The Official Anarchism Thread
Offline Since people keep bringing up politics and we keep hijacking threads in the recurring discussions of anarchism, I figured I'd bring it all to one thread and point other people to this thread when they have problems. I don't even remember how many threads got dragged off-topic. I apologize for anyone who's thread that happened to.
If you have questions about anarchism, ask them here and I'll do my best to answer them. If you have objections to anarchism, say them here and I'll do my best to rebut them.
A few common questions/objections that I've seen here.
"Government is necessary."
No it isn't. This seems to be just something people reflexively say without thinking much about it. The government does provide certain services which could aptly be considered "necessary" such as defense, protection, roads, courts, and other things. It is not necessary for government to provide these things. The market can and will offer them if the government is not there. If the government ceased providing those services, (and it does not have to provide those services,) no part of the government would be "necessary" and thus government itself would become unneccessary.
"No anarchist nation has ever succeeded."
I forgot what thread I was in that I got this one. Anarchism literally is "ana-archon", without rulers. Because rulers are ineffective where their rule cannot be enforced, everyplace is anarchy where there is not a police officer or representative of the ruler (or government) present to enforce the ruler's will. Anarchy is not a form of government which a nation has, and happens to be none. Anarchy is the absence of government. An "Anarchist nation" is a contradiction in terms. Also, the amount of success a nation has is proportional to the amount of anarchy within it. That's why the USSR collapsed. That said, there have been successful regions of land which had no effective government. Celtic Ireland, ancient Iceland, early Rhode Island, and the "Wild West" (which by the way actually had lower crime rates than the east coast) are examples. Celtic Ireland was eventually conquered by the British. Not surprising because Britan was a major power at the time. It still took even Britan a long time to do, because no existing power structure was there for them to take over to relay orders.
"Anarchy is chaos."
As I said above, we live our day-to-day lives in anarchy (unless you're a cop or bureaucrat), and those lives are not chaos in the sense "Anarchy" is typically used to illustrate. Anarchy being chaos is contradictory to experience.
"Without government, land ownership is impossible."
No it's not. Land is just like everything else we own. It's just less mobile. We do not need governments to own our clothes, nor our cars. The same applies to land.
"Most people need leaders."
Let them choose their own leaders.
Now, I came to arrive at anarchism (my particular type being market anarchism, or "Anarcho-capitalism") by being a consistent libertarian. Libertarians believe in a moral law of non-aggression: theft, slavery, and murder are wrong. Very few people dispute this for most people. Libertarians differ from most others by applying this moral law to all people. Because the government consists of people, they are not exempt. Theft, slavery, and murder are wrong, even when called tax, law, and war. How libertarian a person is can be measured by how consistently they apply this to government.
Anarchists identify everything that makes the government "the government" as aggressive. Claiming jurisdiction over land they do not own is theft. The courts, consisting of people, cannot aggress against other people, including those in competing court systems (this was just for you, YN5).
Anarchism is not about causing chaos and rampant violence, it's about ending the chaos and rampant violence committed regularly by governments. Anarchists do not believe governments are sacred.
A small portion of anarchists consider themselves "Agorists". I'm part of that small portion. Agorists are free-market anarchists who believe that the solution to the problem of the government is to replace it with non-aggressive alternatives. Because the government is not a big fan of that idea, this just so happens to involve a lot of activity on the black market or gray market.
Agorists have a class-theory somewhat like Marxists (I don't like marxism, I'm not trying to identify with it), but without Marx's overt stupidity. Marx cited the owners of the means of production (capitalists, "borgeoisie") as the oppressive class, Agorists cite the owners of the means of destruction (statists, political class) as the oppressive class. Marx believed the surplus of value created by workers was being stolen by capitalists. Agorists believe the value created by the host population is stolen by the government (called "taxation"). The pattern follows, correcting much marxist idiocy along the way.
Most of the attacks directed at capitalism by the leftists and commies make ten times as much sense if you replace the words "capitalists" with "government", "workers" with "taxpayers", and so on. For example, Capitalism is not creating a powerful elite class that can do as it likes (as MattShizzle pointed out an hour or two ago in another part of the RRS forums). Government is creating a powerful elite class that can do as it likes. It happens to be friends with big business, and so, when not politically posturing and interfering with big business, it tends to be in bed with it behind closed doors. If capitalists are extremely powerful, it's because the government is there for them to take control of. The solution is not to abolish capitalism, but to abolish the government. Leftists ignore this because they have a fetish for big government.
A free market in everything the government presently does would be superior to what we have now. Disjunction between payment and service under government create uneconomic allocation of resources which creates shortages and surpluses, which would be solved by a free market, where you choose how much of what you want. Elimination of competition under government (government has a monopoly military, police force, road ownership, etc) increases costs, decreases quality and quantity produced, creates waste and inefficiency, et cetera, which are all solved on a free market which allows competition.
Example: Would you rather send packages USPS or FedEx? If the government didn't make it illegal for anyone other than USPS to deliver non-urgent letters under $1, do you think you'd rather send mail via USPS or FedEx? Did you know the USPS doesn't meet it's costs from the user fees (stamps and such), so it has to dig into tax money to pay the extra? The USPS is subsidized, so part of it's costs are hidden. Would you rather the USPS just do everything, or should UPS and FedEx be allowed to compete? Other examples of market vs government look a lot like this one. The market is economic anarchism. The government is it's polar opposite.
Are there any more questions about how I think, what I think, why I think what I think, et cetera? I'll just refer people to this thread whenever they ask me about it from here on, so the earlier you ask, the more people will see it.
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Let's address the issue of national security and borders. Are we to assume that for an anarchic society to function, that all its neighbors would likely be anarchic? What happens when your buddy across the border decides he likes your natural resources and attacks you.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
Military tactics isn't my forte, but the anarchic society has a number of advantages.
1. In an anarchic society, people would certainly have guns and want to learn how to use them (even a little skill with a gun will reduce their need for protection services greatly). In absence of a government to administer gun control laws, this includes assault rifles, machine guns, silencers, .50BMG and 20mm antimaterial sniper rifles, all manner of explosives, et cetera. The anarchic society may already be comparably armed as enemy infantry and will definately outnumber it.
2. Militias formed for defensive purposes by the people in an area would train themselves in guerilla tactics, urban warfare, setting traps, and so on. The same amount of money will go much farther.
3. Protection agencies who would certainly have a portion of it's forces trained for such an event would be able to defend against the invaders by protecting the desired natural resources.
4. Occupation would be impossible. In the country, where the natural resources would be, the combination of the local angry anarchists with the inevitability of firearm ownership and proficiency, the invaders would then have to deal with their troops being picked off by hunters, bombings, and so on. In the city, it would be even worse. The unrestricted availability of explosives, grenades, thermite, antimaterial rifles, and silenced machineguns would put the attackers at an extreme disadvantage and make the cities deathtraps. Any resources left unattended for any length of time would be appropiated for use by the anarchist resistance. It's impossible to win a war against motivated guerillas who have the support of the majority of the local population and know the lay of the land.
5. Because no existing power structure existed to rule the anarchist society, the invaders would have to set the entire thing up on their own, and people would still not obey it, seeing the orders as those of a band of criminals.
6. Bombing the cities to hell would be stupid if the invaders were coming for the anarchist resources, as they would be destroying the means by which those resources can be put to use. It would also reinforce the idea among the anarchists that the invaders really deserved any violence that it was possible to send their way, thus making the guerillas fight harder and their support more willing to assist them.
I would like to know what neighboring country is so stupid as to invade a heavily armed area to take resources it could more cheaply trade for. War isn't cheap.
What, in an anarchist society, prevents the recreation of government? Remember, government didn't create government - people created government.
Wouldn't some people in an anarchist society, espcially people who weren't especially good with a submachine gun, realize that there is strength in numbers and band together for mutual protection and economic advantage? Having done that, what mechanism would be in place to prevent those people from laying claim to a chunk of territory and demanding that others entering the territory obey their rules? Having done that, what would prevent that group from demanding that everyone in the territory contribute to the mutal protection and development of the territory (taxes)? And, as the territory grew and became more demanding to administer, what would prevent the people from deciding that they wanted to hire (elect) some full-time administrators to run things?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
The trigger mechanism in the weapons of people that are good with submachine guns?
No one said there would be someone to protect you from abuse, just that you can defend yourself by all means you wish.
Wouldn't it be easier to hire a security company?
What economic advantage do you see in the situation you described?
Let's say you were forming an anarchic society in the United States. What would prevent 50-90% of the population, which is Christian, from establishing a theocracy and performing forceful conversions of the non-Christians?
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
What about large-scale scientific projects, such as space exploration (there is very little market incentive for that), the human genome project, or the Manhattan project? There is not much profit and thus not much incentive to do the research. Would these areas have been abandoned?
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
They would see any government as a mafia attempting to extract protection money, tell them what to do, and kill them for disobedience. The government would have lost it's aura of legitemacy in that area for generations.
Protection agencies would give them as much protection as they felt they needed.
They can do that to territory that they bought. If they buy a 100 acre farm, hey, they have a 100 acre self-sufficient micronation. They couldn't lay claim to anybody else's land because their protection agencies would stop them.
The anarchist society would not see taxes as "contribution to the mutual protection and development", they'd just call it "theft" and treat tax collecters as theives.
The territory would not grow except by the voluntary entry of new people who sell their land and buy adjacent land to the "nation". If we assume that all of the other things could not possibly have been solved by the free market, and the entering members decide it is cheaper or better to join this "nation", then they might just decide to hold elections. I'm perfectly fine with having countries, but only on the condition that you're perfectly free to not be bothered by any country and only join countries by consent, not by birth.
My protection agency and whatever guns I'd have. I mean, what stops them today? The police and whatever guns I'd have. It's not that radical a change in society. It's just taking the government, taking it's guns away, and letting the competition of the free market eat it alive.
See "Ansari X-Prize". The free market will handle it.
If people do not think it is important to map out the human genome, forcing them to pay for it to happen is not only criminal but deflects resources from a higher-ranked end to a lower-ranked end.
Arguably the world would be better off without nukes. Their nature is to cause as much collateral damage as possible, being totally indiscriminant. If the whole world was anarchist, there'd be little use for the things. In any case, if people saw the potential of nuclear material to be formed into a bomb, and then demanded such a bomb, and could pay for it, they'd have nukes. It's possible that it could have been completed much faster had it not been done in secret as the government did it, with a few people knowing what was really going on and a great number of very small, focused projects going on among people who didn't understand the ultimate end they were working towards.
Do you think it is reasonable that if there was no government, I would be able to hire a bounty hunter to put out a hint on just about anyone I like?
Also, are there any plans to bring anarchy about to fruition, or merely idealistic hypotheticals?
The examples you brought up of functional anarchic societies seemed to work at very low population densities. As I mentioned earlier, as soon as population density reaches some critical point, people automatically seek some central authority to legitimize their claim to a given portion of land. How would you get around this?
