[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Incorrect - governments over time have not uniformly been one thing or another. Further, you seem particularly unaware that in the primitive and semi-primitive world, the heightened level of security that a “government” provided (via outright monarchy or ‘strongman’ orders) was far preferable to the dangers of the surrounding world.[/quote]
Strawman, stop trying to box me into a “us vs. them” world view. I don’t have one. This is an assumption, but one that is hardly supported by the history I know of.
Africa!? Out of all of the places you could have chosen, you choose one of the most statist regions in the world as an example that “anarchy” doesn’t work?
Tell me, didn’t the conservatives of the time when the founders and other enlightenment thinkers were setting up constitutional republics say nearly the exact same thing that you are? IE they were also warned that their experiment would fail, yet, despite it’s modern failures, it lasted for well longer than most back then thought.
My point is that you are using the same logic. “Humans have never, in majority, opted for X. Therefore, they don’t want X and X is not good!” Appeal to majority as well.
Furthermore, if humans have never opted for “anarchy”, then how can you possibly know that it is a worse state of affairs then statism?
Not as far as economic analysis is concerned. I am not speaking about morality, religion, or culture. I am only concerned right now with the state and its role.
And yet the history of statism is one of chaos and mass murder. Who’d a thunk that when you give an agency the monopoly on defense and law that they will abuse their power? What a silly idea.
This is the same as asking, “Why isn’t universal healthcare a part of the spontaneous order?” Well, because it is not due to economic interactions, but is super-imposed upon said economy, and therefore is not calibrated to the economic system that it presides in.
No one is saying that spontaneous means random. Far from it. The state is random with its “legislation” as opposed to the real law of the land (the inter-subjective consensus of any given society).
Actually, it isn’t completely false. That’s the point of private dispute resolution, that it doesn’t get enforced in a state court.
If I don’t pay my taxes I get a notice telling me to pay them. If I ignore that, I get a court summon. If I ignore that, they eventually come to my house to put chains on me and put me in a cage. If I resist I get shot and likely killed. Therefore, it is not voluntary. One group of men hundreds of years ago signing a document does not make it binding on me.
Quite the contrary. The only way to prevent private concentration of power is to eliminate the source of its privileges and open up competition. Still not sure why you are equating feudalism to “anarchy” here. Feudalism was about as statist as it gets.
Nope, many in fact are Objectivists or Rothbardians. One need not equate morality with political action. I may believe something to be moral, that doesn’t mean I expect my neighbor to as well.
Well, yeah it could. Just as well half of the population of the United States could commit suicide tomorrow. But is it likely? Not really, given the incentives involved (these incentives also apply to the state, mind you, so don’t go thinkin’ that the state is somehow immune from acting on incentive).
It seems you think that government has some “guarantee” that “anarchy” just doesn’t have. But government is just people, with all of the same faults as the ones who would live in an anti-statist society.
Eh? The point is to prevent coercion through market competition, not to be a slave to arbitrary power (ooo sound familiar?).
No, but you act as though this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s not, but I don’t think you really want to go there do you?
After three centuries of stability. Longer than the USA has survived, to date (and without a civil war, btw).
Again, you seem to act as if government somehow magically makes a contract a contract. It doesn’t. Contracts can still be enforced in a stateless society through agencies. But the most important thing to realize here, is that even now the only reason contracts are enforced is because the inter-subjective consensus of society wills it.
Sure. Private defense agencies and private courts.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Your F.A. Hayek quotes deserve their own thread for discussion I think. Very complex thoughts and I don’t agree or disagree with either in their entirety, but several things bother me about these quotes. I simply don’t have the time to give it the thought I should to respond.[/quote]
Maybe, but I think TB23 and I have some unfinished business to clear up here first.
Strawman, stop trying to box me into a “us vs. them” world view. I don’t have one. This is an assumption, but one that is hardly supported by the history I know of.[/quote]
This is not a strawman, rather a point that you seemed not to consider in your broad sweep of historical support. Peoples of all kinds have supported (and wanted) all kinds of governments.
Uh, yeah - Africa has been home to some of the most lawless places on earth in recent history, and it has always been “cured” by gangsterism and ‘strongman’ government. To the extent Africa has become “statist” at all, look no further than the fertile ground where the seeds of statism could so easily take root - anarchy.
I am not appealing to the majority, because I am not saying that solely because no one has ever “enacted” anarchy is proof that it is bad. Rather, I am saying that anarchy is bad for a number of substantive reasons, and the lack of historical evidence of it supports my thesis that is is bad, i.e., lots of other people agree.
Twon things. First, I never said anarchy was worse than statism - I’d say they are equally intolerable and incompatible with Human Nature. Second, humans have not “opted” for anarchy, but they have had to live under in certain uninvited circumstances, and every time they have rejected it.
But you are artificially limiting your “analysis” to matters economic when Humans are not solely economic beings. The state has always played a role in the other areas that govern Humans, including your deleted topics of morality, religion, and certainly culture.
In other words, you can’t possibly be correct when you ignore vast swaths of human society in your “analysis”.
You’re losing focus - the world isn’t divided into two spheres, one being “statist” and the other being “anarchic”. You make the same mistake Dustin makes over and over - you oversimplify.
Look around you - most Western humans have as much freedom as they have had in recorded history (when you take the very long view) and yet, there has always been a state involved. Doesn’t mean the state has been perfect, but clearly your idea that once a state is enacted, it is the harbinger of death and destruction isn’t factually true. There are different kinds of states, and humans respond to incentives - and gaining security via the state (comfort that contracts will be enforced, etc.) encourages people to act more freely (more likely to engage in commerce, etc.).
In a democracy, the “inter-subjective consensus of the given society” is, in large part, the “state”. That it operates imperfectly is no argument.
