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Extropian

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mwazaumoja mwazaumoja's picture
Extropian
Disclaimer: I'm a law nerd, but have very little practical knowledge about this stuff. Looking at the Extropian section of Rimward, I think I'm a little confused how their privatized system of justice works. My understanding is that everyone hires a private judiciary which fills the roll of a tort-insurance agency and a private court system. The problem seems to arise when two different court systems representing two different clients come into conflict with each other. There doesn't seem to be a final arbitrator of rights. To me, it seems like it would make more sense if they followed a system similar to the Duncanites from Transhuman Space who had private security companies handle most of the details of protecting and representatives and private judges to handle adjucidation of rights. Speficially, I imagine an Extropian view on litigation would resemble something like a mix of arbitration and insurance policies. I'd imagine that if say, a tort arose between two parties that were otherwise not in contractual privity with each other (say 'A struck B in anger'), that private security companies would contact each other and arrange for an arbitration panel to be put together. This would involve contracting with a separate 'arbitration company' (similar to something like the American Arbitration Associations or Judicial Mediation and Arbitration Services). Each side would pick one arbitrator, and together the two arbitrators would pick a third. The third party could agree on the set of laws that would be applied in the case of a tort (or any other issue that doesn't have privity between the parties at issue) or in the cases of pre-existing contractual relations the laws to be applied would have already been chosen. After this the private judicial companies would take the role as lawyers for the parties and argue a case before the arbitrators. Once the arbitrators issued their decision it would be final (unless the parties agreed that a 2nd panel of arbitrators could be called to ensure a fair arbitration had occured). Finally, after the judgment was entered the arbitration association would notify all relevant security companies of the judgment and (if the parties allowed) publish the opinion on the mesh. Anyhow, these are just some basic thoughts. My head is still a little sore, I just finished the bar exam yesterday.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Yes, I would also assume the
Yes, I would also assume the companies would have an arbitration panel. Most likely, many companies would have pre-agreed panels since they have to deal with these issues many times a day. This is also the system suggested by David Friedman in "The Machinery of Freedom", which I think is the main popularizer of privately produced law companies.
Extropian
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
You'd also quickly build up a
You'd also quickly build up a shell of agreements and standard practices that would be applied to cases. New arbitration companies could/would be easilly shut out of the system as the older ones would be far more efficient and would have little reason to allow new competition once the framework of agreements was set up. You'd basically get an oligarchical judiciary making legal decisions and policy decisions wouldn't be that long in following. Thus you'd get groups of extropans complaining about the government on extropan habitats. The only way to have no government in the long run is to have no people.
Patrick Northedgers Patrick Northedgers's picture
A pre-agreed legal arbitration
I assume that every contract includes a clause like "In case of dissent, sides agree to adhere to verdict of (private law corporation)". When it comes to offences covered by security companies, a network of pre-agreed contracts likely exists - "issues between clients of Gorgon and Medea security companies are handled by Grol and Sons law Bureau". Of course, once more than one security company is involved, things may get slightly more complicated.
"Normal" does not exist anymore. I consider it a good symptom, though.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Gerzel wrote:You'd basically
Gerzel wrote:
You'd basically get an oligarchical judiciary making legal decisions and policy decisions wouldn't be that long in following. Thus you'd get groups of extropans complaining about the government on extropan habitats. The only way to have no government in the long run is to have no people.
I think your sketch is roughly parallels Nozick's argument in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" for why a pure anarchocapitalist society is unstable and why it will hence evolve into a state. As he lays it out, economic efficiency will favour merging the law companies, so in the long run there will only be one monopoly left. Then he does some ethical hand-waving (that I personally don't buy) about how the monopoly would extend its protection to the people who do not want it, and you end up with a legitimate minarchist state. However, in a sufficiently diverse and rapidly changing environment this argument might not work. If the economy instead has a long tail the economies of scale of law companies might be balanced by market segmentation and you get a stable (in the large) anarchocapitalist enforcement system.
Extropian
Unity Unity's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:Gerzel
Arenamontanus wrote:
Gerzel wrote:
You'd basically get an oligarchical judiciary making legal decisions and policy decisions wouldn't be that long in following. Thus you'd get groups of extropans complaining about the government on extropan habitats. The only way to have no government in the long run is to have no people.
I think your sketch is roughly parallels Nozick's argument in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" for why a pure anarchocapitalist society is unstable and why it will hence evolve into a state. As he lays it out, economic efficiency will favour merging the law companies, so in the long run there will only be one monopoly left. Then he does some ethical hand-waving (that I personally don't buy) about how the monopoly would extend its protection to the people who do not want it, and you end up with a legitimate minarchist state. However, in a sufficiently diverse and rapidly changing environment this argument might not work. If the economy instead has a long tail the economies of scale of law companies might be balanced by market segmentation and you get a stable (in the large) anarchocapitalist enforcement system.
So here's the question: Does Extropia count as a sufficiently diverse and rapidly changing environment?
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Unity wrote:So here's the
Unity wrote:
So here's the question: Does Extropia count as a sufficiently diverse and rapidly changing environment?
I think that if any place is radical enough, it ought to be Extropia. Transhumans of all kinds, plenty of mercurials (including big AGIs), an interface position between economies, very different security needs for different kinds of persons. Maybe it is not stable in the truly long run, but I suspect it might be complex enough to sustain itself.
