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Several questions for Anarchists
I personally believe that Anarchy is a utopian ideal which cannot be reached. The following questions reflect why I am skeptical of a stateless society.
1) How would a stateless society deal with an invasion by an organized army ?
2) How would a Stateless society deal with famine or plague?
3) How would a stateless society deal with environmental disasters like the recent one involving British Petroleum ?
4) How would a stateless society deal with ethnic/religious/cultural tensions ?
5 ) How would a stateless society deal with natural disasters like hurricanes,tornadoes, etc ?
6) How would a stateless society deal with organized crime ?
Anarchy, as the "Utopian ideal" is actually quite reasonable. To put it simply, it is the state of things where coercion is disadvantageous and is naturally rooted out of society. A stateless society does not mean an unorganized one, rather it means a freely organized one. The state can be defined in numerous ways, but most if not all involves it being a coercive entity. To get rid of the state, the state's functions will need to become unnecessary or distributed. Most of the need for a state comes from economic and technological stages, meaning ultimately anarchy is dependent on technology. free men have always had slaves, it was a condition of their freedom. For all men to be free, they all must have slaves: thus technology. Technology can theoretically eliminate the causes of many social problems, reducing any state into something unrecognizable as a government.
1) How would a stateless society deal with an invasion by an organized army ?
would there be an organized army? if so, then why wouldn't the stateless society have one as well?
2) How would a Stateless society deal with famine or plague?
is a state needed to deal with a famine or plague? social media can do a good job of alerting most if not all the world of anything serious. (considering that traditional TV is going obsolete, it'll have to.) Also, a vaccine could be made and distributed in the same way as opensource software, then made in something similar to a reprap or makerbot, a wet lab of sorts.
3) How would a stateless society deal with environmental disasters like the recent one involving British Petroleum ?
British petroleum would be considered as a coercive agent(unless your speaking to a black and yellow "capitalist anarchist") and wouldn't exist in a truly anarchist society. Again, a stateless society does not equate to an unorganized one, many people volunteered their time to help down there, why is a state necessary(despite the age or time) to organize a disaster response?
4) How would a stateless society deal with ethnic/religious/cultural tensions ?
Naturally, A truly stateless society would be world wide. There is a strong tradition of internationalism among the far left and several forces causing people to mix, and peacefully. The disassociation from a person's expression and their ethnic/religion/cultural beliefs is becoming more apparent due to newer forms of communication, causing them to be less of a barrier. A relationship is formed before one becomes aware of such things, as such they become secondary and inconsequential. Such an attitude is being increasingly passed on to the younger generations currently. If the trend continues there won't be any significant cultural/religions/ethnic tensions by the time technology allows for a stateless society. The production method that is likely to develop(a commutative free open source one) would counter act any dislike for a particular group that might magically develop.
5 ) How would a stateless society deal with natural disasters like hurricanes,tornadoes, etc ?
The same way as a oil spill.
6) How would a stateless society deal with organized crime ?
what crime?
Most of your questions are questions concerning how would current society cope with losing its state, not with how a stateless society would operate.
To put it simply, it is the state of things where coercion is disadvantageous and is naturally rooted out of society.
"Put simply", anarchy is a society in which there is no authority. We call this "barbarism". We submit that coercion abounds in the society you describe. Power in an anarchist society is decided by strength. As such, anarchy cannot exist for long, before the strong subjugate the weak, and the weak fight back. The victor shall assume authority and the anarchy will vanish. Reversion merely restarts the cycle.
Technology can theoretically eliminate the causes of many social problems, reducing any state into something unrecognizable as a government.
This will likely create a technocracy. If this did not occur, who would dispense justice? Who would pay for infrastructure? How would universal healthcare be provided? These services require organisation. Organisation requires authority.
would there be an organized army?
We understand the scenario to be that a non-anarchist state has invaded the lands of anarchistic peoples.
if so, then why wouldn't the stateless society have one as well?
Doubtful. We cannot see how it would be financed, how it would be deployed and organised, or how it would be commanded, without any form of authority.
is a state needed to deal with a famine or plague?
Organisation is required to deal with such. As aforesaid, organisation is impossible without authority.
British petroleum would be considered as a coercive agent(unless your speaking to a black and yellow "capitalist anarchist") and wouldn't exist in a truly anarchist society.
We theorize that your anarchist society requires oil. The entity responsible for extracting it is irrelevant, private or otherwise. If an offshore platform explodes, an oil spill must be dealt with, whether corporations exist or not (and we recall that it was the - albeit reluctantly given - resources of that corporation that financed the relief operation).
Again, a stateless society does not equate to an unorganized one
In reality, it does.
, many people volunteered their time to help down there, why is a state necessary(despite the age or time) to organize a disaster response?
Because time is only one of the resources required for such an operation. How many volunteers brought heavy machinery?
Naturally, A truly stateless society would be world wide.
We see no reason for this. It need only exist in Russia to have all the resources it requires.
The same way as a oil spill.
Cleaning birds?
what crime?
Without authority, there is opportunity. One man has a car. The other man does not. He kills the first man and takes his car. There are no police to apprehend him, and no laws by which to charge him. Thus it could be said that there is no crime per se, but that is not what the question meant.
Most of your questions are questions concerning how would current society cope with losing its state, not with how a stateless society would operate.
That is not entirely correct. You were merely required to outline the responses that would be pursued. You have mostly failed to do so (save on question 4, but we do not like this question).
I can pick numerous examples which proves your premise false, but the most prevalent are probably sports
Team sports involve captains and managers - leaders - to organize the team and coordinate tactics. The others obey because they want to win, and do not want to be kicked from the team. This constitutes coercion.
The others do not necessarily obey due to the threat of being kicked from the team, nor does such a threat necessarily constitute coercion.
It is common where I've from for such sports as basketball, kickball, team tag, etc to occur spontaneously during the summer often times with no leadership but by consensus or mutual cooperative action. Sledding and snow ball fights occur in a similar fashion during winter, etc. All without requiring someone to ever coerce others into joining.
friends do many things: watching movies together, mixed martial arts, art, cooking together, gift giving, book reviews, etc. All can require some type of organization yet not necessarily coercion.
The others do not necessarily obey due to the threat of being kicked from the team
We are not debating heroic leadership here.
nor does such a threat necessarily constitute coercion.
We suggest you educate yourself on the meaning of coercion. "The practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats".
It is common where I've from for such sports as basketball, kickball, team tag, etc to occur spontaneously during the summer often times with no leadership but by consensus or mutual cooperative action.
Regardless of this, a spontaneous game of football cannot be equated to the running of a nation, unless one begins with only the players and is required to acquire the necessary resources and facilities to play it.
watching movies together, mixed martial arts, art, cooking together, gift giving, book reviews, etc.
All of these activities avail of resources provided by an ordered society and as such cannot be equated to anarchy.
The threat may not be persuading, the threat may be persuading someone to do what is impossible, etc.
Its not being equated to running a nation.
Anarchy is an ordered society, but a different kind then what you can apparently imagine. Also, by your own reasoning anarchy would come after "ordered society" and thus have access to the resources that came from it.
also by your own definition a threat does not necessarily constitute coercion.
We are afraid that in our understanding and the understanding of our Reader's Digest Universal Dictionary, a threat does constitute coercion when it is used to effect or inhibit behaviour in another, as in the case described.
Its not being equated to running a nation.
Running a nation is not solely achieved through coercion, but also appeasement.
Anarchy is an ordered society
Anarchy is a "state of disorder brought about by the absence of or refusal to acknowledge authority". We submit that either you do not understand the societal model, or you have mislabelled it anarchy.
Also, by your own reasoning anarchy would come after "ordered society" and thus have access to the resources that came from it.
We submit that without collective, organised effort, it is impossible to obtain the required amount of oil, food, water (to name but a few) to sustain a substantial population. We would like to know how you believe infrastructure would be maintained, healthcare and education provided and justice dispensed without a properly funded public service.
also by your own definition a threat does not necessarily constitute coercion.
We are afraid that in our understanding and the understanding of our Reader's Digest Universal Dictionary, a threat does constitute coercion when it is used to effect or inhibit behaviour in another, as in the case described.
Its not being equated to running a nation.
Running a nation is not solely achieved through coercion, but also appeasement.
Anarchy is an ordered society
Anarchy is a "state of disorder brought about by the absence of or refusal to acknowledge authority". We submit that either you do not understand the societal model, or you have mislabelled it anarchy.
Also, by your own reasoning anarchy would come after "ordered society" and thus have access to the resources that came from it.
We submit that without collective, organised effort, it is impossible to obtain the required amount of oil, food, water (to name but a few) to sustain a substantial population. We would like to know how you believe infrastructure would be maintained, healthcare and education provided and justice dispensed without a properly funded public service.
"Put simply", anarchy is a society in which there is no authority. We call this "barbarism". We submit that coercion abounds in the society you describe. Power in an anarchist society is decided by strength. As such, anarchy cannot exist for long, before the strong subjugate the weak, and the weak fight back. The victor shall assume authority and the anarchy will vanish. Reversion merely restarts the cycle.
Cannot agree more. The lack of a successful and lasting anarchy only works against the anarchist.
Anarchy, as the "Utopian ideal" is actually quite reasonable. To put it simply, it is the state of things where coercion is disadvantageous and is naturally rooted out of society.
Since we are speaking of human society it is obvious therefore that anarchy can never achieve a state of things where coercion is disadvantageous. Indeed, it is the nature of our biology as beings with innate diversity of skill and strength, and the nature of reality as resources are distributed unevenly and that resources lead to positive feedback in accumulation, which both prevent anarchy from ever being able to exist for any extended period without degenerating into rule by force.
I disagree that it is the nature of reality that resources are distributed unevenly, nor that possession necessarily leads to positive feedback of accumulation. Rather those are due to a type of economic model, which is ultimately based on the technology which defines the means of production. I see no reason why technology can not change so that ultimately resources can be better distributed. If you follow the trends, it is exactly what is happening. If the current trends of technological change continues, not only will many people have their own publication, document, education, etc machines in their pockets but they will have little factories in their homes, combined with a cooperative resource distribution and harvesting social structure(like what is now prevalent with information), many resources would be abundant. The current basis of our economic system can be eliminated, scarcity is not inherent in our existence.
I disagree that it is the nature of reality that resources are distributed unevenly
Why should you? It is only evidenced throughout all of human history and day to day life.
Rather those are due to a type of economic model, which is ultimately based on the technology which defines the means of production.
The reality is that, regardless of technology, Earth has limited resources. Unless you have discovered some means of FTL travel, we suggest you revise your societal views.
I see no reason why technology can not change so that ultimately resources can be better distributed.
Nor do we, if fabrication technology is possible, but this does not account for a person or group of persons desiring more than their "fair share" of the resources, and taking those of others.
If the current trends of technological change continues, not only will many people have their own publication, document, education, etc machines in their pockets but they will have little factories in their homes, combined with a cooperative resource distribution and harvesting social structure(like what is now prevalent with information)
We submit that unless, unbeknownst to us, communism has become attainable and thence sustainable, it is impossible for a situation not to arise whereby the persons in charge of manufacturing such technology do not acquire significantly more resources than are enjoyed by the consumers. We suggest also that, regardless of the viability of communism, organisation would still be required, thereby rendering anarchy unviable.
What is, theoretically, to stop some people allying and combining their resources to manufacture an army of robots whereby to steal the resources of others?
The current basis of our economic system can be eliminated, scarcity is not inherent in our existence.
The current basis of our economic system is supply and demand. We shall therefore examine Uranium.
The exact global reserve of Uranium is neither known to us or relevant, but the fact is that if all the world's uranium were divided equally among the world's inhabitants, nuclear power stations would be impossible to supply without an alliance between a significant number of people. As we are basing our conjecture upon an anarchistic society, such an alliance cannot exist without abolishing the anarchy. We submit that the very same is true of all resources.
If something appears to be evidenced constantly, that in no way is evidence that it is inherent to reality. For example gravity is evidently about as strong here as it has ever been since humans have experienced it, does that mean gravity is of the same strength every where in the universe? no, if we travel elsewhere we would notice a change. So lets travel to the small scale. If you and some friends are enjoying some pizza, you all could agree on an even distribution of the pizza with no problems on implementing such an agreement. The problem is merely scale, all we need are the proper tools to handle the large task before us and then it will seem as trivial as sharing a pizza.
limited resources do not equate to scarce resources.