What of the idea that the competing rich/powerful business owners being able to muscle out any competition. Remember, Microsoft can probably afford a lot more muscle than some guy at his computer who comes up with an effective alternative. What of the fact that the poor will hardly be able to afford protection in comparison to the rich?
I assume that the demand for security would skyrocket. The supply would, as well. How much do you suppose the self-defense industry would grow?
Also, you claimed in an earlier thread that the success of a nation was directly linked to its level of anarchy. Please provide studies that indicate this correlation, or retract the claim.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
You can do that today anyways. Except we call them "Hitmen". Bounty hunters would be subcontractors for protection agencies.
The ones most people try are the political method and the violent method, I prefer the market method. The first is voting and repealing laws until there is no more government. I think they're idiots for thinking that'll buy anything more than temporary relief. The second is violent overthrow of the government. That's idiocy because then people will just set up another government. My preferred method is to grow the black market, that one existing anarchy which is there to slap governments in the face with the hand of reality. Eventually as the black market grew large enough it would be able to supplant the government's every function (free market comptition is a bitch, eh?). At that point, people would be able to choose whether they prefer the free-market anarchist method or the statist method. This is great because it works immediately (I want anarchy, I get it now), it shows people that anarchy works and doesn't force them to accept it before they are ready for it, and it circumvents the possibility of another government forming once the existing government fails.
They don't need a central authority to legitemize their ownership of their land. Their protection agency would probably record ownership of that plot of land, and if any disputes arose, they'd submit their evidence to the court arbitrating the dispute.
Competition is limited by the government's intervention. For example, it would be a lot easier for Mom&Pop's Shop to compete with Walmart if the M&P didn't have to file the same amount of paperwork to obey the laws like licensing, taxes, employees, and all that crap. It drives M&P's out of business. There's nothing inherently bad about big business muscling out smaller business if they're competing on the market, whoever is more efficient will have the lower prices and possibly drive the other out of business. There's nothing wrong with inefficient businesses going bankrupt.
Microsoft and all it's money could not crush Linux in it's wettest dream. They just have a lot more inertia.
There is not a single, uniform-quality good which we call "protection". For example, I might feel perfectly safe with no protection at all, or just a neighborhood watch where a neighbor might come help another if they see trouble. I might feel safe enough if a few of my neighbors and I paid a couple guys to walk the streets carrying AKs (this would be very cheap protection that the poor could certainly afford and it would keep the thugs out). I might feel safe if there was a patrol car sent through my neighborhood every four hours. I might want a patrol car patrolling constantly. I might want 24/7 bodyguards. The present system forces everyone to accept the patrol car every 4 hours whether they like it or not, and makes it difficult to get more protection.
Maybe. Or maybe people are quite happy with approximately as much protection as they have now. Only the free market could tell us.
Hell if I know. I don't even know how to measure it, in scope, in value exchanged, in time spent on meeting defensive ends?
I meant "directly proportional" as opposed to inversely proportional. In hindsight I realize I might have used the words wrong, in which case I retract the "directly" part. They do correlate in that direction. The free market is economic anarchy. The regulated market is economic statism. The freer the market, the more of it is in anarchy. The more regulated the market, the less of it is in anarchy.
"The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.
"Socialism" by Ludwig von Mises. In fact, just go read a bunch of stuff from Mises.org, it's an economics website.
Where the market is free, it succeeds. Where the market is unfree, it fails.
Anarchy = Free market = High production = High level of success
Ok, here's my own little question:
How do you see the copyrights/patents and the concept of intelectual property in an anarchist society?
If you forsee any change in that, how do you see the new shape of entertainment industry, or pretty much any kind of publishers and artists?
Patents are presently used to prevent advancement in industry. It abridges everyone else's freedom to create.
Copyrights prevent people from making potentially superior derivative works. This abridges your freedom to create.
If you have an idea that you think will make you money, tell it to only a few people, get NDAs with them, and work it in secret. If it can't be done like that, what can I say? Too bad.
GNU proves that people will continue to create, and do a pretty good job of it, if they are free to create derivative works and such at their pleasure. On the other hand, Limewire is not the end of the movie and music industries as the doom and gloomers would have you think. I don't think not having IP laws would change a whole lot.
So an anarchist society offers no defence for the weak, OK. Since the weak hugely outnumber the strong, why wouldn't they band together and make rules to stop the strong from oppressing them?
Please explain the difference between a hired security company and an army.
OK. One person has only so many hours in a day and can only accomplish so much. Many people working on parts of a project can accomplish much more in much less time - if they are properly organized. Organization requires a level of central control, therefore there is an economic advantage to people banding together and structuring their activities with rules.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
So the anarchist society requires mind control. The whole idea rests on the assumption that people in the society will take a certain viewpoint. This is exactly the flaw inherent in communism - it is predicated on the assumption that people will be willing to give up their possessions for the good of the collective.
So the wealthy grab control. Please point out the difference from the present system.
So there's a war between "protection agencies" (also known as armies) and and a victor. After several centuries of that, some equilibrium is reached where the entire available land mass is held by a few roughly power-balanced or allied groups. Kind of like it is right now.
More mind control? Your hypothetical anarchists must be the most principled people in history. What makes you think they will reject the benefits of taxation (better defence, better roads, better schools etc) in order to preserve this ethereal ideal?
You can't have a country without rules, which means citizens who want to violate the rules will always be "bothered" by the other citizens.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Well, that's the whole point of anarchy - give people the right to defend themselves.
You have a choice wich security company to hire, or to not hire any.
Right, as long as all parties involved have agreed to cooperate everything is ok, and I see nothing that contradicts anarchy in this situation.
If people want to orginize themselves into something very similiar to a today's state that's fine.
However there will be people that will want to take no part in this, and they'll defend themselves from any opression that such organisations might try.
Yeah. that's more or less the way I thought it would work, but I wanted to ask you because I had trouble visualising it.
I still do for the most part.
I don't think the entertainment industry would survive in it's present form... tough that might nit necesarily be a bad thing.
But how is it anarchy now that (in my example) you have a cabal of weak people banded together and making rules for the others?
I see. So people are only defended by the security company they can afford. So what happens if my security company is better than yours? Do you become my bitch? Why not?
So participation in the state is voluntary. It's a great ideal, but in practice what you would have is people deriving benefits from the state without contributing fairly.
For instance, there's a given patch of territory where 90% of the people have decided to pool their resources to hire a kick-ass security firm to defend them. However, the notoriously cheap Tilberian family doesn't want to pony up for defence. As it happens, the Tilberians own property right in the middle of the territory, so when security defends the borders, the Tilberians are automatically protected.
Now what do the anarchists do?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
What's to keep these protection agencies from corrupting and basically becoming mafia without some sort of oversight? That's a big part of what the mafia and organized crime has always done: the protection racket. More guns isn't the answer because someone will always have more and bigger guns than you...that or everyone dies.
Mafia, other rich organized crime organizations, and for that matter, pretty much anyone with power and wealth are certainly going to take over businesses and gain more power by any means available. What in your idea of anarchy will keep society from being overwhelmed with corruption? As they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I find the idea of anarchy mixed with capitalism kind of odd. Have you ever worked in a large corporation before? You must be aware of how similar a corporation is to a small government in how they're run. And what's going to stop a large corporation from getting greedy and enforcing their will and forcing their products on the public with a small private army, or even waging armed wars between companies? I doubt it would take too terribly long before a large, powerful company would buy itself an army and take over, then you'd be right back where you started with an oppressive ruler. Either that or there'd be constant warfare from different opposing powerful entities or something like the clan warfare run by warlords in some 3rd world countries similar to what happened during the clusterfuck in Somalia.
Protection agencies and militias can only do so much depending on how well they're organized, trained, and if they're willing to work together(unlikely if they're competing for business). If another nation invades an anarchic nation, it'll just end up looking like the current situation in Iraq and everybody will lose, especially the citizens.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
- Eric Idle, from The Galaxy Song
Wrong. You cannot legally do that now, and there is an incredibly high risk involved in doing it illegally. It is very rarely cost-beneficial to hire an illegal hitman today because the state will come after you if you do that.
The market, as it currently is, is free enough that people do not mind mild restrictions (at least the economically sane ones, which happen to be the majority). The black market, on the other hand, has a great deal of detriments:
1. it is difficult to locate
2. it is often much more expensive since supply is generally limited
3. there is no quality control, so you could be getting your black-market flour mixed with methamphetamine or anthrax for all you know.
4. it's impossible to "grow" the black market if the actual market remains competitive for most desirables, which it most certainly is.
Who would choose the court? The way the system currently works, there are documents with a limited range of interpretation to guarantee a relatively fair and balanced trial. In an anarchic system, not only would it be impossible for a single standard of "fairness" to exist, but there would also be no way to enforce it. The defendant and plaintiff would both want their individual courts to settle the issue, but there would be no agreement between the two and no way to settle the dispute.
No, I mean literally muscle out. Have you seen the Simpsons episode where Bill Gates buys out Homer's business? Like that. What's stopping the rich Bill Gates from hiring a few "bodyguards" to go "negotiate" with Homer, after which all his equipment would be mysteriously destroyed? Since the potential profits lost to a superior operating system are phenomnal, there is a great incentive to physically eliminate the threat for Gates. Remember, Homer can't afford nearly the same protection as Bill Gates can.
Which brings me to the point I was trying to make. As soon as Microsoft outcompetes or beats up all its competition, it becomes a monopoly. A free market functions effectively only if there is no monopoly or oligopoly at work, and we have the state to prevent this from happening. In an anarchic state, monopolies would spring up, thus effectively crushing the free market.
You misunderstand. I am not a socialist, I am something of a libertarian. However, I believe that anarchy is not viable.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
Yeah, these security companies and protection agencies sound stunningly similar to mafia racketeering already. How long before it crosses that line in an anarchy and what's to stop it?
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
- Eric Idle, from The Galaxy Song
Well if we're assuming it became an anarchist society in the first place, they'd be taking that stance. It would just be the majority opinion that governments are a bands of gangs. Otherwise there'd still have been a government, wouldn't there?
No. What makes you think it's impossible to have an inexpensive protection agency? And if you think it's no different from the present system, what's wrong with anarchy then?
Protection agencies are not armies. They're like security guards. Protection agencies would not war against each other for territory. They'd compete in the price/quality/quantity area for customers. They have no territory. As soon as the protection agencies started warring, the employees would quit, and the war would be over quickly. If one protection agency went rouge and tried to claim territory, the others would band together to put that one down.
Because defense, roads, and schools will all be privately owned, paid for, used, et cetera. Because the "benefits" of taxation would be had without the taxation, and any taxation would be seen as redundant and criminal.
I don't know what you're trying to say here, but whatever it is, you didn't contradict what you quoted.
The other protection agencies. Protection agencies wouldn't have an exclusive monopoly over a certain territory.