Extropian
Unity Unity's picture
I suspect it will eventually
I suspect it will eventually collapse, in the long run. Either because it finally collapsed on itself or because someone triggered another singularity.
mwazaumoja mwazaumoja's picture
Lack of Default Rules
Arenamontanus wrote:
Gerzel wrote:
You'd basically get an oligarchical judiciary making legal decisions and policy decisions wouldn't be that long in following. Thus you'd get groups of extropans complaining about the government on extropan habitats. The only way to have no government in the long run is to have no people.
I think your sketch is roughly parallels Nozick's argument in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" for why a pure anarchocapitalist society is unstable and why it will hence evolve into a state. As he lays it out, economic efficiency will favour merging the law companies, so in the long run there will only be one monopoly left. Then he does some ethical hand-waving (that I personally don't buy) about how the monopoly would extend its protection to the people who do not want it, and you end up with a legitimate minarchist state. However, in a sufficiently diverse and rapidly changing environment this argument might not work. If the economy instead has a long tail the economies of scale of law companies might be balanced by market segmentation and you get a stable (in the large) anarchocapitalist enforcement system.
The legal system itself seems to actually lack any 'teeth' since it is not fully capable of enforcing its own judgments. So long as security companies and law companies don't merge functions there doesn't seem to be much of a threat of their being an 'extropian arbitration association' that exercises any real authority. However, I do have to wonder if the Extropian model of contract interpretation is based off of some pre-existing legal tradition. An essential part of the success of the modern arbitration system comes from the predicatability of results, which help increase the willingness of parties to settle without resorting to arbitration. Example: If I and another Extropian enter into a sales agreement where I promise to deliver 100 widgets and the other Extropian accepts these terms but adds in his acceptance that these Widgets be delivered on or before a certain date, how do we determine what the effect of these additional terms are? Under the current American system this would have meaning proscribed by a Uniform Commercial Code which would help deal with ambiguity or confusion in dealings between merchants. However under the extropian model, there doesn't seem to be any background default rules if there is no underlying legal authority. As a result, it seems that the cost of contracting would be seriously increased since defining the rights of parties would always need to be made explicitly clear ahead of time. At least, under the system of torts, the general default assumption appears to be strict liability. Hence the incidence of periodic fines for 'micro-torts.'
Libertad Libertad's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
I think that if any place is radical enough, it ought to be Extropia. Transhumans of all kinds, plenty of mercurials (including big AGIs), an interface position between economies, very different security needs for different kinds of persons. Maybe it is not stable in the truly long run, but I suspect it might be complex enough to sustain itself.
It's the Great Extropian Melting Pot! This thread is part of why I love Eclipse Phase; there's enough material in it to engage science nerds, politics nerds, and all kinds of gamers!
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
Unity Unity's picture
Okay, there is a piece here
Okay, there is a piece here in the Anarcho-capitalist bit for the Extropian entry in Autonomist Alliance that is confusing to me: Though left-wing on economics and government, many anarcho-capitalists swing to the right on social issues. The prejudices against AGIs and uplifts, for example, are common among libertarians, as are views on forking. Why?
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
Nevermind
Miss read the question. Ignore this post =) But I guess I can include it into my own post. I am not an economist, in fact I know very little about economic theory. But anarcho-capatalism and the freemarket system as the Extropians use is generally considered a right-wing philosophy, isn't it? It grew out of the neo-liberal movement of the 80's? So they seem to fall to the 'right' on both social and economic policy/beliefs? I don't understand what part of the Extropian economic theory is particularly left wing.
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Unity Unity's picture
I'm mostly confused about the
I'm mostly confused about the AGI and uplift prejudice part. But that is also a concern, yeah.
Libertad Libertad's picture
Well, it could be due to the
Well, it could be due to the fact that some American conservatives call themselves Libertarian despite holding socially conservative views or wanting increased government intervention in national security and social issues. This, combined with Ron Paul being part of the GOP and Stossel being on Fox News, and the "Libertarian" Koch Brothers funding George W. Bush's election, is probably why many people place Libertarianism as part of the American Right-wing. They both share much in common when it comes to business and the economy, but couldn't be further apart in regards to national security, religion, and social issues. Since the Extropians are closest to American Libertarians in ideology, I think the authors confused the "Libertarian-Republicans" with the whole of the movement.
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
mwazaumoja mwazaumoja's picture
Intellectual Property?
AGIs aren't individuals they're intellectual property. People own the rights to their source codes and have the rights to freely buy and sell the fruits of their labor. As for uplifts, I think the argument is more difficult. Are they pets? In that case they'd be property. Are their genetic codes considered property so maybe they are considered property too?
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Well, libertarianism
Well, libertarianism generally tends to be be very socially liberal. Consider the quadrants of the worlds smallest political quiz. It also makes total sense: if people are free to enter whatever agreements they want, of course they are allowed to agree to marry whoever agrees, and so on. I remember explaining transhumanism to libertarians back in the 90s, and their only response was "Well, duh, of course if people want to genetically modify themselves or take smart drugs they should be allowed to. They own their bodies." But then there is the strange bedfellows issue. Typically liberals (used here in the European sense) and conservatives often ally politically against the leftists. The result is usually IMHO that the personal freedom aspect gets pushed out by economic freedom and small government discussion, while the socially conservative still rattle on about their views. As for Extropia, I cannot imagine that it would be very discriminating against uplifts and AGIs. Sure, big AGIs are scary, but that is entirely rational given the gigacide a few years back. The really interesting thing is how to decide on what is a legal agent. And that will be different between different law companies. I can imagine the pure "humanist" company catering to speciests that doesn't take uplift customers - but while it might benefit from market segmentation it also loses potential customers to competitors. Another company might have the policy that any entity that can perform the sign-up procedure and pays its bills will be protected, even if it is just an AI spambot. It is a free market for personhood, after all!