Or in other words you do not see how better technology could stop a group from implementing coercion or force in order to acquire resources?
What of a situation where consumers are the manufacturers?
what is the theoretical base for people to magically build a army of robots to "steal" the resources of others?
Supply and demand is only relevant to prices, money, capital, etc if there is not enough supply for the demand(ie if there is scarcity). If supply grossly exceeds demand, then the item is free.
What if power stations are cheap and efficient, and everyone could use their uranium to fuel their own power station?
If something appears to be evidenced constantly, that in no way is evidence that it is inherent to reality.
However when the fundamental condition remains the same (I.E, we are dealing with humans), it does.
For example gravity is evidently about as strong here as it has ever been since humans have experienced it, does that mean gravity is of the same strength every where in the universe?
No, it means that gravity has a fixed value on Earth, equating to a fixed human nature in humans. We notice once again your inability to use analogies. There are two directly proportional variables, mass and gravity in the analogy; species and the nature of the species in the reality.
If you and some friends are enjoying some pizza, you all could agree on an even distribution of the pizza with no problems on implementing such an agreement.
If we paid an equal share for the pizza, yes. But that is because we are part of an alliance. If a rival gang were to enter and try to steal the pizza, your utopia breaks down. The same would happen on a larger scale in an anarchistic society, except in that case, there would be no police.
The problem is merely scale, all we need are the proper tools to handle the large task before us and then it will seem as trivial as sharing a pizza.
We enquire as to how your pizza analogy explains the provision of healthcare, roads, schools and water?
limited resources do not equate to scarce resources.
That is irrelevant. All that is required for our scenario to stand is for a stronger individual to covet the resources of a weaker individual and then take them by force, which has been observed countless time throughout history. No matter how advanced human technology becomes, this has never changed.
Or in other words you do not see how better technology could stop a group from implementing coercion or force in order to acquire resources?
We have observed throughout history that technological disparity always leads to coercion. Your model suggests that no group, from an even technological footing, could advance beyond the others, which is patently nonsense.
What of a situation where consumers are the manufacturers?
How much do you know about manufacturing washing machines? What about fixing them? In the age where technology is indispensable, knowledge of that technology is the ultimate power. Your model seems to imply that every person in the anarchistic society will somehow know everything about the most complicated technology ever devised.
what is the theoretical base for people to magically build a army of robots to "steal" the resources of others?
What is the theoretical base for providing mass fabrication technology (the key to your entire model) without advanced robotics?
Supply and demand is only relevant to prices, money, capital, etc if there is not enough supply for the demand(ie if there is scarcity). If supply grossly exceeds demand, then the item is free.
But when all resources evenly divided, the supply does not necessarily outstrip demand. Enterprising individuals will forever require disproportionate resources.
What if power stations are cheap and efficient, and everyone could use their uranium to fuel their own power station?
Unless everybody has, unbeknownst to us, become a nuclear physicist and understands nuclear fission (which is fascinating stuff, incidentally), we submit that this scenario would require a class of technologically adept individuals to maintain and service these plants. This would lead to a technocracy.
I disagree that it is the nature of reality that resources are distributed unevenly, nor that possession necessarily leads to positive feedback of accumulation.
Then you disagree with reality, for these are fundamental points used to develop the biological theory of evolution, and it is a readily observed phenomenon that when you acquire a form of wealth, that this wealth enables you to more readily obtain more of it.
Rather those are due to a type of economic model, which is ultimately based on the technology which defines the means of production. I see no reason why technology can not change so that ultimately resources can be better distributed.
You are confusing the way things are, with how they ought to be. Growing order while fighting entropy is technically impossible in our universe, but nature allows the possibility of using available energy to offset entropy so that order may be maintained temporarily while placing entropy elsewhere. This is what you are observing now. Resources are scarce and unevenly distributed, and any means to make an ordered, equal society merely offsets the natural social costs elsewhere until that pool of labour is depleted.
If the current trends of technological change continues, not only will many people have their own publication, document, education, etc machines in their pockets but they will have little factories in their homes,
We are able to have these technologies in our homes because we exploit cheap labour in poor countries to make it affordable to us. If the world behaved this way, the price of technologies like these would begin to reflect their true costs and there would be a wider gap between the wealthy and poor in terms of who can afford these technologies.
The current basis of our economic system can be eliminated, scarcity is not inherent in our existence.
Resources are not data. Life does not behave like the internet.
Like Communism, Socialism and Plato's Republic; Utopian societies like Anarchy are completely retarded.
I mean, some people like to say "looks good on paper, but doesn't work in real life". No, this shit looked retarded on paper, as well.
Really? Eliminate government? Did you think this through, you dumb fucks?
The only people I could say that could survive through Anarchy would be the Skin Heads and other Gang members. Anyone who doesn't join a gang is pretty much fucked. And even so, does living in a gang really sound like the way of life that you want? Gangs are for people with last resorts. Under Anarchy, it's either join a gang or get fucked over... and often times, the latter is the only choice.
Modern day Anarchists have no idea on what they're talking about. And often times, what they describe isn't even real anarchy. Fuckin' idiots.
Although calling your opponent an idiot in debate never wins the topic, I must make an exception in this case because it seems that by engaging anarchists in serious conversation, one only makes them feel as though they have an intelligent thought worth debating.
I personally believe that Anarchy is a Utopian ideal which cannot be reached. The following questions reflect why I am skeptical of a stateless society.
First and foremost, anarchism, in the sense I am using the word, is basically just anti-statism (some would say decentralized statism, but whatever). Given my following proposition I am saying little more than what works naturally emerges. This is in no way a "Utopian ideal". A "Utopian ideal" is expecting one single political philosophy to competently solve the problems arising in society. Given that society is dynamic while ideology is static, this is impossible and therefore a mere "Utopian ideal".
anyway,
1) How would a stateless society deal with an invasion by an organized army ?
This argument has been done to death. Since there is no centralized governing power there is no state head to make "surrender" to you, therefore making invasion a matter of conquering hundreds of individuals rather than one state.
Besides that, guerrilla armies will form in response to the invaders and since the guerrillas have public support while the invaders do not it becomes nearly impossible for the invading nation to destroy the opposing army.
Already this threat is virtually moot and we haven't even yet considered the problems one is faced with when trying to establish a state when there was none to begin with.
2) How would a Stateless society deal with famine or plague?
This is a strange argument as these things are not caused by anarchism. Just google for reasonable ways for you personally to survive these things and you'll have your answer.
3) How would a stateless society deal with environmental disasters like the recent one involving British Petroleum ?
The BP oil spill happened because as our economy is set up now it is more cost efficient to skip the safety stuff and deal with disasters if they happen. Given the demand for clean water isn't predicated on the state, it's safe to assume that such a problem would be dealt with with or without a state.
4) How would a stateless society deal with ethnic/religious/cultural tensions ?
Since everyone wouldn't be financially tethered together via taxation, this sort of tension wouldn't exist (that is, it wouldn't be statistically significant). When you don't force persons whom don't want to be together to stay together, they don't. Problem solved.
5 ) How would a stateless society deal with natural disasters like hurricanes,tornadoes, etc ?
Again, these problems aren't caused by anarchism, so the only reasonable assumption would be that whatever is the most logical way for individuals to deal with such things (google search it) is how they will respond.
6) How would a stateless society deal with organized crime ?
First thing you need to understand is that most organized crime emerges in response to the state. They supply a market otherwise repressed by the state (prostitutes, drugs, etc.). Without a state to repress the market there would be no need for mafias, thus none emerge.
When it comes to mafias designed solely to establish coercive power, consider my answer to your first question.
First and foremost, anarchism, in the sense I am using the word, is basically just anti-statism (some would say decentralized statism, but whatever).
Without defining a state it seems like you're on course for a circular definition.
This argument has been done to death. Since there is no centralized governing power there is no state head to make "surrender" to you, therefore making invasion a matter of conquering hundreds of individuals rather than one state.
Actually not. Since people naturally band together into factions, it's merely a matter of making those factions surrender to your terms. Examples include present-day Somalia and its Islamic factions, Christian factions and transitional government, and in Gaelic Ireland the clans. In both examples we see factions of many individuals which makes conquest easier to outside forces because divided forces lack the resources of the whole.
Besides that, guerrilla armies will form in response to the invaders and since the guerrillas have public support while the invaders do not it becomes nearly impossible for the invading nation to destroy the opposing army.
It isn't a matter of destroying all of the opposing army but crippling it by conquering strategic points, and then winning a war of attrition. Divided factions are smaller and thus more susceptible to individual conquest, so unless your anarchy is completely homogeneous and redundant in its distribution of infrastructure and factories, guerrilla warfare will chiefly be reserved for offense and does not work as effectively for defense of strategic points.
Already this threat is virtually moot and we haven't even yet considered the problems one is faced with when trying to establish a state when there was none to begin with.
States arise very naturally. The problem you face is explaining to us all the magic that keeps factions from merging together to form a single government. Indeed states are so natural, this is why anarchy is never really used to describe a political region except to imply chaos or a state of politics that is in transition. This is why you have to redefine anarchy in your preface to mean something else entirely (the anti-state, whatever that is).
This is a strange argument as these things are not caused by anarchism.
He's asking, that without a central authority to manage a crisis, how an anarchy deals with it.
Just google for reasonable ways for you personally to survive these things and you'll have your answer.
So an anarchy in famine or plague becomes even more chaotic as people act with even more selfishness to hoard resources, medicine, comfort items, etc.
That's why states exist to impose order. When you have a bunch of rival authorities competing with each other during crisis you lose lives to violence caused by political opportunism, greed, and panic.
The BP oil spill happened because as our economy is set up now it is more cost efficient to skip the safety stuff and deal with disasters if they happen.
It's always more cost-efficient to skip safety and protocol regardless of regulations, laws, and economy. The point of regulations is to try and offset that cost-efficiency with a huge fine and jail time, so that companies reconsider in their profit-planning activities.
Given the demand for clean water isn't predicated on the state, it's safe to assume that such a problem would be dealt with with or without a state.
Except it won't. A clean environment, and waterways, are not chief concerns in the capitalist model. You can fudge the issue by throwing around ideas like customer choice and market selection but 19th Century London gave us a great idea of how businesses in an unregulated market behave towards rivers and environment despite these.
Since everyone wouldn't be financially tethered together via taxation, this sort of tension wouldn't exist (that is, it wouldn't be statistically significant).
I struck gold. I'm saving this line to tell my friends, they're going to laugh SO hard at that one (taxes cause sectarianism and racism, who woulda thunk it?).
Since I already know that NOTHING that I or anyone can say will shake you of your anarcho-capitalist delusion at this point, and because what you just said is so egregious with its denial of fundamental reality, I think I won't even address it. 99% of people who read what you typed here will just say to themselves "WTF" and move on.
When you don't force persons whom don't want to be together to stay together, they don't. Problem solved.
I will say, however, that when people retreat into their segregated cultures, they will tend to spiral into a sort of supremacist ideology and this often seems to evolve into tendencies to force themselves of other, inferior, cultures. Just look at Somalia and the Islamists there.
Again, these problems aren't caused by anarchism, so the only reasonable assumption would be that whatever is the most logical way for individuals to deal with such things (google search it) is how they will respond.
So they'll hoard supplies, kill each other over water, and smash windows.
First thing you need to understand is that most organized crime emerges in response to the state.
Nope. Try again. Remember that people naturally form groups, and that organised crime is merely one of these groups. When the activities are illegal we call it organised crime (duh), when the activities are legitimate we call it a business or corporation. Or a club, organisation, charity, etc.
They supply a market otherwise repressed by the state (prostitutes, drugs, etc.).
They supply a good or service which is profitable. As long as it maintains profitability, they will continue to provide it. The Mafia isn't attracted to the danger of illegality.
Without a state to repress the market there would be no need for mafias, thus none emerge.
You're just advocating an entire region of lawlessness, because as per your argument the moment a (state) law emerges the mafia will come into power to undercut it. I guess this must mean that private police forces (your idea) cause mafias to exist as well because they repress the truly free (lawless, unrestrained) market. Maybe you want a market so unrestrained, though, that genocide, murder, rape and molestation are bought and sold without remorse. After all, if these are restrained by private police, it means the mafia must now provide it illicitly.