Uh, this is completely false. Parties hope an award doesn’t have to be enforced in state court, but the point is it can be, therefore it has the force of law. Parties would not arbitrate claims if they didn’t have courts to back up the award. Parties want the privacy and the opaqueness of arbitration, but they only want it knowing that they can actually collect if they win if the losing party simply says “screw the arbitrator’s decision”.
Don’t believe me? Every state in the Union and the federal government has a statute that permits a party to compel under judicial order a party refusing to arbitrate to arbitrate and also allows a party to file for an affirmation of an arbitration award in court in the event a losing party won’t pay up.
If parties simply arbitrated and didn’t need the state’s role to enforce the arbitration process, there would be no need for these statutes to be on the books. But they are, and for good reason - arbitration is a creature of contract, and like all contracts, they must occasionally be enforced by a court when parties refuse to abide by the terms of the contract.
You have a naive presumption that just because parties have agreed to something, that the parties will always perform in accordance with the agreement. Wrong. And that goes for arbitration, too.
Ok, with your point in mind, let’s flesh this out - if you have a child, do you have any obligation to take care of it? Yes or no?
Feudalism is similar to statism, and it results when private power gets concentrated in the hands of the few. These are easy monopolies to acquire - read the history of the feudalistic world. Competition is a dead letter.
Exactly my point - you are a moral relativist. As such, you aren’t on the side of preserving civilization. You’ll let your neighbor do as he or she pleases, as long as it doesn’t “hurt” you. We don’t disagree. As I said, before, libertarians are ultimately moral relativists.
Correct, which is why society requires balance among its institutions, not monopolies. Humans are quite faulty - families help correct some of those faults, religion helps correct some of those faults, markets help correct some of those faults, and the state helps correct some of those faults. All of these “agents” help promote civilization, which at its base, means preserving the Good Things and getting rid of the Bad Things.
But, a threshold issue, you actually don’t believe Humans have faults - you are a moral relativist.
Why would I not want to “go there” regarding moral relativism? That doesn’t make any sense. But yes, libertarians are moral relativists.
Assuming your are right (and I don’t), you are conceding that an anarchic society slipped into statism. So, no matter what arrangement we pick, history tells us we will wind up with statism. m’kay.
But more to the point, the USA is surviving and will survive, and doesn’t need a “cure” (anarchy) that is as bad or worse than the disease. Moreover, the Civil War was caused by those that were pining for as close to anarchy as you will see in American history, and was not a war of “statism versus liberty”. If you think otherwise, commit to a public library and back your way into the history.
Flatly wrong. Your precious “agencies” have no jurisdiction over me unless I consent to that jurisdiction. And, even assuming I agreed to have an “agency” have jurisdiction over me, I can tell the “agency” to stuff it if I don’t want to play along. And what is the agency going to do?
And, contracts are not as self-enforcing as you naively hope. People breach contracts in their self-interest all the time and over bona fide disputes as to their meaning.
Sure, just like the “inter-sobjective consensus of society” wills a central bank.
Completely false, and I get the feeling you haven’t thought about this very much.
Let’s say I destroy some of your property (say, your corn crop you were going to sell at market). I destroyed it by getting drunk and driving my truck into the field and, when the truck burst into flames, it torched your whole crop.
In a stateless society, you have no means to recovering from my injury to you. We don’t have a contract; I simply destroyed something of value to you. No “private court” has jurisdiction over me - we haven’t agreed to submit our dispute to anyone, and I ain’t paying you one red cent.
So? How you going to collect from me absent just coming over with guns and taking stuff?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Sloth was merely borrowing and paraphrasing the common-sense principle that you don’t throw good money (or time or effort) after bad, and having learned the hard way that our resident “li-burr-turr-ee-ans” simply, well, aren’t all that interesting or bright, it’d be a waste of time to get too far down the road in a discussion on “society”.
…they - sometimes in the same paragraph - refer to a “market” as a collective entity that does certain things: the market “corrects” resource allocation, the market “delivers social justice”, and so forth.
[/quote]
Yep. That, and arguing with anarcho-capitalists is simply unnecessary. It’s not an ideology that has any share in the debate. So while one may oppose it, it doesn’t require spending any energy to oppose. It’s share of the conversation is completely insignificant. There’s simply no threat of anarcho-capitalism sweeping the nation, much less the world. It’s like arguing with trekkies who desire to translate The Federation into real world governance. I suppose it could be a little fun on the Mises Institute forum, getting to use your imagination to come up with alternative private institutions, but that’s about as far it’ll get…
In reality, where rubber meets the road, an anarcho-capitalist is like the fella on the corner wearing a sandwich-board sign warning of an impending alien invasion…You try not to make eye contact and just keep on going. Sure, you COULD stop and argue with him. But why? Because if you don’t everyone’s going to believe him, hunkering down to meet the spearhead of ET’s invasion force? Hardly. There’s no need to spend the time or energy.
At lunch, I decided to come up with a (hyopthetical) deal for anarchists. Here it is, let’s put this in a contract:
You give me $10,000.
If the sun comes up Sunday morning, I give you $20,000. If it doesn’t, I keep the $10,000.
In the contract, we agree that any disputes over performance of the contract shall be subject to arbitration instead of through state or federal court.
Our appointed arbitrator can be Sloth.
We agree, affirm, stipulate, contract and pinkie swear that none of the parties will ever, ever, ever, ever seek out the help of a government court, no matter what.
Of the “Anarchists!”, who will take my no-lose bet?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
At lunch, I decided to come up with a (hyopthetical) deal for anarchists. Here it is, let’s put this in a contract:
You give me $10,000.
If the sun comes up Sunday morning, I give you $20,000. If it doesn’t, I keep the $10,000.
In the contract, we agree that any disputes over performance of the contract shall be subject to arbitration instead of through state or federal court.