Protection agencies would be limited by other protection agencies. A mafia, being only a small portion of the population it rules, couldn't survive if people didn't tolerate it. The possibility of bringing in another protection agency makes that easier.
Let me point out that the alternative is often creating another mafia with absolute power and calling it a "government" and democratically electing the leader. To address your actual question, the other protection agencies.
Corporations as such are the creation of governments. It's a piece of paper in some bureaucrat's office somewhere. If you mean businesses and companies use that word, corporation has a different meaning. How similar they are to a government in function is not relevant.
That corporation will find it's customers going to someone that doesn't use force, cutting off it's revenue. A small private army would be expensive, and the potential rewards nowhere near approach the potential risks involved, both for the private army. Businesses compete in production. It would take an absolutely stupid businessman to think he could destroy his way to market dominance while being destroyed. All the employees would quit. I mean, if your employer waged a war on another employer, and your employer's offices were getting bombed, would you stick around to see who won? I sure as hell wouldn't. Armies only work between countries because people can be forced to serve.
So the worst case scenario of anarchy is no worse than the present. Might as well give it a shot.
Somalia is a shithole. They have nothing to lose in Somalia that would make them think it might be a better idea to stop fighting. That said, I'd prefer to be in Mogadishu than Hiroshima when there's a conflict.
You can compete and cooperate. They could work together towards the same goal in the event of a mass attack, and cooperate and coordinate to make themselves more effective.
If the invading country realizes it's going to lose also, it won't invade. If it doesn't realize that, it's going to lose harder.
Wake up to reality. Law does not describe reality. It's illegal? So? I could still do it. And it wouldn't be legal under anarchy. You just have the protection agencies enforcing that law rather than the police.
The free portion of the white market can coexist just fine with the black market. Problem 1 would be solved by growing it. Problem 2 would be part of the reason people participate in it. Because supply is limited. Problem 3 is avoided by the increase in the order of the black market. If Walmart sold you sugar and you found it to be a bag of sand, you'd buy sugar elsewhere. Same on the black market. Problem 4 is not a problem. The black market is the free market. The goal is not so much the black market exclusively, but the free market exclusively. The black market increases in size as the government bans more and more stuff.
http://boredzhwazi.blogspot.com/2006/10/supplanting-state-courts-and-law.html
You choose a court, the other guy chooses a court. If the courts rule oppositely, they can find a third court with a reputation for objectivity and whatever that court says, goes for the other two.
Actually this is a complete joke. Read "Adventures in Legal Land" for a good explanation of why this is.
"Fairness" is subjective. The means of enforcing fairness is called the "free market" where people can choose other courts if they think theirs is unfair.
If the two courts ruled opposingly, they'd call in a third court to rule on the case and the decision made binding on the two lower courts.
I can't believe you're aruging based on the Simpsons. Do I even need to rebut anything here? Do you have any examples from Southpark you'd like to mention?
Homer's protection agency. Homer's court. Can you cite any real world examples of this? Things would not change that much in anarchy.
Monopolies are not inherently bad. If they are a monopoly because competition is illegal, they're bad. If they're a monopoly because they're just so much cheaper and better than all the alternatives, that's not a bad monopoly. If they raise prices enough, someone else will undercut them. Software is a terrible example for this because it's not subject to scarcity as other products are.
I didn't say you were. I was just pointing you to two books that showed quite conclusively that free markets always work better. Because free markets are economic anarchism, it's one great example of how more anarchy = more successful nation, which was my goal in citing those. You asked for studies demonstrating the correlation or for me to retract my statement. There being no good way of measuring anarchy in a society, I gave you the next best thing to studies, I referred you to economics books.
So the anarchy remains an anarchy for as long as everyone wants it to be that way. As soon as one person gets greedy and gathers enough power to start bossing others around, the whole thing crumbles and you're back to government again.
Do you see why constitutions and stable governments are preferable to anarchy?
Of course there can be inexpensive protection agencies. That will always get their asses kicked by expensive protection agencies. Which leaves those capable of buying the expensive protection agencies in control.
The difference is the wealthy are prevented from total tyranny by a constitution and a system of government institutions that check and balance one another. Which is exactly what anarchists want to tear down.
How are they different?
Why not? Especially if someone paid them to do just that?
Again, why not? These are professional warriors with lots of weapons. Are they immune to greed?
Why? Why would these soldiers act differently than all others and quit as soon as there was fighting? Why would the other mercenary groups feel so strongly that they should stop the rogue? Wouldn't they be more concerned with grabbing what they could before it was gone to a more aggressive neighbour?
Magical! How are you going to convince the private entrepreneurs who own all public infrastructure to extend the use of their property to those unable to pay for it? Or will those without money just have to die in your system?
LOL, so you don't know what I said, but I'm still wrong?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Most other forms of anarchism claim anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism. Response?
Also, any quick response to An Anarchist FAQ?
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
No. As soon as one group of people buy a bunch of adjoining land and collectivize ownership, you have a government. Nobody would have the power to boss others around if the others did not obey anyways as they do at present. Anarchy will persist for as long as the people don't respect the authority of whoever has power.
You're starting with the conclusion of "government is good" and looking for ways to justify it. This is a theist strategy. Constitutions cannot enforce themselves, and no government is stable which feeds off an unstable host population. Stability can exist with or without government.
Oh for fuck's sake. It's a protection agency. Not an army that does your bidding. They're not interested in taking orders from anybody or aggressing against anybody and dealing with their protection services. Not only would the employees of those agencies quit due to not wanting to get shot in a stupid war against someone else's protection agency, the other protection agencies would all get together to destroy whatever remaining operational protection agency was left afterwards. A few guys with RomAKs could defend themselves well enough against a protection agency that none of the employees would want to keep their job. If your boss told you to go try to kill a bunch of guys with guns or he'll fire you, would you quit, or go try to kill them?
First of all, your magical constitution which magically enforces itself and prevents tyranny DOES NOT WORK. It didn't in the case of the US, our government now is so analagous to Nazi germany I couldn't begin to name the similarities. A constitution will not enforce itself. Checks and balances don't work because all checking and balancing powers are part of the same government. We want to tear it down because it's ineffective and gives the illusion of "We're not living under tyranny, we have a constitution and checks and balances!", while tyrants are running their damn country, but their head is so far up their ass they can't tell! Democracy doens't work either. Adolf Hitler was voted in by a 90% MAJORITY. Sorry if that seems a bit ad hominem, but you're a perfect example of people that think like that.
A protection agency is defensive, an army is aggressive.
A protection agency does not accept your orders. An army does.
A protection agency's employees do not want to kill other protection agencies' employees. An army does.
If you told a protection agency, "Go and conquer this territory," you would likely be arrested by the protection agency (they would have a contract with you allowing them to do so before collecting payment or providing services, making the arrest voluntary and hence just). If you told an army "Go and conquer this territory", they'll start mapping out strategies.
First of all, because they don't want to get shot at. They aren't hired guns. They're there to protect people. They'll quit if they're told to do something that'll get them unnecessarily shot at. Second, they don't have territories. They have customers. Third, the other protection agencies would retaliate, possibly calling a milita or whatever to help them. The larger the area attempted to territorize, the more militas and protection agencies that one agency is going to have to deal with. Fourth, defender's advantage and their entry into poorly known territory would cost them a lot of people. Fifth, as you tried to hire a mercenary force, some would not accept the offer, and would tell another protection agency what your agency is doing, and they'd put everyone on the alert. The greater the force being mobilized, the higher the chances of someone declining and informing someone else of your intentions. And then you'll really have a hard time because everyone knows you're prepared to attack people.
War is expensive. It would be far more expensive for someone to hire enough soldiers to sufficiently occupy an area than the area would pay back. If there was one soldier per 10 locals, you'd still have resistance. You couldn't keep an eye on all of them all the time. And a soldier getting shot at is going to quit unless you pay him a shitload of money. As soon as you run out of money, your forces will quit, the locals will take back their own land, and you'll be a few million dollars poorer.
They're not professional warriors. You could not make a case that your typical cop is a professional warrior. Protection agencies would be like police, not like armies. Armies would be replaced with militia.
Are we talking about protection agencies or private armies? Protection agencies are not soldiers. The other protection agencies would be contractually obligated to protect them.
If we're talking about mercenary groups, that's different. They'd be fought off by militia. As I said, mercenary groups would be very expensive, especially when there's active resistance trying to kill them. You can't earn enough reward from an occupation to pay off the costs.
You are not even trying to answer these questions yourself, I fucking swear. A relatively small proportion of people own farmland. Yet poor people still have food. Relatively few people own car factories. Yet we all have cars. Relatively few people own oil wells. Yet we can keep our cars fed with gasoline. What's the difference? You pay for it, you get it. It's not outrageously expensive. It will be exactly the same for those other things.
I didn't say you were wrong. I just said it was irrelevant to what you were referring to. I'm not sure exactly what you were saying, but I can tell what you didn't say, and that's enough to determine that it was irrelevant. If you would like to clarify what you said, I'll gladly address it.
I was talking about how I would be fine with countries which existed strictly on a voluntary basis. You said this:
"You can't have a country without rules, which means citizens who want to violate the rules will always be "bothered" by the other citizens."
It was unclear because I can't tell who made the rules, who is breaking them, and who is bothering who. If you would like to clarify, please do so. But I still contend that this was not relevant to my tolerance of voluntary contries.
Respect for authority is nice, but governments are perfectly capable of grabbing and holding power without it. Fear works almost as well as respect.
Oh? Actually my position is that government is inevitable given human nature. Obviously it would be wonderful if we could all just get along, but that isn't the way it is, therefore government.
Of course constitutions can't enforce themselves. You are the one claiming that people will buy into an idea and voluntarily follow it forever. I'm telling you that that won't work without a written constitution and a government body to enforce it.
You have no evidence that populations without government can be stable because there has never been any such thing as a human population without government for any long period of time. What exactly makes you think that society can be "stable" without government?
You mean they don't do what I tell them to do? Then what am I paying them for?
Why not? How do you know this? Why is it impossible for your anarchist security guards to act like other security forces have down through history?
You still haven't explained why this would happen. I figure the other security agencies wouldn't have a problem with someone making a buck by taking an assault job. Hey, one less competitor on the block.
I'm not in that line of work, so no. However many, many people are. If there were a market for assault forces, why do you assume that no one would act to fill that demand? In your answer, please discuss the fact that there have ALWAYS been mercenary groups more than willing to fight for anyone with money.
This is your claim not mine. You are the one saying that anarchist societies will magically hold to anarchy without even a piece of paper outlining what it is.
If you think you're living in a tyranny, that only goes to show that you have no real understanding of the word.
Wrong. The Supreme Court is not part of the government. The press is also not part of the government. The states all have different governments that often have conflicting interests.