When it comes to mafias designed solely to establish coercive power, consider my answer to your first question.
Coercion is living is a pseudostate where the wealthy have better police and court protection, per law, than you. It is where none of your rights or freedoms exist on paper enumerated and defended by the powerful as such. It is where being raped, enslaved, or beaten doesn't get a criminal convicted but refusing to honor his contract does instead. Savage is the mind of someone who considers our nations, which exist to protect us from these things, coercive for doing so.
You took your sweet time with this. I figured this would've started hours after I posted. I really hope this isn't just a re-treading of arguments you've already tried...
Without defining a state it seems like you're on course for a circular definition.
Consider a state as a body capable of making laws as opposed to taking laws (emergent-ism). There's always going to be a layer of subjectiveness to this because the root problem isn't states themselves, but ego.
Actually not. Since people naturally band together into factions, it's merely a matter of making those factions surrender to your terms. Examples include present-day Somalia and its Islamic factions, Christian factions and transitional government, and in Gaelic Ireland the clans. In both examples we see factions of many individuals which makes conquest easier to outside forces because divided forces lack the resources of the whole.
Armies don't come about over night. In the case of a total free-market, you have to establish some sort of psychological obedience to a level not achievable without a pre existing state. Other than that, the only way is to work up the funds to pay off a bunch of guys to be your soldiers. Since there is no pre-set psychological drive for these men to risk their lives for you (as with a state) the price for each soldier would be ridiculous as it would literally have to be a sum equal to or higher than these men value their own lives. Not to mention persons are greedy and will automatically bump up their price to as high as the highest hold out.
But, assuming you do have the funding (somehow...) you still have the problem of finding persons to be your soldiers. You'd have to advertise that you're raising an army and what you plan on attacking. This will almost instantly give off a warning to the target town and cause them to arm up. Not to mention the persons of this town likely have family from other parts that would be more than willing to come protect them.
Put yourself in the situation of a person trying to raise an army in a free market. It's totally unrealistic to assume such a thing would work. Even if somehow you do everything right and conquer this town, at the end of the day your left nearly broke with nothing but rubble and wounded soldiers to show for it.
It isn't a matter of destroying all of the opposing army but crippling it by conquering strategic points, and then winning a war of attrition. Divided factions are smaller and thus more susceptible to individual conquest, so unless your anarchy is completely homogeneous and redundant in its distribution of infrastructure and factories, guerrilla warfare will chiefly be reserved for offense and does not work as effectively for defense of strategic points.
Well, I'm glad you're gong at this from a different angle. Otherwise this would get very boring, very fast.
1. What do you mean by "homogeneous"? All one race?
2. If the infrastructure and factory placement is the way it is specifically to protect the town, then it isn't redundant.
3. Offense and defense aren't necessarily opposites. You can successfully defend a town by bringing the fight to your enemy fist, it's an old tactic. Given that most hired militia don't have the ingrained psychological drive of mind-fucked statist soldiers it's very likely that this paid army would disband upon finding out it's now a matter of facing an opposing army and not just vroom-vroom bang-bang.
Statist armies would take longer to fend off, but since no one likes being conquered, it's safe to assume a strong backlash regardless of if the opposing army is statist or emergent. Also consider how difficult it is to have a conquered state submit to a new power. How well do you see an anti-statist nation obeying a violent, coercive state?
So an anarchy in famine or plague becomes even more chaotic as people act with even more selfishness to hoard resources, medicine, comfort items, etc.
That's why states exist to impose order. When you have a bunch of rival authorities competing with each other during crisis you lose lives to violence caused by political opportunism, greed, and panic.
Each person behaving in their own rational self interest =/= chaos. It just so happens that the well being of a person's surroundings IS in the rational self interest of the individual. Understand, states are only able to deal with things like famine because there is universally operational demand for such problems to be dealt with. the demand exists with or without the state so a solution that best helps everyone get back to normal will alway be the primary objective.
It's always more cost-efficient to skip safety and protocol regardless of regulations, laws, and economy. The point of regulations is to try and offset that cost-efficiency with a huge fine and jail time, so that companies reconsider in their profit-planning activities.
Those things you're talking about aren't "regulations", they're state controls. regulation implies "to keep regular", which is whatever happens naturally. I'm not opposed to regulation, but understand regulation is an emergent thing. Top-down does the opposite of regulate things.
In the case of a free-market, companies that remain opaque do not get business. Transparent companies that don't have their shit together also don't get business. Therefore, it would NOT be cost-efficient to skip safety protocol in a stateless society. Persons today count on the state solely to protect them from this sort of behavior, but since that state is just one entity (as opposed to many investigative firms) it is easy to bribe your way out of the expensive safety stuff.
If I were you, I would've flipped my shit over the lack of state foresight. It's their sole responsibility in our situation to both wirte up and enforce their own regulations. So, either the state hasn't been doing it's job (taking bribes, impunity, etc.) or these so called "regulations" are written in such a way they actually enables catastrophes such as the BP oil spill (taking bribes, impunity... you get the picture).
Except it won't. A clean environment, and waterways, are not chief concerns in the capitalist model. You can fudge the issue by throwing around ideas like customer choice and market selection but 19th Century London gave us a great idea of how businesses in an unregulated market behave towards rivers and environment despite these.
Given that non-statist organizations voluntarily assisted in the BP oil spill anyway, you'd be a fool to deny such an obvious demand.
Also, the water situation in the 19th century was brought about by general ignorance of what caused disease. You can rest assured that if such a firm behaved in such a manner today, it would fail horribly. That is, assuming it;s not protected by the state...
I struck gold. I'm saving this line to tell my friends, they're going to laugh SO hard at that one (taxes cause sectarianism and racism, who woulda thunk it?).
Since I already know that NOTHING that I or anyone can say will shake you of your anarcho-capitalist delusion at this point, and because what you just said is so egregious with its denial of fundamental reality, I think I won't even address it. 99% of people who read what you typed here will just say to themselves "WTF" and move on.
No, you've totally failed to understand what I'm saying. If memory serves, you do this a lot. I'm not saying that taxation causes racism, I'm saying that it aggravates racial and ethnic tensions. This isn't even a controversial statement, take a trip over to stormfront and you'll see 90% of their arguments for segregation involve the inflated black and Hispanic welfare statistics. Check out the black nationalists arguments and you`ll see very much the same thing, except it`s about whites hoarding all the cash and oppressing their ghettos.
If you`d take the time to actually read what I type instead of jumping to conclusions, you wouldn`t say such foolish things.
I will say, however, that when people retreat into their segregated cultures, they will tend to spiral into a sort of supremacist ideology and this often seems to evolve into tendencies to force themselves of other, inferior, cultures. Just look at Somalia and the Islamists there.
This is leading up to the same basic argument addressed in the first couple segments of this post.
Nope. Try again. Remember that people naturally form groups, and that organized crime is merely one of these groups. When the activities are illegal we call it organized crime (duh), when the activities are legitimate we call it a business or corporation. Or a club, organization, charity, etc.
Without a repressed market, all demands can be supplied with no problem. A firm only needs state-like oppressive behavior if the demand it supplies is in turn oppressed by the state. Crayola has to army because it doesn't need one.
They supply a good or service which is profitable. As long as it maintains profitability, they will continue to provide it. The Mafia isn't attracted to the danger of illegality.
I fail to see how this is an argument against me. My point exactly is that these goods/services are provided regardless of their legality, but when branded illegal by the state, it requires state-like violence and force to keep these supplies kicking around.
You're just advocating an entire region of lawlessness, because as per your argument the moment a (state) law emerges the mafia will come into power to undercut it. I guess this must mean that private police forces (your idea) cause mafias to exist as well because they repress the truly free (lawless, unrestrained) market. Maybe you want a market so unrestrained, though, that genocide, murder, rape and molestation are bought and sold without remorse. After all, if these are restrained by private police, it means the mafia must now provide it illicitly.
Again, you don't understand. Given that law will be governed by what has universally operational support, prostitution and drugs will very likely not be illegal. Since things like opposition to murder and rape have operationally universal support, they will be illegal.
Coercion is living is a pseudo state where the wealthy have better police and court protection, per law, than you. It is where none of your rights or freedoms exist on paper enumerated and defended by the powerful as such. It is where being raped, enslaved, or beaten doesn't get a criminal convicted but refusing to honor his contract does instead. Savage is the mind of someone who considers our nations, which exist to protect us from these things, coercive for doing so.
As per usual you flush out numerous assertions with no argument supporting them. I've debated you for months now and you utter lack of understanding of my position at this point tells me you've been totally ignoring everything I've said and have just been childishly bashing your pots and pans together.
I can see though, that you're still in the 16th century mind-set that criminals will become non-criminals though kidnapping, torture and imprisonment.
You took your sweet time with this. I figured this would've started hours after I posted. I really hope this isn't just a re-treading of arguments you've already tried...
What are you, my girlfriend or something?
Consider a state as a body capable of making laws as opposed to taking laws (emergent-ism). There's always going to be a layer of subjectiveness to this because the root problem isn't states themselves, but ego.
You need a better definition otherwise the rest of your beliefs fall apart quickly. If it is the ability to make laws, then anyone with power has made a government.
Armies don't come about over night. In the case of a total free-market, you have to establish some sort of psychological obedience to a level not achievable without a pre existing state. Other than that, the only way is to work up the funds to pay off a bunch of guys to be your soldiers. Since there is no pre-set psychological drive for these men to risk their lives for you (as with a state) the price for each soldier would be ridiculous as it would literally have to be a sum equal to or higher than these men value their own lives. Not to mention persons are greedy and will automatically bump up their price to as high as the highest hold out.
Which are all additional reasons that a stateless society is more vulnerable to conquest.
Unless of course you use indoctrination and propaganda.
Put yourself in the situation of a person trying to raise an army in a free market. It's totally unrealistic to assume such a thing would work. Even if somehow you do everything right and conquer this town, at the end of the day your left nearly broke with nothing but rubble and wounded soldiers to show for it.
People are able to form associations, which grow into factions. It doesn't necessarily require wealth to do this, charisma works as well. This is why an anarchy emerges into a state. If we look at Somalia, we see that factions formed after the fall of the government and those factions have been fighting to re-establish a dominant state.
However, against an existing state this is a severe handicap because you're still fighting internal factions while your enemy state is amassing an army.
1. What do you mean by "homogeneous"? All one race?
Homogeneous means equal division, placement. A homogeneous city would look the same wherever you go.
3. Offense and defense aren't necessarily opposites. You can successfully defend a town by bringing the fight to your enemy fist, it's an old tactic
You are conflating a purpose with a meaning to make the words offense and defense the same thing. I suggest that you limit the scope of your definitions before contrasting them.
Given that most hired militia don't have the ingrained psychological drive of mind-fucked statist soldiers it's very likely that this paid army would disband upon finding out it's now a matter of facing an opposing army and not just vroom-vroom bang-bang.
Fudging. I suggest you learn more about what drives military minds. It usually is part of the culture to place honor and duty in performing the function, above compensation. Your anarcho-capitalist society uses loyalty to factions, and is more prone towards mercenary armies.
Also consider how difficult it is to have a conquered state submit to a new power. How well do you see an anti-statist nation obeying a violent, coercive state?
I think that having reliable medicine, food, clean water, civil reforms, and elections is more incentive to support the conquerors than the memory of violent sectarian society which is the soul of anarchism.
Remember that in an anarchy you have no rights because there isn't an unequivocal authority defining them and defending them. A state brings people actual rights which are defended with force, rather than taken away by it like in anarchism (look at Somalia for this, with Islamist factions taking away Christians' rights at whim, this would be unforgivable in a state).
Each person behaving in their own rational self interest =/= chaos.
It is the definition of chaos because it is self-interest which drives these people to steal from others, and kill each other over goods. Your use of rational is a fudge-word because we both know that what people consider rational during times of panic varies a great deal and it is this which causes chaos. You will proceed to use the word to disqualify those behaviours which you disagree with from entering your utopia.
It just so happens that the well being of a person's surroundings IS in the rational self interest of the individual.
