated with him being a racist), and he'll be the worse for it. That a person can do undesirable things on his property doesn't imply that his property rights should be compromised.
Typically, insurance companies do. But that isn't "socializing the cost", because you're not forcing people to pay for you. Everyone contracts to pay into a common pool, pays a certain premium based on risk to the company, and has license to draw from that pool under conditions laid out in the contract.
Okie dokie.
What I mean is that asking "how" questions doesn't advance the discussion, because there's no way to answer how specifically something will be accomplished. I can speculate and tell you what's really likely to happen, but it's not as if everything I say is going to translate exactly into what an anarchic society is like.
*To everyone else*
Since I have like 4 other posts to respond to, including one very large one, and also given that I haven't been to sleep in a very long time, I'm going to bed, will return later, and will cover those (and whatever other posts are likely to crop up).
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
He has an argument for moral nihilism.
I have no doubt whatsoever that he does. But the stronger his argument for moral nihilism, the weaker his argument for a non-aggression principle. You'll note I asked him to justify the latter, not the former.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The opposite actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_ethics
While I'm flattered you think I'm a mind reader, I'm afraid you're going to have to expand on your point here.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Actually I was hoping you were just a regular reader.
Argumentation presupposes non-aggression. So if he has an argument for nihilism (or anything)...
If engaging in argument (somehow) establishes a non-aggression principle, all this shows us is that an argument for moral nihilism is inherently self-defeating. And in contrast, if moral nihilism is true, then discourse ethics is a non-starter.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
So in my scenario i will grant to you the entire world is populated with small scale anarcho capitalist.
There are three tribes that have wandered the same basic terrain for a long time now. These tribes know of each other, they are trade partners and they has even been intermingling of the tribes in rare occasions. The reason these tribe stay in that same basic geographical area is because of a shared water source. In this area there are no resources of value besides the land and water. These tribes are subsistence farmers, hunters, and gatherers.
Due to lack of money these tribes have very little commutation with the outside tribes and no electricity. These tribes cannot afford to trade there food and/or water to receive electricity and communication devices. Their main source of power comes from windmills. The outside tribes are more advanced and they look down on these simple farmers.
This area is now entering its 5th straight year of drought. These tribes know that there is no rain god and that rain is a product of the earth's natural processes and that these processes are subject to change. This area is now starting to bend under the pressure of the drought. There is less wildlife, smaller crop yields, and the tribesmen are starting to get worried. When members of the tribes go for help the outside tribes respond with what do you have to trade. At this point the tribes have not enough food and water for themselves so they have nothing to trade. The outside tribes don't even want the land because the outside tribes view crop less lands as worthless. To top it all of the outside tribes will not even let tribesmen assemble into their society because they are thought of as ignorant savages.
In these five years tribe A has been siphoning off more ans more water to prepare for the current drought. At this moment tribe A has produce producing farms and enough water to satiate it's people. Tribe B and Tribe C have been taken a laissez faire attitude towards the drought in the hope that the drought would end. At this moment Tribe B and Tribe C are beginning to starve and a few children have died. The water source is almost depleted and each tribe fears what is coming. Out of hunger Tribe B invades and attempts to conquer Tribe A's land for food. Tribe A successfully defends their land but before they can repair the damage tribe C successfully invades. Now that a lot of people have died this area can finally sustain the amount of people present.
That tuned into a longer story than i thought it would be. This is a common tale of tribal war. People tend to look at the big moments in history like the world wars and they seem to overlook the small parts of history like the history of the African tribes. If you focus on the large parts of history i can understand why you would hate large governments, but trust me small scale governments are just as bad.
You may think that this scenario is far fetched but i assure you it is common. You may believe that the outside tribes would do the right thing and help, but any real look at human history would prove you wrong. One fact people overlook in the slavery issue was that Europeans did not go and get the slaves. Instead they paid other tribes to go and get the slaves. It did not take much effort to convince a tribe to invade conquer and capture other humans. Many tribes die off in the survival of the fittest landscape of small scale communities. What has happened will always happen too many people will be present on some piece of land and the most common way to solve that problem will be murder. People do not have logic when they are hungry, people do not have logic when they are thirsty.
The anarcho capitalist has no solution for this problem outside of hope that people will do the right thing. It is a false premise to believe that people will view the world as you do.
First, you're confused about what "ethics" in discourse ethics means, and "moral" in moral nihilism means. If you understood the argument, you would realize that discourse ethics meant he literally CAN'T argue (for nihilism) without presupposing non-aggression. Nothing he can do about it. It just happens. This is in contrast to the kinds of prescriptive morals Cody denies in moral nihilism, where you existentially do have an option about whether or not to follow them.
Second, that's not a counterargument. Even if it were self-defeating that doesn't mean you've found a problem with his actual derivation. The burden goes to you to show that the logical handling of morality MUST yield a cohesive solution.
(a) Watch your tone.
(b) I reject the conclusion of discourse ethics. Maybe that's because I don't fully understand the argument for it, but (while we're on the subject of burdens) the burden is on you to make the case for it; you can't simply link to Wikipedia's summary and expect everyone to take it as canonical. That discussion, however, should probably be taken to a new thread. What's most relevant to this thread is that the inevitable non-aggression posited by discourse ethics is of a far more anemic constitution than the non-aggression principle required by this brand of anarcho-capitalism. This latter concept does indeed allow people the option whether or not to follow it, as is evident by the anarcho-capitalists' complaint that the state doesn't follow it. You may say this is because the state doesn't engage in discourse. I'd disagree - the state engages in discourse and "aggression" side-by-side, which right there serves as counterexample to discourse ethics - but even if I'm wrong about this, and what the state does is not proper discourse, that only serves to clarify the core problem here: that agents can choose whether or not to engage in the sort of discourse that discourse ethics considers "proper". Whether he's saying "One ought not to initiate aggression" or "One ought to engage in proper discourse", the anarcho-capitalist is unavoidably advocating some moral imperative. Which is inconsistent with moral nihilism. And if the logical handling of morality doesn't yield a cohesive solution, that only heaps more problems on our hapless ancap.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Also, hi.
Where? You don't understand the argument.
I linked the wikipedia article so you could glean a basic understanding. I don't see why I have to physically type the text out myself.
Wrong. Anarcho capitalism is a philosophy. The "anemic" NAP of discourse ethics applies to it with full force.
Discourse is not simply the act of talking. Argumentation categorically presupposes that you are attempting to procure the consent of your audience. So you can never give an argument for aggression the same way you can't have voluntary slavery or a square circle.
No. Cody's non-aggression is not morally imperative. Again, I point you to the distinction I brought up between "ethics" (rules) and "morals" (prescriptions). It is only ethically imperative if you are trying to argumentatively justify yourself.
As far as I can see, Cody does not have any free-floating prescriptive moral claims. According to him, no one does. Hence moral nihilism.