Extropian
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
The thing is Capitalism is
The thing is Capitalism is built upon the underlying concept of Ownership. In other words who has the right to use or control something. If you don't recognize uplifts or AGIs as people then they cannot own anything. Therefore they can't enter into contracts as participating parties. This means Extropans can be just as beingist as the next faction. If they recognize an uplifted octomorph as property and not a person then that ego would simply be livestock to be worked, used and slaughtered as its owner saw fit. In fact recognition of property separates Extropans from true anarchists as that recognition in itself constitutes a form of government.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Gerzel wrote:The thing is
Gerzel wrote:
The thing is Capitalism is built upon the underlying concept of Ownership. In other words who has the right to use or control something. If you don't recognize uplifts or AGIs as people then they cannot own anything. Therefore they can't enter into contracts as participating parties.
Sure. But my neighbor thinks everything is inhabited by a kami and has rights, so he is fine with AGIs, uplifts and other things entering contracts. Remember that Extropia does *not* have any constitution declaring who or what has rights. It is a free market. If it is economically efficient or popular that AGIs have rights they will acquire them (as evidenced by Nomic).
Extropian
Unity Unity's picture
My concern is mostly just
My concern is mostly just that the book explicitly spells out that Anarcho-Capitalists have problems with AGIs and Uplifts, which makes no sense for just these reasons you're mentioning.
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Yes. But your neighbor doesn
Yes. But your neighbor doesn't matter unless he has a lot of capitol or is part of the prevaling majority able to decide who legally is a person or not. In order for Capitalism to work you MUST separate clearly and distinctly owners from the owned. When does an AI become its own person after its programmer has made it? What services can a programmer demand from it? When does property become person? In order for a contract to have weight in a community it must meet the mores and tenants of that community as to what is fair and legal. It doesn't matter if those are not written down or stored somewhere or if they are. If it were true anarchy then the neighbor's beliefs would apply to him and him alone and the crazy man down the street would be king because he decided that he owned the universe. Truth would be determined by who could hold the most power over the others.
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Gerzel wrote:Yes. But your
Gerzel wrote:
Yes. But your neighbor doesn't matter unless he has a lot of capitol or is part of the prevaling majority able to decide who legally is a person or not. In order for Capitalism to work you MUST separate clearly and distinctly owners from the owned. When does an AI become its own person after its programmer has made it? What services can a programmer demand from it? When does property become person? In order for a contract to have weight in a community it must meet the mores and tenants of that community as to what is fair and legal. It doesn't matter if those are not written down or stored somewhere or if they are. If it were true anarchy then the neighbor's beliefs would apply to him and him alone and the crazy man down the street would be king because he decided that he owned the universe. Truth would be determined by who could hold the most power over the others.
In Extropia, your neighbors can't tell you that an AGI is not a person. You can make contracts with an AGI if you want, even if they don't like it. They don't have to make contracts with the AGI, as is their own prerogative.
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Or if the AGI isn't a person
Or if the AGI isn't a person and the AGI does something against them or their property they can sue you for your hardware/software running amok. If you allow the AGI use your systems and access other systems through it any action it take would be yours. If it is in a shell then the owner of that shell would be its owner. If its original owner comes calling with a proof that they created it you might be liable for theft or infringement. More importantly if an AGI isn't recognized by the larger government of the habitat, if you decided to renege on the contract you signed with it well then you didn't break any contract and it has no right to come back and sue or take any other legal action. If you decide to hold it in your systems and force it to work for you then you are merely making use of your property. In other words, it does matter very much what others think is property and persons. Capitalism only exists once ownership of goods has been established and to establish it you must establish what is the owner and what is the owned.
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Gerzel wrote:Or if the AGI
Gerzel wrote:
Or if the AGI isn't a person and the AGI does something against them or their property they can sue you for your hardware/software running amok. If you allow the AGI use your systems and access other systems through it any action it take would be yours. If it is in a shell then the owner of that shell would be its owner. If its original owner comes calling with a proof that they created it you might be liable for theft or infringement. More importantly if an AGI isn't recognized by the larger government of the habitat, if you decided to renege on the contract you signed with it well then you didn't break any contract and it has no right to come back and sue or take any other legal action. If you decide to hold it in your systems and force it to work for you then you are merely making use of your property. In other words, it does matter very much what others think is property and persons. Capitalism only exists once ownership of goods has been established and to establish it you must establish what is the owner and what is the owned.
On Extropia, there IS no larger government. This DOES mean problems sometimes get solved with Railguns and Plasma Rifles, but usually arbitration takes care of it.
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
The arbitration system IS the
The arbitration system IS the larger government and its standards that government's rules and laws as to what is a person and what is property and what is a valid contract.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Gerzel wrote:The arbitration
Gerzel wrote:
The arbitration system IS the larger government and its standards that government's rules and laws as to what is a person and what is property and what is a valid contract.