Our appointed arbitrator can be Sloth.
We agree, affirm, stipulate, contract and pinkie swear that none of the parties will ever, ever, ever, ever seek out the help of a government court, no matter what.
Of the “Anarchists!”, who will take my no-lose bet?[/quote]
Oooh!OOh!
I volunteer to hold the stakes! I will even sign a contract!
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
This is not a strawman, rather a point that you seemed not to consider in your broad sweep of historical support. Peoples of all kinds have supported (and wanted) all kinds of governments.[/quote]
It is. You’re acting like I believe there have only been “totalitarian” nightmare governments. There is a difference in degree of statism, obviously. I would rather live in The United States than in pretty much any other state, that doesn’t mean I believe it is a good situation. It also doesn’t mean that the United States doesn’t still use force against its citizens.
Correct, but what the hell does this have to do with anarchy? Anarchy has never been an ideological focus in Africa. You seem to be misunderstanding my position. I am not claiming that all stateless societies would work or are the same. It would be as foolish as you claiming that all states work and are the same. There is clearly a difference between The United States and the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Likewise, no ideological revolution has ever taken place in Africa that would convince them that “anarchy” is a good idea. Furthermore, the only place in Africa that has ever truly been in a quasi-state of anarchy is Somalia.
Africa is also the victim of thousands of years of foreign invasion and, more recently, destructive foreign aid.
But there is historical evidence (not for exactly a stateless society, but many that have similar features). You just refuse to look at it.
Firstly, it must be noted that when I am talking about statism here, I am referring to “big-tent” statism. Yes, like I said above, I realize not all states are built the same and there are FAR varying degrees of brutality. Let me just give you my definition of a state here, so we can be clear: An institution that attempts to maintain a monopoly on the use of force and law within a given (usually extremely large) geographical area.
Yes, again I agree that if human beings don’t want “anarchy”, it is going to suck. Likewise if they don’t want a state. I’m sure the dead of Dresden, Nanking, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki are all extremely glad that they had a government to create (dis)order.
[quote]But you are artificially limiting your “analysis” to matters economic when Humans are not solely economic beings. The state has always played a role in the other areas that govern Humans, including your deleted topics of morality, religion, and certainly culture.
In other words, you can’t possibly be correct when you ignore vast swaths of human society in your “analysis”.[/quote]
Actually, no. The analysis only goes so far as economics because I recognize that human beings are not monolithic. Are you trying to claim that most people don’t generally want peace, prosperity, and freedom? That is mainly what my argument is based on.
Ok, but what does this have to do with what I said? The point is not that I oversimplify, the point is that YOU do. You act as if the state has been some great guiding force that is protecting us from the Hobbesian wasteland that lays just outside of its jurisdiction. When, in reality, it is very often actually the state that is the greatest threat to the mass of people.
I acknowledged this point above and have never pretended to disagree with it. States aren’t monolithic, because PEOPLE aren’t monolithic. The same goes for “anarchy”. I also have never said that the state is the “harbinger of death and destruction”. That is a strawman of my position.
Currently it is, but that does not erase the fact that state law is often in contradistinction to the kind of law that I’m talking about.
[quote]Uh, this is completely false. Parties hope an award doesn’t have to be enforced in state court, but the point is it can be, therefore it has the force of law. Parties would not arbitrate claims if they didn’t have courts to back up the award. Parties want the privacy and the opaqueness of arbitration, but they only want it knowing that they can actually collect if they win if the losing party simply says “screw the arbitrator’s decision”.
Don’t believe me? Every state in the Union and the federal government has a statute that permits a party to compel under judicial order a party refusing to arbitrate to arbitrate and also allows a party to file for an affirmation of an arbitration award in court in the event a losing party won’t pay up.
If parties simply arbitrated and didn’t need the state’s role to enforce the arbitration process, there would be no need for these statutes to be on the books. But they are, and for good reason - arbitration is a creature of contract, and like all contracts, they must occasionally be enforced by a court when parties refuse to abide by the terms of the contract.[/quote]
I should’ve clarified. This is correct now, but it used to be that they weren’t enforceable in government courts. Still, historically most private arbitration were not enforceable in government courts. However, my argument is not simply for private arbitration. I am not opposed to law, I am only opposed to state law.
LOL, hardly. I don’t know where you’re getting this idea that there is no enforcement of contracts in a stateless society, but get rid of it right now. It’s incorrect.
This question makes a couple implicit assumptions (or else you wouldn’t ask it). 1) That people wouldn’t take care of their children unless forced to, and 2) That I have the ability to force them to take care of their child. Neither are necessarily true, especially the first one.
That being said, from whose standpoint does this obligation belong? Do I believe that I have an obligation to take care of my child? Yes. Do others? I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that most feel this way as well. So, yes I have an obligation to take care of my child. That doesn’t mean that that obligation needs the backing of force, however.
Uh, no. Feudalism happens when the state grants extreme land privileges to a select few. Competition is a dead letter, eh? I hope, I hope, I hope I never see you arguing for a free market in anything. You’ve said it right here that you don’t believe in competition.
At this point, I’m going to need you to make a more precise definition of “civilization”, because you keep sliding it into the conversation. Again, one need not be a “moral relativist” to be a libertarian, they only need believe that they don’t have the right to enforce their moral code on others.
Society requires balance among its institutions, not monopolies, which is why you want to grant the biggest monopoly of them all - the state? Boy, can’t beat that logic.
Again, this is an appeal to tradition, which is apparently the cornerstone of conservative thought.
Incorrect. Even if I was a “moral relativist”, it doesn’t mean that I can’t agitate for my subjective valuations. It also doesn’t mean that human beings, in general, don’t agree on a common moral code (such as murder, theft, and rape are wrong, for instance. You will find few humans who disagree with these).