Hitler wasn't killing Jews or sending Germany to war when he got those votes. All the bad stuff started happening after Hitler subverted the democratic process that was in place. So the example of Nazi Germany shows us how important a strong democracy with a well-conceived constitution is to country.
So their guns don't fire unless you shoot first? What if it's necessary to preemptively invade a neighbour to prevent an attack?
Then what the hell are you paying them for?
Soldiers don't want to kill other soldiers either. It's not personal, it's a job that needs to be done.
Why would the protection agency do this? Are they not interested in money? If not, it certainly wouldn't be a problem to find another outfit down the road who is.
Who does?
They have guns and they are hired to use them. That makes them hired guns in my books.
And if the most effective way to do that is to take out some other people...?
Unless they signed up specifically so they could go to war with guns. Don't laugh, thousands of people do it every day.
What if their customers want them to take over territories?
Why? Unless someone is paying them to defend a territory, why would another agency take it upon themselves to defend it for free?
Unless they had really cool toys and good strategies.
So there's no market for mercenaries then. Hmm, wonder why the word exists...
If I lived in your anarchist society the first thing I'd do is hire the best soldiers I could find and lock down an area about 100 miles in diameter. Then I'd keep them raiding the surrounding territories to prevent any of my neighbours from building up enough force to attack me. And nothing in your society would prevent me from doing this.
The locals won't take back nothing because if they do I'm going to fucking destroy them and their homes and families. My secret police will keep very close tabs on everything and no one will know when they are being watched or listened to. Every now and then I'll torture someone to death in the square, just to keep everyone honest. Money won't be a problem because I'll be taxing my constituents and pooling my resources with lots of friends who are similarly concerned about their personal security.
Pretty soon I'll own the whole bloody anarchy!
I don't care what word you want to use. If I have money, I can hire guys with guns who know how to use them to do whatever I want them to do. I still haven't seen a single reason from you as to why I would be unable to do this in your anarchy.
A protection army can become a private army overnight if that's what the customer wants them to do. I don't know why you think this is impossible - it happens in latin america all the time.
You do if you're doing it right. It's been going on for as long as human civilization.
Because governments redistribute tax dollars to them.
Because automakers are supported with public infrastructure and government trade protection.
Because government subsidies make it affordable and public infrastrucure supports the shipping and distribution.
No, there'd be a lot less and our quality of life would suck.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
I'll reply to the rest of your post and my perceived inadequacies of it at a later point. For now, the part you skipped over:
There is nothing stopping a monopoly from using unethical means to suffocate all competition. There is a great incentive for a reigning, rich technology company, for example, to beat the crap out of competitors who have the potential to put a dent in their market but are unlikely to have the defense resources available to the larger company. The Simpsons example was very pertinent: Bill Gates came with a few thugs and destroyed Homer's computer. My question, directly relevant to the event of a monopoly: what is stopping a powerful company from establishing a monopoly and physically eliminating all competition? Remember: a free market functions on the assumption of competition. As soon as a monopoly is established, it controls the market. There is no more competition. I'm not saying it's "good" or "bad," but it destroys the idea of a free market, and the state is what prevents monopolies from forming.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
You can't rule anything if you can't get obedience. And you can't get obedience from someone determined not to obey.
Non sequitur.
To enforce what? Anarchy? That's self-defeating. Order? That's unnecessary. Purpetuity? That's an arbitrary value.
Celtic Ireland, from the year 650 to 1650. 1000 years long enough for you? And it wasn't a primitive society either.
What exactly makes you think that society cannot be "stable" without government? You're the one making the claim that something is necessary, I'm just saying it's not. Burden of proof is on you.
To protect you. You get a contract with them to protect your life, liberty, and property from threats. They don't take orders from you, just contracts and payment, and they protect you in return. Just like if you pay McDonalds, they'll give you a Bigmac, they won't give you a blowjob. It's not what they're offering.
Because other security forces have been employed by government and provided with "soveriegn immunity" and idiocy like that which absolved them of any responsibility for their actions. Private security forces wouldn't be subject to the same idiocy because they wouldn't have a widely respected geographic monopoly over a certain area of land as others do. Also, because they don't want to get shot.
The other protection agencies would have a problem with someone assaulting the people they're contractually obligated to protect. They're open to lawsuits for failure to protect. Also, if I found out my protection agency was raiding other PAs to drive them out of business, I'd send them a bomb rigged to a GPS detonator with my next payment.
Those mercenary forces aren't inexpensive. I'm not denying that there might be mercenary forces. What I'm denying is that (1) those mercenaries would be the protection agencies I'm talking about, (2) that those mercenaries could be profitably employed by some malevolent gazillionaire (making the operation entirely temporary), and (3) that this problem would actually be a bigger problem in anarchy than it is under a typical government. In either case, it's approximately zero.
You're the one saying it's not possible. I'm silent on the issue. You were glorifying consitutions.
tyr·an·ny /ˈtɪrəni/
-noun
1. arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.
4. oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler.
5. undue severity or harshness.
6. a tyrannical act or proceeding.
I understand the word just fine. The US is tyrranical. George Bush despotically abuses his authority and has arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power. Read a few of the Executive Orders that have been issued that allow the President to give himself more power. Jose Padilla is evidence of oppression and unjustly severe government. Are you looking at the world around you when you believe you don't live in tyranny? That this tyranny has not directly tyrannized me is not relevant to the issue.
*bangs head on desk*
Yes it is. Justices are nominated by the president and reviewed by congress. If SCOTUS was not part of the government, this wouldn't be happening.
He made it perfectly clear that that was what he wanted to do, and got elected on it. Of course he wasn't killing Jews or at war. You can't take a country to war or make national concentration camps before you get into power! But people knew he wanted to do those things.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Discuss in your response. (You made such a request for me so I expect the same from you.)
Use of force or threat of use of force. If you pre-empt, you can't prove that the person would have done something. They might very well have planned on it but not actually carried it out, as often happens.
Protection. It's right in the name. They're not mercenaries. They're not a private army. They're a protection agency.
It is not a job that needs to be done. If neither were to start anything, no killing would have to take place. Defense is a job that needs to be done. Aggression is not.
Because the mass of their customers have more money than you do, and the mass of their customers are safer if you're prevented from carrying out an attack. Besides, they're not equipped for an invasion.
Then present ominous threat that defensive force will be used in retaliation, and wait for them to attack.
If they got a job at a protection agency so they could go to war, they picked the wrong line of work. They would either join a militia or move to a state and join their military. Thousands of people do it every day because they're blinded by nationalist ignorance.
Then their customers can give them their own land and call it a territory.
Because proection agencies do not have exclusive rights to a certain area. Two neighbors can get protection services from two different PAs.
You have never been to ARFCOM if you think the civvies don't own those cool toys also.
I never said that. I just said that as you tried to find mercenaries, you'd encounter people that refused to be a mercenary at any price you were willing to pay. And they would have incentive to go and tell other people about what you're doing. Since they'd end up being one of the subjects if you succeeded.
You don't have enough money to do that. You don't have enough soldiers to do that. You don't have enough anything to do that. Even if you did, you wouldn't be able to keep people down who refused to be ruled.
Aside from your severe shortage of the necessary resources, absurd level of optimism and ignorance of factors that would prevent you from doing this. A country is not an area inside an invisible line. Your attempt at forming a dictatorship would collapse from within, not from an ouside invasion. You would quickly run out of money to pay those mercenaries, and you'd find it extremely difficult to extract any kind of taxes that you could pay them with. At the same time, the locals would drive your costs up by bombing all your shit (bombs are so easy to make it's not funny) and shooting all your troops.
They'll do the same to you. All they have to do is figure out who you are and where you live, and nothing will be able to stop a determined militia trying to kill you.
Oh, except for the people who are watching and listening. And those people will want to be paid money that you're not making off them.
You'll have to confiscate all the guns too (and good luck doing that, I can personally attest to the fact that guns can be made out of two lengths of pipe, a cap, and a bullet) to keep people from killing you. You won't keep them honest. You'll keep them angry and resistive.
You won't be able to tax them because they won't pay. You can't build enough prisons to throw them all into, and the remainder of society couldn't support them.
You are insanely optimistic, arrogant, ignorant, and several other things which I don't care to name at the moment.
Besides, what exactly stops you from doing this today? Go do that in some third-world country.
Tell you what, you start budgeting this little occupation of yours. Gather some realistic numbers for mercenary payments, cost of building prisons and constructing the monitoring system and operating that, and any other things you think you'll need. Subtract that from what you think you can extract from a society that doesn't willingly pay taxes and shoots back at you at every opportunity.
You would be able to. I don't constest that. I contest that you can be successful doing that. War is expensive, the potential income is nowhere near enough to meet the recurring debts, much less have any rate of return on the initial investment.
You seem to have gotten a strawman into your head. Protection agency != Protection army. Militia are protection armies. Protection agencies are the day-to-day patrols.
That's different. In those cases, people see the government as their legitemate rulers and pay taxes because everybody else does, they have the inertia to keep doing it. You're talking about taking a group that has never paid taxes in their life, forcing them to pay taxes, and thinking you'll make money off it, and thinking it'll be just as easy as if you'd had the intertia all along. You'd die quickly in that anarchy.
I'm poor and I have food and I don't get tax dollars redistributed to me.
They would still be around without public roads (privatize them, you'll still have roads), and protectionism is harmful. Go read some material by Mises or Rothbard.
*bangs head on desk again*
The government taxes gasoline to hell and back. The public infrastructure that supports the shipping and distribution would still exist if it was private.
I seriously don't think you're even trying anymore.
I apologize, I must've missed it. Also, let me thank you for not being the jerk that Tilberian is being and giving me a chance to respond before jumping to stupid conclusions...thanks for not jumping to stupid conclusions also. Actually you're not coming to any conclusions, you just seem to sit there and ask questions and correct any percieved misconceptions. Either way, thanks for being polite about it.
Unethical means would have to be defined. Some consider selling below cost to be unethical, some consider forcing someone at gunpoint to be unethical. Should I assume you mean the latter?
Keyword: Defense. Defense != Attacking other companies. They don't need to have the defensive resources of the larger company unless the larger company is attacking them physically. In which case, they'll alienate a lot of consumers.
I haven't seen that episode because I don't watch the Simpsons. So I'm not very clear on the specifics. Homer would have his protection agency on call and a shotgun. He ought to have a backup of his harddrive made every week or two also.
All the same things that stop it from happening at present would stop it from happening under anarchy. We just wouldn't call the enforcement body "The United States Government" anymore. It would be such and such security and the so-and-so courts.
A free market functions on the assumption that all action is voluntary, not on the assumption of competition. There is more to the free market than good companies driving out wasteful companies. The free market functions where there are monopolies as well.
A monopoly is not permanant once established. Competitors can overthrow the monopoly. Only if competitors are kept down by means of force can a monopoly have any kind of permanance.
States prevent monopolies of the beneficial type from forming while ensuring that monopolies of the destructive type form. The beneficial monopoly is that which forms because all others are inefficient, the destructive monopoly is that which forms because the government has prohibited competition.