Yes and no. Wikipedia: "Government consists of the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and the system by which they are organized." But here they are all interacting in a free market, and they can actually have locally contradictory rules. There doesn't have to be any global agreement on who is a person. For example: Simon Law Inc. allows AGIs as persons and contract-holders. Hayek Heights Corp. only allows transhumans to live within its gated community and regards AGI as property. Most of the time this is not a problem. If someone protected by HHC mistreats an AGI under protection of SLI then SLI will contact HHC for arbitration: both want to minimize their costs, but they also need to maintain their contracts and reputations. Most likely the arbitration will scrutinize the fine print of the part of the contracts dealing with inciting inter protection agency conflict, as interpreted by the jointly agreed arbitration agency (if the AGI went into the community or were outside will likely matter a lot). The fact that HHC thinks AGIs are non-persons doesn't matter: it is all a matter of obeying contracts, keeping customers happy and paying, and maintaining a good reputation to get more customers. The claim that extropians have a hard time with AGIs is not well supported by Rimwards at all. The fact that a big near-seed AGI like Nomic is a respected (if controversial) freelance court points in the opposite direction. The only polities that would even have allowed her existence is the anarchists, I assume. And even there it seems likely that some militia might decide she is a non-person. On Extropia she presumably have some nice contract with Medusan Shield and no doubt plenty of protective lawyers. p. 164 says that the anarcho-capitalist fraction of Extropians "Though left-wing on economics and government, many anarcho-capitalists swing to the right on social issues. The prejudices against AGIs and uplifts, for example, are common among libertarians, as are views on forking." But prejudices is not the same thing as being a non-person. p. 167 points out that AGI programming is legal on extropian habitats.
Extropian
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:Gerzel
Arenamontanus wrote:
Gerzel wrote:
The arbitration system IS the larger government and its standards that government's rules and laws as to what is a person and what is property and what is a valid contract.
Yes and no. Wikipedia: "Government consists of the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and the system by which they are organized." But here they are all interacting in a free market, and they can actually have locally contradictory rules. There doesn't have to be any global agreement on who is a person.
No there doesn't have to be a globally unique system of rules for who is a person. The Arbitration system is still the government and it still determines who is and is not a person. The fact that it determines differently depending on what parts of it you ask is irrelevant. AGIs and Uplifts can still legally have their rights stripped just by course of running against the wrong Arbiter. If they don't have much capitol they won't get much choice.
Quote:
The claim that extropians have a hard time with AGIs is not well supported by Rimwards at all. The fact that a big near-seed AGI like Nomic is a respected (if controversial) freelance court points in the opposite direction. The only polities that would even have allowed her existence is the anarchists, I assume. And even there it seems likely that some militia might decide she is a non-person. On Extropia she presumably have some nice contract with Medusan Shield and no doubt plenty of protective lawyers.
Note: She started out without her status as an AGI being known. Only after she amassed power and wealth did she come out.
Quote:
p. 164 says that the anarcho-capitalist fraction of Extropians "Though left-wing on economics and government, many anarcho-capitalists swing to the right on social issues. The prejudices against AGIs and uplifts, for example, are common among libertarians, as are views on forking." But prejudices is not the same thing as being a non-person. p. 167 points out that AGI programming is legal on extropian habitats.
They are if they belong to the person making the laws and decisions. He who holds the capitol makes the laws.
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Or to put it in another much
Or to put it in another much more satisfying way: LIEEEEESSSS!!!
Libertad Libertad's picture
Another way to interpret the
Another way to interpret the anarcho-capitalists being right-wing on social issues is this: many socially conservative libertarians hold many views in common with their republican counterparts in the US, but they don't believe that the government should get involved or ban the things they don't like. For example, a libertarian who believes that porn is harmful would be against government bans because it would result in a Prohibition-like atmosphere of underground porn, the arrest of many decent citizens, and the strengthening of organized crime. So socially conservative Extropians may not be fond of AGI research, but they believe that forcing others to not research/make AIs will only result in the creation of an oppressive State. AGI and Uplift increase in numbers is a lesser of two evils.
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Gerzel wrote:The arbitration
Gerzel wrote:
The arbitration system IS the larger government and its standards that government's rules and laws as to what is a person and what is property and what is a valid contract.
Nope. There is NO UNIFIED arbitration entity- there are a bunch of arbitration companies that are loosely affiliated.
Gerzel wrote:
They are if they belong to the person making the laws and decisions. He who holds the capitol makes the laws.
Not completely true. He who has more firepower can lay down the law. But sometimes doing that is bad for business. And on those who choose to live on Extropia tend to not want things that are bad for business.
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture
Quote:Not completely true. He
Quote:
Not completely true. He who has more firepower can lay down the law. But sometimes doing that is bad for business. And on those who choose to live on Extropia tend to not want things that are bad for business.
What about the rich foreigner that schemes to destroy or conquer Extropia? How do the Extropians protect themselves against him? Seems to me all Extropia is some sort of wild west marketplace. Everyone with any sense keeps their secure data and ego backups off that rock and if some terrorist or foreign agent antimatter bombs Extropia into dust...oh well, file an insurance claim. What if the two arbitrators and security companies can't agree on a third party at all? What if one group deliberately delays proceedings. Who's going to force them to get their ass in gear? Extropia just isn't believable to me as described.
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
NewtonPulsifer wrote:Extropia
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
Extropia just isn't believable to me as described.
That is true for any society you do not have experience with. I find it amusing to note how many pages in Rimward are spent explaining anarchist societies, since they are even harder for the average reader to get their head around. Fascist corporativism in the Junta? We are so used to it that there is little need to explain it. Anarchocapitalism? Much more need for explanation since it is rather different from what we are used to. Anarchism? Pages upon pages...