Not during times of panic, greed, or when the surroundings lose ownership to everyone (Tragedy of the Commons).
The BP Oil Leak is an example of this, and so were the waterways in 19th century London.
Understand, states are only able to deal with things like famine because there is universally operational demand for such problems to be dealt with.
States are able to deal with the problems because they have authority in the form of police and military. These things are very good at keeping social chaos in check.
the demand exists with or without the state so a solution that best helps everyone get back to normal will alway be the primary objective.
People do not think alike, operate as a collective, and are motivated by selfishness and greed. This is what makes your assessment invalid.
Those things you're talking about aren't "regulations", they're state controls. regulation implies "to keep regular", which is whatever happens naturally. I'm not opposed to regulation, but understand regulation is an emergent thing. Top-down does the opposite of regulate things.
You didn't actually refute my argument, you just redefined the words and changed the topic.
In the case of a free-market, companies that remain opaque do not get business.
This is just a blunt assertion that verges on being a lie. Business is entirely about keeping your methods, dealings, research, and investments hidden. When you are transparent, it means that you are open to the world for imitation, which is poison to capitalist business since your ability to make profit is based on being as unique as possible in serving a demand.
What do you think proprietary technology, intellectual property, trademarks, and industrial espionage are?
Transparent companies that don't have their shit together also don't get business. Therefore, it would NOT be cost-efficient to skip safety protocol in a stateless society.
Again with the blatant lies.
Back in the 19th century something called patent medicines were common as well as nefarious for being quackery. They were basically unresearched concoctions sold as cure-alls. Proper ethics demand that when you claim your medicine cures a disease (much less every disease or many diseases), you follow through with clinical trials in order to determine effectiveness and at the very least you use a large pool of double-blind trials and safety tests. However this is very costly (why do you think medicine is so expensive?) and it is a long process because it's actual science. What did patent medicine companies and salesmen do? They just made claims without testing them. Buyer beware.
Then we get into factories. Back in those days, there were no laws or organisations like OSHA. So what happened? No safety guards near hazardous machinery. You just had to be observant while working and extremely careful to not get maimed. Again, investing in proper safety costs extra money (replacing broken or worn machinery, training your employees, etc.), and the factory which doesn't use safety has all those extra costs as profit.
Persons today count on the state solely to protect them from this sort of behavior, but since that state is just one entity (as opposed to many investigative firms) it is easy to bribe your way out of the expensive safety stuff.
As opposed to bribing, intimidating, or purchasing stock into a bunch of small-fish safety organisations.
If I were you, I would've flipped my shit over the lack of state foresight. It's their sole responsibility in our situation to both wirte up and enforce their own regulations. So, either the state hasn't been doing it's job (taking bribes, impunity, etc.) or these so called "regulations" are written in such a way they actually enables catastrophes such as the BP oil spill (taking bribes, impunity... you get the picture).
That's why we have humans in charge who amend laws and improve them. We have that luxury while in an anarchy the laws and regulations wouldn't exist in the first place (because the police force would be owned or much smaller than the oil companies).
Given that non-statist organizations voluntarily assisted in the BP oil spill anyway, you'd be a fool to deny such an obvious demand.
The capitalist model only cares about profit, not safety or health. Therefore we will see the same scenario develop as the one which existed in 19th century London.
Also, the water situation in the 19th century was brought about by general ignorance of what caused disease. You can rest assured that if such a firm behaved in such a manner today, it would fail horribly. That is, assuming it;s not protected by the state...
The people who dumped the waste into rivers had no penalties for the behaviour. They knew that hydragyrum and arsenic killed people, they just didn't care because it was a big river that was convenient.
Besides the fact that to this day we still find ourselves fighting companies over surreptitious chemical dumps. What, isn't the market going to bankrupt 3M for its repeated dumping and creation of toxic waste over the decades?
I'm not saying that taxation causes racism, I'm saying that it aggravates racial and ethnic tensions. This isn't even a controversial statement, take a trip over to stormfront and you'll see 90% of their arguments for segregation involve the inflated black and Hispanic welfare statistics. Check out the black nationalists arguments and you`ll see very much the same thing, except it`s about whites hoarding all the cash and oppressing their ghettos.
Maybe you don't actually understand what it is that you are saying. When you say, "Since everyone wouldn't be financially tethered together via taxation, this sort of tension wouldn't exist (that is, it wouldn't be statistically significant)." it implies that all other causes of discrimination (fear, lack of understanding, culture, religion, hatred and sectarianism, etc.) are statistically insignificant to taxation.
You also don't understand human nature. What a bigot uses to explain his racism is merely an intellectual excuse, to keep his mind off of his emotional reasons for hating different people. If taxation ended, he would find another reason to hate them.
Without a repressed market, all demands can be supplied with no problem. A firm only needs state-like oppressive behavior if the demand it supplies is in turn oppressed by the state. Crayola has to army because it doesn't need one.
"All demands" include murder, genocide, torture, extortion, bribery, rape, genocide. If you make these legal then it is a repressed market, and these activities are driven underground.
I fail to see how this is an argument against me. My point exactly is that these goods/services are provided regardless of their legality, but when branded illegal by the state, it requires state-like violence and force to keep these supplies kicking around.
And you don't think that branding these activities as illegal by private police firms will cause the same? The activities that the Mafia engages in (rackets, bribery, extortion, theft, murder, assassination, drugs, counterfeiting, etc.) are all violent and lend themselves to force. They also attract the kind of ruthless people who will use force to suppress rival business (meaning gang warfare).
Again, you don't understand. Given that law will be governed by what has universally operational support, prostitution and drugs will very likely not be illegal. Since things like opposition to murder and rape have operationally universal support, they will be illegal.
Which means that a Mafia will exist to provide the illicit services of rape and murder. In addition to counterfeiting, bribery, protection rackets, etc.
I've debated you for months now and you utter lack of understanding of my position at this point tells me you've been totally ignoring everything I've said and have just been childishly bashing your pots and pans together.
If you pay attention, you will find that I understand your position very well. It's just that I don't subscribe to it, and so I don't have to view the world in a way that is required to support it. I am free to take your premises and run with them to their logical conclusions. You are not. You need to maintain a very idealistic view of society and people so that your ideology can work.
Your ideology operates under very narrow circumstances (everyone acts rationally to the point that they think of everyone's interests ahead of their own, factions only form due to ideology and religion, everyone is a strong individualist who acts out of principle, etc.).
What a stupid thing to say, given how quickly you responded this time. But I guess you're no stranger to saying stupid things. =/
You need a better definition otherwise the rest of your beliefs fall apart quickly. If it is the ability to make laws, then anyone with power has made a government.
First and foremost, "government" does not necessarily equal a state. Government is just something that governs. Emergent law can be called a government because it governs, even though there's no central head to it.
Second, Any group with the ability to make non-emergent laws is technically a state. The degree of which will be up to the individual. A parent enforcing a grounding for not going to bed on time can technically be called statist. Again, the problem is the ego of man, not the states themselves.
Which are all additional reasons that a stateless society is more vulnerable to conquest.
Unless of course you use indoctrination and propaganda.
Not true. The demand for defense is a constant, whilst the demand for an invading army is not. Persons are more willing to protect their livelihood with their lives than money with their lives. If you throw money on top of that, there's no problem. We have police today, don't we? Given, it's not a very good system, but then again it is a statist monopoly.
People are able to form associations, which grow into factions. It doesn't necessarily require wealth to do this, charisma works as well. This is why an anarchy emerges into a state. If we look at Somalia, we see that factions formed after the fall of the government and those factions have been fighting to re-establish a dominant state.
However, against an existing state this is a severe handicap because you're still fighting internal factions while your enemy state is amassing an army.
Okay, I'm not going into Somalia for the billionth time while you've still left my arguments for this unaddressed everywhere in our other debates. If you want to know my counter argument, you already know where to look.
Homogeneous means equal division, placement. A homogeneous city would look the same wherever you go.
Why would this be necessary?
You are conflating a purpose with a meaning to make the words offense and defense the same thing. I suggest that you limit the scope of your definitions before contrasting them.
What the hell are you talking about? I very clearly stated that offense can be a good defensive tactic because it takes the fight away from the town. like how shooting someone successfully defends yourself from being shot by that person.
Fudging. I suggest you learn more about what drives military minds. It usually is part of the culture to place honor and duty in performing the function, above compensation. Your anarcho-capitalist society uses loyalty to factions, and is more prone towards mercenary armies.
Are you saying a group of persons WITH ideologically ingrained obedience to an entity are less likely to create armies than persons without such mind control? Take any two given kids. One has been raised his entire life in military school and has spent that time training for war and worshiping the American flag. The other joins a regular school and experiences nothing out of the ordinary. Which is more likely to risk his life for daddy govmunt?
I think that having reliable medicine, food, clean water, civil reforms, and elections is more incentive to support the conquerors than the memory of violent sectarian society which is the soul of anarchism.
Remember that in an anarchy you have no rights because there isn't an unequivocal authority defining them and defending them. A state brings people actual rights which are defended with force, rather than taken away by it like in anarchism (look at Somalia for this, with Islamist factions taking away Christians' rights at whim, this would be unforgivable in a state).
Such foolishness. You're argument is predicated on the very thing you're still trying to establish. having no rights has the exact same effect as having unlimited rights. Ultimately, regardless of the state, you only have the right you're capable of keeping.
It is the definition of chaos because it is self-interest which drives these people to steal from others, and kill each other over goods. Your use of rational is a fudge-word because we both know that what people consider rational during times of panic varies a great deal and it is this which causes chaos. You will proceed to use the word to disqualify those behaviors which you disagree with from entering your utopia.
Clearly, you don't know the definition of chaos. =/
The ONLY reason why ANYONE does ANYTHING is if it is in their own rational self interest. Selfishness isn't so evil as you think it is. I pay taxes, not because I love the state, but because it's in my own rational self interest to do so. While it may seem to be rational to kill others for goods, the end result is being a social pariah with a target on his head. Perhaps the only thing holding you back from killing others for their pocket change is the state and you would go on a murderous rampage for trivialities if the state took a month off, but no one else I know finds such an act rational or necessary.
Not during times of panic, greed, or when the surroundings lose ownership to everyone (Tragedy of the Commons).
The BP Oil Leak is an example of this, and so were the waterways in 19th century London.
Holy shit, for the last damn time, tragedy of the commons only applies to common land, NOT private land. Private land is the solution to TC. The whole point of TC is to point towards private land as a superior alternative.
States are able to deal with the problems because they have authority in the form of police and military. These things are very good at keeping social chaos in check.
If no body wanted the state to assist them, the state would have a very hard time doing so. If demand for state intervention isn't there, it typically doesn't happen.
People do not think alike, operate as a collective, and are motivated by selfishness and greed. This is what makes your assessment invalid.
If what you say is true, then you've just proved that states cannot work as they are made of persons and according to you, persons are motivated by selfishness and greed and cannot operate as a collective. You've defeated yourself. ;)
Can't wait to see how you twist this.
You didn't actually refute my argument, you just redefined the words and changed the topic
Is your IQ 12 or something? Not only is what you've just written untrue (I went on to address your actual argument IMMEDIATELY after writing that) but you even responded to it! The very next point of yours that I'm going to deal with is in direct response the point you're claiming I ignored! Watch, just watch >
This is just a blunt assertion that verges on being a lie. Business is entirely about keeping your methods, dealings, research, and investments hidden. When you are transparent, it means that you are open to the world for imitation, which is poison to capitalist business since your ability to make profit is based on being as unique as possible in serving a demand.
What do you think proprietary technology, intellectual property, trademarks, and industrial espionage are?
Whoa, holy shit! This comment here is in direct response to my argument against the one you JUST claimed I ignored. Wow, it's almost like I wrote a second paragraph dealing with it or something...
Anyway, there is demand for businesses to be transparent. Therefore companies who want to gain customer trust will allow for their business to be under the microscope. Many businesses do this now even without being required to.
There's an equilibrium between costumer trust and suicidal openness. Most persons only care about if a company is secretly funding an army, or if it murders endangered animals to make it's product or things of that sort, not the specifics of how it puts it's product together. There's no reason to assume this. Besides, getting the seal of approval from many trusted investigative firms would be enough 90% of the time. The firms have no obligation to give out a companies secrets so long as they aren't harming anyone.
Again with the blatant lies.
Back in the 19th century something called patent medicines were common as well as nefarious for being quackery. They were basically unreserved concoctions sold as cure-alls. Proper ethics demand that when you claim your medicine cures a disease (much less every disease or many diseases), you follow through with clinical trials in order to determine effectiveness and at the very least you use a large pool of double-blind trials and safety tests. However this is very costly (why do you think medicine is so expensive?) and it is a long process because it's actual science. What did patent medicine companies and salesmen do? They just made claims without testing them. Buyer beware.
Then we get into factories. Back in those days, there were no laws or organizations like OSHA. So what happened? No safety guards near hazardous machinery. You just had to be observant while working and extremely careful to not get maimed. Again, investing in proper safety costs extra money (replacing broken or worn machinery, training your employees, etc.), and the factory which doesn't use safety has all those extra costs as profit.
Wow! Yet ANOTHER comment made in direct response to the point you claimed I ignored! You're just failing all over yourself today.
1. The industrial revolution is considered to be a step forward form mankind by just about every historian and economist. Also, the raw numbers back up this claim. persons lived longer, made more and had more access to doctors.
2. As already stated, the demand for transparency in the market exists with or without a state. Your concern over this is a proof of it.
As opposed to bribing, intimidating, or purchasing stock into a bunch of small-fish safety organizations.
You can bribe one singular entity who's sole purpose is to secure control much easier than several entities who's sole purpose is to find corruption in business. Remember, these firms compete with each other for respectability. They would LOVE to catch one of their opposing firms taking a bribe. the current state has been shown time and time again to take bribes, but not much can be done about it.
That's why we have humans in charge who amend laws and improve them. We have that luxury while in an anarchy the laws and regulations wouldn't exist in the first place (because the police force would be owned or much smaller than the oil companies).
Lol, this is you FOURTH response to my comment that, according to you, doesn't exist. That's hilarious.
Also, I thought humans where incapable of acting outside of greed and couldn't function in collectives? What happened to that? Now, apparently, humans can do things perfectly well...
Your assumption that oil companies would own the police is unbacked. First of all, this isn't seen to be the case with already private police and without such heavy state interest, oil wouldn't be very big at all.
The capitalist model only cares about profit, not safety or health.
Unless, or course, your profit is defined by the health and safety of others. Like a doctor's, or an engineer's. Did you forget that these professions exist or something?
The people who dumped the waste into rivers had no penalties for the behavior. They knew that hydragyrum and arsenic killed people, they just didn't care because it was a big river that was convenient.
Besides the fact that to this day we still find ourselves fighting companies over surreptitious chemical dumps. What, isn't the market going to bankrupt 3M for its repeated dumping and creation of toxic waste over the decades?
You'll notice, most companies don't do this and several companies attract costumers on the basis that they donate to environmental charities. If companies that do this and don't receive a class action law suit, then either their disposing in a way that doesn't actually hurt anyone, or they have have state protection. This isn't an uncommon or even well hidden event.
Maybe you don't actually understand what it is that you are saying. When you say, "Since everyone wouldn't be financially tethered together via taxation, this sort of tension wouldn't exist (that is, it wouldn't be statistically significant)." it implies that all other causes of discrimination (fear, lack of understanding, culture, religion, hatred and sectarianism, etc.) are statistically insignificant to taxation.
If you don't force persons together, the tension isn't nearly as bad. Once segregation ended, not much changed. It wasn't until forced integration hit the seen that the shit hit the fan. The more you force persons who dislike each other together, the less problems there are. This is basic logic.
You also don't understand human nature. What a bigot uses to explain his racism is merely an intellectual excuse, to keep his mind off of his emotional reasons for hating different people. If taxation ended, he would find another reason to hate them.
The emotions had to come from somewhere. Besides, your assumption is unbacked. One can logically be opposed to illegal immigrants going to our prisons because of financial reasons without emotionally hating Amerindians.
"All demands" include murder, genocide, torture, extortion, bribery, rape, genocide. If you make these legal then it is a repressed market, and these activities are driven underground.
This isn't ancient Rome. The demand to not be raped far out ways the demands for rape and in fact the vast majority of persons opt to have nothing to do with rape. A rape firm wouldn't do so well. Why are you arguing within the market if you don't even understand supply and demand?
And you don't think that branding these activities as illegal by private police firms will cause the same? The activities that the Mafia engages in (rackets, bribery, extortion, theft, murder, assassination, drugs, counterfeiting, etc.) are all violent and lend themselves to force. They also attract the kind of ruthless people who will use force to suppress rival business (meaning gang warfare).
If the drugs and prostitutes become legal, then the theft, murder, extortion etc. becomes unnecessary and quite frankly, detrimental to the firm.
Which means that a Mafia will exist to provide the illicit services of rape and murder. In addition to counterfeiting, bribery, protection rackets, etc.
Anti rape and murder laws have universally operational support. There's no reason to assume a firm could survive on a commercial basis with rape and murder as it's prime service. Mass murdering is an event between states, not firms.
If you pay attention, you will find that I understand your position very well. It's just that I don't subscribe to it, and so I don't have to view the world in a way that is required to support it. I am free to take your premises and run with them to their logical conclusions. You are not. You need to maintain a very idealistic view of society and people so that your ideology can work.
You're projecting. Everything I say is based on logical and historical evidence. If memory serves, all too often where you unable to come up with statistical evidence to support your claims.
our ideology operates under very narrow circumstances (everyone acts rationally to the point that they think of everyone's interests ahead of their own, factions only form due to ideology and religion, everyone is a strong individualist who acts out of principle, etc.).
If this is true, then your argument isn't that the free market cannot work, but merely that mankind will never be smart enough to make it work.
The preface of a free market is that everyone has come to the rational conclusion that the state isn't needed. Mankind has become more rational and individualistic every generation since its antiquity. There's no reason to assume this trend stops here.
Persons are stupid now, but they're all Einsteins compared to ancient man.
What a stupid thing to say, given how quickly you responded this time. But I guess you're no stranger to saying stupid things. =/
Guess it went above your head.
First and foremost, "government" does not necessarily equal a state. Government is just something that governs. Emergent law can be called a government because it governs, even though there's no central head to it.
You need to be more specific because parents, property owners, and renters, etc. are not government.
You'd also better define a state.
Second, Any group with the ability to make non-emergent laws is technically a state. The degree of which will be up to the individual. A parent enforcing a grounding for not going to bed on time can technically be called statist. Again, the problem is the ego of man, not the states themselves.
If your example follows from your definition then your definition is flawed. Try again, narrow the criteria.
Not true. The demand for defense is a constant, whilst the demand for an invading army is not. Persons are more willing to protect their livelihood with their lives than money with their lives. If you throw money on top of that, there's no problem. We have police today, don't we? Given, it's not a very good system, but then again it is a statist monopoly.
A military is not a market problem. This is your handicap, you think of something greater than a market in market terms. Your earlier example of how mercenary operations fail in a free market was an illustration of this. When you are building an army you need more authority than a corporation, and more money than a corporation.
Okay, I'm not going into Somalia for the billionth time while you've still left my arguments for this unaddressed everywhere in our other debates. If you want to know my counter argument, you already know where to look.
Better not address the argument, I guess.
Why would this be necessary?
Isn't it obvious? A homogeneously structured and planned city has fewer if any strategic points and requires more effort to conquer.
What the hell are you talking about? I very clearly stated that offense can be a good defensive tactic because it takes the fight away from the town. like how shooting someone successfully defends yourself from being shot by that person.
Offense and defense are actions and purposes. An offensive action performed for defensive reasons is still offensive, and you would be confusing the purpose with the action.
Are you saying a group of persons WITH ideologically ingrained obedience to an entity are less likely to create armies than persons without such mind control? Take any two given kids. One has been raised his entire life in military school and has spent that time training for war and worshiping the American flag. The other joins a regular school and experiences nothing out of the ordinary. Which is more likely to risk his life for daddy govmunt?
Thank-you for making my rebuttal for me.
Also, call it mind control or duty, but it is the reason you are living a comfortable life right now free of foreign invaders. I'd suggest you bear that in mind when you criticise the system you live in.
Such foolishness. You're argument is predicated on the very thing you're still trying to establish. having no rights has the exact same effect as having unlimited rights. Ultimately, regardless of the state, you only have the right you're capable of keeping.
I think Japan is an example of what I said working to the invader's advantage. An imperialist state with fascist tendencies received social and political reform from its occupiers and the people eventually accepted it.
Note that I did not mention Somalia or Iraq. Occupation could work except that there are Islamist insurgents. These factions are relentless and tenacious. Nothing short of exterminating them will end their influence and violence.
Clearly, you don't know the definition of chaos. =/
Chaos is the unpredictability brought on by a group of individuals acting according to self-interests.
The ONLY reason why ANYONE does ANYTHING is if it is in their own rational self interest.
There you go, just like I said you would. People act according to SELF-INTEREST. Rationality isn't required, and is uncommon. This is why 1% of America owns over 40% of private wealth. Rationally speaking it isn't necessary for a person to have over a hundred times the personal wealth of a working-class family. Rationally speaking dividing that wealth evenly would benefit the majority with gains higher than the loss that 1% would suffer (everyone would have over ten times the wealth they presently possess, which means healthier, better-fed and better-educated workers and less crime as a result).
Selfishness isn't so evil as you think it is. I pay taxes, not because I love the state, but because it's in my own rational self interest to do so. While it may seem to be rational to kill others for goods, the end result is being a social pariah with a target on his head. Perhaps the only thing holding you back from killing others for their pocket change is the state and you would go on a murderous rampage for trivialities if the state took a month off, but no one else I know finds such an act rational or necessary.
Just like I said you would, you throw the word rational around to justify behaviours that you find agreeable or necessary. It's your fudge-word.
Well, I can answer you with the warlords of Somalia. They killed people over humanitarian aid packages which they used as currency. Were they not acting out of their own "rational" self-interests? In their case it means that killing a few people was worth the wealth brought by stealing their packages. Being a social pariah gave them rule over towns and gangs.
Holy shit, for the last damn time, tragedy of the commons only applies to common land, NOT private land. Private land is the solution to TC. The whole point of TC is to point towards private land as a superior alternative.
Not during times of panic, greed, or when the surroundings lose ownership to everyone (Tragedy of the Commons).
If no body wanted the state to assist them, the state would have a very hard time doing so. If demand for state intervention isn't there, it typically doesn't happen.
We intervened in Iraq, and severely crippled insurgence groups. In fact it was only after we left that violence and crime rised appreciably.
Militaries are very effective at quelling populations.
If what you say is true, then you've just proved that states cannot work as they are made of persons and according to you, persons are motivated by selfishness and greed and cannot operate as a collective. You've defeated yourself. ;)
States acknowledge this and that is why force is used in emergency operations, because relying on a mob to regulate itself never works.
In the larger context, states regulate and oversee themselves so as to keep selfishness and greed in check. An anarchy does not, and that is why an anarchy quickly degenerates into barbarism.
Is your IQ 12 or something? Not only is what you've just written untrue (I went on to address your actual argument IMMEDIATELY after writing that) but you even responded to it! The very next point of yours that I'm going to deal with is in direct response the point you're claiming I ignored! Watch, just watch >
You changed the topic again.
Anyway, there is demand for businesses to be transparent. Therefore companies who want to gain customer trust will allow for their business to be under the microscope. Many businesses do this now even without being required to.
I'll answer this from the angle of biology. In evolution there is a demand for our lives to extend well-into immortality. However basic biological costs and simple comparison versus returns tells us that despite the demand, the return from the investment into longer-lived people is too high, and so after reproductive age your body starts failing big-time. To apply this to basic business, we see that the consumer demand for transparent business exists but compared to the costs of being transparent (losing your investments into research, proprietary technology, ability to use deception to sell more, etc.) there is little incentive to do so.
In other words, demand does not solve everything. Demand is a value measured against cost.
There's an equilibrium between costumer trust and suicidal openness. Most persons only care about if a company is secretly funding an army, or if it murders endangered animals to make it's product or things of that sort, not the specifics of how it puts it's product together. There's no reason to assume this. Besides, getting the seal of approval from many trusted investigative firms would be enough 90% of the time. The firms have no obligation to give out a companies secrets so long as they aren't harming anyone.
Because that worked so well against De Beers, Standard Oil (and modern oil), Cocoa plantations, Diamond Mines, Clothing and apparel manufacturers (how many people are injured in sweatshops to bring you your shirts and shoes? Do you even care?). The list is voluminous. The point is that while consumers do care, it isn't enough, or it is too far away to matter.
1. The industrial revolution is considered to be a step forward form mankind by just about every historian and economist. Also, the raw numbers back up this claim. persons lived longer, made more and had more access to doctors.
Change of topic. The topic is:
Transparent companies that don't have their shit together also don't get business. Therefore, it would NOT be cost-efficient to skip safety protocol in a stateless society.
In other words you asserted that companies left to regulate themselves would find it more profitable to use safety. History disagrees with you (drink Radithor if you disagree with me).
2. As already stated, the demand for transparency in the market exists with or without a state. Your concern over this is a proof of it.
Only with a state is there a steep price attached to not meeting safety guidelines. Because otherwise it is more profitable to lie about your safety than to conduct actual research and safety tests.
You can bribe one singular entity who's sole purpose is to secure control much easier than several entities who's sole purpose is to find corruption in business. Remember, these firms compete with each other for respectability. They would LOVE to catch one of their opposing firms taking a bribe. the current state has been shown time and time again to take bribes, but not much can be done about it.
Smaller companies means smaller demands (when bribing) and less difficulty in intimidating or subverting them otherwise.
Remember what I said about a bunch of small factions versus a state when in war? Similar rules apply.
Your assumption that oil companies would own the police is unbacked. First of all, this isn't seen to be the case with already private police and without such heavy state interest, oil wouldn't be very big at all.
It is not an assumption. It is human nature to buy out your competition or enforcers. This was a big problem in many countries in the past, and still is in less developed ones. It requires great vigilance to protect against, and a state has the benefit of being able to hold corrupt men accountable. An anarchy is ultimately about power, and if you can buy out police then the only one who is a threat to you is an even bigger police dispatch. It's actually worse than that because private police automatically have a conflict of interest towards whoever pays their checks (especially he who pays most of it) so it is like sanctioned bribery.
More idealism (or insanity) on your part there.
Unless, or course, your profit is defined by the health and safety of others. Like a doctor's, or an engineer's. Did you forget that these professions exist or something?
In which case you make the most money selling palliatives over cures, treatments over surgeries. Because your existence is still based on maximising revenues. Then there's the quackery, since you can intentionally sell placebos as cures because a sugar pill costs way less than actual medicine, and remember that there are only private police and courts, so you can be sure to pay them more than your clients could ever hope to afford (tiered service is capitalist), which goes a long way towards getting the courts to judge in your favour. You can even treat patients like cars, fixing them in surgery while at the same time breaking something so that they come back to you months later.
I wish we had such a system, imagine the fortune I'd make off of idealists like yourself, "Why of course our treatment is approved by many (fake) authorities in the field. We also use only the (lowest) highest-end tools and medicines during the operation."
You'll notice, most companies don't do this and several companies attract costumers on the basis that they donate to environmental charities. If companies that do this and don't receive a class action law suit, then either their disposing in a way that doesn't actually hurt anyone, or they have have state protection. This isn't an uncommon or even well hidden event.
Oil, diamonds, cocoa, paper mills, 3M (again, when finding this article for you it turns out they have many instances of this), semiconductors, car companies, etc. have all either dumped wastes into the environment, killed or injured people with improper waste storage, or have practices which harm others on a regular basis.
It's an uphill battle.
If you don't force persons together, the tension isn't nearly as bad. Once segregation ended, not much changed. It wasn't until forced integration hit the seen that the shit hit the fan. The more you force persons who dislike each other together, the less problems there are. This is basic logic.
The people weren't forced together. After segregation ended (and before it too) many black men and women just tried to be successful and were killed and beaten for it. Before it ended blacks were regular assaulted just to give fear to their community.
Of course, after we ended segregation and made efforts to bring minorities into the spotlight, and with the help of a generation of activists, we have a much more tolerant culture.
The emotions had to come from somewhere. Besides, your assumption is unbacked. One can logically be opposed to illegal immigrants going to our prisons because of financial reasons without emotionally hating Amerindians.
You really have no clue how people behave on a regular basis, do you? Maybe that's your problem, the way you think is very unusual, so it doesn't even occur to you to NOT apply this to everyone else.
This isn't ancient Rome. The demand to not be raped far out ways the demands for rape and in fact the vast majority of persons opt to have nothing to do with rape. A rape firm wouldn't do so well. Why are you arguing within the market if you don't even understand supply and demand?
Rape exists and some people enjoy it. Making it illegal drives it underground. That's all you need to understand.
If the drugs and prostitutes become legal, then the theft, murder, extortion etc. becomes unnecessary and quite frankly, detrimental to the firm.
You've never heard of rackets and hits? Two profitable ventures.
I guess you never expected businesses to deal in assassination in your little utopia.
Anti rape and murder laws have universally operational support. There's no reason to assume a firm could survive on a commercial basis with rape and murder as it's prime service. Mass murdering is an event between states, not firms.
Ever heard of Rwanda? That was a genocide perpetrated by a faction.
Why couldn't rape and murder be profitable? Killers and rapists exist. They do it even with it being illegal. Some people just want a hit performed, and some just like to have power over women. Why couldn't this be a business? Remember that in your utopia there is no state to regulate laws, so there can be zones of lawlessness, since some areas would have weaker militias than others.
You're projecting. Everything I say is based on logical and historical evidence. If memory serves, all too often where you unable to come up with statistical evidence to support your claims.
Haha. You're funny. Every time I contradict you with history you just quote your bible... er, I mean Mises, for Truth. Then you demand evidence that cannot exist (statistics from the dark ages? really?). You must know in the back of your mind that you're treading on thin ice, why else would you demand explicit statistics from periods in history and regions on Earth full of chaos, disarray, social injustice, and especially lack of detailed records?
You're like the creationist who demands a transitional fossil for every generation between H. sapiens and H. habilis otherwise he won't accept being wrong.
If this is true, then your argument isn't that the free market cannot work, but merely that mankind will never be smart enough to make it work.
The free market cannot work because humanity does not behave in a way that would make it work. It isn't about smartness or dumbness, it is about our personalities. We are selfish, destructive creatures and giving everyone absolute freedom means that those in power will use it against everyone else for no better reason than they can.
The preface of a free market is that everyone has come to the rational conclusion that the state isn't needed. Mankind has become more rational and individualistic every generation since its antiquity. There's no reason to assume this trend stops here.
It has not become more compassionate, empathetic, or fair.
Persons are stupid now, but they're all Einsteins compared to ancient man.
That's only because we save knowledge from prior generations. If ancient man (the Romans, Greeks, Sumarians, Babylonians, etc.) had access to our information they would be as smart as we are now.
No, you just say stupid things and cover for it by pretending it was something just too damn ingenious for anyone else to understand.
You need to be more specific because parents, property owners, and renters, etc. are not government.
You'd also better define a state.
I actually already addressed this in the next point you're about to address. I don't know why you didn't go back and edit this... =/
If your example follows from your definition then your definition is flawed. Try again, narrow the criteria.
I don't see a problem with it. A state can be miles wide or just one building.
A military is not a market problem. This is your handicap, you think of something greater than a market in market terms. Your earlier example of how mercenary operations fail in a free market was an illustration of this. When you are building an army you need more authority than a corporation, and more money than a corporation.
The free market invading army fails for the reasons I listed earlier. Free market defense works just fine because there is such a high demand for defense. but also a very high demand for each agency to be very transparent. It takes a state to run a successful invasion, but defense needs little more than the demand for defense.
Better not address the argument, I guess.
Your argument has on Somalia has been addressed a ridiculous amount of times. You want to know my argument? You know where to look. You want my supporting evidence? It's in the same place.
Isn't it obvious? A homogeneously structured and planned city has fewer if any strategic points and requires more effort to conquer.
A city can be planned voluntarily. If this sort of structure really is needed then i see no reason why it couldn't happen.
Offense and defense are actions and purposes. An offensive action performed for defensive reasons is still offensive, and you would be confusing the purpose with the action.
My point is that one can use offensive tactics to successfully defend whatever it is they're trying to keep safe. I don't see why your having trouble with this.
Thank-you for making my rebuttal for me.
Also, call it mind control or duty, but it is the reason you are living a comfortable life right now free of foreign invaders. I'd suggest you bear that in mind when you criticize the system you live in.
This was an argument against state-like armies forming in a free market. Persons will (virtually) always be willing to take arms to protect themselves and their livelihood.
Also, I am alive today despite mankind's insanity, not because of it.
I think Japan is an example of what I said working to the invader's advantage. An imperialist state with fascist tendencies received social and political reform from its occupiers and the people eventually accepted it.
Statists surrendering to other statists =/= anti-statists surrendering to statists. It's much simpler to conquer a state with a state because the ideology is already there. Sure, there is quite a jump between a democratic republic and Imperialism, but evidently it can be done since the concept of statism is already there. the persons already think they need some kind of state.
What would happen if Japan was anti-statist? Once the soldiers left, the Japanese would simply stop paying taxes, arm up, or move. Given the ratio of civilians to military in any given state, the military really has little power.
Note that I did not mention Somalia or Iraq. Occupation could work except that there are Islamist insurgents. These factions are relentless and tenacious. Nothing short of exterminating them will end their influence and violence.
Just imagine that sort of rebellion amongst anti-statists. No occupation could succeed.
Chaos is the unpredictability brought on by a group of individuals acting according to self-interests.
Nice ad-hoc definition you pulled right out of your ass there. =/
People act according to SELF-INTEREST. Rationality isn't required, and is uncommon.
Personally, I see the rational behind having more wealth than you could possibly lose, but I guess you don't. This sort of wealth ratio is only possible with a state. If everything was voluntary, other persons simply wouldn't tolerate so few persons having so much wealth and would simply opt out of their businesses.
Just like I said you would, you throw the word rational around to justify behaviors that you find agreeable or necessary. It's your fudge-word.
You know, if you already knew my counter argument, but didn't debunk it pre-emtively, I'm left to assume that you couldn't and decided to state it at the off chance it would deter me from using it. =/
The fact remains that killing and raping isn't as rational 99.99% of the time as not-killing and not-raping is. Sure, I could kill my local variety store clerk instead of paying him, but at the end of the day all I've got a few candy bars, some milk and a target on my head.
Well, I can answer you with the warlords of Somalia.
Oh, for the love of God...
They killed people over humanitarian aid packages which they used as currency. Were they not acting out of their own "rational" self-interests? In their case it means that killing a few people was worth the wealth brought by stealing their packages. Being a social pariah gave them rule over towns and gangs.
This isn't an example of an individuals actions, but group actions, gang actions. This is basically the same argument were already in above.
Not during times of panic, greed, or when the surroundings lose ownership to everyone (Tragedy of the Commons).
So?
We intervened in Iraq, and severely crippled insurgence groups. In fact it was only after we left that violence and crime raised appreciably.
Militaries are very effective at quelling populations.
I have a feeling there is none, but.. do you have any statistics backing this?
tates acknowledge this and that is why force is used in emergency operations, because relying on a mob to regulate itself never works.
In the larger context, states regulate and oversee themselves so as to keep selfishness and greed in check. An anarchy does not, and that is why an anarchy quickly degenerates into barbarism.
Wait, wait, wait... so persons can NOT organize within themselves because of their natural flaws, but at the same time a few persons can somehow manage EVERYTHING even though they can't manage themselves? How does that make sense?
When has allowing the greedy to keep themselves in check ever solved greed? You're not making any sense here.
You changed the topic again.
You also failed to notice I actually went on to deal with your argument... AGAIN. Should I just not bother writing in paragraph form and just smush all my words together for you to understand that sometimes more than one sentence is directed at something you wrote???
I'll answer this from the angle of biology. In evolution there is a demand for our lives to extend well-into immortality. However basic biological costs and simple comparison versus returns tells us that despite the demand, the return from the investment into longer-lived people is too high, and so after reproductive age your body starts failing big-time. To apply this to basic business, we see that the consumer demand for transparent business exists but compared to the costs of being transparent (losing your investments into research, proprietary technology, ability to use deception to sell more, etc.) there is little incentive to do so.
In other words, demand does not solve everything. Demand is a value measured against cost.
Revenue earned is the number one incentive for a business. Is consumer demand was for CEO's to wear long, frilly capes (for whatever reason), then that's what will happen so long as the CEO's want to remain competitive.
Because that worked so well against De Beers, Standard Oil (and modern oil), Cocoa plantations, Diamond Mines, Clothing and apparel manufacturers (how many people are injured in sweatshops to bring you your shirts and shoes? Do you even care?). The list is voluminous. The point is that while consumers do care, it isn't enough, or it is too far away to matter.
You already know what I have to say about each of those cases. Why do you insist on re-treading ground already broken? Your argument hasn't changed, do you think mine has?
Change of topic. The topic is:
Transparent companies that don't have their shit together also don't get business. Therefore, it would NOT be cost-efficient to skip safety protocol in a stateless society.
In other words you asserted that companies left to regulate themselves would find it more profitable to use safety. History disagrees with you (drink Radithor if you disagree with me).
YOU brought the IR as an example of market failure. This was totally relevant.
That fact that areas of business not heavily subsidized by the state find it more profitable to use safety, it follows that demand safety was not invented by the state.
Only with a state is there a steep price attached to not meeting safety guidelines. Because otherwise it is more profitable to lie about your safety than to conduct actual research and safety tests.
Which is why you have investigative agencies. And just to tease out any bribery, have multiple agencies.
Smaller companies means smaller demands (when bribing) and less difficulty in intimidating or subverting them otherwise.
Remember what I said about a bunch of small factions versus a state when in war? Similar rules apply.
These firms would also investigate each other. What, are they all going to pay each other off? And besides, all one firm would have to do is not take the bribe and they could make a market killing multiple times any bribe by selling out all the corrupt firms.
It is not an assumption. It is human nature to buy out your competition or enforcers
Just something worth noting, deriving an ought from an is IS an assumption.
This was a big problem in many countries in the past, and still is in less developed ones. It requires great vigilance to protect against, and a state has the benefit of being able to hold corrupt men accountable.
Which is why the state naturally attracts the most corrupt as it allows them to get away with more. Dumb criminals rob banks, smart criminals join the government.
It's actually worse than that because private police automatically have a conflict of interest towards whoever pays their checks (especially he who pays most of it) so it is like sanctioned bribery.
More idealism (or insanity) on your part there.
There is a LOT wrong with what you've said. As in, an entire debate could be written just on the faults in your thesis alone. Just watch this.
And please, please, don't bother bringing up some 'counter' argument already addressed in the video. =/
In which case you make the most money selling palliatives over cures, treatments over surgeries. Because your existence is still based on maximizing revenues.
If your service sucks, persons stop coming to you. Next issue...
Then there's the quackery, since you can intentionally sell placebos as cures because a sugar pill costs way less than actual medicine, and remember that there are only private police and courts, so you can be sure to pay them more than your clients could ever hope to afford (tiered service is capitalist), which goes a long way towards getting the courts to judge in your favour. You can even treat patients like cars, fixing them in surgery while at the same time breaking something so that they come back to you months later.
I wish we had such a system, imagine the fortune I'd make off of idealists like yourself, "Why of course our treatment is approved by many (fake) authorities in the field. We also use only the (lowest) highest-end tools and medicines during the operation."
The way you view society, you make it sound like no civilization is possible. Most doctors go into their field because they want to help persons. Besides, as previously stated, firms that behave in this destructive manner don't get business.
Oil, diamonds, cocoa, paper mills, 3M (again, when finding this article for you it turns out they have many instances of this), semiconductors, car companies, etc. have all either dumped wastes into the environment, killed or injured people with improper waste storage, or have practices which harm others on a regular basis.
It's an uphill battle.
Okay, there's a lot of statistics here that you are ignoring, like how involved the state is with these firms. Without writing a book, consider how functional the state really is if this sort of dumping happens on their watch. It either means that the state is a piss-poor means of regulating business, or they a\re actually working in collusion with these corrupt firms, not the other way around.
The people weren't forced together. After segregation ended (and before it too) many black men and women just tried to be successful and were killed and beaten for it. Before it ended blacks were regular assaulted just to give fear to their community.
Of course, after we ended segregation and made efforts to bring minorities into the spotlight, and with the help of a generation of activists, we have a much more tolerant culture.
I'm sorry, but this is just not true at all. After forced segregation not much happened. A few persons moved around, but it wasn't until forced integration happened that the problems occurred. You can't even deny that forced integration occurred, it's a very well documented part of American history. All other issues aside, this is proof that persons were forced together.
Our culture is NOWHERE near tolerant. Perhaps white culture is tolerant, but not total culture. It's worth noting that 85% of interracial crime is perpetrated by blacks. At the PRIME of lynching (1882-1968, a span of 86 years) 3,446 blacks were lynched. in 2005, 654,500 interracial crimes were perpetrated by blacks (about 750,000 happened in total). Don't even pretend what you say reflect reality, it's insulting to even the idea of intelligence.
You really have no clue how people behave on a regular basis, do you? Maybe that's your problem, the way you think is very unusual, so it doesn't even occur to you to NOT apply this to everyone else.
Non-sequitur. The remains persons who don't like each other don't like being forced together and would live to not be financially responsible for the persons they hate. Why are you so against this statement???
Rape exists and some people enjoy it. Making it illegal drives it underground. That's all you need to understand.
The demand for rape isn't large enough to make a successful business over it, especially considering how high anti-rape demand is.
You've never heard of rackets and hits? Two profitable ventures.
I guess you never expected businesses to deal in assassination in your little utopia.
You know, I don't understand why utopia has started being used as a pseudo-insult. Obviously what I profess is Utopian, everyone's idea of an ideal society is Utopian. Why would anyone purposefully chose a philosophy because they find flaws in it?
Anyway, most assassinations are inter-government dealings. Most firms don't risk hiring assassins. Besides, Given how inexpensive police will be due to competitive pricing, protecting yourself won't be a problem.
Ever heard of Rwanda? That was a genocide perpetrated by a faction.
Why couldn't rape and murder be profitable? Killers and rapists exist. They do it even with it being illegal. Some people just want a hit performed, and some just like to have power over women. Why couldn't this be a business? Remember that in your utopia there is no state to regulate laws, so there can be zones of lawlessness, since some areas would have weaker militias than others.
My argument isn't that demand for murder/rape doesn't exist, merely that counter demand is stronger. So much so that even mentioning rape and murder support relative to anti rape and murder support seems silly.
Haha. You're funny. Every time I contradict you with history you just quote your bible... er, I mean Mises, for Truth. Then you demand evidence that cannot exist (statistics from the dark ages? really?).
I had no problem finding statistics for all my claims. Why is it okay for you to come up short, but not for me? Besides, simply disregarding statistics because it's organized on a libertarian website is NOT an argument against my case. I could find many other sites with the same information (like for example, Mises' sources), but for the sake of convenience I use Mises. You have no counter argument, so you're making up for it with ad-homonym.
You must know in the back of your mind that you're treading on thin ice, why else would you demand explicit statistics from periods in history and regions on Earth full of chaos, disarray, social injustice, and especially lack of detailed records?
No, I'm demanding statistics because YOU are making claims that can only be verified through statistics. Don't make such claims if you have no evidence. Science 101.
You're like the creationist who demands a transitional fossil for every generation between H. sapiens and H. habilis otherwise he won't accept being wrong.
Actually, if you'll go back and look at our past debate, I was rather generous with what I accepted as evidence from you, it just so happened that I was able to find actual evidence that pointed in the opposite direction you did.
Once again your analogies are nothing but failures. You see, the problem was you making specific claims about fossils you have no evidence of, not that you were drawing a line between two already existing fossils. I found evidence for my case just fine and you made no effort to debunk or present counter evidence.
The free market cannot work because humanity does not behave in a way that would make it work. It isn't about smartness or dumbness, it is about our personalities. We are selfish, destructive creatures and giving everyone absolute freedom means that those in power will use it against everyone else for no better reason than they can.
So, your solution to mankind's nature to rule and destroy is to give a small group of men a monopoly on power and the ability to destroy? Fucking brilliant avesk, fucking brilliant...
It has not become more compassionate, empathetic, or fair.
Well, that explains why we're still watching gladiators mangle each other for fun, or why we're still burning witches, or why we still swaddle and beat children en masse, or why... oh wait. =/
That's only because we save knowledge from prior generations. If ancient man (the Romans, Greeks, Sumarians, Babylonians, etc.) had access to our information they would be as smart as we are now.
How is this a counter argument? Yes, if ancient man had access to what we have, they would be more like us. What's your point???
No, you just say stupid things and cover for it by pretending it was something just too damn ingenious for anyone else to understand.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, you're a little slow at humour and analogy?
I don't see a problem with it. A state can be miles wide or just one building.
It doesn't match the typical meaning of the word, which probably means that it is too vague.
The free market invading army fails for the reasons I listed earlier. Free market defense works just fine because there is such a high demand for defense. but also a very high demand for each agency to be very transparent. It takes a state to run a successful invasion, but defense needs little more than the demand for defense.
Without unity in defense movements, the individual factions are weak to the conqueror.
Your argument has on Somalia has been addressed a ridiculous amount of times. You want to know my argument? You know where to look. You want my supporting evidence? It's in the same place.
No it hasn't. All you ever did was quote Mises and say something to the effect that "therefore Somalia is better without a state." When I pointed out how much crime and violence exists there due to lack of central authority, you just rebutted that they have more televisions, radio, internet access, and money. As if it justifies the violence of the society.
My point is that one can use offensive tactics to successfully defend whatever it is they're trying to keep safe. I don't see why your having trouble with this.
Offensive guerrilla warfare tends to be more difficult to carry out, because you are constrained by environment as part of your strategy.
Also, I am alive today despite mankind's insanity, not because of it.
You are alive today because powers greater than yourself defend your rights from other nations who would benefit by conquering your land and imposing their laws.
Statists surrendering to other statists =/= anti-statists surrendering to statists. It's much simpler to conquer a state with a state because the ideology is already there. Sure, there is quite a jump between a democratic republic and Imperialism, but evidently it can be done since the concept of statism is already there. the persons already think they need some kind of state.
A state is not an ideology. It is a boundary of governance. An anarchy doesn't make everyone into rugged individualists who will die for principle.
What would happen if Japan was anti-statist? Once the soldiers left, the Japanese would simply stop paying taxes, arm up, or move. Given the ratio of civilians to military in any given state, the military really has little power.
If Japan was an anarchy, the same procedure as before: occupy, set up a government and quell rebellion. You give your kind too much credit.
Just imagine that sort of rebellion amongst anti-statists. No occupation could succeed.
Funny, Gaelic Ireland was conquered, and Somalia has more or less been conquered by Islamists and the transitional government in alliance. It's funny how your rugged individualist Somalis got what they wanted: religious law which is by definition hostile towards different beliefs and biased against women. Stupid people always get what they want in the end.
Personally, I see the rational behind having more wealth than you could possibly lose, but I guess you don't. This sort of wealth ratio is only possible with a state. If everything was voluntary, other persons simply wouldn't tolerate so few persons having so much wealth and would simply opt out of their businesses.
The industrial revolutions of both the United States and Britain, periods of minimal government interference in business, found the exact reverse happening. This is because businesses anticipate that their customers might find other sellers and so they take over other markets.
Besides this, your kind hate Socialism for precisely this reason, that it redistributes wealth more evenly. Why would your kind hate Socialism for equalising wealth, but at the same time advocate a system that accomplishes the same thing? The typical arguments against socialism is that it is theft, or unfair to the successful to pay for the unproductive but you advocate the same thing where it is impossible to become rich for creating a great new product because everyone moves away from your business after you acquire a certain amount of wealth.
You know, if you already knew my counter argument, but didn't debunk it pre-emtively, I'm left to assume that you couldn't and decided to state it at the off chance it would deter me from using it. =/
What I said:
Your use of rational is a fudge-word because we both know that what people consider rational during times of panic varies a great deal and it is this which causes chaos. You will proceed to use the word to disqualify those behaviours which you disagree with from entering your utopia.