And, finally, if I were a moral nihilist, I could still find faults with humans, only I wouldn’t be able to objectively prove it.
Lol, well that’s one (extremely ignorant) way to look at it. Gee, three centuries of relative stability and peace, BUT IT BECAME A STATE SO YOU LOSE I WIN! I refuse to talk about it now! Wah!
Oh freaking please, this is just BS I’m sorry. The Confederacy believed in institutionalized slavery, hardly a libertarian utopia.
Once again, you seem completely unaware of the most basic literature on the subject. No serious “market anarchist” I know of has ever endorsed a system where you are free to do anything you want if you have not consented to a legal system. I agree that would be naive and unworkable (although the Law Merchant system in the middle ages did work without coercion, and fairly effectively to my knowledge).
Great. What does this have to with “anarchy” again?
Not sure if you were being sarcastic here or not, but if you weren’t, then I agree.
[quote]Completely false, and I get the feeling you haven’t thought about this very much.
Let’s say I destroy some of your property (say, your corn crop you were going to sell at market). I destroyed it by getting drunk and driving my truck into the field and, when the truck burst into flames, it torched your whole crop.
In a stateless society, you have no means to recovering from my injury to you. We don’t have a contract; I simply destroyed something of value to you. No “private court” has jurisdiction over me - we haven’t agreed to submit our dispute to anyone, and I ain’t paying you one red cent.[/quote]
What? Have you ever taken the time to read ANYTHING about this subject? Seriously, I haven’t even read THAT much on this and know that this is about the most basic thing that is gone over.
Ok, yes a private defense agency would have the right to use retaliatory force against someone who aggresses against one of their clients. There need not be a contract beforehand (although there would likely be contracts between agencies about this sort of thing beforehand).
[quote]So? How you going to collect from me absent just coming over with guns and taking stuff?
[/quote]
What’s the problem, that is essentially how the state does it now (except it has a billion worthless laws that it does it for).
Note: I skipped (and deleted) certain sentences in the name of focusing on the areas of dispute.
[quote]Dabba wrote:
But there is historical evidence (not for exactly a stateless society, but many that have similar features). You just refuse to look at it.[/quote]
Er, no, I looked at it. A., it wasn’t truly stateless, and B., the end-result wasn’t good. But that is irrelevant to the point that I had a fallacious appeal to authority.
No, my point was that you can’t simply reduce Man to an economic animal and then design a system or society around economics at the expense of everything else that matters, which is apparently (by your own admission) what you are doing.
Moreover, that doesn’t make any sense - just because you think Humans aren’t “monolithic” doesn’t mean you get to conveniently ignore complicating factors that gum up the works of a smoothly-running abstract Anarchic society.
If you aren’t looking at the whole picture, you aren’t doing anything worthwhile. This is, of course, the great flaw of Marxism, and it is also the great flaw of the Anarchist.
Again, too much oversimplification - the state sometimes protects us from the Hobbesian wasteland, and sometimes it doesn’t. States, for example, provide the great necessity of protecting people from without - this is undisputed.
This is non-responsive. We know that arbitration awards are enforceable in court nowadays - this is a fact. But you said parties that choose arbitration don’t need and don’t care about the state’s enforcement of arbitration, that the state’s role is superfluous and unnecessary, and the parties don’t want the state involved at all.
The fact that these statutes exist is proof positive you are wrong.
So, you concede your original position? Or not?
Well, then tell me how. I keep offering you the opportunity, but you still won’t explain it. Ok, I am all ears - in a stateless society, how do I make you perform the terms of a contract I have with you?
Again, I am not arguing that contracts don’t get fulfilled - they do on the basis of mutual advantage. But, parties will always refuse to comply for one reason or another, and you haven’t yet explained how I enforce a contract against you.
So, tell me. Should be interesting.
Uh, no, it has nothing to do with “implicit assumptions”, and don’t assume you know what I am thinking - the question is “do you have a duty to take care of your child?”. What other people do or don’t do is irrelevant - do you have a duty to take care of your child?
So you do have an obligation to take care of your child. No contract exists with said child. Where does this obligation come from?
Btw, you keep answering questions you think I’m asking. Just stick to the question.
Two things: first, feudalism is not dependent upon a state to grant the privileges. Second, I don’t think competition is a dead letter personally - when a feudalistic society develops, competition by and through dispersed proerty owners disappears, ergo in feudalism, competition is a dead letter.
Actually, inevitably, libertarians seem to have to embrace moral relativism - that has been the point all along. As for “civilization”, that’s shorthand for a society with the requisite institutions to promote ordered liberty, including, but not limited to, protections and inventives for healthy families, economic prosperity, equality of opportunity, free and intelligent inquiry, intellectual and religious freedom, preservation of tradition, and most importantly, virtue.
Who said I want to grant the state the “biggest monopoly of them all”? I have no interest in this, but this monopoly occurs as a natural event - without intentional agency - when the other institutions shrink or are diminished.
Which is why libertarianism - with its wholesale attack on these other institutions as unnecessary restrictions on people’s “freedoms” - invite the growth of the state.
No, it isn’t - and I am getting the sense you are the kind of person who likes to mention and throw out logical fallacies alot without really understanding them. An appeal to tradition is saying something is “right” simply for the lone reason that “we’ve always done it that way”, which is not anything I have suggested. Read up.
But you have no right to “agitate for your own subjective valuations” - by your own lights.
And, yes, there is a common moral code - but why is it common? And if an individual decided that one of these isn’t “wrong”, who are you to tell him his “subjective valuation” is false? If an individual decides theft is ok, you don’t have a right to object - because you don’t have an architecture for “rights”, or claims over other men whether you agree with those claims or not.
So it would be a pointless exercise.