Quote:
Quote:
Not completely true. He who has more firepower can lay down the law. But sometimes doing that is bad for business. And on those who choose to live on Extropia tend to not want things that are bad for business.
What about the rich foreigner that schemes to destroy or conquer Extropia? How do the Extropians protect themselves against him?
Any society will have a problem if a rich or powerful external power try to undermine them, whether a liberal democracy or an anarchy. The interesting issue is how well they can defend themselves, and this strongly depends on *how* the scheming is going on. As an economist friend put it (when discussing attempts at undermining information markets): "There are two kinds of people in the market. The people who try to make money and the people who try to manipulate the market. The first kind will cheerfully take the money from the second kind through the trading, since they second group are not aiming for economic efficiency. So they will get what they want... for as long as they constantly pay for it. And given market logic, if there is profit to be had more and more people will come in to fleece them. The only way they can succeed is if they have far more money than the entire market, and in that case they have now destroyed the market by giving away their fortune to people who they disagree with. Who no doubt will set up a second market." Hmm... how to undermine an anarcho-capitalist market? Getting big arbitrators and security companies into trouble with each other seems obvious, but they are also motivated to stay in business and have hired non-stupid people. If company A and B refuse to deal with each other then there is an opening for company C to act as a mediator or buffer. A deeper, and probably better way of attacking is to reduce the reliability and trust of trade. In normal economies this is really powerful (so this method works even better against the Junta or Consortium) since it increases friction in trade and really puts a wet blanket over growth. But the inhomogeneous and already cheerfully caveat emptor style of extropian business makes trust attacks tricky - sure you can undermine bitcoin, but people use dozens of currencies and reps, you need to undermine *all* of them. And the moment someone realizes what you are doing they are going to start fleecing you by churning out currencies. The problem with undermining anarchocapitalism and similar open adaptive distributed systems is that it is a bit like undermining the Internet. People have been predicting and worrying about its imminent demise since the early 80s, and these predictions have often been *reasonable*. There are people and powerful groups working hard on attacking the system. But people also invent solutions to them at a high rate, and the diversity of the whole system makes it fairly resilient (as demonstrated by its survival). If bad things happen people quickly learn and use alternatives: the only really vulnerable points (like root DNS and oceanic cables) are the ones that are expensive and hard to replace. So I wouldn't worry too much about attacks that attack some part of the market: it has to be something centralized and hard-to-replace. Extropia Now is not too important (it bootstrapped the system but is not running it). I would guess actually blowing up Extropia might work - not because it would stop extropianism, but because the cluster effect of having a concentrated market disappears. But that might just mean a new free market cluster emerges somewhere else, like on Ceres, with a lot of the same actors and people.
Quote:
Seems to me all Extropia is some sort of wild west marketplace. Everyone with any sense keeps their secure data and ego backups off that rock and if some terrorist or foreign agent antimatter bombs Extropia into dust...oh well, file an insurance claim.
Which of course would mean Extropia has far better survival chances than those places where people trust that their government can protect them. Anybody keeping their backups in their same polity as where they live deserve what they get. Belt societies are well aware that they are stationary fragile targets, so it makes complete sense to spread the risks widely.
Quote:
What if the two arbitrators and security companies can't agree on a third party at all? What if one group deliberately delays proceedings. Who's going to force them to get their ass in gear?
Deliberate delays can be dealt with by having contract clauses stipulating acceptable handling times, with penalty clauses paying out for delays. If the companies cannot agree on anything, then they might have to shoot at each other... or not do anything at all, if that is cheaper. This actually seems likely, since they all have insurance premiums - one of the factors stabilizing anarchocapitalism that most overlook is that insurance companies send price signals through their premiums discouraging stupid behaviour. Many people hearing about anarchocapitalism think it is all about gun-toting security companies. They are wrong: there are far more lawyers and insurance people involved. One of the key issues of actually getting the system to work is to ensure the incentive structure makes these people efficient rather than giving them incentives for maximizing their fees. But few players want to delve into the issue of equilibria and incentive structures of legal markets... it is about as obtuse as metallic hydrogen production.
Extropian
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Arenamontanus wrote
Arenamontanus wrote:
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
Extropia just isn't believable to me as described.
That is true for any society you do not have experience with.
Why? I don't have any experience with feudalism and I believe it perfectly well. I certainly have no trouble suspending my disbelief when reading through A Song of Ice and Fire, or Macbeth. Direct experience is not required for something to be believable, and if someone's suspense of disbelief is jarred a lack of experience is no excuse for a work of general fiction.
Unity Unity's picture
Good thing Eclipse Phase isn
Good thing Eclipse Phase isn't 'general' fiction.
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Unity wrote:Good thing
Unity wrote:
Good thing Eclipse Phase isn't 'general' fiction.
You are correct. I should have said, non-specialized. Or a work of fiction that is meant for a highly limited audience who is already familiar with the world and concepts there-in. EP especially the core book, is meant to introduce audiences to its world. While it isn't general and is specialized for Hard Sci-Fi, Anarcho-Capitalism is more politics than science thus doesn't fall into its specialization. In any case I think we are to a point where we may have to agree to disagree on certain topics. For better or worse the Extropans are a relatively small faction, like the Ultimates, and get fewer articles than the other factions.
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Personally, Extropia is quite
Personally, Extropia is quite believable, although I have some doubts to its stability.