What you proceded to say:
The fact remains that killing and raping isn't as rational 99.99% of the time as not-killing and not-raping is. Sure, I could kill my local variety store clerk instead of paying him, but at the end of the day all I've got a few candy bars, some milk and a target on my head.
In other words, murder and rape are not behaviours that fit in your utopia so they are magically irrational (despite that in poorly governed areas these crimes have an increased rate, meaning that a lot of people disagree with you and find them rational, in increasing number with less law enforcement).
This isn't an example of an individuals actions, but group actions, gang actions. This is basically the same argument were already in above.
It leads to the same conclusion: when the advantage is high enough, people will become social pariahs and commit heinous acts.
I have a feeling there is none, but.. do you have any statistics backing this?
Wait, wait, wait... so persons can NOT organize within themselves because of their natural flaws, but at the same time a few persons can somehow manage EVERYTHING even though they can't manage themselves? How does that make sense?
When has allowing the greedy to keep themselves in check ever solved greed? You're not making any sense here.
When people naturally assemble together and regulate themselves, they will gravitate towards a few taking command of the many, usually with force and threats.
Realising this, government has evolved over millennia to divide power and add oversight so that it is very difficult for a small group of people to run society according to their whims. That is why we have separate branches of government with different legal authorities. It is why the courts are separate from the presidents and kings. It is why a parliament was formed and evolved so that the royalty became more like figureheads.
Your ambition is to revert society to a time before this, and so there will be no protection of our liberties, just people with power competing with each other for more of it.
Revenue earned is the number one incentive for a business. Is consumer demand was for CEO's to wear long, frilly capes (for whatever reason), then that's what will happen so long as the CEO's want to remain competitive.
It is always about weighing costs to benefits. In other words how much profit is expected to be made for the investment of transparency. The cost of transparency is too high.
You already know what I have to say about each of those cases. Why do you insist on re-treading ground already broken? Your argument hasn't changed, do you think mine has?
You aren't able to refute them. They stand as examples of how the market fails to solve social problems.
YOU brought the IR as an example of market failure. This was totally relevant.
That fact that areas of business not heavily subsidized by the state find it more profitable to use safety, it follows that demand safety was not invented by the state.
In the industrial revolution businesses were not subsidised yet found it most profitable to not use safety because there were no legal consequences for a dead worker or sick customer.
Just something worth noting, deriving an ought from an is IS an assumption.
It is a fact of nature. Next please?
Which is why you have investigative agencies. And just to tease out any bribery, have multiple agencies.
These firms would also investigate each other. What, are they all going to pay each other off? And besides, all one firm would have to do is not take the bribe and they could make a market killing multiple times any bribe by selling out all the corrupt firms.
Private agencies have a bias to those who pay them. Small agencies are notoriously easy to intimidate into silence.
Which is why the state naturally attracts the most corrupt as it allows them to get away with more. Dumb criminals rob banks, smart criminals join the government.
You really don't have room to talk, considering that every modern and historical attempt and state of anarchy has seen rampant civil problems ranging from theft and looting, to skirmishes over foreign aid.
Do you see something crucial here? Anarcho-capitalists have no official land that they claim is an example for all to bear witness to the marvel of Austrian economic genius. Critics will point to examples that are clearly similar to their proposed social system, but the anarchist will disown it if there is anything negative. At the same time the anarchist will ridicule governments for obvious faults but cannot be ridiculed in a way the he finds personally credible because he has no society to test his convictions upon.
There is a LOT wrong with what you've said. As in, an entire debate could be written just on the faults in your thesis alone. Just watch this.
And please, please, don't bother bringing up some 'counter' argument already addressed in the video. =/
I know that when I want to disprove an historical fact and crucial aspect of human nature, I look to none other than a teenage amateur's anarchist works for proof. How could I not?
Let's do a basic review so that you understand my positions and reasoning and if you still argue with it, barring an actual legitimate criticism and not just denial, I will probably just drop the matter as hopelessly beyond your ideology's ability to comprehend.
Police and courts are run by individuals. Individuals are typically rational creatures (except in times of emotion) which means that they will typically abandon their principles when certain conditions are met. This is known colloquially as the idea that every man has his price. The effect that this has is that official positions of authority may be corrupted using money, intimidation, and favours. It can be effective enough that an organisation may not even appear to be corrupt to onlookers. How do we fight this? That is the question isn't it?
The short answer is that is cannot be definitively stopped, short of combining measures whose costs increase exponentially with prevention efficacy giving diminishing returns, until the costs equal infinity. Therefore we need to remember that any solution is merely about degrees of effectiveness versus costs to society. States attempt to accomplish this a number of ways, such as holding police accountable to the law as everyone else is, making courts and police a public expense meaning that that conflict of interest vanishes because everyone employs these services rather than an elite few. Then you have records kept on financial and managerial activities, men and women who oversee the courts and precincts, standards for evidence and processing of inmates and suspects, etc. In other words, after a long history of combating corruption the state has employed a variety of measures to try and make corruption very difficult to get away with, as well as severely punished.
What is the problem for private police firms and courts? Since the pay of these employees comes from a smaller group of people, the conflict of interest grows against "out of district" individuals. Since they operate like a business it means that justice is a matter of profitability and also that the employers are susceptible to bribes (because they want to stay ahead of their competitors). It means that since competition exists for trustworthy law enforcement, that tricks to hide corruption will evolve with the businesses (because this is the most profitable venture, look at athletes and steroids for reference). Since we are dealing with small businesses, it means that big organised crime syndicates are immune to law enforcement so this becomes every criminal's ambition: to be bigger than the law.
When you remove the state you remove the bureaucracy, the public sector, and the employees who have a job overseeing these institutions. You replace them with financially needy institutions.
If your service sucks, persons stop coming to you. Next issue...
Ever seen the printer/ink business model? It works. That's the problem.
The way you view society, you make it sound like no civilization is possible. Most doctors go into their field because they want to help persons. Besides, as previously stated, firms that behave in this destructive manner don't get business.
Nurses go into medicine because they want to help. Doctors go in because they want money and prestige.
I view society with healthy scepticism. You need to learn to do that. Stop thinking of how you're going to invent or discover the perfect system and instead focus on how you're going to fix your great system when it goes terribly wrong. That's the problem with you anarchists, you have no clue how to fix your system when it goes astray, you never even consider the chance of it because you're too busy promoting it as perfect. It's going to go astray, every system does. America was once a secular democracy founded on ideals which share a lot with present-day libertarianism like free market capitalism and no public institutions. What did it become? A Christian-secular, two-party plutocratic, socialist-capitalist hybrid state.
Okay, there's a lot of statistics here that you are ignoring, like how involved the state is with these firms. Without writing a book, consider how functional the state really is if this sort of dumping happens on their watch. It either means that the state is a piss-poor means of regulating business, or they a\re actually working in collusion with these corrupt firms, not the other way around.
When the state becomes entangled, it is usually because the business grew big enough to invest itself into the state.
Anyway, the truth is that the state is imperfect at regulating business. We see that every day when we drive exhaust-emitting cars, use petro-plastic items, buy groceries that are largely cultivars with little diversity (this makes our agricultural market unstable because disease affects lack of biodiviersity intensely), and this is just the environmental side. On the social side we witness politicians which mostly come from wealthy backgrounds, indicating special interests most of the time, we see a minimum wage that is below the cost of living, we see (in the US) a lack of healthcare for most people except insurance which does a poor job usually. On the foreign side we see diamond companies, cocoa companies, oil, etc. ruining lives in distant countries.
However in spite of all this, we seem much better off than the days of pure capitalism when workers were maimed and died regularly in factories, and there was no penalty for dumping toxic waste into rivers or selling filth and poison as food.
I'm sorry, but this is just not true at all. After forced segregation not much happened. A few persons moved around, but it wasn't until forced integration happened that the problems occurred. You can't even deny that forced integration occurred, it's a very well documented part of American history. All other issues aside, this is proof that persons were forced together.
Our culture is NOWHERE near tolerant. Perhaps white culture is tolerant, but not total culture. It's worth noting that 85% of interracial crime is perpetrated by blacks. At the PRIME of lynching (1882-1968, a span of 86 years) 3,446 blacks were lynched. in 2005, 654,500 interracial crimes were perpetrated by blacks (about 750,000 happened in total). Don't even pretend what you say reflect reality, it's insulting to even the idea of intelligence.
In the United States, around the turn of the 20th century, Klan members regularly hunted down and killed black men and women. Being black meant you had a place in society. Strange Fruit tells a tale of this, in the culture of the time. Jump ahead and you see social unrest that came from segregation (race riots, black nationalism, and such).
Affirmative action attempted to offset this social ill. I cannot determine whether it worked or not because the situation is socially complicated, but I believe it safe to say that it played a role along with activists, popular media, race-relations, etc. in attempting to bridge the divide caused by strife and ultimately lead to our culture we have now.
Now racism is seen as archaic in most circles. It's a dead issue for most because we can't imagine treating people so superficially. Other cultures aren't expected to have their place. I'd argue that it has almost gone to the point of excess because we need to be sceptical towards Islam and the culture of misogyny and intolerance it brings, but many western countries seem unable to act against it for fear of being bigoted.
Non-sequitur. The remains persons who don't like each other don't like being forced together and would live to not be financially responsible for the persons they hate. Why are you so against this statement???
Bigotry comes from an emotional bias. An incorrect pattern deduced in some personally damaging act. It may also come from how one was raised, but this is easier to overcome.
You know, I don't understand why utopia has started being used as a pseudo-insult. Obviously what I profess is Utopian, everyone's idea of an ideal society is Utopian. Why would anyone purposefully chose a philosophy because they find flaws in it?
One man's flaws are another's opportunities.
The demand for rape isn't large enough to make a successful business over it, especially considering how high anti-rape demand is.
My argument isn't that demand for murder/rape doesn't exist, merely that counter demand is stronger. So much so that even mentioning rape and murder support relative to anti rape and murder support seems silly.
In certain Islamic states rape instances are much higher, either due to the misogyny of the religion and the government's enforcement of it, or the sexual repression. In these countries human trafficking for rape would be possible if it were legal.
Anyway, most assassinations are inter-government dealings. Most firms don't risk hiring assassins. Besides, Given how inexpensive police will be due to competitive pricing, protecting yourself won't be a problem.
Prove that assassinations are limited to states and do not find much use elsewhere.
I had no problem finding statistics for all my claims. Why is it okay for you to come up short, but not for me? Besides, simply disregarding statistics because it's organized on a libertarian website is NOT an argument against my case. I could find many other sites with the same information (like for example, Mises' sources), but for the sake of convenience I use Mises. You have no counter argument, so you're making up for it with ad-homonym.
An increase in televisions, radios, internet, per person and increase of live expectancy of a couple years are statistics that do not refute the existence of violence across a region. Neither do statistics comparing the Feudal era to the Industrial Revolution negate the immense suffering that was typical of the time.
So, your solution to mankind's nature to rule and destroy is to give a small group of men a monopoly on power and the ability to destroy? Fucking brilliant avesk, fucking brilliant...
We are selfish, destructive beings, therefore the solution is to create a system not built upon trust (like your anarchy is). The system should instead intensely monitor itself (like our state does).
Well, that explains why we're still watching gladiators mangle each other for fun, or why we're still burning witches, or why we still swaddle and beat children en masse, or why... oh wait. =/
first of all i had to lawl at the name of the creator of this debate "monarchist" funny due to what were debating.
any way as an other person pointed out, your arguing from a view of how society would cope with out government than a non government society functioning in the first place. i have to disagree, since we dont have a single anarchist society in the world the only way to get to anarchy would to figure out how to lead a government society to a non government society, the reality is that not enough people would want to do that. government has made life easy, at the expense of some freedoms, government is something someone can easily become dependable on. government is the forced organization of society. and for most people it works fine.
i would love to try out a society based on libertarian views but this would never happen. so instead i advocate for smaller government interaction and dependency, a far more reasonable thing to do.
libertarians call for minimal or no government but that does not mean no order, or law. simply law is enforced differently, how this works, i dont feel like going into this. instead look up some libertarian stuff, its really interesting, even if you dont agree with it. like communism is an interesting idea, but is a bad idea to use.