Uh, no, that isn’t what I was saying, of course - the point is, even a precious Anarchic society is doomed to devolve into statism…so what causes this, since it seems so prevalent, no matter what system you choose beforehand?
And, if you don’t want your feelings hurt by being called immature, don’t give me a reason to.
Tell that to the libertarians around here who see in the Confederacy the great cause of liberty. But more to my point, the Slave Power wanted the closest thing to anarchy we’ve seen - the ability to ignore law as they saw fit, when they wanted.
But it still doesn’t add up - even if I consented to jurisdiction of some contract-based, private “legal system”, what happens when I say “I disagree with the private legal system, go pound sound”? There is no place to enforce my contractual obligation to abide by the private “legal system” (it’s the same problem as ‘arbitration’).
And, if you live in a system where you are not free to do anything you want if you have not consented to a legal system, then you aren’t free by anarchic standards. That sounds of a requirement of society, not an option.
Nope, by the same measure, a central bank exists under the same authority. Not being sarcastic.
Incorrect - the private defense company owns no “right” to use retaliatory force against me. No contract exists - I merely destroyed something you own. What “right” do they have? None. Zero.
And, notice something else - your “private defense force” is coming to use force against me when I have had no right to state my innocence. What I did nothing wrong? What if I contend that I wasn’t drunk and that you didn’t adequately provide fencing or signs? Or that one of your cows came out into the road and made me swerve into your field, so it wasn’t my fault, but really, it was yours?
You don’t have a mechanism to deal with this in your stateless society. You only have a “private defense force” that comes to collect for its “client” after the “client” unilaterally decides I was in the wrong. Think this could be subject to abuse? It’s the same “justice” meted out by the mafia.
Of course, if I think I am in the right, or just have more guns, I ain’t going to roll over and let your “private defense force” come take my property - I am going to put up a fight.
And so on. This is nothing but the Law of the Jungle. And peoples have faced this scenario before, and you know what they did? They formed public agencies - primarily court systems - to deal with this problem.
When I said I didn’t think you had put much thought into this, I wasn’t kidding. And you haven’t.
This is just “mad at authority” nonsense - and you still haven’t solved the problem I supplied to you.
If this were true, then conservatives would not be the ones bringing up incredibly outrageous doomsday scenarios every time they talk about anarchy. They would know that the spontaneous nature of society would find a solution to this.[/quote]
Humans have never in the course of history opted for [anarchy].[/quote]
This is because people who lust after power do not give anarchy as an option. To people who lust after power the idea that society can organize itself sans state diminishes their ability to lord over society. This seems like an obvious point to me that you seem not to consider.
Peaceful people act in accordance with anarchy without even realizing it. Anarchy is about peaceful human action, cooperation, and exchange more than it is about a stateless society. The stateless society – that anarchy refers to – is only brought about by a peaceful coordination of resources; however, anarchy exists regardless of the state so long as people act peacefully with each other. Indeed, even governments must act anarchically with each other in order to not be at a constant state of war.
If I don’t pay my taxes I get a notice telling me to pay them. If I ignore that, I get a court summon. If I ignore that, they eventually come to my house to put chains on me and put me in a cage. If I resist I get shot and likely killed. Therefore, it is not voluntary. One group of men hundreds of years ago signing a document does not make it binding on me.
[/quote]
That makes no sense. This is the exact same for any private property you choose to trespass upon.
If you don’t pay your rent you get a notice telling you to pay it. If you ignore that you get a court summon. If you ignore that they eventually come to your house and put chains on you and put you in a cage. Therefore, it is not voluntary. Your mother signing a document does not make it binding on you.
Just as you can leave the house you are renting you can leave the United States.
If I don’t pay my taxes I get a notice telling me to pay them. If I ignore that, I get a court summon. If I ignore that, they eventually come to my house to put chains on me and put me in a cage. If I resist I get shot and likely killed. Therefore, it is not voluntary. One group of men hundreds of years ago signing a document does not make it binding on me.
[/quote]
That makes no sense. This is the exact same for any private property you choose to trespass upon.
If you don’t pay your rent you get a notice telling you to pay it. If you ignore that you get a court summon. If you ignore that they eventually come to your house and put chains on you and put you in a cage. Therefore, it is not voluntary. Your mother signing a document does not make it binding on you.
Just as you can leave the house you are renting you can leave the United States.[/quote]
Your analogy is incorrect. Renting is a voluntary act but being born in a certain geographical location is not.
Not paying ones rent usually does not end in violence but rather eviction.
On the other hand, not paying my taxes would always end in either violence or slavery. I have never heard of a tax ‘evader’ getting evicted.
[quote]Dabba wrote:
Ok, yes a private defense agency would have the right to use retaliatory force against someone who aggresses against one of their clients. There need not be a contract beforehand (although there would likely be contracts between agencies about this sort of thing beforehand).
[/quote]
LOL retaliatory force! And what level of force is appropriate?
Lets say I stole a pair of shoes from your house. Then I ran back into my house.
I am not a member of your court system, nor do I have any contract with them or parties that deal with them. Neither am I a member of your private defense force company, nor do I have any contract with parties that deal with them.
As such what level of force is appropriate? Can these random people from the private defense company come onto my property and use force against me? What if I resist? Is it ethical for them to shoot me for resisting?
Now consider that you don’t have 100% proof that I stole your shoes. In fact I didn’t but the evidence suggests I did. But your private court decides that I was the one who stole your shoes. If your private defense company comes onto my property aren’t they initiating force against me? After all I did nothing wrong and armed men I have no affiliation with are coming onto my property and trying to arrest me.
How would such a situation work?
The only way I can see a society working like this is if all the court systems and PDA’s have agreements with one another.