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
Unity Unity's picture
NewAgeOfPower wrote
NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Personally, Extropia is quite believable, although I have some doubts to its stability.
Basically this, for me. That it exists and is thriving now, a mere decade after a post-apocalypse because it's sitting nice and cozy in the middle of two vastly divergent economic systems? That's perfectly believable. Whether it will still be there in any recognizable form in say, another twenty years (barring another singularity making this entire thing moot) is a different matter.
Decivre Decivre's picture
Unity wrote:Basically this,
Unity wrote:
Basically this, for me. That it exists and is thriving now, a mere decade after a post-apocalypse because it's sitting nice and cozy in the middle of two vastly divergent economic systems? That's perfectly believable. Whether it will still be there in any recognizable form in say, another twenty years (barring another singularity making this entire thing moot) is a different matter.
But that's fine. One of the conceits of the setting is that, as a result of both the Fall and the new colonial age of system habitation, people have the opportunity to try out new prototypical political and governmental systems. Extropia is one of them. Consider that Extropia is only a few decades old; it may very well be unstable and poised for collapse. It would make a great plot-point for your campaign.
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Unity Unity's picture
Exactly, Decivre.
Exactly, Decivre.
Korota Korota's picture
I kind of assumed the mention
I kind of assumed the mention that anarcho-capitalists swing to the right on social issues was referring to the fact that there's no support or sympathy for people who don't poor or disadvantaged people. If you don't have money, you're screwed because nobody will help you unless you do something like sell yourself into slavery in exchange. Not that anyone will give any sort of fair deal to someone who isn't profitable to enslave. It's their own fault for being untrained or handicapped or mentally ill or whatever.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Gerzel wrote:EP especially
Gerzel wrote:
EP especially the core book, is meant to introduce audiences to its world. While it isn't general and is specialized for Hard Sci-Fi, Anarcho-Capitalism is more politics than science thus doesn't fall into its specialization.
Well, there is nothing like hard political fiction (at least as a genre, at least as far as I know). However, anarchocapitalism actually has a pretty sizeable literature - consider Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom", Murray Rothbard etc. There are plenty of well-reasoned papers and books on the topic, and even some fairly serious projects. I think as a political system it is at least as "hard" as wormholes are hard sf - not anything the majority of experts think is feasible, but an intriguing possibility that isn't completely against known economics or political science. The same goes for the anarchists in the setting. Had they just been described as traditional anarchists it would not have seemed very plausible. But plug in post-scarcity and especially the reputation economy and they start to look like "hard" political sf again.
Extropian
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Korota wrote:I kind of
Korota wrote:
I kind of assumed the mention that anarcho-capitalists swing to the right on social issues was referring to the fact that there's no support or sympathy for people who don't poor or disadvantaged people.
Which is of course a rather crude caricature. A bit like leftists all being motivated by envy. To quote what a friend said when he was paying for the dinner of a poor mutual friend: "As a libertarian I am allowed to spend my money on people I like." No doubt some extropians are self-centred (like the unsubtle take-that about the objectivists), but others are spending their money on charity. If one thinks charity will be under-supplied by the free choices of people, one should expect it to be under-supplied by a state responsive to their wishes (and a state unresponsive to their wishes has little reason to make the right choice as they see it). The idea that libertarians or anarchocapitalists are conservative when it comes to social issues strikes me as bizarre. Most libertarians I know are *very* tolerant. The core point is that people should have the freedom to pursue their lives as they see fit. Yes, you might say that some lifestyles are not for you or even look disgustingly self-destructive, but that is the extent of it: you don't have any way of prescribing how others live. Including if they marry AGIs, donate money to exhumans, or like to dress up as furry jovians.
Extropian
Decivre Decivre's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:Which is
Arenamontanus wrote:
Which is of course a rather crude caricature. A bit like leftists all being motivated by envy. To quote what a friend said when he was paying for the dinner of a poor mutual friend: "As a libertarian I am allowed to spend my money on people I like." No doubt some extropians are self-centred (like the unsubtle take-that about the objectivists), but others are spending their money on charity. If one thinks charity will be under-supplied by the free choices of people, one should expect it to be under-supplied by a state responsive to their wishes (and a state unresponsive to their wishes has little reason to make the right choice as they see it).
Charities in Extropian regions of the system also have a lot more leeway with regards to how they can use donated money. Since there is no central governing body to define what is and isn't a charity, a charity's clout and capability to do good things is purely defined by how well they maintain their reputation. If a charity's reputation becomes too low, a new charity (which anyone can start, rather easily) can snatch up their original position and restore the status quo. In a sense, this means that there is less incentive for charities to become corrupt and disorganized. Doing so tanks your reputation and makes your spot in the food chain easy pickings for any other charity.
Arenamontanus wrote:
The idea that libertarians or anarchocapitalists are conservative when it comes to social issues strikes me as bizarre. Most libertarians I know are *very* tolerant. The core point is that people should have the freedom to pursue their lives as they see fit. Yes, you might say that some lifestyles are not for you or even look disgustingly self-destructive, but that is the extent of it: you don't have any way of prescribing how others live. Including if they marry AGIs, donate money to exhumans, or like to dress up as furry jovians.