They suffer from a vocabulary disease whereby words mean what they have traditionally meant and never evolve over time. "A dildo is whatever has traditionally been considered a dildo," says one quote I've read. Other forms of anarchism dispute anarchocapitalism because they believe "capitalism" can't exist without governments or some silly shit like that. I read one mutualist even call communism "State capitalism". So yeah. Their definition of capitalism is completely different from how it is used in the sense of "anarcho-capitalism" which refers to free markets of private property. Anarchism is traditionally a socialist movement, it's the more recent development of libertarians which reject government that created a new kind of anarchism that they don't like. Anarchy means "Ana" being "without" and "archon" meaning "ruler". Because anarchocapitalism exists without rulers, it can properly be termed anarchism.
In short, ignore them, they don't know what they're talking about.
Yeah. I can tell by the red/black flag they're waving on the site that they're anarchosyndicalists. They don't know what capitalism is either. And they're still stuck on that darned labor theory of value. Value is subjective, LTV requires objective value, without LTV their rantings about inequality mean nothing.
Precisely. What is stopping a large corporation that has established a monopoly from simply squishing potential financial irritants? After all, that is something a large company will want to do at some point, thus creating a market for high-rate assassins/enforcers. Since the company is already powerful economically/socially, it could definitely afford to eliminate competitors stealthily.
You are mincing words. They are not likely to alienate consumers if the consumers don't know about it, and unless the competitor and his family live in a fortress. A powerful corporation will surely have a van full of people who are capable of doing its enforcing for it, but that can travel anonymously. It is unreasonable to assume that they would not resort to force if they could, because it is a much easier and less costly manner of eliminating the competition than is currently accepted in our system.
Also: consider this scenario. A powerful corporation hires a group of enforcers to eliminate a competitor, who has designed a superior cell phone. Enforcer group convinces the defense contractor for that competitor's home that engaging in combat would be highly costly to defense contractor. Furthermore, they offer to bribe the defense contractor. In this situation, the defense contractor will act rationally and get his ass out of there (since he is not willing to give up his life for his job), and perhaps use the money he got. The enforcer group tortures the competitor, obtains blueprints, and sets fire to the building, and then escapes. Now, I think this is an entirely plausible scenario: if people are willing to go to war for financial or strategic reasons, killing a single individual and his family should not be particularly implausible.
The government, because it has authority and power. There is no analogous apparatus in an anarchic system. The problem of the such-so-so system is that their authorities are in conflict, and courts, security, and contractors would cater to their customers. And this means that courts, security firms, and defense contractors would also have to compete for authority. And the capacity for authority is directly proportional to the force that backs that authority.The company that has proven it could be more favorable for the customer under duress than others (which would mean being more authoritative) has the better the marketing strategy.
This is precisely what I was referring to. The power of a corporation can be balanced only by the power of a state.
Please do not insult me with cheap rhetoric. An economic monopoly or an allied oligopaly from multiple industries, which has a great deal of control over your society, is very likely to arise (like in the film Total Recall). The only force stopping it now is the fact that the state exists to prevent such monopolies from forming. The state has its own checks and balances which are quite effective (though certainly not perfect).
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
My response to all of these is that nothing prevents these things from happening today. Microsoft, if it really wanted to, could have Apple bombed while avoiding responsibility and appearing as if it was uninvolved in the incident. It has the money and influence to make it happen, and the law and law enforcement wouldn't be any less able to stop it than it is today. Since I already offered this and you contested, I'll move on to your objections.
Something will not stop those things from happening just because it has "authority and power". In fact, I don't think those things are even relevant. You don't need "authority and power", you need justice and enforcement. And you could have that under anarchy. Aside from that, the terms "authority" and "power" are too ambiguous to mean anything in this context. Would you like to specify? Authority over what? Power over what? Why? Who? How?
Please be more specific. Do you mean everyone will give their own customers preferential treatment? If so, there is a mass market in these cases, a few wealthy clients would not outweigh the rest of the public, and courts who were biased would be ignored.
They wouldn't have to compete for authority. Whichever court a case was tried in would have authority over the case. Any defense agency or or whatever could go and enforce the orders of the court (who would take responsibility for any mistakes). You'll have to explain exactly what you mean when you say "authority".
If they are too favorable, other courts will simply ignore them and rule contradictarily for a third court to arbitrate. With both customers to the third court being equal before the eyes of the third court, the third court could be objective and overturn the biased court's decision.
The corporation is a creation of the state. If you mean companies or businesses, use that word. A corporation is something different. It's a piece of paper the government gives people to absolve them of personal responsibility for debts incurred in the name of the corporation.
If you meant that the power of a company can be balanced only by the power of a state, you'll have to elaborate on this "power" thing. If you mean physical force, a company can only be a very small portion of any population, and would be attacked if it started forcing people to obey it.
Please, stop referring to fictional works to justify government. Anything can happen in fiction. It's not necessarily indicative of reality. And I don't read or watch a lot of fiction, so I'm not familiar with Total Recall.
If you believe a company can become so powerful, why do you believe a government will stop it? Suppose they do something like that in Costa Rica, where they don't have a military that could stop them. In that case, the government wouldn't stop them. It's possible that some military force could, but that doesn't necessarily have to come from a government to be effective.
What government has not grown in size, cost, and force as time progressed until overthrown or collapsed?
Basically, what I'm saying is that anything the government could do, other people could do also. There is nothing inherent in government that makes it more effective than any other group with the same resources. Your solution to an imagined threat of aggressive companies is a defensive government...what do you do about the well-demonstrated real threat of an aggressive government? Where is the final check against that? And why does this final check work against a tyrannical government and not a tyrannical company? To steal your refer-to-a-fictional-worst-case-scenario idea, what stops us from living under an Orwellian dystopia? What's to say that 1984 wasn't just set a few decades too early?
I have seen an argument against such as:
Response?
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
I could refute that a dozen ways, but since one is enough, I call strawman. Boss-worker relationship is not necessary for capitalism. Capitalism is about free markets and private property, it has nothing to do with boss-worker relationships. They're using "capitalism" wrong if that's their attempt at refuting anarcho-capitalism. It's not the same meaning of "capitalism", so their attack is irrelevant.
So, is "capitalism" a mode of exchange or a mode of production?
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
Obedience is easy to get through force and state terror. If you don't believe me, do some reading in history.
Not at all. People will fight if they are not prevented from doing so by an established order of authority. Therefore government is necessary to keep the peace (among other things).
Yes. The anarchy has to be enforced or else it will change back into government. Since it takes a government to enforce a set of social rules, there's no way that anarchy can work for any length of time.
Celtic Ireland during that period was constantly governed by various tribal chieftains and self-proclaimed kings. Then they got invaded by England because they could never get their act together and form a central government to defend the region. Try again.
OK. Open the newspaper. All over the world you see the places with little or no government in varying states of war and poverty. The citizens are miserable. In Afghanistan they accepted the Taliban rather than be without government. The entire history of the world shows chaos, misery and tragedy occuring in any area that is not governed well. That's my proof. Now show me your evidence that society can be stable and effective without government.
Stop dodging. If I'm paying for mercenaries that will act as an army, I'm going to be able to find mercenaries willing to act as an army. I'm still waiting for you to tell me why that won't happen, and why the wealthy won't be able to swiftly turn your anarchy back into a series of feudal feifdoms.
Absolved of responsibility!? There's no mechanism for accountability in an anarchy at all! At least under the present system soldiers have to follow rules. With no courts, cops or government, your security forces can rape, pillage and destroy with total impunity, as long as they're backed by enough money to keep replenishing their weapons and personnel.
You've explained why the protection agency hired to protect a particular patch of territory would fight against another force trying to attack it. You haven't explained why this action would cause ALL the other PAs to band together and destroy the attacker. As long as the attacker isn't attacking them, why should they care?
1. I don't care who the mercenaries are. The fact is, they'd be there and available for hire.
2. So there would be no profit in taking over territory and enslaving the population? Boy, there really must have been a lot of stupid leaders down through history. Like, all of them.
3. Under a typical government, the chances of being attacked by a neighbour's mercenary force is approximately zero. Under your anarchy, I can see no reason why this couldn't happen at any time.
You sure are silent on the issue. So far you not even attempted to present any explaination of how an anarchy would stay anarchic, except to say that everyone would want it that way. Unless you have perfected mind control, or have magically found a population of humans who all think alike, the real answer is that the anarchy would swiftly fall under feudal government.
You have no idea what true tyranny and abuse of power is. Bush is restrained in many ways by dozens of checks on his power. Compare the US government to North Korea, Myannmar or many governments in Africa then tell me again about how tyrannical it is.
Read a textbook. The fact that the Supreme Court is nominated by government doesn't make it part of it. If I have to explain this elementary stuff to you then I think I'm wasting my time with this conversation.
No they didn't. You are just wrong and I don't know what revisionist history you've been reading. Hitler was elected on a platform of national revitalization for Germany. He even kept his plans for remilitarization secret. No one in Germany or out of it could have predicted the outcome.
Maybe it is. Still better that there's some process. Hey, maybe the sheep can buy one of the wolves off.
Your turn: anarchy is two wolves fighting over who gets to eat the sheep.
So what? In an anarchy, there's no one to hold anyone accountable to this approach to justice, or any other.
Asked and answered.
It is if you want what someone else has. Are you so naive as to think that that motive is every going to go away?
Unless they are equipped for invasion. You still have given no reason why this would be impossible.
Glad you're not a general in my country.
I don't know why you think this distinction between a PA and a militia protects you from my points. If there's people with guns, they can use them to attack as well as defend.
Why would they do that when they can invade someone else's terriroty?
And have them duke it out for supremacy. It's medieval England all over again.
So your first move is to disarm the civvies before they can organize a defence. Or threaten them with WMD. Not hard.
Ok. So I look around without saying anything until I find someone advertising mercenary services. Your endless strings of strawmen and red herrings are getting boring.
Why not? What if I'm Bill Gates? What if I'm Bill Gates and Ted Turner working together?
It's easy to keep people down. Their willingess or unwillingness is irrelevant. Read some history.
I have lots of money, espeically since I don't have to pay any taxes in your anarchy. I have lots of friends helping me, all of whom have been promised rich rewards when we own the region. My secret police would make sure that taxes are paid and anyone commiting acts of sedition are punished so horribly that no one will try it.
What a joke. No chance. I've been planning this for years. I'm dug in and my weapons and organization are superior. The first man that leaves his house to come attack me will find that house leveled, with his family inside.
Are you kidding? They're making me lots of money! They're extorting thousands every day.
Wrong. That isn't how populations react, your American revolutionary fanatasies notwithstanding. It is quite possible to terrorize a population into submission, and Americans are just as susceptible to it as anyone.