And what aspect does competition play? Does competition always result in the best outcome? If we have two courts competing then won’t the one that “looks” the best get the most paying customers? And looks are deceiving.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Your analogy is incorrect. Renting is a voluntary act but being born in a certain geographical location is not.
[/quote]
Is it? What realistic alternative do I have? I can rent another apartment, or I can potentially borrow to buy a house, … or… assuming I don’t have family/friends that is about it.
This is around the same alternatives I have if I am born in a certain country. I can leave the country. I can stay but move to another state. Or I can change the system through the democratic process.
The person born in a certain geographical location has choice as does the person renting. They are both voluntary acts. Nobody is forcing you to stay in either. In fact you can easily be born into a rental apartment.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Not paying ones rent usually does not end in violence but rather eviction.
[/quote]
Sorry mate but if you continually refuse to pay the money you owe you will end up in debtor prison.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
On the other hand, not paying my taxes would always end in either violence or slavery. I have never heard of a tax ‘evader’ getting evicted.[/quote]
I have heard of plenty of tax evaders paying what they owed and then emigrating out of the country.
You will be in just as much trouble if you refuse to pay your rent mate. I underpaid my taxes for a few years and it took years to finally get a resolution and at no time did the government throw me into jail. Sure they would have eventually but it is the same as with not paying your rent.
This is because people who lust after power do not give anarchy as an option. To people who lust after power the idea that society can organize itself sans state diminishes their ability to lord over society. This seems like an obvious point to me that you seem not to consider.
Peaceful people act in accordance with anarchy without even realizing it. Anarchy is about peaceful human action, cooperation, and exchange more than it is about a stateless society. The stateless society – that anarchy refers to – is only brought about by a peaceful coordination of resources; however, anarchy exists regardless of the state so long as people act peacefully with each other. Indeed, even governments must act anarchically with each other in order to not be at a constant state of war.[/quote]
You are correct - a stateless society is only brought about by a peaceful coordination of resources by unanmous cooperation. This would be true of any kind of society, so long as you had unanimous consent to cooperate.
The problem is, and always has been, is your galactic naivete in assuming that you can achieve this unanimous consent to cooperate and maintain it over any period of time. If you could, there isn’t a version of “society” - market-based, commune-based, anything - that wouldn’t work.
These always fail, of course, because there never is a durable unanimity to cooperate, because humans are incapable of it. Self-interest does not always dictate cooperation, and never has. People lust for power, they lust for control, they lust for status - and any theory that ignores this indisputable aspect to human behavior is simply unserious.
People disagree, and when they do, they fight, or at a minimum, they begin to order their interests in alignment with their opinions formed from experience. From local spats to intercontinental war, humans don’t change.
Your entire philosophy can be discredited in a paragraph. It never gets any better.
If I don’t pay my taxes I get a notice telling me to pay them. If I ignore that, I get a court summon. If I ignore that, they eventually come to my house to put chains on me and put me in a cage. If I resist I get shot and likely killed. Therefore, it is not voluntary. One group of men hundreds of years ago signing a document does not make it binding on me.
[/quote]
That makes no sense. This is the exact same for any private property you choose to trespass upon.
If you don’t pay your rent you get a notice telling you to pay it. If you ignore that you get a court summon. If you ignore that they eventually come to your house and put chains on you and put you in a cage. Therefore, it is not voluntary. Your mother signing a document does not make it binding on you.
Just as you can leave the house you are renting you can leave the United States.[/quote]
Oh no! You’ve got me now…except you left out one important distinction.
Private property is attained through homesteading or purchase on the open market. The state simply seizes land and claims it as its own.
And, just stop. The “Love it or leave it!” argument is tired and boring and has been refuted literally thousands of times.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Er, no, I looked at it. A., it wasn’t truly stateless, and B., the end-result wasn’t good. But that is irrelevant to the point that I had a fallacious appeal to authority.[/quote]
Read my post again. I said specifically that it wasn’t an exact example of a stateless society. Nevertheless, it was for all effective purposes run in a similar fashion to a stateless society.
What do you mean by this “everything else that matters”? To whom? Me? You? When people engage in market activity they are engaging in beneficial transactions of goods and services. To say that that is sacrificing “everything else that matters” is silly to say the least.
I’m not. The problem is that you are mucking up an economic efficiency argument with other arguments that cannot be proved to have any objective truth.
I agree, and once again, I don’t view the world through a class struggle context as the Marxists do. I view it as an extremely complex system that no man can ever fully understand, which is why we should make trial and error (IE market competition) our main source of social interaction.
Again, tell this to the people who have benefited oh so much from state protection - see the civilian victims of nearly all wars in history. This is not oversimplification. For every person that has been helped by “national defense”, I’m willing to bet that as many have been harmed, if not more. And, no, I don’t believe that war can ever be erased from human society. I merely believe that its costs can be internalized.
[quote]This is non-responsive. We know that arbitration awards are enforceable in court nowadays - this is a fact. But you said parties that choose arbitration don’t need and don’t care about the state’s enforcement of arbitration, that the state’s role is superfluous and unnecessary, and the parties don’t want the state involved at all.
The fact that these statutes exist is proof positive you are wrong.
So, you concede your original position? Or not?[/quote]
I already said that my original post was incorrect, but more out of a lack of clarification on my part.
Many ways. A) by getting a private court to back up the contract, and this can either be enforced through violence or through something like a contract rating agency (like a credit rating agency). B) Simply through reputation, people who break contracts consistently will not be getting much business.
Fine, but the reason I made those assumptions was because we seemed to be talking about the legitimacy of the state, whereas now we are talking about morality.
It depends. If I believe in subjective morality, then I would say it comes from my own subjective valuations. If I believe in objective morality, then I may say it comes from God or some such thing.
How so? I will admit that the study of Feudalism is not something I have spent much time on. Furthermore, I was under the impression that the definition of it itself is widely varied - in part because the actual system was widely varied. So, how did Feudalism develop without the state (I’m honestly curious)?