Part of that might be the fact that many people who came to extropia didn't originally have extropian views. Extropia is one of the largest capitalist system outside of the Planetary Consortium, so it's possible that many might have come there and liked what they saw. Especially after the Fall, where many people didn't get the luxury of choosing where they ended up. So the anarcho-capitalist population may be shaped by many people from outside the classic anarcho-capitalist viewpoint… so-called "neo-anarcho-capitalists" who may be more common than traditionalists. One other possibility is that this prejudice is a shift caused by demand, as the anarcho-capitalists are living in a world where AGI and uplift discrimination is fairly common. Anarcho-capitalism goes where the profit does, so it makes sense that things would move conservatively towards these issues if that's where the consumer-base wants to go with it (and that makes sense, considering that the socially-liberal peoples of the system tend to live in the outer parts and shun currency altogether).
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Unity Unity's picture
I'm still very interested in
I'm still very interested in the mutualists, myself; I rather wish there had been room for a bit more on them in Rimward.
NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture
The most difficulty I have
The most difficulty I have with Extropia is not really the privatizing the enforcement/judicial angle. It's the "legislative" branch that really seems to be missing. You know, laws and rules in the first place. Like perhaps that it isn't okay to jam wireless signals. Or that it is finders keepers if somebody drops/loses something. Or is there some lost and found procedures? Contract law doesn't cover this sort of thing. Who/what body promulgates these laws/rules/guidelines in the first place? Did Extropia adopt some sort of already existing legal tradition? If so, which one?
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
NewtonPulsifer wrote:Who/what
NewtonPulsifer wrote:
Who/what body promulgates these laws/rules/guidelines in the first place? Did Extropia adopt some sort of already existing legal tradition? If so, which one?
Ah, this is the part where people don't "get" anarcho-capitalism (or anarchism for that matter), since it is so different from most of our current political systems: Nobody promulgates the laws. In our kind of state-based society the state promulgates laws. It has a monopoly on making and enforcing them (almost - there are some weird franchises) and everybody are covered by them: laws are *public*. In an anarcho-capitalism laws are *private* contracts. I sign up with Direct Action: the contract we negotiate lists the laws I have to follow - for example that DA will not fully cover me jamming wireless and might even employ penalty clauses in that case. You sign up with Medusan Shield and sign a different contract. Maybe it has similar clauses (a lot of the contract contents are going to be fairly similar, just compare legal boilerplate) but it could have different clauses. In fact, depending on how you negotiate and what you pay you might get a different contract from other customers to the same company. How does this work in practice? If I start jamming the mesh people around me are going to call *their* cops. Who will call Direct Action. DA takes a look at my contract and say that I am not protected for doing stupid stuff like that: either they will not protect me when Medusan Shield hauls me off for online vandalism, or more likely they will (as per the contract) debit me the fine MS levies and give it to them plus some extra administrative fees and penalties (DA and MS have so many interactions that they have a standardized system for this; the real nightmare is when I do something involving 200 companies at the same time. In that case likely practice is to have a special arbitration system for "everybody at once" messes). Note that this is all tort law rather than criminal law: essentially people affected by my actions are suing me in private courts. Complicated? Of course. This is far more tricky than the public law system. If you have N law companies there are N^2 possible interactions between their legal systems (not counting different contract within the same company). This is why I doubt anything like this will work in the real world until we have pretty good AI, since in order to act legally you need to do background negotiations and analysis all the time. Torts have to be lightweight and run faster-than-realtime. However, market forces will also streamline the system. Companies with very incompatible rules will find themselves wasting resources in endless torts on behalf of their customers, losing money. Sure, you can get some customers by offering protection for their antisocial behavior, but it will be so costly that your prices will be way, way above the normal and hence the customer base microscopic: a less extreme contract would earn you more as a company. So most of those "laws" in the contracts will be fairly similar: you are covered for using force to protect yourself, but not for initiating force. Messing up communications for others is not covered (in fact, it is probably a more serious crime on Extropia than elsewhere, since it impairs people's ability to call their legal contractors and the ability to resolve contracts). And so on. The advantage of private law is that it can be far more free and customizable than public law. The anarchist commune can run an entirely pure anarchist society on the inside without problem on Extropia - and so can the Jovians and Ultimates. The exhuman down the road may mess with its brain as much as it wants, but it will have to pay some hefty insurance and law fees for the privilege, much of which will go to the somewhat worried neighbors. Is it stable? Maybe, maybe not. It is a market. I suspect that there will be plenty of change and instabilities - market bubbles, people coming up with tricks that fool systems for a while, mis-evaluations and accidents, innovation and creative destruction - but I also suspect this kind of system is *resilient*. There is no single point of failure. The real anarcho-capitalist question is of course whether this freedom is economically more efficient than the non-free economies: if it isn't, it will not win out in the end.
Extropian
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
I get it. It is nice and
I get it. It is nice and balanced as long as no one gets a major advantage. Soon factions form to use their pooled resources to protect themselves while some go on the offensive. In the last stage someone gets enough power to pass laws and you no longer have any trace of anarchy left. True anarchy doesn't work for long periods/large groups because it doesn't hold as people pool resources and form webs of interdependence. As those power blocks grow they solidify into governments. They might not call themselves that but that is what they will function as. Anyway I think we're getting deep into the weeds and suspiciously close to circular arguments. I'll try to keep my responses to new points. While I think this thread has been fun. I think we've flogged this horse.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Gerzel wrote:I get it. It is
Gerzel wrote:
I get it. It is nice and balanced as long as no one gets a major advantage. Soon factions form to use their pooled resources to protect themselves while some go on the offensive. In the last stage someone gets enough power to pass laws and you no longer have any trace of anarchy left.