They have to pay or I'll fucking kill them. Once I cap the first guy that doesn't shell out enough to satisfy me, his neighbours will quickly cave in.
You are naive to the point of retardation.
What the hell do you think goes on in the Third World all the time, every day?! Read a goddam newspaper before you start shooting your mouth off.
I don't need to do that to know it's possible. It has happened, is happening, and will happen again over and over through all human history.
Let's remember, of course, that initially I'm not going to overextend myself. I'll grab enough territory to be lucrative and make sure I'm nicely dug in and well established (with the heads of the rabble-rousers decorating my fence) before I round up some allies and head on to larger things.
Sorry, it's an occupational hazard when debating someone who throws out strawman after strawman rather than answer any points.
No, I'm saying that before this anarchy is even established, and you have your population who isn't used to taxes, someone is going to get greedy and take over.
You drive on government roads. You are protected by government police. Your food and many of the goods you buy are certified safe by government bureacracies. I could go on and on. You most certainly do have lots of tax dollars redistributed to you.
The roads wouldn't have been built in the first place without public dollars, and if they become privatized only the profitable routes will remain. It doesn't work, and millenia of private road-building prior to the modern age proves that your scheme is inferior.
Oh? Then why was public money needed to create it in the first place?
I seriously don't think you know enough to be in this discussion.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
About government:
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
I'd consider it a system of exchange that is extremely conductive to high production.
It's kinda fuzzy, though. I mean, production to me means the allocation of resources to meet demand, not necessarily the creation of new stuff. Allocation of resources usually requires exchange. I think they're a bit intertwined. But I'd consider capitalism to be a mode of exchange.
This is different...anarchists are not afflicted with a belief that a change in government is a change in a necessary ruling body.
Why do you need "an established order of authority"?
It does not take a government to enforce a set of social rules unless they are arbitrary rules. And we already have anarchy today, see my sig. Anarchy cannot become government. Anarchy is always there just outside the reach of government.
They were called "tuaths", the kings and cheiftains were not rulers so much as leaders. You could secede from tuaths, making it voluntary.
Those shitholes have no government because they are tubulent, not the other way around. And I believe anarchy is anyplace that is outside the reach of government in a certain time and place, which includes the vast majority of the world.
Then don't go to a protection agency, dimwit. Don't go to KFC and ask for a burger, and don't go to a protection agency for a private army.
I didn't say you couldn't hire mercenaries, I believe I have confirmed it repeatedly. It just wouldn't be profitable at all, and those feudal feifdoms would not be sustainable.
Bullshit. There's courts, there's police, there's people with guns. You'll be held accountable. You don't need authority to hold someone responsible.
There are courts and cops, there's just no geographic monopoly of those two which we presently call government. Soldiers would still have to follow rules.
PAs are not hired to protect contiguous patches of territory. They're hired to protect individuals. Other PAs would band together to destroy the attacker because they'll have customers in the occupied area, and they'll have reason to suspect that the attacker will continue their invasion into other areas.
If you can't afford them, they're not available to you.
There would be no profit in the circumstances you're giving. When people are resigned to believe that government is inevitable, they'll just obey rulers. When they're not, they resist, they attack you, and try to kill you and all your hired goons. Governments don't have this problem. You do. You can't use governments to demonstrate that it might be profitable because they're exceptionally advantaged.
I can see no reason why this couldn't happen under government if a big enough force was available.
If it became anarchic by the method I advocate, which I see as the only viable one, then a vast majority of people would want it that way because they witnessed the failure of government.
Fine, let it. I'll have enough bombs, guns, and ammo to blow them to kingdom come. I can make up bullshit scenarios about what resources I have with which to purpetuate my scheme just like you can and have been doing.
No he's not. He's Commander-in-Chief of the military. He can delcare martial law and his word becomes law. He's already abolished habeus corpus.
Less tyrannical doesn't mean not tyrannical.
Rub your braincells together. The Supreme Court is part of the Judicial Branch outlined in the Constitution. Even if we assume for some stupid reason that SCOTUS is not part of the government, the fact that the government has control over it means it might as well be.
Anarchy is a well-armed sheep to convince the wolves that they don't want to eat the sheep after all. If the wolves kill each other, great! That's one less target for the sheep to shoot at.
Yes there is, there'd be courts and protection agencies. If you don't respect others, you lose your status of "person" and become "unowned property". If that happens, no courts that anyone pays attention to will hear a complaint by unowned property. If you can demonstrate that they were attacking you, you can demonstrate that they give up "person" status and become property, and you can do whatever you want with your own property.
You can buy a house for $100,000, or you can hire a mercenary force to occupy that neighborhood and allow you to live in that house for $1,000,000 per year. If you want what someone else has, it is much cheaper to trade for it than it is to stake it by force.
It isn't impossible, just extremely unlikely. It's like going to KFC and asking for a burger.
M.A.D. worked with Russia, it'll work on a smaller scale too.
It's more the words you're using. PA stands for protection agency, not private army. KFC/burger.
Because invasion is so much riskier.
This is extremely frustrating. Stop saying "Oh, so blah blah blah" and "that means blah blah blah". If you have questions, ask questions. Stop throwing out stupid bullshit.
PAs would not duke it out for supremacy. What motivation is there for that?
You can't disarm a heavily armed society before they can defend themselves. That would require house-to-house, business-to-business confiscations. That takes either a lot of time, a lot of labor, and in either case, is a lot of dangerous and there's a lot of places to hide guns where they won't look. Threatening them with a WMD would be stupid. You're trying to enslave them, why would you kill them?
This doesn't get around the problem. Some will still decline to serve you and inform others of your intentions.
You're not.
Their willingness or unwillingness is extremely relevant. Read some military history. When people really do not want you there, it's extremely difficult to keep them down.
That requires so many assumptions of what you will and will not be able to get away with it's barely worth a rebuttal. Go ahead and punish them horribly in public (in private it won't have as much effect, you're doing it for effect, right?). Watch as a sniper paints the wall with the punisher's brains. Try to find a replacement. Stop the people from coming to the aid of the punished.
Yeah, and you have the resources to figure out who to hit, when to hit them, and you're stupid enough to kill off potential taxpayers. Man, you'd get eaten alive.
If they're covering enough people to make you thousands every day, they're not spending enough time on each individual. Put a camera in my house. I'll shoot it. Come try to repair it. I'll set a bomb in it. Try to bomb my house. I'll be long gone by then. Level the neighborhood. You'll just inspire more resistance. Destroy the entire city. You have no guarantee that I'll be there, and you'll be destroying a million or so taxpayers. There goes your revenue stream.
Ah, collectivism. By taking the average of all people, you can conveniently ignore the actions of the most radical and capable as if they were patently absurd.
You cap my neighbor and I'll cap you. Maybe not immediately, but I will do it.
The same can be said about you.
You didn't answer my question. Why don't you go do that now? Why doesn't Bill Gates do that? Why don't rich guys do that today? Obviously they can, and obviously it happens. Why is there no connection?
It's possible. It's not profitable. That's the point. It won't be profitable for several generations as you convince the locals that you're actually looking out for them.
No, what has happened, is happening, and will happen again over and over is governments being replaced. People are still convinced that government is necessary to the point that they refuse to let anarchy form. If anarchy came about the way I'm talking about, that wouldn't happen.
The smaller the initial territory you attempt to claim, the better the odds of outside forces "invading" your territory.
And you just seem to keep throwing out stupid conclusion after stupid conclusion rather than answer many of my points. And I am answering your points.
And other greedy people won't try to stop them? Everyone is greedy.
I don't own a car.
I'm protected by a KA-BAR and a Surefire 9P. The police don't protect me. They just think they do. Police are there to write a report after someone attacks me. They won't be there when I'm attacked, thus they won't protect me. If the police were interested in my protection, they wouldn't be stopping me from protecting myself with the $10 illegal short-barreled shotgun I could make in the hardware store nearby.
Thus increasing the price. Thank you government, for prohibiting the sale of less expensive food that doesn't meet your standards but I might be perfectly happy with anyways...
Keep going.
Yes they would've. They wouldn't be as overbuilt as they are today, but there'd certainly be roads.
Millenia of private road-building is a bad example because they didn't have the technology we have today.
It wasn't. The government is stupid and thought it was. Because government is collectivism.
The feeling is mutual. I don't think you know enough about anarchism to discuss it.
+1. That's pretty much my perspective of government.
Another question:
You mentioned courts. How would laws be determined?
If the courts/police are private entities, what would happen if two of them have different law?
What about very different laws (there might be a demand for them and thus a market)?
What would happen if person A buys protection from agency X and person B buys protection from agency Y and they have a conflict?
What if agency X costs much more and is much better equipped than agency Y?
Also:
What if a company was able to buy out/gain control of many companies and used their collective resources to generate profits to effectively create barriers of entry into the industries (and when some do enter they buy them out if they become promising)?
What if this mega company spreads and others form?
What if these mega companies start to coerce the majority of the population?
What if these mega companies become states?
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
I expect that laws would be determined by the contradiction of laws. For example, if a law was determined in one court that "Such and such owes taxes", another court could rule that as theft, which nobody disputes that theft should be illegal. Thus, the law would become unenforceable because anyone attempting to collect taxes would be charged with theft in another, or possibly even the same court. Nobody would want to be arbitrated by a court with laws that contradict themselves, so courts with those stupid laws would be run out of business or sued out of business.
I talked about something similar to this on my blog. It was ruling opposedly on the same case that time, but it would be similar for differences of law.
http://boredzhwazi.blogspot.com/2006/10/supplanting-state-courts-and-law.html
You'll have to clarify on "very different laws".
AX and BY go to court. Did you mean what if they try to shoot it out? That won't happen. The PAs would just have to find some kind of resolution, probably using a court.
Then the paranoids will buy X and everyone else will buy Y. The agencies wouldn't have a shootout or anything, that's bad business, dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient. They'll find a nonbiased arbiter to resolve any conflicts.
Barriers to entry aren't created by competition, they're inherent in the industry itself. Oil refining has a barrier of entry not because there are already other oil refineries, but because oil refining takes expensive hardware. Because buying out companies would be voluntary on the part of both, a competitor that forsees greater profits in competing with the monopoly long term than selling the resources for anything less than twice their actual market value, will either compete with the monopoly and destroy it's monopoly status or will use that company's policy to rob it by creating more and more competing firms with the buyout money and selling them for twice their market value. Someone did this to Rockefeller 11 times (going into business and having Rockefeller buy him out) and retired pretty wealthy. There'd be a lot of money to be made by taking advantage of such stupid policies that the mega company has.
Uhm...more people get better service at lower prices, I guess. Did you have a more specific concern?
The majority would stop buying stuff from that company, making all the invested capital worthless, which will really cut into the profits. The majority would likely retaliate and destroy whatever capital that company owns, which would also really cut into the profits. A company is never a great enough proportion of the population to coerce them effectively without fear of retaliation, reducing the potential rewards. And the coercing mechanism is expensive, reducing potential rewards. A company which grew so large would have done so by doing research before making a move. Such a company would likely not see the maneuver as profitable. And if another company attempted the same thing, defense would certainly be extremely profitable compared to the alternative.