And, I don’t think its a dead letter. From what I’ve read, the landed aristocracy was quaking in their boots at the onset of the industrial revolution because they had to face competition. I know they weren’t feudal lords, but I think the point stands.
Ok, well that’s extremely general, but I appreciate the definition anyways.
No, the point was that the state is the biggest monopoly of them all. Again, you keep acting as if the state was somehow voluntarily willed by everyone in society. It never happened that way and it CAN’T happen that way or else it is not a state.
Minarchist libertarianism does, but not “anarchist” libertarianism.
You were simply listing off institutions, saying that they were all needed to preserve society, without logically explaining why. That’s why I called it an appeal to tradition.
I did not say this or imply it.
Right, but then of course said individual would have to face theft against himself as well. The hunters become the hunted and then they just realize that hunting plain ol’ sucks. Then they trade.
The fact is, even objective moral codes are subjective - they are all decided on by humans and they ALL vary to some degree. If objective morality is based on subjective valuation, then it becomes clear that objective morality is based upon a prior existing “code”. I don’t believe that humans necessarily need an objective moral code to act civilized, but I also don’t think that one need necessarily be rejected because it claims objectivity.
Perhaps, but are we interested in the truth or in feeling fuzzy inside?
Quite simply, ideology. It is the same reason why capitalism was never allowed to develop for thousands of years. It was not ideologically accepted.
Furthermore, this is not a very good argument. Institutionalized slavery existed for the vast majority of humanity and now it is all but gone (at least institutionalized forms are). I’m sure people hundreds of years ago were making similar arguments for slavery - that it has always existed and, therefore, there is a reason that it must always exist.
I don’t care if you attempt to “hurt my feelings”, I just think it makes for a fruitless debate.
I don’t know of such libertarians who are confederate supporters. I do know of libertarians who support secession (and of course, as an anarchist, one MUST support secession).
Furthermore, ignoring law is not “anarchy”. Anarchy is the radical idea that government should have to face competition - like every other agency that produces goods and services in society.
Two things: First of all, if you up and leave a private legal system, you are not protected by it anymore, and then will suffer as you have little recourse against those who may do you harm. Secondly, as I have said before, some private courts may use force to enforce their rulings. It honestly depends on what consumers desire more, punishment or restitution. Thirdly, you will suffer serious reputation effects if you ignore rulings.
It seems like you are getting at the argument “No final arbiter of disputes”. Before I go on, however, I will wait to make sure this is what you are getting at (I don’t want to make any assumptions about what you’re thinking).
The legal systems are voluntary, in the sense that if you want protection and law, you give up some amount of money to pay for it. It is involuntary in the sense that if you commit a crime against someone, you cannot just say, “To heck with your ruling!”.
There is some disagreement among anarchists as to reputation-based punishment vs. violence-based punishment. I would personally prefer to live in a system with violence-based punishment. However, these punishments would also apply to me, so I would have to weigh my costs.
You would choose which PDA (Private Defense Agency) you want to pay for instead of being forced to pay for one dispute resolution agency as you now are.
Right. Which is why ending the fed requires a shift in ideology, nothing more. As Milton Friedman once said (in reference to how to enact political change), “The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.” In other words, if you want to change things politically or economically or any social change really, it must stem from ideology and those on top must find it profitable to enact this change.
This, of course, requires that the inter-subjective consensus believe that the change is a good thing.
By the same token, what “right” does the government have to use force against me if I don’t pay taxes?
You are correct about one thing, perhaps using the word “right” was misleading. Rather, they would likely have the authority to use retaliatory force.
Incorrect. This is what private courts are for. To settle disputes between people for just these scenarios. If you have no PDA, then yeah you are probably screwed (not necessarily, but that’s another topic). However, if you do have a PDA (and hence a subscription to a private court), then your legal proceeding would be taken to said private court.
Lawyers, judges, and plaintiffs would still exist in a stateless society. Do you know who one of the most venerated heroes was in medieval Iceland? It was not a warrior or king, but a lawyer. Legal proceedings would be very prominent in a stateless society, especially without the costly fees and delays of state courts today.
Ironically, this describes the state. The state comes to your house to collect for its clients (politicians, the military, the police, etc.) and if you don’t pay, force is used against you.
And, yes, I do think PDAs will abuse their power. Fortunately, the market has a mechanism for weeding out companies that do this excessively - they go out of business.
[quote]Of course, if I think I am in the right, or just have more guns, I ain’t going to roll over and let your “private defense force” come take my property - I am going to put up a fight.
And so on. This is nothing but the Law of the Jungle. And peoples have faced this scenario before, and you know what they did? They formed public agencies - primarily court systems - to deal with this problem.[/quote]
They have also formed private agencies when the state couldn’t handle it, yet you conveniently ignore these. And, no, people have not faced this scenario before. Anarcho-capitalism was only recently formalized in the 1970s. Whatever stateless societies that may have taken place before then would only have been accidentally anarcho-capitalist, if they were at all.
Incorrect. This is what private courts are for. To settle disputes between people for just these scenarios. If you have no PDA, then yeah you are probably screwed (not necessarily, but that’s another topic). However, if you do have a PDA (and hence a subscription to a private court), then your legal proceeding would be taken to said private court.[/quote]
I don’t have much time, so I will drill down (in my mind) to the most salient part of the disagreement - the above.
No, there are no “private courts” for torts. Your “private court” has no jurisdiction over me. And, the only reason I would consent to have this dispute adjudicted by a “private court” is if I feared your retaliation; otherwise, I’d just ignore you or shoot at you the moment you set foot on my property.
The point is this - when pressed to find a solution, your anarchic theory comes up with many tortured scenarios that are, frankly, unreliable. And, with all of these problems, why wouldn’t a political subdivision just simply set up a civil authority with its doors open all the time to hear grievances and that had jurisdiction over the people in the political subdivision so matters of recovery would be minimized?
Your problem is that you are proposing a solution in search of a problem. Your convoluted “remedy” for torts - “private courts” that no one is likely to cooperate with, citizens routinely engaging in self-directed violence to make good on “harms” committed against them (real or imagined), no viable means of appeal to review the “private court’s” errors - simply isn’t much of remedy.
Moreover, given this lack of security, people would be less inclined to engage in commerce or otherwise transact with one another. Your idea that “well, if someone gets a reputation of being a dealbreaker or someone who won’t pay up, that will work against them” is abstract as it is naive. In the real world outside your window - with a mature legal system that can seize assets and secure recoveries for damages with lightning speed - people routinely break contracts, refuse to pay judgments against them for torts, etc. Imagine a weak, practically non-existent enforcement mechanism that relies on someone to simply “preserve their good name” as the means of securing judgment, and the problem would get far worse, rather than better,
I.e., people don’t behave like you want them to now, when it is far less easy to escape consequences of non-compliance, and there is little reason to think it would get better in a “cooperative” situation.
And this is why no one adopts it. It simply doesn’t work well or provide many advantages. Doctrinally pure? Sure, but that doesn’t mean anything.
[quote]This is non-responsive. We know that arbitration awards are enforceable in court nowadays - this is a fact. But you said parties that choose arbitration don’t need and don’t care about the state’s enforcement of arbitration, that the state’s role is superfluous and unnecessary, and the parties don’t want the state involved at all.
The fact that these statutes exist is proof positive you are wrong.
So, you concede your original position? Or not?
This still doesn’t answer the question. What was incorrect about your original post? You said people didn’t need the state and even preferred no state when choosing arbitration - is this false then?
I contended that you need state power to make aritration viable and that people who arbitrate want it and are happy to have it.
You disagreed. So you now agree with me? Or not?
[quote]So you do have an obligation to take care of your child. No contract exists with said child. Where does this obligation come from?
This is feet-shuffling. Is there a duty or not? Your answer suggests that any duty is entirely dependent on a person’s belief/valuations. If this is true, then there is no “duty” - it merely be a personal preference.
Well, which is it? Does a “duty” to take care of your child exist regardless of a person’s “subjective valuations”? Yes or no?
[quote]Dabba wrote:
Private property is attained through homesteading or purchase on the open market. The state simply seizes land and claims it as its own.
[/quote]
I can’t help it, here. A common objection of the anarchist is that it his misfortune to be born within the borders of a nation-state, and under the thumb of a government. That there is an wrong- headed assumption to expect his consent. Indeed, he did not give his consent at the drawing of borders, or to the birth (or the form) of the government so how can his consent be expected in the present?
Yet, private property suffers the same issues. No man created the matter of the earth, the water, nor the air. Yet, men at some point siezed control–exluding all others from doing as they too wished with matter none created–of something that is not his. Land, earth, and ore didn’t materlize through the magic of the market place. No, force and the threat of, established authority over the land and it’s resources. The same establishes it’s borders…err, boundries. Private property assumes consent, and where none is given, relies on force. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t consent to people owning beachfront property back when someone first ‘claimed’ it. I just have to tolerate the tacky little house and shops ruining the scenery.
If the lack of unanimous consent of those past, present, and future is an issue with one, then it’s an issue with the other.
[quote]Dabba wrote:
Oh no! You’ve got me now…except you left out one important distinction.
Private property is attained through homesteading or purchase on the open market. The state simply seizes land and claims it as its own.
[/quote]
And? What makes you think homesteading or purchase on the open market gives you a legitimate claim to land? I certainly don’t see it as legitimate. If I am leaving a piece of land alone because I want to admire the natural beauty of it and you come along and homestead it why does that give you the rights to it? You are using an external resource you did not create and then acting like your use of it gives you rights to it.
Furthermore, the vast majority of land has been obtained through warfare or from states that seized it in war and then passed it along or that private parties have taken via force. Hence, without the existence of states the land ownership distribution would be radically different.
So where is the distinction? If the US starts giving land in Iraq to US settlers in 50 years when I go to Iraq and purchase a property on the open market that was seized 50 years ago, will I hold a legitimate claim to it from a libertarian perspective?
In summary basically all land has changed hands through force and coercion at least once. Hence almost all private ownership of property is only through some long ago seizure. If they still hold legitimate ownership even though the land was in times past acquired forcefully then this indicates there is some timeout period after which holding land that was once stolen becomes legitimate.
And if this is the case then a states ownership of land must become legitimate after it holds it for some period of time. Well France has been around for over a thousand years so the French state must own the land legitimately. Or else almost everyone in America who owns land does so illegitimately.
Again where is the distinction?
[quote]Dabba wrote:
And, just stop. The “Love it or leave it!” argument is tired and boring and has been refuted literally thousands of times.[/quote]
Except it hasn’t been refuted at all. The love it or leave it argument is brought out time and time again by libertarians when corporations act like assholes. Give me a nickel for every time I’ve heard the following conversation:
Bob the liberal: “My company wants to to make everybody work 7 days a week 10 hours a day for no more pay”
Chris the libertarian: “Well the company is allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t violate contractual agreements.”
Bob: “Well that sucks. Do you really think we should allow this unethical behavior?”
Chris: “You could always leave the company”
Bob: “It is the only company in town that is hiring. If I quit I am out of work and won’t be able to pay my bills and look after my family”
…
Chris: “Well then you should move towns”
Look mate if you have refuted it properly and soundly then simply find one of your old posts where you did so and copy and paste. It should in fact only take a few seconds of your time.