That is the assumption people make. Robert Nozick has argued that this process leads to minarchic societies. Wheter it is true remains to be seen. The classical example of a somewhat similar system was the law of medieval Iceland. David Friedman has looked rather closely at why it failed, and it seems that the main two reasons were 1) no good damping mechanism for revenge, and 2) invasion by a superior force. 1 could likely be designed away (just consider adding insurance companies), 2 is an outside context issue that doesn't tell us much about the system.
Quote:
Anyway I think we're getting deep into the weeds and suspiciously close to circular arguments. I'll try to keep my responses to new points. While I think this thread has been fun. I think we've flogged this horse.
Maybe. Anarchocapitalism is a pretty different system from what we have now, so it is a fun topic. Maybe we can turn the topic around a bit: given the past discussions in this thread, what adventures can we make? Here is one possibility: libertarians are of course acutely aware of all these criticisms of their system, so some of the founders also set up semi-secret groups to help safeguard the system. Not by being any form of centralist law, mind you, just foundations devoted to preventing some of the more obvious failure modes and spreading the right ideas. This means that there might exist forces on Extropia investigating and interfering with groups they think are amassing risky amounts of power or abusing the system. They might also be trying to track down outside agent provocateurs and infiltrators that try to sabotage Extropia. Then they show the amassed evidence to people to get donations: a free market intelligence agency charity. Of course, not all such foundations work well. Some might have gone seriously doctrinaire, others have become nearly bankrupt and are now taken over by special interests. A foundation protecting Extropia from Fall-like disasters and trying to ensure that it complies with the Treaty of Uniform Security (a rather tricky issue, since there is no government) might have become obsessed with Nomic... or dug up traces of the Prometheans. Firewall agents might be approached by scary security agents working for... an extropian insurance firm. Its representative explains that it has figured out the existence of Firewall - and it approves. After all, xrisks are bad for business. While it cannot officially support Firewall, it is quite willing to provide useful information and resources in tackling xrisks and other nasty activities. It is a fairly low-cost investment for the firm if it can be kept quiet, yet various long tail risk can be defused before they affect the bottom line. Two law companies are seriously at loggerheads, disrupting trade and life in general. Unlike normal conflicts they seem to have allowed prestige to get in the way of profit, so their arbitration dealings are deadlocked. In the meantime more and more cases are piling up that cannot easily be resolved, prestige is being lost and bad feelings are spreading. What is actually going on? A seriously funded attempt at disrupting Extropia, executives infected with something making them make crazy decisions, or a ultra-subtle powerplay by some smart schemer trying to get their customers into her legal system?
Extropian
GreyBrother GreyBrother's picture
Doing some thread necromancy
Doing some thread necromancy here because i finally got around reading the Extropian chapter in Rimward and i'm one of these that needs some help understanding how private law works. Like, i get usual fights and stuff. It's easy. Most extropian Law Firms will consider that a regular insurance case where damages need to be paid and reparations are in order for all parties. But the book also mentions that you can subscribe to a set of laws that are in accordance with your own views. And we already talked in this thread about pro-antisocial laws and how companies like this would be either very expensive to subscribe to or they would not exist for long because of a lack of rep. But this is rather minor. What if we have a biochauvinist who visits Extropia regularly and has subscribed to a law code that fits his views that Uplifts and AGIs are property, not people. And in one of his visits he damages a AGIs synthmorph, accidentally probably. Obviously, the AGIs law code would declare the AGI a person, while the biochauvs company obviously doesn't. How would that be resolved? One sees it as a case of property damage, the other as damage to a person.
SquireNed SquireNed's picture
GreyBrother wrote:Doing some
GreyBrother wrote:
Doing some thread necromancy here because i finally got around reading the Extropian chapter in Rimward and i'm one of these that needs some help understanding how private law works. Like, i get usual fights and stuff. It's easy. Most extropian Law Firms will consider that a regular insurance case where damages need to be paid and reparations are in order for all parties. But the book also mentions that you can subscribe to a set of laws that are in accordance with your own views. And we already talked in this thread about pro-antisocial laws and how companies like this would be either very expensive to subscribe to or they would not exist for long because of a lack of rep. But this is rather minor. What if we have a biochauvinist who visits Extropia regularly and has subscribed to a law code that fits his views that Uplifts and AGIs are property, not people. And in one of his visits he damages a AGIs synthmorph, accidentally probably. Obviously, the AGIs law code would declare the AGI a person, while the biochauvs company obviously doesn't. How would that be resolved? One sees it as a case of property damage, the other as damage to a person.
A lot of money changes hands.
R.O.S.S.-128 R.O.S.S.-128's picture
Putting the Personal in Property
Actually there is a rather simple workaround to resolve the conflict you described. In Extropia, your person is also the property of yourself. Therefore, harming your person could also be considered a form of property damage, just with the catch that you are some extraordinarily expensive property. So the AGI pursues the case as property damage and collects a large settlement, setting up a shell corporation to carry out the contracts and collect the payment if necessary. In a more general sense though, corporations are also a useful end-run on challenges toward your personhood in general. As much as the other party may insist that you cannot act as a legal entity, they cannot deny that a corporation can, because that is the entire reason corporations exist in the first place. The fact that the corporation is entirely under your control and acts in your interest has no bearing on its ability to enter contracts or participate in transactions.
End of line.

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