I think that's unlikely, but if that happened, we'd be no worse off than we are today, would we? Let me say, it would be pointless to have a state to prevent it, because it only raises the same concerns that were previously laid on the mega companies and shifts them onto the government.
And thank you for raising the same questions as the other guy in a much more polite manner.
My concern here is something like what happened to Clarence Gideon would happen.
What about "barriers" due to inability to successfully compete with the big business due to the big business's market penetration and profit rates? (These could improve if the new business survives long enough though)
Thank you.
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
Being denied a lawyer because you're poor? In absence of the years of law school and expensive education and the Bar associations to deal with, not to mention all the laws and legalese created by government, legal counsel would be far less expensive and quite affordable. Some courts might be loser-pay-all, so an innocent poor defendant could hire a lawyer, and if the court rules in the defendant's favor, the poor defendant could pay nothing but their time. Others might be plaintiff-pay-court, defendant-pay-plaintiff-if-guilty, where the defendant could just ignore the court and wait for a result, and if the result is not in the defendant's favor, go to another court and have the decision overturned, having the courts find a third court to rule on which court's decision would be made binding. The defendant might not even be costed much time in the process if they hired a lawyer to do all their representing for them and not have to appear in the court at all.
I see nothing wrong with it. Do you have a specific example you believe unjust?
You mentioned earlier that there are no barriers to entry from competition, yet what I described seems like a barrier to entry and it does result from competition.
Question: Income inequality -- what would it look like and what effects would it cause?
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
That isn't a barrier to entry, it's a barrier to staying in business. By barrier to entry, I thought you meant something which prevents you from even producing and trying to sell something. That's what I consider a barrier to entry. Less efficient business being driven out by more efficient business is a normal result of a free market.
The richest people would probably not remain as disproportionately wealthier than the other classes. Taxes would be removed (it's a common misconception that the tax system today is progressive...it is on paper, not in practice), some protections and preferential treatment which government gives to big business would be gone, economic regulations which stifle competition would cease to exist, and this would result in fewer people with wealth measured in billions and more people with wealth measured in tens of millions. Employment would probably be much higher, as minimum wages wouldn't exist, allowing more employers to give OJT and give jobs to those whose work isn't worth a certain minimum, and take that experience to another job that pays better. The poor would be better off in absence of these things, as economic regulations always hurt the poor hardest in the end.
I'd imagine the effects would be more small businesses and local chains, as opposed to fewer large businesses, as the many with 10s of millions will be competing more than the few with 10s of billions, prices would probably fall too, and there'd be some more innovation I believe. I'm not terribly familiar with the effects of income inequality and it's appearant effect on the market, so my prediction is as good as anyone's.
Because of brainwashing?
Read what I wrote then read your response. You're asking the question I just answered.
I understand that you think this but you still seem incapable of explaining why. I think I've laid out a very plausible scenario, based on the actual history of the world, for how an anarchic population would quickly revert to feudal government simply through the actions of a greedy few and the need for mutual protection. Your inadequate response is always "they won't do that because they won't want to." I'll ask you again, what form of mind control are you going to use to keep everyone in your anarchy on the same political page?
Riiiiiiiight. What would have been the real consequences for a 10th century man of deciding to secede from his tuath, bearing in mind that people in that age rarely traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born in their entire lives?
I see. So peaceful, orderly places create governments and turbulent, violent places do not. Does that mean that people in peaceful, orderly areas want to destroy their happiness by creating government for no reason? Or maybe living in a violent, turbulent area just causes the population to be smarter and have a clearer view of political realities.
Or maybe you are totally wrong, and effective government does promote peace.
So government doesn't exist unless someone in a uniform is standing right in front of you?
This whole inane protection agency/mercenary thing boils down to this: why are PAs, in your theory, so much less expensive than mercenary groups? If a PA in an anarchy is going to be worth having around, don't they have to be able to defend against an attack from a mercenary group? If so, don't they have to be roughly as well armed? If so, won't they cost about as much to hire?
Which brings us to your whole objection regarding mercenaries - they'd be too expensive for people to hire and use to invade territory. Well, if they are, then the PAs are, too. If the PAs aren't too expensive, then neither are the mercenaries.
See above.
An anarchy with courts and police!? WTF? Where do they come from? Who hires them and oversees their work? From where do they acquire their legitimacy? Who makes the rules they enforce? What is their jurisdiction and who determines it?
For the love of Spaghetti, WHY? What possible mechanism exists to define and enforce the rules that soldiers must follow?
So I only attack one guy's property at a time. Why would a PA strike me in a neighbouring territory when they aren't paid to do so and, as you've pointed out ad naseum, they have no offensive capabilities?
So there's no wealthy people in your anarchy?
That's right. Governments are exceptionally advantaged. Which is why people form them. Which is why people voluntarily participate in them, especially when a government can deliver the spoils of a successful war to them. Are you getting it yet?
Because, as you pointed out, no one individual can ever amass enough force to seriously challenge a government. This is why people like governments - as a force for security and protection from external threats, they can't be beat.
I think it's time to start asking yourself why that failure is totally invisible to almost everyone on earth except you.
No you can't. You just said that an individual can't beat a government. Once the feudal state is there, with tax revenues and a draft and everything, you won't have enough guns etc to overthrow it. You'll be right back where you are now, fantasizing about anarchy on a message board without a hope in hell of ever seeing it happen.
No he hasn't and his titular power doesn't give him a percentage of the control you ascribe to him. It's fine if you hate Bush, but try to restrain your accusations to things that are actually problems.
Good point. I'll give you that one. But I still think you're whining if you think you are oppressed, especially when you consider how people in those parts of the world live.
The government does not have control over it. That is the whole point. The judges are there for life, and they can rule however they like and neither the President, Congress or the Senate can do a damn thing about it.
Yes, you are right. In an anarchy, EVERYONE would be fighting and no one would get to stand aside.
Am I getting this right that somehow people are property in your anarchy? As in slaves? Also, see my earlier questions as to how courts can possibly exist without government.
Owning a house isn't enough for some people. They want to own the house and make all the rules that might apply to that house and the land it's on. Only a military force can deliever that kind of ownership.
If no one else was selling burgers, KFC would be flipping like crazy tomorrow. Either way, I can always get a burger in a free market.
Risk = the deaths of people other than you. Reward = total lordship over a territory and all its means of production. It doesn't take a business major to do that math.
Oh Ok, I'll be sure to avoid saying anything that you might not like.
On second thought - not.
Money and power.
You don't have to kill all of them. Just enough to terrorize the rest into not wanting to call your bluff. Once you've done that, disarmament shouldn't be any big deal.
OK, so others know of my intentions and arm themselves. A war is fought and I lose, leaving a victor who now controls my territory. "Damn" he thinks "that was easy!" So he starts cranking up to go on to the next territory.
I'm not making this shit up. This is what has happened through history, all over the world.
How do you know? Are you saying there aren't any wealthy people in your anarchy? Actually there probably wouldn't be, but all you'd need are relatively wealthy people.
I've read lots of military history and any reasonably organized and funded military force with sufficient lack of scruples can easily keep any civilian population down.
I am giving examples from history and current events of the way things actually have worked and do work. You are giving examples from a theoretical scenario in which the following holds:
1. Civilians are willing to risk themselves and their families to fight oppression, even when it's only happening to someone else
2. Casual gun owners are as good at fighting as professional troops
3. Mercenaries are so civic-minded that they quickly report any attempt to hire them for heinous purposes
4. Security forces created for protection can never be used for offensive purposes
5. Everyone will be so commited to one political ideal that they will never embrace another, even if they can make money and gain power to do so
Conclusion: your anarchy is a fantasy land.
Of course my friends and I have the necessary resources. After all, it's not like we're up against a government.
You shoot the camera in your house, the next thing you're going to hear is boots kicking in your door at three in the morning. When your neighbours see your corpse hanging from a tree in your front door, I bet they'll leave their cameras alone.
Exactly! You got it! And the actions of the radicals are always absurd - until and unless they capture the imagination of the average. Which anarchy has totally failed to do in the hundreds of years it's been around as an idea.
LOL - who the hell are these people? Are you going to clone Rambo and populate an entire civilization with him? News flash - most people will do almost anything to avoid a fight, especially one with guns.
Rich guys don't do that today because THEY'RE UP AGAINST GOVERNMENTS. Governments rule. In places where there are no governments, rich guys can and do do all the things I've described.
It is profitable and the world is full of rich dicatators that prove it.
People refuse to let anarchy persist because whenever it does form (as it has many times in many places), the effects are always so horrific that they look to any source of authority that can deliver peace and stability.
Whatever. Ultimately there will be a war and a victor who will have power over the area.
No that's not true. Most people just want to be comfortable. Its the exceptionally driven and aggressive that make governments and the various social dispute mechanisms necessary.
You receive goods and services that traveled to you on government roads. You conduct business and/or go to school with people who use government roads. Your life would be totally different if the government hadn't built roads.
Your guns protect you from nothing. If the cops weren't around a gang like I'm describing would have killed you long ago. You depend on others for your protection, just as everyone else does.
Yes it certainly would be worth getting e-coli and salmonella a couple times a year if we could save a buck or two. Don't be an idiot.
I don't need to. I've already shown that you depend on the government in lots of ways.
Crappy roads that didn't go half the places they should or take as direct routes.
Technology is irrelevant. The Romans built great, straight roads because they did it with public money and centralized control.
It's so easy for you to sit back and say everything would have been as good as it is or better if it were done differently than it was. What it boils down to is, you have theory and guesswork on your side, and I have historical fact on mine.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Anarchism is to statism what atheism is to theism. You only consider anarchist beliefs brainwashing because you disagree, just as many atheist beliefs are brainwashing to a theist. Now stop that. Next time you mention brainwashing this debate is over. No brainwashing is involved.
I was questioning why you need authority and why something else cannot do the same thing.
I believe that "very plausible" scenario is based on absurd optimism and assumptions that do not apply to an anarchic culture, likely because it starts with a conclusion then builds a method to that conclusion.
There is no mind control. People won't want to because costs would outweigh befenfits.
They would likely be treated as an outsider by the tuath.
How government is created is irrelevant, and it's not necessarily true that the government was created by the people. Governments are much more likely to form when people assume they're necessary and the society can support a government.
Not for no reason. They have plenty of reasons. Each and every one of which based in ignorance.
I'd argue that this is the case in Somalia. Their tribal culture is not conductive to the democracy the UN keeps trying to give them, they're aware of the reality that whichever tribe gets into power will use the government to oppress all others, and so tear down government.
Only if you butcher the word peace to include violence committed by individuals and exclude violence committed by individuals calling themselves "The State".
The government exists, however it is ineffective and cannot govern in places where the police cannot see, hear, shoot, or whatever.
PAs are cheaper because their typical day-to-day work doesn't involve the same levels of danger a mercenary would. Once the shit hit the fan, PAs would be likely to raise prices during such a conflict (increase in demand without corresponding increase in supply raises price). Those who could continue to afford PAs and didn't get the PA contractually obligated to protect would be few...those who could not, would have to fend for themselves.
Assuming they're the same thing. They're not.
Imagine that! People demand services and can get them from something other than a geographic monopoly!
Supply/Demand.
Customers.
Ownership and contracts.
Nobody. They don't enforce rules. They protect people. That doesn't mean they can't make you responsible for your actions.
Anywhere someone gives them jurisdiction.
What mechanism exists today?
I didn't say they have no offensive capabilities. As you pointed out, anyone that can defend can offend. The PA would strike you because you're an aggressor and they have to protect people from you.
There are. You're not one of them.
Governments' advantage comes from their citizens' idiotic patriotism and appearance of legitemacy. Because nobody would be patriotic to you or percieve you as a legitemate ruler, you have none of those advantages.
So what do you do when the government is doing exactly what you do in your fantasy world? You cannot have a "final" check on power that rests in any limited number of hands or you end up with tyranny.
And this is why tyrants like governments...as a force for aggrandizement and extortion, they can't be beat.
It would be quite obvious. I mean, if we're assuming a territory without government exists, it would be because the government failed. Otherwise it wouldn't have come to exist in the first place. If you're assuming ungoverned territory, I'm assuming government had failed in the past to create an ungoverned territory. That failure would be witnessed. I haven't said that failure has happened in reality yet.
Yes I can. If you can hire a mercenary force with money you don't own, I can own all the bombs and shit that I don't own. I will be able to overthrow it, and by the same means which tore down the original government. Black market. Nontaxpaying or fractional taxpaying. Starting up a protection agency which competes with yours. The black market would slowly weaken your government's foundation until it collapsed just as the previous government had. You'll be right back where you are now, fantasizing about conquering anarchy on a message board without a hope in hell of ever seeing it happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act#Provisions
Not legitemately.
I actually don't hate him. I think he's a dumbass and a proud fool. I don't hate him any more than any other cocky dumbass. On occassion including yourself.
And I should not complain that I am hungry while ethiopians are starving? Why should I not complain that opression exists just because others are more oppressed?
Yes they can. They can add judges that'll rule the way they want the ruling to go.
Not consistent with my experience.
If they aggress against you, then yes. If someone attacks you, they become your property. Blow their head off and eat the brain for all I care. He made himself your property when he attacked you.
...yeah, that's called ownership. Ownership is absolute irresponsible control. You want absolute irresponsible control. You already have it. Second part about military force is thus not relevant.
KFC doesn't have any of the hardware needed for flipping burgers.
How do you know your life isn't at risk? Do you think I wouldn't subject you to instantaneous cranial ventliation should I find out where you are?
Say stuff I don't like, fine, just stop coming up with dumb "OH WELL THAT MEANS THIS THIS AND THIS". Say it like "Doesn't that mean this this and this?" and this can be a much more civil conversation.
Come disarm me and I'll show you any big deal.
There would be no "victor" as you use the word, as if some commander of troops. There'd just be a bunch of troops. Since the threat was gone, they'd just go home.
You wouldn't be spending your time arguing on a forum with an anarchist if you had so much money.
No, just that you're not one of them, you don't think like any of them, and thus what you would do with as much money as they have has far less bearing on how a real situation would develop.
And yet they sign up for military service to do just that...what're the odds.
They aren't, but they don't have to be. They just need to know how to use what they have in such a way as to aquire massive advantage.
It takes only one, and the protection agencies would probably pay the mercenary for telling of the plot. If you could hire a mercenary for $50,000 a year, and a group of PAs is offering a $25,000 reward for information which prevents such event as you propose, a mercenary would find that they could earn 6 months' worth of income without 30 minutes of work.
I never said that. I said you'd be asking them to do something they don't do.
In other words, people consistently apply the principle of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and apply it to the government just like anyone else, and that people will be convinced by a chance of earning money they could make on the market anyways?
Your perspective of anarchy is a fantasy land where people can't take care of their own problems or do anything on their own without some government being there to allow it.
What necessary resources are those?
Good thing doors are extremely easy to boobytrap with bombs and buckshot. Your thugs will eat my slugs.
When my neighbors see your JBTs hanging from the tree in my front yard, I bet they'll ask me how I did it and can I borrow that.
Anarchy in most of those years was a left-wing idiocy theory. Only recently did it become logically consistent.
Like pick them off from 120 yards with a supressed .30-30, successfully averting a firefight.
It's not the governments, it's the people in those governments, and their actions which stop you. If you take away the government, you still have those people, and you still have those actions.
Authority does not deliver peace and stability.
No, if you lose, the victors will go home. Those interested in carrying on a fight to aggress against others will not constitute the entire force that put you down.
Yes it is. People are greedy, selfish, and egocentric.
Human wants are insatiable. Human wants above comfort become less valuable than the necessary labor to achieve it in many cases.
The aggressive make governments...they're not the ones that make them necessary.
Not true. If somebody else built the roads, I'd still have roads.
So for all that period of time before cities had police, there were gangs running around and killing people? Back when the RKBA was a right and not a privilege?
I cook my food. That kills the germs. If you can't cook yours, that's your problem.
If I depend on the government in any way, it is because the government has given me no choice in the matter.
Prove it.
I never knew stolen money build roads so much better than legitemately earned money...what is it about "public money" that gives it this magical ability?
Look at the damn post office. Compare to FedEx and UPS. You have cocky self-assurance on your side, I have the facts of the free market on my side. Market does it better, cheaper, faster than government every single fucking time. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this rule somehow changes in protection, courts, roads, or anything else that the government does.
I'll stop mentioning brainwashing if you stop making the totally unwarranted assumption that everyone in an anarchist society will remain anarchists through pure personal preference. There are all kinds of people in the world, and the big weakness of anarchy is that it only takes a few aggressive types to totally screw up the system. Do you think democracy persists because of everyone's personal preference? Hell no! It's because there's a written-down set of rules and institutions that members of the public service are required to defend, under oath. People who attempt to subvert these institutions from outside of the established process are put down with force.
Because the lesson of history and human psychology is that people will fight, unless physically prevented from doing so.
So you deny that throughout history violent men have rushed in to fill power vaccums. OK, I'm getting bored with this.
Some people don't count the cost as long as they can grab power. Especially when they can shift the cost to others.
And have their lives thereby destroyed. Medieval people counted on their communities for support even more than we do today. So it is ridiculous to claim that truath members actually had a "choice" whether to obey the clan elder or not.
Government is not necessarily created by people? Bwa...bwaha...BWAAHHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Who creates it then? Aliens?
Right. As soon as people are able to, they form government. Why? Are all people, all through history, stupid? If lack of government is so great, why haven't people just stayed that way whenever government is absent?
Your arrogance is breathtaking. You, who have never had to live in anything other than the most advanced, free and secure society the world has ever seen, think you can sit there and second guess the decisions of all people down through history? Tell you what, go live somewhere where there's no government for a while then come back and tell us all how wrong people are to want one.
Use any measure you want. There is more peace inside the average government than there would be in the average anarchy.
This is silly because even when a government official is not present, people are aware that the area they are in is under government control, and that transgressions, if they are reported, will be investigated. Even if they think there is little chance of that, they get in the habit of staying within the law and will usually do so as long as they know they are within the law's jurisdiction.
What bloody good would it do for a PA to wait until an attack to raise their price? If they haven't prepared in advance, a price rise during isn't going to help them! The PA has to be at least as well armed as the mercenaries beforehand, which means a PA is going to cost about the same. More, actually, since you have to keep the PA on retainer all the time, and the mercenaries can be hired on a per-job basis.
I also note with disdain your casual attitude toward people who can't pay for the very expensive protection your anarchy requires. It seems to be fine with you if poor people are killed and starved.
A point you have again failed to defend.
Then how the hell is it an anarchy?
Oh I see. So my neighbour steals my car and I hire cops to investigate the crime. Then I hire a court to try my neighbour. The court convicts him, and he says "fuck that, I don't recognize your court." And we're back to duelling mercenary groups.
So the interested parties in a dispute hire the arbiter of the dispute. What happens if one party has no interest in seeing the matter resolved?
That are legitimized by what? The courts that depend on them for their custom? Do the words conflict of interest mean anything to you?
How can I be responsible for my actions without rules to guide those actions? How do I know what actions are OK and which I'm going to get punished for? What authority do they use to justify use of force against people?
And if two people disagree over where a particular court has jurisdiction?
The Constitution and THE GOVERNMENT.
So there's no real difference between a PA and a mercenary group, except in the kind of work they accept. And there's nothing to prevent a particular group from deciding to change their line of work. So rent-an-armies will be prevalent in your anarchy. I feel more secure already.
But someone is. And they could very well decide to take over.
Wait a second. You've already admitted that governments enjoy a military advantage. If citizens want the strongest possible force protecting them, doesn't it therefore make sense for them to form a government?
You set up a government with checks and balances on power. Yes, power ultimately rests in the hands of the military. So you do need buy-in from the military that they will obey the orders they get from the civilian government. This is difficult to do - look how often a military decides to overthrow civilian governments. But once you have that buy in, and other controls in place (for instance forcing the military to rely on the government for funding), you have a stable government without tyranny. That is, unless you redefine tyranny to mean any government that ever prevents anyone from doing what they want ever - which is how most anarchists define tyranny.
Most people feel the level of "tyranny" they experience at the hands of good government is more than made up for by the benefits they receive. Like being able to live without fear of imminent death.
Look at Afghanistan in the late '80s. The government collapsed and for several years there was no official power at all. It didn't take long for those people, formerly no known for being religious fanatics, to accept the Taliban as rulers rather than go on as they were.
So you're back to claimiing that there won't be any wealthy people in your anarchy.
Or in any other way.
No reason. It's just that your overreaction to problems that barely exist is driving you to consider bizarre solutions like anarchy.
They get that chance once in a blue moon when one of the judges retires or dies. And the record shows that the judges rarely rule exactly the way the politicians who put them there would like them to.
You have no experience with anarchy. You like in a stable democracy.
That's just weird.
What if someone won't sell? What if you already have sufficient military force to take over the territory, but not enough free cash to buy it? What is any other of the dozens of reasons for invasion exist?
And they can't get it?
I have security.
I might say that if I didn't know what it meant. Since I do, I say I do.
Here we go. It all comes down to you thinking you're a tough guy with your gun. It all comes down to you thinking you can take on anything, and therefore you don't need cops or a military or social services or nuthin.
You are seriously deluded.
There certainly would be a victor - they guy who pays and commands the troops. And either he or they would claim the captured territory.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown