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Wed, 2014-02-05 10:39

#102

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Or when people are arrested for victimless crimes, like the war on drugs? Do you agree with kidnapping and locking people up in a small room for a long time for possession of some weed? How many lives are ruined by such laws and police work, without the "criminals" ever having been guilty of harming anyone? How is that morally justifiable?
You know as well as I do that unjust laws have [i]nothing[/i] to do with the discussion at hand. Especially since you can just... get rid of unjust laws. Through legal and democratic processes.

Of course unjust laws have to be factored in. They're the whole problem with democracies.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
But we have to remember that when they come to collect taxes (and many fines), they're not acting in the role of preventing violent crime. They're extorting money for the state.
Money that pays for, among other things, the police so they can protect you from violent crime. And property crime. And maintaining the legal system that protects you from violent crime (by convicting violent criminals) And the army, to protect you from violent enemy armies. And your health care. The health care of violent criminals, so they're less violent and less criminal. And welfare, so less people turn to crime out of desperation.

As I've said several times, if that was all they collected money for, I'd have very few problems with it. But they don't. They collect money for all sorts of things, like the war on drugs and wars waged on foreign populations. Please don't only adress the few expenditures I agree with. I asked if you thought it was reasonable that the state would kill me for refusing to pay 0.1% of my taxes because I refuse to fund the war in Iraq.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Do they have the moral right to do so? I don't see where they get that. Democratic citizens don't have the right to rob people for things they would like to give money to, so they have no right they can transfer to anyone else, do they? How can their proxies, the politician and the cop, then gain that right?
That right extends as a mandate from the masses.

How can they transfer rights they don't have? Do they really have the right to force me to fund the war in Iraq or kill me if I refuse?

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Only a state could implement something like limited liability for example.
I don't see why limited liability is exclusive to the state. What about non-states makes limited liability impossible?

You're liable for damages you cause. There are no politicians to give corporations special protection enforced by the state monopoly on violence.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
How many products would you buy if there was zero guarantee for anything about it? I hope you're going to say "practically none". There's an obvious risk there that you should avoid. So you go looking for a consumer protection code on the free market.
You seem almost dogmatically convinced that there will [i]always[/i] be the possibility of switching to a "better" alternative. However, if my options are "eat food with no protection it's not filled with polonium" and "starve to death", I don't really have the option of avoiding the obvious risk of no protections - my only other option is [i]certain death[/i].

When you say that your alternative is to starve to death, you're not talking about ancap in a modern society. Voter behavior demonstrates a willingness to uphold welfare which should not disappear just because democracy ends.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
In other places like France, a competitive health services market has given probably the best health care system on the planet. In Denmark and the UK, public health care is absolutely abysmal.
Wow, really? You're using the old lie that the UK public health is absolutely abysmal? It's not like the UK is healthier (according to the OECD) than France, at less cost per capita. It's not like the NHS is notoriously more efficient at using money than private industries. France has perhaps the best health system in the world... and the third most expensive per capita among OECD countries. This [i]Fox News[/i] level arguments about state health care systems.

If you like underfunded public health care systems with long waiting lists and substandard treatment and prefer to call that "efficient" just because it is cheap, go ahead. In the meantime, I'll keep on paying to my private health insurance because the universal government health care we have here in Denmark is of so low quality that I just can't accept that.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I'm sure they'd like that, but of course an indenture contract should be considered carefully. Agreeing to one where the contract owner can control your costs and extend the duration is obviously setting yourself up for getting screwed.
Yet somehow I don't think the millions of people stuck in indentured debt bondage in India and Pakistan today had any real choice in the matter when they signed their contracts. The choice is is not "evil slavery contract" and "good slavery contract", it's "evil slavery contract" and "starve to death".

Ancap won't magically end poverty-related problems that some currently poor democracies suffer from. It won't magically induce poverty-related problems in currently rich democracies either. I don't get how you can quote problems in democracies as an example of how bad ancap will be. What is the logic?

Wed, 2014-02-05 11:42

#103

Lilith

I think...

The logic here is that an ancap society isn't just going to pop up out of thin air. Presumably it's going to evolve out of a pre-existing system, meaning the flaws aren't just going to magically disappear overnight. Unless you're advocating violent revolution, which I don't think you are. Otherwise, that's a whole other animal to wrangle with. Edit: I should clarify that I mean the [i]implementation[/i] of an ancap system in an existing area/region.

Wed, 2014-02-05 11:45

#104

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

The establishment of limited

The establishment of limited liability in ancap society Much has been made of whether limited liability would be available in ancap. This is how I see it coming about. let me know if there is a hole. Party A decides he would like to expand his business by calling for capital. He creates a company name and declares himself to be the head of that business. He draws up contracts with investors stating that they will lend investment capital in exchange for defined limited control of the company in the form of voting rights for the CEO and board of directors and interest expressed as a portion of the profits, both in proportion to the amount lent expressed as a number of shares. The contract explicitly states that the company and its agents may not draw on any other monies or asset of the shareholders to cover costs, debt or losses. The party’s to the contract are the investors and the company itself, with party A signing as an agent of the company. This contract is taken to the company’s legal provider (who was chosen for being both large and likely to endorse the contract as being between party’s that had consented to it) and is confirmed as being a contract between consenting parties. A CEO and board are elected (party A will probably be the CEO at this point) there statement of duties lists that they will control the company on behalf of the shareholders and they are tasked with making profit for the shareholders. Their contract states that they are employees and will receive a fixed (large) wage and will receive bonuses at the discretion of the shareholders if they do well. It also states that the company and its agents cannot draw on any funds or other assets of an employee to cover operating costs or debt. The company now offers purchase contracts to suppliers in the company’s name with a low ranking employee signing as agent, the initial contracts are payed cash in advance so there is no way the supplier could be short changed. Only after becoming a valued customer dose the compony ask for cash on delivery and whatever credit terms are customary (14 days, 30 days it doesn’t matter get some credit). The company also sells goods at good price and quality, recepts are always issued in the company name. If somebody requests credit it may be given in the company’s name. Next the company breaches a contract in a small way. A day late paying a bill, sells a slightly defective product. The company legal service immediately swoops in and offers, in the name of the company, to pay a slightly more than reasonable recompense. Any querying of this apparent generosity is marked told it is a matter of customer relations, we don’t want the minor issue to prevent future business. In the face of a good restitution payment the aggrieved party and there legal service, accept the offer not from an individual but from the company. This continues until all, or virtually all legal services operating in the jurisdiction has presided over a dispute with the compony and accepted the result. At some point party A disassociates himself from the company, preferably by being thrown out by the shareholders. Then time enough passes that the direction of the company could reasonably be expected to be different had party A remained in control (wouldn’t hurt if he was thrown out for wanting to change direction). Also other companies are created in similar manner, they will find it easier as it has been done before and accepted into common law. Now the company gets into trouble, and cannot meet its debts. The creditors demand restitution. But from whom. The employment contracts all specify that the employs can’t be held to corporate debts. And it wouldn’t really be right to hold an employ for the mistakes of his employer, especially as unpaid wages make them creditors. The shareholders also cannot be required to pay, technically the initial investment was a loan making them creditors as well, although the terms of the investment means the company can just keep paying them a portion of there no profits. Further every legal service representing the creditors has also accepted the company as an entity in past dealings where it presided over contracts listing the company as one of the party’s to the contract (all those generous restitutions, and other dealings that worked very well for their clients). The only person ever associated with the company who does not have a contract confirming his lack of liability for the full time of his association is party A (his actions as CEO where as an employee but there was a moment when he founded the company when he acted as an agent without a contract). He will argue that he cannot be responsible for the debt because he has had no influence over the company for an extended period of time, and was on record as wishing to take it in a different direction, a direction that (he claims) would not have resulted in insolvency. So who can the court now call upon to make restitution? Unless some employee of the company breached his employment contract by failing to act in good faith for the good of the company (if the CEO can be shown to deliberately transfer out all the assets without proper payment today he can be charged and the transactions reversed, it’s just a pain in the butt trying to prove it) I believe the various courts and legal services involved will be forced to deal with this in whatever way they deal with the death of a person in debt (and if it is relevant lacking any recoverable stack, backup or next of kin. Now there is a thought, how dose ancap deal with inherited debt. The child never agreed to a high interest loan) Further the courts are stuck having accepted hundreds of these non person entities with liability neatly contained. And with no central authority for law, who can make special rules to limit their power and influence, or prevent the creation of more.

Wed, 2014-02-05 11:59

#105

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:Of course

Smokeskin wrote:
Of course unjust laws have to be factored in. They're the whole problem with democracies.

There are democracies that [i]don't[/i] put people in jail for, say, possession of marijuana. Sometimes because the people decided that they shouldn't have those unjust laws. Are unjust laws really such a systematic problem that they're the "whole" issue with democracies? That, somehow, unjust laws will always exist in a democracy, so we have to get rid of democracies instead of the unjust laws?

Smokeskin wrote:
Please don't only adress the few expenditures I agree with. I asked if you thought it was reasonable that the state would kill me for refusing to pay 0.1% of my taxes because I refuse to fund the war in Iraq.

...the state doesn't do that. If you don't pay your taxes, the state does not order you executed. Perhaps agents of the state kills you if you pull a gun trying to prevent them from collecting the taxes... but then you've threatened to [i]murder people[/i], in which case the state might kill you not because you're refusing to pay taxes, but because you're [i]threatening murder[/i]. Of people who are often unarmed.

Smokeskin wrote:
How can they transfer rights they don't have? Do they really have the right to force me to fund the war in Iraq or kill me if I refuse?

Yes, that's exactly the right they have. Except that part about killing, which they don't do.

Smokeskin wrote:
You're liable for damages you cause. There are no politicians to give corporations special protection enforced by the state monopoly on violence.

I'm still not seeing it. Can't the corporations now just [i]pay[/i] for that privilege?

Smokeskin wrote:
When you say that your alternative is to starve to death, you're not talking about ancap in a modern society. Voter behavior demonstrates a willingness to uphold welfare which should not disappear just because democracy ends.

Oh, so charity. Like in the Victorian period, where the charity was given to fashionable or socially obvious causes, especially if there were some heart-rending drawings of orphans looking sad? Or now, where the charity is given to fashionable or socially obvious causes, especially if there are some heart-rending pictures of African orphans looking sad? Charity, which tends to dry up when it's needed the most?

Smokeskin wrote:
If you like underfunded public health care systems with long waiting lists and substandard treatment and prefer to call that "efficient" just because it is cheap, go ahead. In the meantime, I'll keep on paying to my private health insurance because the universal government health care we have here in Denmark is of so low quality that I just can't accept that.

The reason the waiting lists are shorter are because they don't help the poor. Why of course you get shorter waiting lists when you don't have to treat everybody! The fact that you can pay extra to skip in line when you're rich is [i]not a good thing[/i]. And you keep going on and on about the terrible state of the NHS and Danish public health care... which is why 90% of Danes are totally satisfied with state health care, and the low quality that comes for using the most advanced methods available to them. This underfunded, low-quality system that has 79% of the people feeling "good" or "very good" about their health. Or the NHS, which is so inefficient that it only rates the world's [i]second[/i] most efficient health system (after Irish state health care).

Smokeskin wrote:
Ancap won't magically end poverty-related problems that some currently poor democracies suffer from. It won't magically induce poverty-related problems in currently rich democracies either. I don't get how you can quote problems in democracies as an example of how bad ancap will be. What is the logic?

The problems exist, and your proposed system of non-government seems to seek to [i]remove[/i] the legal and economic support systems that prevents such things from happening in rich democracies, while also exacerbating the problems that exist in poor democracies. I mean, you're literally proposing that people will [i]sell themselves into slavery[/i] to avoid being trapped in endless debt, proposing that there will always be a provider who is willing to sell "good indenture contracts" to prevent people from selling themselves into bad slavery. Given that people don't have those options today (they tend to have have "bad slavery" and "death"), by what processes do you propose that your anarcho-capitalist society makes sure that everyone always has the [i]possibility[/i] of choosing good slavery contracts over bad slavery contracts?

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Wed, 2014-02-05 13:20

#106

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Please don't only adress the few expenditures I agree with. I asked if you thought it was reasonable that the state would kill me for refusing to pay 0.1% of my taxes because I refuse to fund the war in Iraq.
...the state doesn't do that. If you don't pay your taxes, the state does not order you executed. Perhaps agents of the state kills you if you pull a gun trying to prevent them from collecting the taxes... but then you've threatened to [i]murder people[/i], in which case the state might kill you not because you're refusing to pay taxes, but because you're [i]threatening murder[/i]. Of people who are often unarmed.

You have the situation completely backwards. "Refusing to pay" doesn't mean "and then just letting them take it anyway". At the point I resist them, they escalate, not me. I turn the unarmed man away, they come back with two police officers. I tell them to leave, they force their way in. I shove them back out, they pull their guns. I pull out my shotgun, they shoot. I match their threat level while they escalate until they kill me. What you're saying is "but you can just let them take it". Yes I could, but that's not really the point here - the point is, what happens when you try to refuse to take part in funding their war in Iraq. The answer is, they force you to pay or kill you trying.

Quote:

Smokeskin wrote:
You're liable for damages you cause. There are no politicians to give corporations special protection enforced by the state monopoly on violence.
I'm still not seeing it. Can't the corporations now just [i]pay[/i] for that privilege?

How would they do that? Do you think corporations can buy "laws" that protect them from getting sued in ancap? I'm getting a bit frustrated at continually arguing against straw men. I wish you would seek to understand ancap instead of just making up your own, twisted version of it.

Wed, 2014-02-05 14:28

#107

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

Ok, some questions to help us

Ok, some questions to help us understand. I will be thinking about the answers as archetypal examples of a type so let me know if you don’t think they qualify. Environment A factory pollutes a river. The chance of cancer for anybody who drinks from the river is now doubled, who has standing to sue? What if there is an alternative water source. Do the people who highly valued the idea of a clean river have any standing at all? Blocking development Somebody builds a road between the west and east side of an island. Somebody else wants to build a north south road. What prevents the owner of the first road being unreasonable about the terms of the crossing? (A tunnel would restrict his maximum weight, a bridge his maximum height, and he doesn’t want your road because he plans to build one as well) Nepotism A land developer builds a housing estate and sells blocks. He retains ownership of the roads but is contractually obliged to provide maintenance for 5 years (should not be needed so constitutes guarantee of quality), and then at no more than 2% over his cost (you can’t fix the price nobody knows what the future price of road base will be). 6 years later he hires his brother as a subcontractor to provide some necessary repairs for 10 times the going rate and charges the house owners that and 2% extra. There is a clear conflict of interest but what contract has he broken. Practicality of excluding every possible scam in a contract How long are contracts going to be? There are presently thousands of rules regarding consumer protection, hundreds of which are potentially relevant to each sale. Will each of these that are valued be reproduced in each sale contract? If I walk up to a fast food store and ask them to accept my consumer protection terms do you think anybody will even have time to read it. Welfare in bad times Historically during recessions and depressions many people become unemployed and more suffer reduced income, people who retain full employment store money in case they lose their job. This means that disposable income is way down and charitable payments are reduced. At the same time there are increase numbers of unemployed people needing charity. It is only the state with its very strong borrowing position (almost 100% safe investment. Worst case they print you some money and you lose some value to inflation) and lack of a profit motive that allows welfare payments to continue. During unfortunate economic times how will ancap society deal with the reduced availability of charity at the same time as an increased need. Natural manopolies. There is one road between two towns. If a second is built and both charge reasonable tolls there will be insufficient traffic to maintain both roads. What prevents the first roads owner from charging an unreasonable toll and informing anybody who starts planning a second that he will drop his prices the day they open, guaranteeing they will lose money? Monopolies maintained through size. There are 2 hardware retail chains in town and several independent stores. One is part of a larger group of companies that can afford to buy out the other (a large cash outlay). Now the single hardware chain uses its buying power to be cheaper than all the small hardware stores until they close down from lack of customers. Now possessing a monopoly the hardware chain increases prices just to line there pocket. Any time a competitor tries to enter the market the chain holds a sale dropping prices to near cost (there strong buying power cost) for just long enough to force the competitor out of business. How would this be prevented in ancap?

Wed, 2014-02-05 15:47

#108

Equinox

thezombiekat wrote:Ok, some

thezombiekat wrote:
Ok, some questions to help us understand. I will be thinking about the answers as archetypal examples of a type so let me know if you don’t think they qualify. Environment A factory pollutes a river. The chance of cancer for anybody who drinks from the river is now doubled, who has standing to sue? What if there is an alternative water source. Do the people who highly valued the idea of a clean river have any standing at all? Blocking development Somebody builds a road between the west and east side of an island. Somebody else wants to build a north south road. What prevents the owner of the first road being unreasonable about the terms of the crossing? (A tunnel would restrict his maximum weight, a bridge his maximum height, and he doesn’t want your road because he plans to build one as well) Nepotism A land developer builds a housing estate and sells blocks. He retains ownership of the roads but is contractually obliged to provide maintenance for 5 years (should not be needed so constitutes guarantee of quality), and then at no more than 2% over his cost (you can’t fix the price nobody knows what the future price of road base will be). 6 years later he hires his brother as a subcontractor to provide some necessary repairs for 10 times the going rate and charges the house owners that and 2% extra. There is a clear conflict of interest but what contract has he broken. Practicality of excluding every possible scam in a contract How long are contracts going to be? There are presently thousands of rules regarding consumer protection, hundreds of which are potentially relevant to each sale. Will each of these that are valued be reproduced in each sale contract? If I walk up to a fast food store and ask them to accept my consumer protection terms do you think anybody will even have time to read it. Welfare in bad times Historically during recessions and depressions many people become unemployed and more suffer reduced income, people who retain full employment store money in case they lose their job. This means that disposable income is way down and charitable payments are reduced. At the same time there are increase numbers of unemployed people needing charity. It is only the state with its very strong borrowing position (almost 100% safe investment. Worst case they print you some money and you lose some value to inflation) and lack of a profit motive that allows welfare payments to continue. During unfortunate economic times how will ancap society deal with the reduced availability of charity at the same time as an increased need. Natural manopolies. There is one road between two towns. If a second is built and both charge reasonable tolls there will be insufficient traffic to maintain both roads. What prevents the first roads owner from charging an unreasonable toll and informing anybody who starts planning a second that he will drop his prices the day they open, guaranteeing they will lose money? Monopolies maintained through size. There are 2 hardware retail chains in town and several independent stores. One is part of a larger group of companies that can afford to buy out the other (a large cash outlay). Now the single hardware chain uses its buying power to be cheaper than all the small hardware stores until they close down from lack of customers. Now possessing a monopoly the hardware chain increases prices just to line there pocket. Any time a competitor tries to enter the market the chain holds a sale dropping prices to near cost (there strong buying power cost) for just long enough to force the competitor out of business. How would this be prevented in ancap?

you know,i spent the last 30 minutes trying to compose a rebuttal to some of the ancap talking points just for you to do a beter job than i can do.thank you;) but i would add two thing's 1.wmd's i.e. in a ancap world what is there to stop someone from making a bio weapon. 2.how do ancap decide who can consent to somthing. i.e.at what age can two (or three)people consent to sleaping together

Wed, 2014-02-05 15:59

#109

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:You have the

Smokeskin wrote:
You have the situation completely backwards. "Refusing to pay" doesn't mean "and then just letting them take it anyway". At the point I resist them, they escalate, not me. I turn the unarmed man away, they come back with two police officers. I tell them to leave, they force their way in. I shove them back out, they pull their guns. I pull out my shotgun, they shoot. I match their threat level while they escalate until they kill me.

I find this scenario hard to believe; do the police really (as in, on a regular basis, in, for example, Denmark or Norway or the UK) pull guns when people shove them? It seems more like you're constructing a scenario based on exaggerations and hyperbole (using examples drawn heavily from the dysfunctional elements of US police enforcement) to scaremonger, rather than representing the reality as is. To the best of my knowledge, and I'd really like evidence and not hearsay to the contrary, police are not allowed (and hence usually don't) to use lethal force unless confronted with lethal force themselves. To take Denmark, for example, in the 1996-2006 period, 66 shots were fired at civilians (leading to 11 deaths), and the majority of these were not when police officers where shoved. This doesn't sound [i]at all[/i] like the scenario you pose, where you refusal to pay a fine results in armed police coming to your door and threatening to shoot you when you violently refuse to cooperate.

Smokeskin wrote:
How would they do that? Do you think corporations can buy "laws" that protect them from getting sued in ancap? I'm getting a bit frustrated at continually arguing against straw men. I wish you would seek to understand ancap instead of just making up your own, twisted version of it.

[i]"Corporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, such men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation...."[/i] -Murray N. Rothbard, [i]Man, Economy & State[/i], with [i]Power and Market[/i], 1962 When influential (by which I mean "the most influential, basically the founder of the movement and formulated most of their core theories and tenets") persona who, to the best of my knowledge, is still held in high regard by large swathes of the anarcho-capitalist movement today says that limited liability can exist independently of the state in the anarcho-capitalist society, I don't really feel that my questions are all that unreasonable. (Although what I meant was "the corporation pays for the privilege by paying for the army that enforces the limited liability, not necessarily that they buy the laws".)

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Thu, 2014-02-06 02:38

#110

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
You have the situation completely backwards. "Refusing to pay" doesn't mean "and then just letting them take it anyway". At the point I resist them, they escalate, not me. I turn the unarmed man away, they come back with two police officers. I tell them to leave, they force their way in. I shove them back out, they pull their guns. I pull out my shotgun, they shoot. I match their threat level while they escalate until they kill me.
I find this scenario hard to believe; do the police really (as in, on a regular basis, in, for example, Denmark or Norway or the UK) pull guns when people shove them? It seems more like you're constructing a scenario based on exaggerations and hyperbole (using examples drawn heavily from the dysfunctional elements of US police enforcement) to scaremonger, rather than representing the reality as is. To the best of my knowledge, and I'd really like evidence and not hearsay to the contrary, police are not allowed (and hence usually don't) to use lethal force unless confronted with lethal force themselves. To take Denmark, for example, in the 1996-2006 period, 66 shots were fired at civilians (leading to 11 deaths), and the majority of these were not when police officers where shoved. This doesn't sound [i]at all[/i] like the scenario you pose, where you refusal to pay a fine results in armed police coming to your door and threatening to shoot you when you violently refuse to cooperate.

You can add any sort intermediate steps you like between the shoving and the guns. It ends up the same way. Either take their funding for their war by force or they kill me trying. I don't understand why you keep on nitpicking irrelevant details instead of addressing the fundamental issue. If you think it could end differently, please explain to me how I could stop them safely.

Quote:

Smokeskin wrote:
How would they do that? Do you think corporations can buy "laws" that protect them from getting sued in ancap? I'm getting a bit frustrated at continually arguing against straw men. I wish you would seek to understand ancap instead of just making up your own, twisted version of it.
[i]"Corporations are not at all monopolistic privileges; they are free associations of individuals pooling their capital. On the purely free market, such men would simply announce to their creditors that their liability is limited to the capital specifically invested in the corporation...."[/i] -Murray N. Rothbard, [i]Man, Economy & State[/i], with [i]Power and Market[/i], 1962 When influential (by which I mean "the most influential, basically the founder of the movement and formulated most of their core theories and tenets") persona who, to the best of my knowledge, is still held in high regard by large swathes of the anarcho-capitalist movement today says that limited liability can exist independently of the state in the anarcho-capitalist society, I don't really feel that my questions are all that unreasonable.

If a company lends money then it can of course have a contract that specifies limited liability. In the case where a company is just a pooling of capital (like a publicly traded company with widely dispersed stock) there is generally not the control from the owners to transfer liability. But if you have a majority shareholder (or the consolidated equivalent), or the same persons with controlling influenced across companies, then liability would transfer when value is spirited away like in the Freedom Industries case. I don't know which instance Rothbard speaks of. I assume it is the two first.

Quote:
(Although what I meant was "the corporation pays for the privilege by paying for the army that enforces the limited liability, not necessarily that they buy the laws".)

And how would they do that? They'd be open to punishment for committing violence (both the company executives and the soldiers). The people they'd be trying to oppress would have insurances that kicked in - what you're suggesting is equivalent to invasion, in ancap an insurance event on the magnitude of a natural disaster. On top, a precedent for security contracts not protecting people from corporate armies would inspire other companies to do the same, creating a wave of armed conflict that could bankrupt the entire security and insurance industry. A company trying to oppress people with a private army really would be equal to an invasion and they'd face the entire security industry. Your corporate army might as well be taking over now. So can we stop with the straw men? I'm not arguing against democracy with some perverted version where every judge and cop is bribable either.

Thu, 2014-02-06 03:39

#111

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
You have the situation completely backwards. "Refusing to pay" doesn't mean "and then just letting them take it anyway". At the point I resist them, they escalate, not me. I turn the unarmed man away, they come back with two police officers. I tell them to leave, they force their way in. I shove them back out, they pull their guns. I pull out my shotgun, they shoot. I match their threat level while they escalate until they kill me.
I find this scenario hard to believe; do the police really (as in, on a regular basis, in, for example, Denmark or Norway or the UK) pull guns when people shove them? It seems more like you're constructing a scenario based on exaggerations and hyperbole (using examples drawn heavily from the dysfunctional elements of US police enforcement) to scaremonger, rather than representing the reality as is. To the best of my knowledge, and I'd really like evidence and not hearsay to the contrary, police are not allowed (and hence usually don't) to use lethal force unless confronted with lethal force themselves. To take Denmark, for example, in the 1996-2006 period, 66 shots were fired at civilians (leading to 11 deaths), and the majority of these were not when police officers where shoved. This doesn't sound [i]at all[/i] like the scenario you pose, where you refusal to pay a fine results in armed police coming to your door and threatening to shoot you when you violently refuse to cooperate.

Ok I am going to have to defend Smokeskin here. While his scenario did miss a few steps ongoing refusal to pay taxes could result in your death. And the fact that it is because people aren’t stupid enough to let it go that far. the first policemen at your door isn’t there to take your stuff but to give you a letter telling you when to be in court for failure to pay your taxes. If you show up you get fined, the unliklyhood of your voluntary payment is noted and your bank/employer are instructed to pay on your behalf, out of your account/wages. I am assuming Smokeskin will show contempt to the court or isn’t going to show up. In either of these cases a bench warrant could be issued for contempt of court. The police will go out to bring Smokeskin into the court house to see the pissed of judge. Smokeskin will see this arrest as kidnaping and resist, which indecently is a crime. Now the rules police in most jurisdictions operate under allow them to win fights (would be hard to find police officers if they were required to loos), to this end they are permitted trained and expected to use slightly more force than the person they are arresting. Police grab, Smokeskin shoves, police get baton, Smokeskin gets bat, police draw gun (seriously hopping that Smokeskin sees sense and drops bat), Smokeskin gets gun, police (now seriously in fear of his own personal life) shoots Smokeskin until he stops resisting. Contrary to popular myth most gunshot wounds are not fatal but Smokeskin could now be dead. If you constantly match the force used by the police they will always bring out more force because there rules and training say they should use the minimum force they need to be confident of winning. Most people do not try fighting the police with weapons and as a result don’t get shot, they get arrested instead. Now I don’t think this is wrong in the way Smokeskin dose. I see it as somebody dodging social responsibility and attacking police when they enforce the rules we all live by. And for the act of fighting the police getting shot is a risk you chose to take.

Thu, 2014-02-06 05:52

#112

Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote:Ok, some

thezombiekat wrote:
Ok, some questions to help us understand. I will be thinking about the answers as archetypal examples of a type so let me know if you don’t think they qualify.

I think what you posted is very relevant and surely some of the harder, actual issues with ancap.

thezombiekat wrote:
Environment A factory pollutes a river. The chance of cancer for anybody who drinks from the river is now doubled, who has standing to sue? What if there is an alternative water source.

If there are people or companies downstream that through ownership or homesteading have the right to that part of the river and use the water for drinking, then they'd have a right to sue. The factory would have to go downstream and make agreements with the owners on the pollution (like compensating a water purification plant for the extra filtering it needs to do). If the pollution begins prior to the downstream river being owned, then you can't just start getting drinking water from downstream and then claim pollution and a right to sue because you have to clean the water first. To a large extent, normal liabilities also apply, though that is something that should change over time. Today when no one drinks river water, I don't believe common law would recognize liability for minor pollution that would pose a health risk if you drank the water over a long period, but something that made you sick from taking a single cup or falling into the water would be a liability issue for the polluter. 200 years ago, the limits to acceptable pollution levels would be stricter. Risk is one of the very difficult aspects of ancap. I don't think it is that hard to demonstrate a tort for having an increased cancer risk imposed upon you, but it might be hard to lift the burden proof and you'd need a class action law suit to actually deter polluters. And there might be many polluters, confounding the issue further. However, with the extreme damage that comes from heavy pollution I think common law can adapt to handle the issue. This is also one of the reasons for getting rid of limited liability. You can't just partition of risk in legal entities without consent. The people responsible for the decisions to release a chemical onto other people's property need to know that they will be held accountable if it turns out to be harmful. There are other but similar problems related to externalizing risk in ancap. One is the moron speeding in his muscle car down the street where your kids walk and play. The standard ancap response is "before you buy the house make sure you have a stake in the road and/or that the neighbors agree with you on the speed limit", but that won't cover everything. Of course, you're not safe from everything in a democracy either, but democracies have a much easier time just locking something down (which is also the problem with them, that they use the same power to for example oppress people, generate a lot violent crime and criminal markets that harm consumers of outlawed products, like the Prohibition in America in the 1920s and the current war on drugs).

thezombiekat wrote:
Do the people who highly valued the idea of a clean river have any standing at all?

To a certain extent if they own it. But claiming that it has to be 100% clean when the pollution doesn't cause any actual restrictions on your use, I don't see that flying. That's not how it works today either, there's a ton of pollutants in the water and air that we live with. In many cases, ancap could end up cleaner because anyone that can demonstrate tort can sue, unlike today where the government decides the safe limits.

thezombiekat wrote:
Blocking development Somebody builds a road between the west and east side of an island. Somebody else wants to build a north south road. What prevents the owner of the first road being unreasonable about the terms of the crossing? (A tunnel would restrict his maximum weight, a bridge his maximum height, and he doesn’t want your road because he plans to build one as well)

On the face of it, nothing. I've been involved in many real estate projects and seen how private infrastructure and utilities agreements are handled. I would be very reluctant to develop a project where you couldn't get a guarantee on the infrastructure viability - it would worry the buyers and make it impossible to sell or at least it would get a lower value. In turn, the road owners get less traffic and less income. The same goes for utilities. So what we do is we make contracts with whoever owns the connecting roads (if they're private) and utilities that oblige them have their section supply us. And those owners of the next sections have similar agreements. What you should end up with is a network of contracts that ensure that the infrastructure keeps working. So the situation you describe could happen, if people moved into an area without proper infrastructure guarentees. That's a risk, and I hope they got their property at a discount for taking on that risk. If that risk comes back to bite them, that's how risk works. If you don't pay your home insurance, don't whine about your loss when it burns down.

thezombiekat wrote:
Nepotism A land developer builds a housing estate and sells blocks. He retains ownership of the roads but is contractually obliged to provide maintenance for 5 years (should not be needed so constitutes guarantee of quality), and then at no more than 2% over his cost (you can’t fix the price nobody knows what the future price of road base will be). 6 years later he hires his brother as a subcontractor to provide some necessary repairs for 10 times the going rate and charges the house owners that and 2% extra. There is a clear conflict of interest but what contract has he broken.

You could give the home owners the right to carry out the maintenance with a choice of their contractor at the same cost, or the right to assign another contractor. Such clauses are common in contracts where one party chooses the contractor and passes on the costs. Your example also shows clear signs of deception and breaking the intent of the agreement. You live in the US? The US legal system is based on a literal interpretation of the agreements. In Denmark, our legal system also looks at the intent of the agreement when there is a dispute. I'd hope that common law would not take the literal approach.

thezombiekat wrote:
Practicality of excluding every possible scam in a contract How long are contracts going to be? There are presently thousands of rules regarding consumer protection, hundreds of which are potentially relevant to each sale. Will each of these that are valued be reproduced in each sale contract? If I walk up to a fast food store and ask them to accept my consumer protection terms do you think anybody will even have time to read it.

They wouldn't have the time nor the skills - I don't think any corporation would let their cashiers take on the responsiblity to interpret a legal document. There would likely be some consumer codes that had a large enough market share to be known by the companies, and they'd only accept those. And the companies wouldn't know each of them in detail either, just like they don't know all product law but get advice from a legal service instead. So your fast food joint would know that they could sell to code A, B, and C, code D there's a 10% markup because they have higher liabilities for food poisoning, and you can't sell to code E because you don't meet its ecological standards. Obviously how complex it can be is determined by technology. 50 years ago it would have to primitive. In today's connected world with internet, credit cards and smartphones, you can have more complexity and faster update cycles. In EP every fast food joint could have a legal AI running.

thezombiekat wrote:
Welfare in bad times Historically during recessions and depressions many people become unemployed and more suffer reduced income, people who retain full employment store money in case they lose their job. This means that disposable income is way down and charitable payments are reduced. At the same time there are increase numbers of unemployed people needing charity. It is only the state with its very strong borrowing position (almost 100% safe investment. Worst case they print you some money and you lose some value to inflation) and lack of a profit motive that allows welfare payments to continue. During unfortunate economic times how will ancap society deal with the reduced availability of charity at the same time as an increased need.

That's a good point. Most people should be covered by unemployment insurance, but there is still an issue for the poor. Considering that I'd prefer to give money to welfare companies that prepared for bad times. Maybe they save up, maybe they have a derivative linked to consumption indexes (in good times the derivate would cost them but there'd be less need for welfare payouts and in bad times the derivate would pay out to cover increasing welfare payouts and a drop in income), maybe they short the stock market.

thezombiekat wrote:
Natural manopolies. There is one road between two towns. If a second is built and both charge reasonable tolls there will be insufficient traffic to maintain both roads. What prevents the first roads owner from charging an unreasonable toll and informing anybody who starts planning a second that he will drop his prices the day they open, guaranteeing they will lose money? Monopolies maintained through size. There are 2 hardware retail chains in town and several independent stores. One is part of a larger group of companies that can afford to buy out the other (a large cash outlay). Now the single hardware chain uses its buying power to be cheaper than all the small hardware stores until they close down from lack of customers. Now possessing a monopoly the hardware chain increases prices just to line there pocket. Any time a competitor tries to enter the market the chain holds a sale dropping prices to near cost (there strong buying power cost) for just long enough to force the competitor out of business. How would this be prevented in ancap?

Mostly that is just standard price war tactics and posturing. It already happens today, and at the local level nothing is done about it. There is also the related problem of price cartels. Sure, the second road is built, but the two road owners decide to still keep the price at the old, inflated rate. Most modern democracies will break up large monopolies (but ignore them at the local level) and make price cartels illegal. Some price cartels would also be de facto illegal in ancap because of consumer protection codes, but if the cartel has so much of a combined true monopoly that it doesn't have to hide it (like in the two road island case) they can just refuse the accept the consumer code. There's a limit to how bad it can be until competition will solve it, but below that threshold the free market can be exploited. It's a problem in ancap - we get some price cartels and price gouging. On the other hand, we break a lot of monopolies that democracies tend to enforce. Most monopolies come about from regulation - copyright, patents, limited number of available licenses from the state, etc. These can be incredibly nasty, like when lifesaving drugs are inflated in price to be out of reach of the poor. Or look at Myriad Genetics who patented a gene so for years they charged $3,000 (iirc) for a cheap genetic test that tested for a gene that gave cancer to women and killed them in their 30s if they didn't get a masectomy before it broke out. You mother dies from that, what are you going to do? Not get the test and either risk your life or cut off your breasts even though you might not carry the gene? Everyone paid the $3,000 to get a 50% chance to keep their breasts. Do you think its fair that the state uses its monopoly on violence to shut down anyone who tries to deliver a DNA test at fair price, because that would keep Myriad Genetics from lining their pockets? That companies can patent our DNA sequences? Why did the government just keep on protecting the company instead of the people, until the US Supreme Court finally sided with the people?

Thu, 2014-02-06 06:08

#113

Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture

Smokeskin wrote:Of course

Smokeskin wrote:
Of course unjust laws have to be factored in. They're the whole problem with democracies.

This, right here, shows where half the vitriol in this thread comes from. You are arguing against democratic systems using the current, corrupted, models as your examples. However, you expect us to consider AnCap in the idealized state, not corrupted by the presence of human beings in the system. The simple reality is that no economic or political system survives contact with human beings. This means that any such system should be judges on how corruption collapses it and into what form it collapses.

Smokeskin wrote:
Do they have the moral right to do so? I don't see where they get that. Democratic citizens don't have the right to rob people for things they would like to give money to, so they have no right they can transfer to anyone else, do they? How can their proxies, the politician and the cop, then gain that right?

Well, you might begin by realizing that there are no such things as moral rights. Morals are emotion based, and not absolute. Thus what is immoral for one is moral for another. Thus morals have no more weight than any other unsupported opinion. Since moral rights are merely what someone considers it moral to grant to people, they are also ephemeral.

Thu, 2014-02-06 06:09

#114

Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote:

thezombiekat wrote:
Ok I am going to have to defend Smokeskin here. [...] Now I don’t think this is wrong in the way Smokeskin dose. I see it as somebody dodging social responsibility and attacking police when they enforce the rules we all live by. And for the act of fighting the police getting shot is a risk you chose to take.

Thank you Zombiekat. I obviously don't fight the police since I value my continued freedom and life, and because my feelings towards them are ambivalent. They do the heavy lifting of taking care of dangerous criminals too, which I of course think is a noble job. As you say, the question at hand is, does the state have a moral right to do as it does? Is it reasonable that they will escalate to lethal force to get a mere 0.1% of my taxes to fund their war in Iraq? Can that be justified in any other way than an axiomatic belief in democracy makes anything right? And how do you then deal with say fundamentalist democracies that implement say a death penalty for homosexuality? (And I'm having a terribly hard time not invoking Godwin's Law here...) My personal opinion is that democratic states have to play by the same moral rules as everyone else. You can't steal, rob, murder, kidnap, extort. I know I've been defending ancap with mostly utilitarian arguments, but this is the deontological argument that lies at its heart.

Thu, 2014-02-06 06:26

#115

Pyrite

So as I see it there are two

So as I see it there are two big burdens with Ancap that I don't see being fulfilled. The first one is the burden of education: People are only going to be able to survive in this society without devolving to abject poverty, slavery, and eventually rioting and violent revolution if they are very well educated on how to survive in a completely 'buyer beware' economy. People, generally, are dumb, short sighted, and don't do adequate research on every product they buy to protect themselves. In a complex economy, it's functionally impossible for them to do so. It is easy for an institution to take advantage of a person, especially by being trustworthy at first, then leveraging that trust to mire the person in impossible obligations and a byzantine legal framework. The second is the availability of competing services. Ancap seems to assume that a service that does not serve the needs of it's clients well will almost instantly be replaced by one that can, but I've yet to see anything that will legitimately prevent companies from using their capital to push new actors out of the market and keep new services from arising. If everyone with significant overall marketshare agrees that they want the market to work a certain way, it will work that way regardless of what the pissant customers have to say about it. Judiciary companies begin to incrementally alter their practice and rulings to favor their business partners. Attempts to stop this would effectively be armed rebellion, as people try to form new security companies and obtain supplies for them to free themselves from the tyrrany of the old, meanwhile building up arms is probably in violation of their security company's 'non-compete' clause, freeing their previous security company to initiate military action against them.

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Thu, 2014-02-06 07:19

#116

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:You can add

Smokeskin wrote:
You can add any sort intermediate steps you like between the shoving and the guns. It ends up the same way. Either take their funding for their war by force or they kill me trying. I don't understand why you keep on nitpicking irrelevant details instead of addressing the fundamental issue. If you think it could end differently, please explain to me how I could stop them safely.

I've been focusing on your details because it was the details that seemed exaggerated and even to some degree manipulative. You claimed that "If you protect yourself against [the police], they will kill you, or wound you and lock you in small room for decades." It then turned out that "protecting yourself" included not only attempts at survival or avoiding bodily harm, but also as far as I can tell from what you've written, attempting to not be arrested and threatening to murder people. This goes somewhat far beyond what I interpret as "defend yourself". And, well, while you seem to hold that, axiomatically, you have a moral right to not have to pay fines which you should be allowed to defend with means up to and including lethal force, I don't believe such a "right" exists, so I don't believe you have or [i]should have[/i] any legal means of preventing the police from collecting fines. When you version of "refusing to pay" includes the [i]axiom[/i] that you must be allowed to not pay a fine, and that you have a moral right to enforce this through force, you're simply not using "refusing to pay" in any sense of the term I'm familiar with. Heck, just a written moment later, you went back to "The answer is, they force you to pay or kill you trying.", which is pretty much [i]pure hyperbole[/i]. You are simply not likely to die (or even end up in prison for a decade) for refusing to pay your taxes or a fine, which is exaggeration in the extreme.

Smokeskin wrote:
If a company lends money then it can of course have a contract that specifies limited liability.

Then why did you claim that only a state could implement limited liability?

Smokeskin wrote:
And how would they do that? They'd be open to punishment for committing violence (both the company executives and the soldiers). The people they'd be trying to oppress would have insurances that kicked in - what you're suggesting is equivalent to invasion, in ancap an insurance event on the magnitude of a natural disaster.

Punishment? Who are going to punish the people with their own private army?

Smokeskin wrote:
On top, a precedent for security contracts not protecting people from corporate armies would inspire other companies to do the same, creating a wave of armed conflict that could bankrupt the entire security and insurance industry. A company trying to oppress people with a private army really would be equal to an invasion and they'd face the entire security industry.

What stops me from buying enough of the security industry that nobody wants to fight me?

Smokeskin wrote:
Your corporate army might as well be taking over now.

Right now, armies are not for sale in most democracies.

Smokeskin wrote:
So can we stop with the straw men? I'm not arguing against democracy with some perverted version where every judge and cop is bribable either.

Perhaps not judges and police officers, but your made central to your arguments that politicians would be too liable to bribes and corruption to enforce consumer protection or environmental measures.

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Thu, 2014-02-06 07:41

#117

Smokeskin

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Of course unjust laws have to be factored in. They're the whole problem with democracies.
This, right here, shows where half the vitriol in this thread comes from. You are arguing against democratic systems using the current, corrupted, models as your examples. However, you expect us to consider AnCap in the idealized state, not corrupted by the presence of human beings in the system. The simple reality is that no economic or political system survives contact with human beings. This means that any such system should be judges on how corruption collapses it and into what form it collapses.

When I'm criticizing democracies, I use the best, most fair, most advanced democracies, like the US and European ones. I'm not using the worst democracies like many African and Middle Eastern ones. If you're not willing to be judged on the best you've achieved, what standards should you be held to? Should we also applaud communism for its lofty ideals and ignore the oppression and poverty it leads to? On the other hand, people seem to mostly be using totally unreasonably examples to counter ancap. They drag out problems that stem from regulation as an example of how bad capitalism is, when ancap wouldn't have such regulation. They say "look at how bad charity was in the Victorian Era", in a period where the government welfare wasn't developed either because people just didn't care as much back then. Some people for some reason assume that if you go ancap, everyone turns into a raging egomaniac with no sort of human decency or desire to help anyone, which strikes me as completely at odds with the behavior we all see people display. You said Somalia was an example of ancap, even though it had none of the institutions that ancap society is based on. A few people here like Zombiekat and Equinox (sorry if I missed anyone, can't remember everything) are debating the issue in a balanced manner, but in general I've been met with criticism of perverted versions of ancap that are comparable to a democracy where every judge and cop is bribable for pennies. Where did I present an idealized version of ancap? I'm mostly going with how market solutions tend to solve most problems very well - I don't believe anything can deny the multitude of good, affordable services and products that the markets provide. We also all know of market failures like monopolies and price cartels, and I've acknowledged those - some will be made worse by ending regulation, others will improve. The only thing I've said that I think can be presented as "idealized" is my belief that the freeloader issue won't be so large that funding voluntary welfare will be a problem - and in that regard, I've also said that I wouldn't have much of a problem with a state that only did that. If it turns out that people are dying in the streets, I'd go welfare minarchist in a heartbeat.

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Do they have the moral right to do so? I don't see where they get that. Democratic citizens don't have the right to rob people for things they would like to give money to, so they have no right they can transfer to anyone else, do they? How can their proxies, the politician and the cop, then gain that right?
Well, you might begin by realizing that there are no such things as moral rights. Morals are emotion based, and not absolute. Thus what is immoral for one is moral for another. Thus morals have no more weight than any other unsupported opinion. Since moral rights are merely what someone considers it moral to grant to people, they are also ephemeral.

I completely disagree. Do you for example think that a moral belief like "I consider it immoral that women enjoy sex so it is any father's duty to cut off his daughters' clitoris and sew her up so tightly sex will hurt" is just as morally right as a modern western liberated stance on women's sexuality? Have you read Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape? I highly recommend it if you're willing to be challenged on your moral relativity.

Thu, 2014-02-06 07:58

#118

Smokeskin

Equinox wrote:

Equinox wrote:
but i would add two thing's 1.wmd's i.e. in a ancap world what is there to stop someone from making a bio weapon.

This is a question of risk, one of the major problems in ancap. I think you could make the case - like you would if someone polluted the air with carcinogenics that increased the risk of cancer for people in the area - that you place people at risk of getting killed by a WMD from an accident. A worse problem is if someone has the proper security procedures (say for example the US I don't think could be blamed for being at risk of accidentally igniting a nuke) but you fear that they are producing it with an intent to harm people in the future - you simply feel you can't allow to take the risk. Can the non-aggression principle apply to proactively remove people's ability to do harm? In some cases, maybe ancap has to stop being 100% ideological and find a practical solution. If the security contractors stopped people from making nukes and bioweapons, would anyone be against that? Probably not.

Equinox wrote:
2.how do ancap decide who can consent to somthing. i.e.at what age can two (or three)people consent to sleaping together

Like in democracies, there's no fixed answer to that, it varies from place to place. In ancap, such things are decided under common law. It goes beyond sex - at what age can they enter contracts? Can you sell ANYTHING to a minor? How extensive rights do parents have over their children? What about child abuse?

Thu, 2014-02-06 08:05

#119

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:

LatwPIAT wrote:
Perhaps not judges and police officers, but your made central to your arguments that politicians would be too liable to bribes and corruption to enforce consumer protection or environmental measures.

Are you saying that politicians are not often corrupt? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Lobbying_cont... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel [link to any newspaper in the world]

Thu, 2014-02-06 08:12

#120

Smokeskin

Pyrite wrote:So as I see it

Pyrite wrote:
So as I see it there are two big burdens with Ancap that I don't see being fulfilled. The first one is the burden of education: People are only going to be able to survive in this society without devolving to abject poverty, slavery, and eventually rioting and violent revolution if they are very well educated on how to survive in a completely 'buyer beware' economy. People, generally, are dumb, short sighted, and don't do adequate research on every product they buy to protect themselves. In a complex economy, it's functionally impossible for them to do so. It is easy for an institution to take advantage of a person, especially by being trustworthy at first, then leveraging that trust to mire the person in impossible obligations and a byzantine legal framework.

Never leave home without your consumer protection rights. You're not supposed to know everything, your code is. Everyone will use it all the time. If someone forgets, everyone around them will go nuts like we do when people do something excessively dangerous like pissing on a biker gang's motorcycles. Your credit card will probably be set up to only accept transactions where the other party accepts your code.

Thu, 2014-02-06 09:01

#121

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:When I'm

Smokeskin, given that consumer rights providers will provide you with consumer protection codes that you don't expect consumers to read, what stops the consumer rights providers from exploiting you?

Smokeskin wrote:
When I'm criticizing democracies, I use the best, most fair, most advanced democracies, like the US[...]

Ah, yes. The US. Well-known for being a fair and advanced democracy. Especially with regards to corruption in the form of lobbying, which is often recognized as one of the [i]major[/i] flaws of US democracy.

Smokeskin wrote:
I completely disagree. Do you for example think that a moral belief like "I consider it immoral that women enjoy sex so it is any father's duty to cut off his daughters' clitoris and sew her up so tightly sex will hurt" is just as morally right as a modern western liberated stance on women's sexuality?

Why, yes, of course rejecting the [i]existence[/i] of objective morality must mean you're in favour of female circumcision. The rejection of the idea of a universal moral truth (like moral meta-ethicists relativists do) does not mean accepting that female circumcision is morally right; it's a rejection of the very concept of moral "rightness".

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Thu, 2014-02-06 10:00

#122

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Smokeskin wrote:LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:
LatwPIAT wrote:
Perhaps not judges and police officers, but your made central to your arguments that politicians would be too liable to bribes and corruption to enforce consumer protection or environmental measures.
Are you saying that politicians are not often corrupt? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Lobbying_cont... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel [link to any newspaper in the world]

Have to give points to Smokeskin on that one. "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Thu, 2014-02-06 10:19

#123

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin,

LatwPIAT wrote:
Smokeskin, given that consumer rights providers will provide you with consumer protection codes that you don't expect consumers to read, what stops the consumer rights providers from exploiting you?

Trustpilot? Word of mouth? Journalists? The incentive to keep an image of trustworthiness because a company like that would go out of business if it lost trust? If someone like a big consumer rights provider has clauses that everyone can read and that exploit you, don't you think someone would notice?

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
When I'm criticizing democracies, I use the best, most fair, most advanced democracies, like the US[...]
Ah, yes. The US. Well-known for being a fair and advanced democracy. Especially with regards to corruption in the form of lobbying, which is often recognized as one of the [i]major[/i] flaws of US democracy.

I said US and European. This is not just a critique of the US. I think your problem is that you don't acknowledge how the actually existing democracies work, but instead think of some idealized version of democracy when you're comparing with alternatives. Where politicians aren't self serving, public choice theory is the study of those naughty Americans, the agent-principal problem doesn't exist, and everyone pays their taxes with happiness and obeys all the laws because that's what they were raised to do without even questioning it so the police doesn't have to threaten anyone.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I completely disagree. Do you for example think that a moral belief like "I consider it immoral that women enjoy sex so it is any father's duty to cut off his daughters' clitoris and sew her up so tightly sex will hurt" is just as morally right as a modern western liberated stance on women's sexuality?
Why, yes, of course rejecting the [i]existence[/i] of objective morality must mean you're in favour of female circumcision. The rejection of the idea of a universal moral truth (like moral meta-ethicists relativists do) does not mean accepting that female circumcision is morally right; it's a rejection of the very concept of moral "rightness".

I didn't say it meant he was in favor of female circumcision. I asked him if he thought female circumcision was morally equivalent to a liberated stance on female sexuality. What's with all the twisting of everything I say? Is it really necessary to make up your own perverted version of me so you can really dig into Bizarro-Smokeskin? I might cry mod soon :D What does it mean in practice to reject the concept of moral rightness? That relativists can't pass judgment on things like performing female circumcision on babies? That they wouldn't stop it if they had the power to do so? Are you a moral relativist?

Thu, 2014-02-06 10:42

#124

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

I am curious how ancap would

I am curious how ancap would foster scientific & technological innovation and community, while allowing inventers to make a living. To understand what I mean we need some history of patents (it sucked without them. They worked for a while, now they are nearly as bad as what we started with). Quite some time ago. (I’m not looking at references so you’re not getting dates but before America was a thing) there was no such thing as intellectual property. If you invented something I was free to make it, I had no development costs so I drive the price down and you make no money after considerable expense and effort. It worked fine when what passed for technological advance was a blacksmith working with some scrap iron for a few hours and realising dropping it in piss made the blade more resilient. When people started putting significant time and resources into research and invention it became a major problem. So inventers became a closed mouthed lot hiding their methods so nobody could undercut them. As a result they had practical monopolies for as long as they could keep the secret (often in there head) nobody could build on the scientific understanding they had gained, and it was not uncommon for innovations to be lost with the death of the innovator, and of cause theft of secrets meant there was a good chance that an inventor would still lose the ability to recover his costs. With secrecy stifling scientific discussion the monarch of the day had an idea (or an advisor gave them one). Said monarch decreed that if any inventor came with a novel invention (not made before, not an article discovered in nature, and not obvious) they would be granted a patent from the crown granting them exclusive right to market that invention for a span of several years. However, in exchange for this short term monopoly they must immediately provide full plans and explanations to the crown, who would make them available for all to see. This proved a great boon. Inventors started browsing other inventions for ideas and spoke more freely with one another. New ideas where arrived at by combining old patients and if it was still current you just agreed to split the profits between the inventors involved. Then research projects got longer and more expensive, and more risky governments where lobbied and extended the patent period. And because today every new development is based on several each of which is based on several others most new product involves paying patent fees for thousands of different patents. The very system that encouraged innovation when introduced now stifles it. It doesn’t help that the American patent offices attitude is accept all patent applications and if it is not valid then it can be taken through the courts. Meaning that if somebody patents a breast cancer gean you have a choice pay the fee or breach the patent and wait to be sued hoping the court will decide the patent was invalid (you can’t chance the patent without standing. And somebody who is thinking of entering the industry doesn’t have standing, I can understand why nobody wanted to be the one to take on that behemoth armed only in the fact they are probably in the right). There are now thousands of these speculative patents on the books that may or may not be legal. Challenging them is a risky business. In my opinion the patent office isn’t doing its job letting them threw without a proper examination of there validity. And copy write is a similar creature. I don’t think the new transformers movie could have been made if copying the disk and selling it in a store the day of release was legal. But does it need to last decades after the creators death for that movie to be profitable. 2-5 years from release should be more than enough. Now in the best answer to these problems I can see to cut down the duration again. Only grant the monopoly for a few years. But measured from the point it hits the market (with a caveat that you have to keep working to bring it to market no just sitting on a potential product) but I would be open to a novel means of achieving what was once achieved buy the early decades of the patent system, a combination of communication between and profitability for inventors. Can ancap deliver these goals. Note trademark is also technically IP but I look at it very differently. If I trust the quality of the food made by john and marketed as ‘John’s kitchen supplies’ when I see a product labelled ‘John’s kitchen supplies’ I want it to be the stuff john makes. This is important to protect the reputation of a product line, and to protect customers who think they are getting something else. The current policy of “a trademark lasts as long as you use it. And is only protected in regions you use it” works well for me.

Thu, 2014-02-06 11:15

#125

Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture

Smokeskin wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I didn't say it meant he was in favor of female circumcision.

Funny, it felt like that was what you were implying about me.

Quote:
I asked him if he thought female circumcision was morally equivalent to a liberated stance on female sexuality. What's with all the twisting of everything I say? Is it really necessary to make up your own perverted version of me so you can really dig into Bizarro-Smokeskin? I might cry mod soon :D

Okay, if your question was literal... To me, no, the female circumcision moral argument does not match the ethical frameworks I try to live my life by. However, part of my ability to reject it comes because I gave zero weight to someone claiming that their views are a moral. The fact that said hypothetical circumciser considers his actions to be fulfilling morality means nothing to me. Same as how Mother Theresa spending her entire life founding hospices for the sick "out of devotion to God." The Christian morality she used to make, and justify, her actions means nothing to me. In the end what I work on is intent and result. Your circumciser is trying to justify claims of superiority by removing capabilities from another person. The result is pain without benefit. Mother Theresa's intent was to make some people, with terminal illnesses, deaths a little less alone. The result was an imperfect system, but an improvement on the nothing that was there before.

Quote:
Are you a moral relativist?

I am not a moral anything. I literally* have no morals. I live life using a set of ethical frameworks I spent years adjusting and refining. *word meant in the dictionary sense, not in the slang form. Oh, and as a minor note, "moral rights" and "moral rightness" are two very different things.

Thu, 2014-02-06 12:57

#126

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

The biggest problem with

The biggest problem with moral rights is that it so frequently it comes from different believed truths. I will give you an example that has actually been bothering me lately. The first point is the right of a child to be protected from serious harm When you see somebody you care for in clear danger you should do all in your power to negate that danger. If my child is playing wanting to climb a tree I know to be insufficient to support him I should prevent him from climbing the tree even using physical force causing mild pain and upsetting the child if necessary. This is the right thing to do as if he climber the tree it is most likely that he would break a branch and suffer a serious fall. And in other situations where the child is at risk of serious or long term harm I should take whatever action is most effective to prevent said serious harm. This also applies to other people with less capable people in there care. The second point is the right to freedom of religion. All people should be free to choose any religion or to have no religion. Nobody should interfere with this, and if necessary outside people may be justified in acting to prevent interference. The third point is a fact. Many religions include perpetual serious discomfort for those who do not follow that religion. And eternal happiness for those who follow well. There is often no middle ground for people who do not believe but are still good people. Religious people frequently believe this as fact and live there life based upon it. Point 2 requires I should have no problem with the people described in point 3 there religious views are their own. If the person described in point 3 has a child in there care they will believe that if the child fails to follow their specific religion they will suffer for eternity. This is a serious harm therefor under point 1 they MUST do all in their power to ensure there child follows there religion. While sweet words are likely to be most effective given the magnitude of the harm (miss out on eternity in paradise, suffer eternity of torcher) corporal punishment and restricted travel are hardly an overreaction to the potential danger when les harsh methods have failed. Naturally this conclusion is in violation of the child’s freedom of religion but how can I fault the parent for exercising their freedom of religion and acting to protect the child (I so want to fault the parent, very very hard, with an axe) Once you start considering multiple perfectly reasonable moral rights in combination you almost always wind up with this style of paradox. My preferred ethical framework actually stems from one fact I have decided to take as true without proof. Life is a good thing. From this, threw consequential ethics (because rules don’t matter we are trying to end up with maximum life) springs all the ideals you need. With slightly less internal contradictions than other systems I have scene.

Thu, 2014-02-06 16:00

#127

Smokeskin

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
I didn't say it meant he was in favor of female circumcision.
Funny, it felt like that was what you were implying about me.
Quote:
I asked him if he thought female circumcision was morally equivalent to a liberated stance on female sexuality. What's with all the twisting of everything I say? Is it really necessary to make up your own perverted version of me so you can really dig into Bizarro-Smokeskin? I might cry mod soon :D
Okay, if your question was literal...

Of course it was a literal question. I have zero reason to suspect you are a fundamentalistic muslim. But there are many "politically correct" people who think you can't pass any judgment on "differences in cultural norms" and will say that the two are morally equivalent.

Quote:
To me, no, the female circumcision moral argument does not match the ethical frameworks I try to live my life by. However, part of my ability to reject it comes because I gave zero weight to someone claiming that their views are a moral. The fact that said hypothetical circumciser considers his actions to be fulfilling morality means nothing to me. Same as how Mother Theresa spending her entire life founding hospices for the sick "out of devotion to God." The Christian morality she used to make, and justify, her actions means nothing to me. In the end what I work on is intent and result. Your circumciser is trying to justify claims of superiority by removing capabilities from another person. The result is pain without benefit. Mother Theresa's intent was to make some people, with terminal illnesses, deaths a little less alone. The result was an imperfect system, but an improvement on the nothing that was there before.

I'm not sure I know what you mean. Would you stop female circumcision through force if you could? Let us say you are a politician, about to vote on a law to ban female circumcision and punish anyone who carries it out along with the parents who allow it with a long prison sentence. Pro-circumcision activists are outraged at the idea that they'll be prevented from living according to their ancient traditions and the lack of cultural tolerance displayed in such a law. The floor is evenly divided, and your vote will decide the outcome. Do you vote for the law and ban female circumcision, or do you vote against or abstain?

Thu, 2014-02-06 16:11

#128

Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote:

thezombiekat wrote:
Now in the best answer to these problems I can see to cut down the duration again. Only grant the monopoly for a few years. But measured from the point it hits the market (with a caveat that you have to keep working to bring it to market no just sitting on a potential product) but I would be open to a novel means of achieving what was once achieved buy the early decades of the patent system, a combination of communication between and profitability for inventors. Can ancap deliver these goals.

There's nothing inherent in ancap that says you can or can't have IP. Some ancaps believe that you can have IP rights, others like myself don't. If the courts and their common law acknowledge IP, ancap will deliver it.

Quote:
Note trademark is also technically IP but I look at it very differently. If I trust the quality of the food made by john and marketed as ‘John’s kitchen supplies’ when I see a product labelled ‘John’s kitchen supplies’ I want it to be the stuff john makes. This is important to protect the reputation of a product line, and to protect customers who think they are getting something else. The current policy of “a trademark lasts as long as you use it. And is only protected in regions you use it” works well for me.

Trademarks would be covered in your consumer protection rights - the seller guarantees it is the genuine brand if that's what you think you're buying. In ancap versions with IP, the company would also have protection against competitors using its brand. Without IP anyone could fake your brand if they wanted to (they just couldn't pretend it was real to the customers).

Thu, 2014-02-06 16:36

#129

Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote:

thezombiekat wrote:
Naturally this conclusion is in violation of the child’s freedom of religion but how can I fault the parent for exercising their freedom of religion and acting to protect the child (I so want to fault the parent, very very hard, with an axe)

I apply the same moral standard to them as to everyone else. I'm not going to judge the parents for their motivations in doing what they do. If they're being really hard on their children to push them to excel at some sport (I'm sure everyone has seen or heard about how many of the world's top athletes were paced as children), or if they're doing it because they want their children to believe in god, it's the same thing morally. I'm a hardcore atheist so I relate very differently to the intended goals in the two cases, and I'd voice very, very different opinions on them, but I don't have any right to intervene in one and not the other. It's their children, not mine. If either one does cross into actual child abuse territory, there's no excuse. You can't justify it with tradition, or personal morals, or supernatural beliefs, or how great his adult life as a sports star will be.

Thu, 2014-02-06 16:45

#130

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Smokeskin wrote:thezombiekat

Smokeskin wrote:
thezombiekat wrote:
Naturally this conclusion is in violation of the child’s freedom of religion but how can I fault the parent for exercising their freedom of religion and acting to protect the child (I so want to fault the parent, very very hard, with an axe)
I apply the same moral standard to them as to everyone else. I'm not going to judge the parents for their motivations in doing what they do. If they're being really hard on their children to push them to excel at some sport (I'm sure everyone has seen or heard about how many of the world's top athletes were paced as children), or if they're doing it because they want their children to believe in god, it's the same thing morally. I'm a hardcore atheist so I relate very differently to the intended goals in the two cases, and I'd voice very, very different opinions on them, but I don't have any right to intervene in one and not the other. It's their children, not mine. If either one does cross into actual child abuse territory, there's no excuse. You can't justify it with tradition, or personal morals, or supernatural beliefs, or how great his adult life as a sports star will be.

Agreed. Child abusers, regardless of gender, intent or background, should be educated without mercy for their first offense, and then shot without mercy for their second. But I work with kids, and I consider both anti-vaxxers and creationists to be child abusers, so my emotions may be a [i]tad[/i] strong in this case. :p

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Thu, 2014-02-06 16:54

#131

Smokeskin

Creationists as child abusers

Creationists as child abusers, is that from permanently damaging their mental faculties and ability to think rationally by imprinting them with strange beliefs?

Thu, 2014-02-06 17:02

#132

Pyrite

So then the lynchpin of Ancap

So then the lynchpin of Ancap becomes the consumer protection agencies. How do you make sure those agencies remain both trustworthy and competitive? How is trust in the right agencies initially established, by both consumers and the marketplace? What happens when businesses in the marketplace conspire, and refuse to do business under any but the most bare-bones of consumer protections?

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Thu, 2014-02-06 17:19

#133

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Smokeskin wrote:Creationists

Smokeskin wrote:
Creationists as child abusers, is that from permanently damaging their mental faculties and ability to think rationally by imprinting them with strange beliefs?

Bingo. All critical and rational thinking is trained out of them with the repetition of "Goddidit!" (Afterall, if you teach them to ask questions, then they start asking dangerous questions... like "Why should I listen to you, [rabbi/pastor/etc]?" or "How do you know what god's will is?" Best to train all of that out of them at an early age so that they'll be nice, docile and willing to follow the orders of any authority figure they imprint on). Add to that that failing to teach them about the complex world that they live in somehow fails to make that complex world cease to exist and you have a recipe for creating generation after generation of uneducated, credulous, uncritical, xenophobic idiots who will do exactly what they're told by the leaders that they've been told to agree with their entire lives. Add to that, in order to maintain control in the long term, you also have to teach them to never trust science, to assume that all science is "a lie straight from the pit of Hell", that scientists are charlatans who are actively out to defraud the public (projection much?) and the picture of how we got to have a group of ideologues in the most powerful country in the world able to deny all basic science becomes much clearer. Creationism is the act of hemming in a child's mental horizons, and teaching them that daring to look outside of those carefully marked boundaries is sinful and risks corrupting their soul should they ever ask the forbidden question: "Why?" These children will never be able to wonder, to learn, to discover, to explore, to understand anything without a vestige of guilt or fear shivering deep through them. It becomes a self-reinforcing memeplex, one that replaces thought with the programmed responses, wonder with guilt, and understanding with dogma, and forces its hosts to attack any and all perceived signs of critical thought out of self-preservation, and it has no place in modern society. ...not that I feel strongly about it at all. Nope. Nosiree. ;)

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Thu, 2014-02-06 17:59

#134

Smokeskin

We're very much in agreement

We're very much in agreement on it. I'm just not ready to go up to the literal child-abuse-that-needs-intervention level (I'm not sure you are either?). I think creationists as a group raise children that are more likely to have a happy, productive life than many other groups in society, so the argument for intervention escapes me. I once knew a creationist on a forum I frequented for years. He was like the trucker creationist version of Arenamontanus - he was curious, listened to all sorts of audio books on the road and talked to all sorts of people he met. A really nice and interesting guy to talk to. He said that after he'd looked into geology, archeology and evolution he'd realized that when god made the Earth 6,000 years ago he'd just made it seem a lot older. He saw little contradiction between science and creationism. So not everyone goes all bad from it. You know, we should try to spread that meme. Our version of ID - we know it is bullshit but we hit them with it to get them to start looking at the science, because it is the evidence he left behind.

Thu, 2014-02-06 18:16

#135

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I think your problem is that you don't acknowledge how the actually existing democracies work, [b]but instead think of some idealized version of democracy when you're comparing with alternatives.[/b] Where politicians aren't self serving, public choice theory is the study of those naughty Americans, the agent-principal problem doesn't exist, and everyone pays their taxes with happiness and obeys all the laws because that's what they were raised to do without even questioning it so the police doesn't have to threaten anyone.

Really now? [i]I'm[/i] the one working the idealized model of my pet political system while not making the same allowances for yours? You've made the claim that corporations wouldn't want to use their private armies to enforce their ill will citing how they haven't in modern democracies, rather conveniently ignoring that corporations aren't allowed to [i]have[/i] private armies, and when they [i]do[/i], they do things like [url=http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2008/10/17/death-special/... down strikers and children[/url]. When presented with the problems of poor people not being able to pay for a security contractor to prevent coercion and other predatory practices, you suggested they get another job, which ignores... well... [i]unemployment[/i] as a problem, and also that, since they can't pay for a security contractor in the first place, how are they supposed to defend themselves against coercion? When it comes to welfare, you suggested voluntary donations (i.e. charity) as a solution, and also handwaved away all the problems that charity faces by making unsubstantiated claims about how people just care more these days than back in Victorian times - which of course is why charity works so wonderfully these days and so many people complain about their taxes being spent on unemployment benefits; people who don't want to finance welfare through taxes are just going to spend that money on charity instead? You claim that markets will magically find ways to make things cheap and fair, while democracies have to be judged by unjust laws (your prime example here seems to be drug law) that are neither universal nor absolute, and by the mechanisms by which democracies claim to and do work, can be voted and/or legislated away; take for example Uruguay, the Netherlands, some US states, Portugal (especially Portugal), Argentina, Ecuador, the Czech Republic... Likewise, the markets will always provide, yet you also claim that politicians basically never will, because they're all too corrupt. A darkness of their souls that, I might add, doesn't extend to the common man who is expected to provide charity to others. Humans, you've claimed, are fundamentally altruistic, yet somehow politicians will always turn out to be egoistical and not want to help the citizens of the state? You've made very clearly untrue statements about the state of state health care in various European countries. You described the UK as "inefficient" and "abysmal" when it's the second-most efficient health care system in the world, and the 18th best! You claim that French health care is an example of consumers choosing their own among private providers, yet the majority of those have rates set by the government in the first place. So when the government provided an inkling resemblance to a free market and it resulted in something good (expensive but high-quality health care), that's a fair standard to judge free markets by, but when debt slavery is a problem in democracies, it's not fair to make predictions about debt bondage contracts, because it's a problem with democracies? You've claimed, [i]repeatedly[/i], that trying to not pay a fine will get you murdered, talking about putting things like they are by using words like "men in dark uniforms" and "theft" and "coercion", while also redefining "refuse" to include "by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force". I don't really think that I'm presenting strawman anarcho-capitalism while you're providing a fair view of modern democracies, to put it shortly...

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Thu, 2014-02-06 18:17

#136

Smokeskin

Pyrite wrote:So then the

Pyrite wrote:
So then the lynchpin of Ancap becomes the consumer protection agencies. How do you make sure those agencies remain both trustworthy and competitive? How is trust in the right agencies initially established, by both consumers and the marketplace?

Aren't these the things that markets are typically very good at? I don't think you see market failures in these areas.

Quote:
What happens when businesses in the marketplace conspire, and refuse to do business under any but the most bare-bones of consumer protections?

The same as when all the carmakers refuse to sell anything but crappy, overpriced cars. Let competition work it out. This is really no different from the price cartel problem. And in general, I think both companies and consumers prefer to have a higher price than no consumer rights.

Thu, 2014-02-06 18:45

#137

Pyrite

Smokeskin wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
The same as when all the carmakers refuse to sell anything but crappy, overpriced cars. Let competition work it out. This is really no different from the price cartel problem. And in general, I think both companies and consumers prefer to have a higher price than no consumer rights.

It is often easier to identify a crap car than to identify a set of consumer protections with a loophole allowing them to be exploited. Also, this just moves the burden of education to the selection of your consumer protection agency, unless you'd like to argue that there would be no exploitative actors in that market. And as for high prices vs terrible consumer protection, why can't the marketplace conspire to have both?

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Thu, 2014-02-06 18:58

#138

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:You've made

LatwPIAT wrote:
You've made the claim that corporations wouldn't want to use their private armies to enforce their ill will citing how they haven't in modern democracies, rather conveniently ignoring that corporations aren't allowed to [i]have[/i] private armies, and when they [i]do[/i], they do things like [url=http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2008/10/17/death-special/... down strikers and children[/url].

Sorry to point it out, but you're talking about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre, right? That happened in a democracy, and the governor sided with the company and called in militia to help the companies, and the militia did almost all of the killings. The workers on the other hand had no security contracts and no one to protect them, because the people can't have private armies in democracies - that's what they have in ancap. Now, if you have an example with a massacre that didn't involve the elected government killing people, or where the people had a private army to protect them, then we'd have something worth discussing. But right now, you're making the argument for me why we shouldn't give the government a monopoly on violence.

LatwPIAT wrote:
When presented with the problems of poor people not being able to pay for a security contractor to prevent coercion and other predatory practices, you suggested they get another job, which ignores... well... [i]unemployment[/i] as a problem, and also that, since they can't pay for a security contractor in the first place, how are they supposed to defend themselves against coercion?

Several options have been mentioned. Welfare. Security contractor getting a split of the damages awarded. You just forgot apparently.

LatwPIAT wrote:
When it comes to welfare, you suggested voluntary donations (i.e. charity) as a solution, and also handwaved away all the problems that charity faces by making unsubstantiated claims about how people just care more these days than back in Victorian times - which of course is why charity works so wonderfully these days and so many people complain about their taxes being spent on unemployment benefits; people who don't want to finance welfare through taxes are just going to spend that money on charity instead?

Probably not, and they shouldn't be forced to. I've mentioned freeloaders multiple times, but apparently you forgot and now you again think I'm saying "everyone will magically turn nice in ancap". That's silly, just like your claim that ancap would turn everyone selfish. And people do care more these days.

LatwPIAT wrote:
You claim that markets will magically find ways to make things cheap and fair, while democracies have to be judged by unjust laws (your prime example here seems to be drug law) that are neither universal nor absolute, and by the mechanisms by which democracies claim to and do work, can be voted and/or legislated away; take for example Uruguay, the Netherlands, some US states, Portugal (especially Portugal), Argentina, Ecuador, the Czech Republic... Likewise, the markets will always provide, yet you also claim that politicians basically never will, because they're all too corrupt.

Markets suffer from failures in some cases, and governments can also do good. But there is a much deeper and fundamental problem with the incentives in government that will continue to cause it to make decisions that don't serve the people. I posted some links earlier to wikipedia articles on the research into it (and we're talking Nobel Laureates, not some fringe economics), but I'm sure you haven't read them.

LatwPIAT wrote:
You've claimed, [i]repeatedly[/i], that trying to not pay a fine will get you murdered, talking about putting things like they are by using words like "men in dark uniforms" and "theft" and "coercion", while also redefining "refuse" to include "by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force".

I asked you previously how you suggest I refuse. I'd be very happy to be able to refuse without anyone drawing any guns. Why don't you just answer me? It is much easier that you just give me the solution so I and everyone else can see how that would work. Now, if you don't have a peaceful solution (and I don't believe you do), could you just acknowledge that you're wrong and we can move on and talk about the real issue?

Thu, 2014-02-06 19:06

#139

Pyrite

Smokeskin wrote:I asked you

Smokeskin wrote:
I asked you previously how you suggest I refuse. I'd be very happy to be able to refuse without anyone drawing any guns. Why don't you just answer me? It is much easier that you just give me the solution so I and everyone else can see how that would work. Now, if you don't have a peaceful solution (and I don't believe you do), could you just acknowledge that you're wrong and we can move on and talk about the real issue?

Have you read 'Bartleby the scrivener'?

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Thu, 2014-02-06 19:07

#140

Smokeskin

Pyrite wrote:

Pyrite wrote:
And as for high prices vs terrible consumer protection, why can't the marketplace conspire to have both?

Cartels typically have a breaking point. They exist on the premises that no one in the cartel would gain more by dropping prices and taking a larger market share, and that competitors considering to enter the market find the entry costs higher than the potential profits. The more the cartel pushes the price, the more likely it is that it will break. On top of that, people will often substitute their spending if the price is gouged too badly. If flatscreen TVs were pushed up in cost, some people would switch to watching TV on their tablets and computers. So they can't just push maximally on all fronts, they'd have to prioritize. And if the consumers value consumer protection over price, and the companies value price over consumer protection, then the most profitable move for the companies is to gouge the price and let the consumer protection be.

Thu, 2014-02-06 20:25

#141

LatwPIAT

Smokeskin wrote:Sorry to

Smokeskin wrote:
Sorry to point it out,

I am sure you feel immense amounts of sorrow.

Smokeskin wrote:
but you're talking about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre, right? That happened in a democracy, and the governor sided with the company and called in militia to help the companies, and the militia did almost all of the killings. The workers on the other hand had no security contracts and no one to protect them, because the people can't have private armies in democracies - that's what they have in ancap.

As you are someone who is accusing me of not reading linked articles, I'd like to refer you to both the article [i]I[/i] linked as well as the one you linked. Reading it, you should notice that the incident(s) in the first article happened several months [i]before[/i] the governor called in the state militia, and the murders were committed by employees of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. This detective agency was something of a legal private army in that conflict. To the best of my knowledge (and I'll admit to not being an expert on the legal details of 19th Century US laws regarding private detective agencies), the strikers would have full legal rights to hire Baldwin-Felts or an equivalent agency like the Pinkertons to defend themselves against murder. Yet, as it happens, private armies tend to side with the people with lots of money, who tend not to be poor workers. But I'm sure that in anarcho-capitalist society, this will all be solved by private armies hiring themselves out pro-bono to protect people from exploitation, lots and and lots of welfare, and the poor people being able to afford long-term protection contracts paid up front.

Smokeskin wrote:
Several options have been mentioned. Welfare. Security contractor getting a split of the damages awarded.

Ah, yes, I'm sure that we can support the legal needs of the poor entirely through charity and pro-bono work.

Smokeskin wrote:
Probably not, and they shouldn't be forced to. I've mentioned freeloaders multiple times, but apparently you forgot and now you again think I'm saying "everyone will magically turn nice in ancap". That's silly, just like your claim that ancap would turn everyone selfish.

Charity, does not, today, work to adequately support the poor. Even with taxes (that quite a lot of people aren't going to pay in your anarcho-capitalist society, meaning less money overall goes to welfare), the poor are struggling. So how then are you proposing that that the poor survive off welfare with the added expenses of private security and legal protections, [i]especially[/i] in economic downturns which have a known tendency to cause charity to dry up?

Smokeskin wrote:
And people do care more these days.

The fact that I used the term "Unsubstantiated claim" will, I hope, demonstrate exactly how much faith I place in the validity and relevance of that statement.

Smokeskin wrote:
Markets suffer from failures in some cases, and governments can also do good. But there is a much deeper and fundamental problem with the incentives in government that will continue to cause it to make decisions that don't serve the people. I posted some links earlier to wikipedia articles on the research into it (and we're talking Nobel Laureates, not some fringe economics), but I'm sure you haven't read them.

A part of a [i]single[/i] wikipedia article, on the problems of lobbying in the United States of America, with research that deals primarily with a situation only in the US, and which is at times uniquely US-American. Take, for example, the problem that politicians need to rely on lobbyists to pay for their expensive advertising campaigns - this is not a problem that's systematic and endemic to democracies; it disappears when political parties aren't allowed to advertise via mass media or are not required to solicit private entities for funding to advertise with. If you really want to convince me that lobbying is such a pustule upon all democracies everywhere, I'd really like evidence and research that deals with all democracies everywhere, not research dealing with a single instance of a dysfunctional lobby-government relationship. As for those Nobel Laureates, they don't really seem to feature heavily in the article, and there's no Nobel Prize in economics anyway; which Prize did they win, the Peace Prize? (Or did you mean they're laureates for the "Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"? - I guess you could actually be a "Nobel laureate" even if you didn't actually win a Nobel Prize, given that they economic memorial prize is issued by the same group.)

Smokeskin wrote:
I asked you previously how you suggest I refuse. I'd be very happy to be able to refuse without anyone drawing any guns. Why don't you just answer me? It is much easier that you just give me the solution so I and everyone else can see how that would work. Now, if you don't have a peaceful solution (and I don't believe you do), could you just acknowledge that you're wrong and we can move on and talk about the real issue?

You can refuse... and have them arrest you for refusing to pay your fines? You can refuse to pay the fines and not end up dead, you can refuse to pay the fines and not end up wounded; you can probably even refuse to pay fines and not end up assaulted. Pretty much the only thing you can't do is end up refusing to pay fines and expect to not have the state enforce (through prison terms) its moral right to collect those fines in spite of your refusal.

—

@-rep +2 C-rep +1

Fri, 2014-02-07 05:29

#142

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

A consumer protection compony

A consumer protection compony possess a few traits that make it difficult to form a lasting oligarchy. It is fast for a customer to change provider, The costs of entering the field are low (you don’t need lots of land, machinery, or stock), new entries are resilient to short term difficulty gaining market share because they have low debt. Quality matters enough that if one provider is seen as of poor quality but cheap people will still pay a reasonable price for a quality product. So you can’t force a competitor out of the marked with a price war. Bad quality (or corrupt) consumer protection providers will quickly be noticed by the victims who will spread the word widely. There dose remain the possibility of a retail oligarchy consorting to refuse reasonable consumer protections. This will leave the consumer protection providers powerless.

Smokeskin wrote:
Probably not, and they shouldn't be forced to. I've mentioned freeloaders multiple times, but apparently you forgot and now you again think I'm saying "everyone will magically turn nice in ancap". That's silly, just like your claim that ancap would turn everyone selfish.

We are not saying ancap will turn everybody selfish. Just that some people are selfish (always have been, are now, always will be) and that it will only take a few people who are crafty, intelligent and selfish to ruin it for everybody, unless something is organised to keep them in check against there will.

Fri, 2014-02-07 06:39

#143

Erenthia

A question for the Ancaps

My issues with anarcho-capitalism are much more logistical than moral/ethical. It's my opinion that ancap essentially incomplete, but that it actually is a good start. (Also DROs give me the creeps, but that's not a valid argument) So my question for you guys is this (and I'd have asked on reddit but those people genuinely scare me. the ancaps in this thread seem much more approachable) : Imagine that in addition to security contracts, consumer protection, DROs and private defense firms you add an additional structure. We'll call it a "residential consortium" The business model of the residential consortium is this: It owns a great deal of land (say, the size of the UK or Texas or something in that order of magnitude). It then builds houses and apartment buildings, etc in on its land and rents these out. As a part of the contract, you agree to use the consortium's consumer protection agencies, DROs, and private security firms - which are cheaper because it is purchasing services from these companies in bulk and able to negotiate a lower rate. It can also force these companies to operate under a central framework turning polycentric law back into monocentric law. Of course, as its primary marketing strategy the consortium will seek to "commoditize the complement" meaning it will take it's profits and invest them in infrastructure projects as a means of making it's primary product (housing) more attractive. It might also build hospitals and pay doctors to treat their customers free of charge, create an education system free to it's existing customer base, and rent commercial land at a higher rate (and possibly take a percentage of their profits) to those who want to operate businesses on their land. In fact, with enough land they might even follow the freemium model, offering basic housing and food allowance at no charge in hopes that some percentage of "free" level users will upgrade to premium versions (like all freemium models, this will be subsidized by premium users). Of course, those who live in such a consortium would have a high incentive to purchase voting shares in the consortium... If this is acceptable then anarcho-capitalism would [i]seem[/i] to be an position that says: 1) I don't like the terminology of democracy. Taxes are only okay if we call them "rent" or "membership dues" and 2) The punishment for tax evasion should be banishment/deportation rather than imprisonment. I can almost get behind #2 but #1 is silly. The government owns the land. All the land. Even if you think you own it, Eminent Domain is proof that you don't. Now, on the other hand, I [i]do[/i] like the idea of a world where anyone can create their own state and states compete for citizens and are subject to market forces. Thus AnCap, to me, seems like a more appropriate context for states to deal with each other than individuals. (side note: I'm actually an anarchist, leaning towards syndicalism but I haven't picked what goes after the hyphen for me just yet. I find AnCap and Marxism equally interesting. Really though, I don't think Anarchism of any sort will be viable until we have significantly more powerful technology to back it up.)

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Fri, 2014-02-07 08:17

#144

Smokeskin

Erenthia wrote:My issues with

Erenthia wrote:
My issues with anarcho-capitalism are much more logistical than moral/ethical. It's my opinion that ancap essentially incomplete, but that it actually is a good start. (Also DROs give me the creeps, but that's not a valid argument) So my question for you guys is this (and I'd have asked on reddit but those people genuinely scare me. the ancaps in this thread seem much more approachable) : Imagine that in addition to security contracts, consumer protection, DROs and private defense firms you add an additional structure. We'll call it a "residential consortium" The business model of the residential consortium is this: It owns a great deal of land (say, the size of the UK or Texas or something in that order of magnitude). It then builds houses and apartment buildings, etc in on its land and rents these out. As a part of the contract, you agree to use the consortium's consumer protection agencies, DROs, and private security firms - which are cheaper because it is purchasing services from these companies in bulk and able to negotiate a lower rate. It can also force these companies to operate under a central framework turning polycentric law back into monocentric law. Of course, as its primary marketing strategy the consortium will seek to "commoditize the complement" meaning it will take it's profits and invest them in infrastructure projects as a means of making it's primary product (housing) more attractive. It might also build hospitals and pay doctors to treat their customers free of charge, create an education system free to it's existing customer base, and rent commercial land at a higher rate (and possibly take a percentage of their profits) to those who want to operate businesses on their land. In fact, with enough land they might even follow the freemium model, offering basic housing and food allowance at no charge in hopes that some percentage of "free" level users will upgrade to premium versions (like all freemium models, this will be subsidized by premium users). Of course, those who live in such a consortium would have a high incentive to purchase voting shares in the consortium... If this is acceptable then anarcho-capitalism would [i]seem[/i] to be an position that says: 1) I don't like the terminology of democracy. Taxes are only okay if we call them "rent" or "membership dues" and 2) The punishment for tax evasion should be banishment/deportation rather than imprisonment. I can almost get behind #2 but #1 is silly.

A company would be free to do that, yes. At least that's what us ancaps say - a statist should ironically enough be opposed to it because it is a monopoly. If people willingly sign the "social contract" then imprisonment for tax evasion is also ok. You don't even need to control the whole area, you could easily have dispersed "states" as long as you could live with your non-state-member neighbors doing evil stuff like smoking weed or getting abortions without you getting to throw them in jail for it.

Erenthia wrote:
The government owns the land. All the land. Even if you think you own it, Eminent Domain is proof that you don't.

I completely disagree. The government doesn't have ownership of private property or land. It didn't homestead it, nor did it purchase it from someone who did. The stuff it did homestead, it did so with money robbed from people. Let's imagine you and some other people move to unclaimed lands and begin farming the land, building homes, etc. You've now homesteaded the land you've developed and that you use, and so you own it. The people on the island doesn't put all the land to use, so there is still unclaimed land. Then one day, some guy comes along and tells you "please vote for one of these people to lead you". Maybe the guy you voted for gets in, maybe he doesn't. But either way, the next that happens is another guy shows up. He says "hello, you now have to pay 30% of your income to us. If you don't pay willingly, we have 100 men with rifles that will come and take the money from by force, and of course they'll take some more money for their trouble too. And if you resist them, we'll take you away from your family and farm for a few years, how do you think they will like that? So really, just pay up. Have a nice day!" And then these guys that took your money, they build better roads between the farms for your money. They show up with a list of rules that you have to obey including inside your own home, and they use the money they took from you to hire more men with guns to make sure you follow the rules. That's what states are in a nutshell. I don't see how that gives them ownership of your land. They didn't homestead our land and they didn't buy it. I don't even see how they have a legitimate claim to the roads even - yes they homesteaded them, but they did so with stolen money. They owe the people that money back, which will likely bankrupt them and then we'll seize their property and divide it among us.

Erenthia wrote:
Now, on the other hand, I [i]do[/i] like the idea of a world where anyone can create their own state and states compete for citizens and are subject to market forces. Thus AnCap, to me, seems like a more appropriate context for states to deal with each other than individuals.

I'm totally with you on this one. If we really have to keep democracy, then I would like to see it divided up into city-states. Say 100,000 people in each (that's roughly twice the size of the average municipality here in Denmark). All laws get handled in the city-state, from tax rates to welfare to drug laws to how much you want to give to a joint army. It's small enough that the politicians are accountable to the community, and more importantly it is small enough that people can move. Right now, moving to another country comes with extreme cost - separation from friends and family, often a different language and culture. This means that the competition between states is very, very low. With small city-states however, we could easily move from one to the other. This would create real competition and give some power back to the people.

Fri, 2014-02-07 08:20

#145

Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote: Smokeskin

thezombiekat wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Probably not, and they shouldn't be forced to. I've mentioned freeloaders multiple times, but apparently you forgot and now you again think I'm saying "everyone will magically turn nice in ancap". That's silly, just like your claim that ancap would turn everyone selfish.
We are not saying ancap will turn everybody selfish. Just that some people are selfish (always have been, are now, always will be) and that it will only take a few people who are crafty, intelligent and selfish to ruin it for everybody, unless something is organised to keep them in check against there will.

That's why you have private courts and security contractors. It keeps those people in check.

Fri, 2014-02-07 10:46

#146

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Side note: Regarding the

Side note: Regarding the "Children's Lunches Thrown Out Because Their Parents Couldn't Pay" issue, a rather nice counter-point just popped up in my RSS Feeder: [url=http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/02/07/3263261/texas-man-school-l... Man Pays Off Students' School Lunch Debts So They Can Keep Eating[/url]. Not aiming to reignite that conversation in all of its incandescent glory, but good news and stories of integrity should be shared as much as the bad news and tales of corruption, if not moreso. Beyond that... *throws precautionary bucket of water on smoldering thread* Keep calm and carry on! :)

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Fri, 2014-02-07 15:24

#147

Erenthia

Smokeskin wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
A company would be free to do that, yes. At least that's what us ancaps say - a statist should ironically enough be opposed to it because it is a monopoly.

That's incorrect on a number of levels. For one, statists recognize the government as a monopoly and consider it to be an exception. For another not all statists have a problem with monopolies. Communists for example. (Actually it's not a complete monopoly because they don't own *all* the land, they're just highly vertically integrated) Also in ancap, due to the economies of scale, residential consortiums would be highly desirable to live in, since it reduces the legal complexity and costs of various services. So a real ancap world would look almost exact like ours but with fewer restrictions on travel.

Smokeskin wrote:
If people willingly sign the "social contract" then imprisonment for tax evasion is also ok.

So if your government decided to circulate it's existing body of laws as a contract and you had the option to sign it or leave the country, what would you do? And would you be satisfied with that situation?

Smokeskin wrote:
You don't even need to control the whole area, you could easily have dispersed "states" as long as you could live with your non-state-member neighbors doing evil stuff like smoking weed or getting abortions without you getting to throw them in jail for it.

Right, but that wasn't the point. The point was that in practice, an ancap society would look just like the ones we have today, except with a few very minor alterations. Edit: sorry I have the bad habit of not using the preview button and editing my posts for grammar/etc while they're live, but I wanted to add in here, that most people would want to live under the same legal framework as their neighbors, so that would become a feature consortiums offer to their customers.

Smokeskin wrote:
I completely disagree. The government doesn't have ownership of private property or land. It didn't homestead it, nor did it purchase it from someone who did. The stuff it did homestead, it did so with money robbed from people. Let's imagine you and some other people move to unclaimed lands and begin farming the land, building homes, etc. You've now homesteaded the land you've developed and that you use, and so you own it. The people on the island doesn't put all the land to use, so there is still unclaimed land. Then one day, some guy comes along and tells you "please vote for one of these people to lead you". Maybe the guy you voted for gets in, maybe he doesn't. But either way, the next that happens is another guy shows up. He says "hello, you now have to pay 30% of your income to us. If you don't pay willingly, we have 100 men with rifles that will come and take the money from by force, and of course they'll take some more money for their trouble too. And if you resist them, we'll take you away from your family and farm for a few years, how do you think they will like that? So really, just pay up. Have a nice day!" And then these guys that took your money, they build better roads between the farms for your money. They show up with a list of rules that you have to obey including inside your own home, and they use the money they took from you to hire more men with guns to make sure you follow the rules. That's what states are in a nutshell. I don't see how that gives them ownership of your land. They didn't homestead our land and they didn't buy it. I don't even see how they have a legitimate claim to the roads even - yes they homesteaded them, but they did so with stolen money. They owe the people that money back, which will likely bankrupt them and then we'll seize their property and divide it among us.

That's not how states form. Sure, that's how empire's spread, but they're usually more open about the fact that they're stealing other people's land. States form when people who live together decide they need a hierarchy to keep the peace (not an assumption I agree with but it's built into our DNA via the reptile brain). They simply made the error of not signing over to their land to a central authority first because they didn't realize that they needed to in order to appear legitimate. The concept of common law demonstrates that people wouldn't have expected to be sovereign on the land they homesteaded. So I don't agree that that's what states are. I think they're much more like the consortiums I described.

Smokeskin wrote:
I'm totally with you on this one. If we really have to keep democracy, then I would like to see it divided up into city-states. Say 100,000 people in each (that's roughly twice the size of the average municipality here in Denmark). All laws get handled in the city-state, from tax rates to welfare to drug laws to how much you want to give to a joint army. It's small enough that the politicians are accountable to the community, and more importantly it is small enough that people can move. Right now, moving to another country comes with extreme cost - separation from friends and family, often a different language and culture. This means that the competition between states is very, very low. With small city-states however, we could easily move from one to the other. This would create real competition and give some power back to the people.

I don't claim to know how things should be organized, but I don't necessarily agree that keeping democracy is a last resort. Part of the point of my "residential consortium" was to show that the ways things are now would (largely) succeed in an open marketplace because collective bargaining power would drive down the costs of DROs and Private Defense firms and living under the same legal framework as all your neighbors reduces the complexity of everyday life. Now, don't get me wrong, part of the reason we don't have more efficient systems is because we don't use the market effectively. In minarchy, the state wouldn't do anything itself and it wouldn't interfere in the market directly. All essential government functions would be handled as a single payer system and implemented by the private sector. Obviously the problem with this is in having a few people controlling absurd amounts of money, which is why I think the government should be an Autonomous Corporation. What i don't see the need to do is to dismantle existing states so we can put them back together in almost the same way when we can, instead, simply rewrite our laws.

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Fri, 2014-02-07 15:49

#148

Steel Accord Steel Accord's picture

Erenthia wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
A company would be free to do that, yes. At least that's what us ancaps say - a statist should ironically enough be opposed to it because it is a monopoly.
That's incorrect on a number of levels. For one, statists recognize the government as a monopoly and consider it to be an exception. For another not all statists have a problem with monopolies. Communists for example. (Actually it's not a complete monopoly because they don't own *all* the land, they're just highly vertically integrated) Also in ancap, due to the economies of scale, residential consortiums would be highly desirable to live in, since it reduces the legal complexity and costs of various services. So a real ancap world would look almost exact like ours but with fewer restrictions on travel.
Smokeskin wrote:
If people willingly sign the "social contract" then imprisonment for tax evasion is also ok.
So if your government decided to circulate it's existing body of laws as a contract and you had the option to sign it or leave the country, what would you do? And would you be satisfied with that situation?
Smokeskin wrote:
You don't even need to control the whole area, you could easily have dispersed "states" as long as you could live with your non-state-member neighbors doing evil stuff like smoking weed or getting abortions without you getting to throw them in jail for it.
Right, but that wasn't the point. The point was that in practice, an ancap society would look just like the ones we have today, except with a few very minor alterations. Edit: sorry I have the bad habit of not using the preview button and editing my posts for grammar/etc while they're live, but I wanted to add in here, that most people would want to live under the same legal framework as their neighbors, so that would become a feature consortiums offer to their customers.
Smokeskin wrote:
I completely disagree. The government doesn't have ownership of private property or land. It didn't homestead it, nor did it purchase it from someone who did. The stuff it did homestead, it did so with money robbed from people. Let's imagine you and some other people move to unclaimed lands and begin farming the land, building homes, etc. You've now homesteaded the land you've developed and that you use, and so you own it. The people on the island doesn't put all the land to use, so there is still unclaimed land. Then one day, some guy comes along and tells you "please vote for one of these people to lead you". Maybe the guy you voted for gets in, maybe he doesn't. But either way, the next that happens is another guy shows up. He says "hello, you now have to pay 30% of your income to us. If you don't pay willingly, we have 100 men with rifles that will come and take the money from by force, and of course they'll take some more money for their trouble too. And if you resist them, we'll take you away from your family and farm for a few years, how do you think they will like that? So really, just pay up. Have a nice day!" And then these guys that took your money, they build better roads between the farms for your money. They show up with a list of rules that you have to obey including inside your own home, and they use the money they took from you to hire more men with guns to make sure you follow the rules. That's what states are in a nutshell. I don't see how that gives them ownership of your land. They didn't homestead our land and they didn't buy it. I don't even see how they have a legitimate claim to the roads even - yes they homesteaded them, but they did so with stolen money. They owe the people that money back, which will likely bankrupt them and then we'll seize their property and divide it among us.
That's not how states form. Sure, that's how empire's spread, but they're usually more open about the fact that they're stealing other people's land. States form when people who live together decide they need a hierarchy to keep the peace (not an assumption I agree with but it's built into our DNA via the reptile brain). They simply made the error of not signing over to their land to a central authority first because they didn't realize that they needed to in order to appear legitimate. The concept of common law demonstrates that people wouldn't have expected to be sovereign on the land they homesteaded. So I don't agree that that's what states are. I think they're much more like the consortiums I described.
Smokeskin wrote:
I'm totally with you on this one. If we really have to keep democracy, then I would like to see it divided up into city-states. Say 100,000 people in each (that's roughly twice the size of the average municipality here in Denmark). All laws get handled in the city-state, from tax rates to welfare to drug laws to how much you want to give to a joint army. It's small enough that the politicians are accountable to the community, and more importantly it is small enough that people can move. Right now, moving to another country comes with extreme cost - separation from friends and family, often a different language and culture. This means that the competition between states is very, very low. With small city-states however, we could easily move from one to the other. This would create real competition and give some power back to the people.
I don't claim to know how things should be organized, but I don't necessarily agree that keeping democracy is a last resort. Part of the point of my "residential consortium" was to show that the ways things are now would (largely) succeed in an open marketplace because collective bargaining power would drive down the costs of DROs and Private Defense firms and living under the same legal framework as all your neighbors reduces the complexity of everyday life. Now, don't get me wrong, part of the reason we don't have more efficient systems is because we don't use the market effectively. In minarchy, the state wouldn't do anything itself and it wouldn't interfere in the market directly. All essential government functions would be handled as a single payer system and implemented by the private sector. Obviously the problem with this is in having a few people controlling absurd amounts of money, which is why I think the government should be an Autonomous Corporation. What i don't see the need to do is to dismantle existing states so we can put them back together in almost the same way when we can, instead, simply rewrite our laws.

With all that being said. Would you describe yourself as a miniarchist? I agree with you in that we should work to rewrite existing infrastructure rather than wholesale revolution.

—

Your passion is power. Focus it. Your body is a tool. Hone it. Transhummanity is a pantheon. Exalt it!

Fri, 2014-02-07 17:27

#149

Smokeskin

Erenthia wrote:For another

Erenthia wrote:
For another not all statists have a problem with monopolies. Communists for example.

What communists think about such things don't really count, like how creationist opinions on evolutionary theory aren't relevant either.

Erenthia wrote:
Also in ancap, due to the economies of scale, residential consortiums would be highly desirable to live in, since it reduces the legal complexity and costs of various services. So a real ancap world would look almost exact like ours but with fewer restrictions on travel.

I'd like to meet he ancap who would give up his freedom and willingly commit himself to the oppression of democracy just to save a few bucks and the simplicity of not having to deal with troublesome neighbors who play by their own rules. Anarcho-capitalism is about freedom. Also, how do you propose that this "democracy-in-ancap" would stop developing the exact same problems that actual democracies have?

Erenthia wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
If people willingly sign the "social contract" then imprisonment for tax evasion is also ok.
So if your government decided to circulate it's existing body of laws as a contract and you had the option to sign it or leave the country, what would you do? And would you be satisfied with that situation?

Of course not. What right does the state have to extort me like that? I live here, I have my friends and family and business here.

Erenthia wrote:
most people would want to live under the same legal framework as their neighbors, so that would become a feature consortiums offer to their customers.

Some people would want that, and they'd be free to go live there. I wouldn't. Why would I put myself in a position where what my neighbors think could end up dictating what I could do?

Erenthia wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I completely disagree. The government doesn't have ownership of private property or land. It didn't homestead it, nor did it purchase it from someone who did. The stuff it did homestead, it did so with money robbed from people. Let's imagine you and some other people move to unclaimed lands and begin farming the land, building homes, etc. You've now homesteaded the land you've developed and that you use, and so you own it. The people on the island doesn't put all the land to use, so there is still unclaimed land. Then one day, some guy comes along and tells you "please vote for one of these people to lead you". Maybe the guy you voted for gets in, maybe he doesn't. But either way, the next that happens is another guy shows up. He says "hello, you now have to pay 30% of your income to us. If you don't pay willingly, we have 100 men with rifles that will come and take the money from by force, and of course they'll take some more money for their trouble too. And if you resist them, we'll take you away from your family and farm for a few years, how do you think they will like that? So really, just pay up. Have a nice day!" And then these guys that took your money, they build better roads between the farms for your money. They show up with a list of rules that you have to obey including inside your own home, and they use the money they took from you to hire more men with guns to make sure you follow the rules. That's what states are in a nutshell. I don't see how that gives them ownership of your land. They didn't homestead our land and they didn't buy it. I don't even see how they have a legitimate claim to the roads even - yes they homesteaded them, but they did so with stolen money. They owe the people that money back, which will likely bankrupt them and then we'll seize their property and divide it among us.
That's not how states form. Sure, that's how empire's spread, but they're usually more open about the fact that they're stealing other people's land. States form when people who live together decide they need a hierarchy to keep the peace (not an assumption I agree with but it's built into our DNA via the reptile brain). They simply made the error of not signing over to their land to a central authority first because they didn't realize that they needed to in order to appear legitimate.

Most people never had any say in any state forming. Some guy homesteaded some land, and then he sold it to someone who passed it onto his son who sold it to someone who... and so on. Along the way, a baron comes along and says he has to pay allegiance, and then a king, and then another king, and then maybe the king hands over state to a parliament, or some there was a civil war and the revolutionaries won and made it a democracy. Very few people were involved in creating the state. And I think that very, very few would have just willingly signed their land over to the new states. But let's do it your way, I'm fine with that. The state announces that in 3 years, it will go from house to and ask people to either sign over their land to the government or go anarcho-capitalistic - the state would no longer have any jurisdiction over us or our property. And I know this is being generous of us ancaps, but as a full and final settlement all the anarcho-capitalists gets a fair stake in all the government property as compensation for all the stuff it stole from of us and all the crimes it committed.

Erenthia wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I'm totally with you on this one. If we really have to keep democracy, then I would like to see it divided up into city-states. Say 100,000 people in each (that's roughly twice the size of the average municipality here in Denmark). All laws get handled in the city-state, from tax rates to welfare to drug laws to how much you want to give to a joint army. It's small enough that the politicians are accountable to the community, and more importantly it is small enough that people can move. Right now, moving to another country comes with extreme cost - separation from friends and family, often a different language and culture. This means that the competition between states is very, very low. With small city-states however, we could easily move from one to the other. This would create real competition and give some power back to the people.
I don't claim to know how things should be organized, but I don't necessarily agree that keeping democracy is a last resort. Part of the point of my "residential consortium" was to show that the ways things are now would (largely) succeed in an open marketplace because collective bargaining power would drive down the costs of DROs and Private Defense firms and living under the same legal framework as all your neighbors reduces the complexity of everyday life. Now, don't get me wrong, part of the reason we don't have more efficient systems is because we don't use the market effectively. In minarchy, the state wouldn't do anything itself and it wouldn't interfere in the market directly. All essential government functions would be handled as a single payer system and implemented by the private sector. Obviously the problem with this is in having a few people controlling absurd amounts of money, which is why I think the government should be an Autonomous Corporation. What i don't see the need to do is to dismantle existing states so we can put them back together in almost the same way when we can, instead, simply rewrite our laws.

The whole economy of scale thing only really works out when there's competition though - without it, you get all the typical diseases of monopoly. Competition isn't just about having to stay ahead of the next guy, it also has a lot to do with tinkering and trial and error. We humans aren't half as smart as we think we are and even less apt at planing for the future. We need different actors to do different things and then let the market test who had the best idea. But mostly, I think you're focusing way too much on economic efficiency and way too little on the freedom. Once you get your huge consortiums, then freedom evaporates and we're living under the boot of an elite again. Stuff like that will just never work. It's been analyzed to death. Look at the principal-agent problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem . The incentive structure is just never going to work out for the principal - and that's us, folks. The ancap solution to the problem is to remove the principal and make everyone their own agent that can choose on the free market.

Fri, 2014-02-07 17:52

#150

Pyrite

By what mechanism would

By what mechanism would companies review and either accept or reject the policies of new consumer protection contracts? Certainly this wouldn't happen on the transaction level (except maybe with super-advanced AIs) I would assume that any such company would need to get its contracts pre-approved by a large number of influential market actors. That seems to me like it would become the largest barrier to the entry of new consumer protection agencies.

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Fri, 2014-02-07 19:10

#151

Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:Smokeskin

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
but you're talking about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre, right? That happened in a democracy, and the governor sided with the company and called in militia to help the companies, and the militia did almost all of the killings. The workers on the other hand had no security contracts and no one to protect them, because the people can't have private armies in democracies - that's what they have in ancap.
As you are someone who is accusing me of not reading linked articles, I'd like to refer you to both the article [i]I[/i] linked as well as the one you linked. Reading it, you should notice that the incident(s) in the first article happened several months [i]before[/i] the governor called in the state militia, and the murders were committed by employees of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. This detective agency was something of a legal private army in that conflict.

They were not a legal private army, no. You could hire detectives, and guards, but they could only apply force for self defense. Factory owners and detectives were charged with murder in some of the riots, but I don't think they were ever convicted. You can imagine the call "hello mr. factory owner, it's the governor. I'm terribly sorry to hear you've been charged with murder. I was considering to uhm look into the legal proceedings of the case, see if there was any uhm irregularities in the case that should be uhm brought to the attention of the judge. Of course such things cost money for uhm lawyers and such to assist me, and unfortunately the office drawers are a bit empty at present...." In several cases they wanted the private detectives to be able to act more aggressively, so they got the sheriff to deputize them. Again, the government and its monopoly on violence sides with the company.

LatwPIAT wrote:
To the best of my knowledge (and I'll admit to not being an expert on the legal details of 19th Century US laws regarding private detective agencies), the strikers would have full legal rights to hire Baldwin-Felts or an equivalent agency like the Pinkertons to defend themselves against murder.

Who would take the job? When they fight off the company detectives and the militia arrives afterwards, do you think they'd be able to fight them off too? Was it 8,000 militiamen that arrived in the Ludlow incident? What do the workers' detectives do then? Surrender and let the militiamen teach the rioting workers a lesson, or fight alongside them and the workers still lose (which by the way also shows why the workers had no incentive to hire detectives, even if they could afford it). Do you think the workers' detectives would have the clout to get deputized before the incident, or to get off the murder charges afterwards, like the company men did? You're proposing that the workers hire people to fight the government. I just don't see that working.

LatwPIAT wrote:
Yet, as it happens, private armies tend to side with the people with lots of money, who tend not to be poor workers.

The examples you cited didn't have private armies, the heavy lifting was done by government militia. Also, there is the concept of insurance. Rich people have the means to pay for the rebuilding if their house burns down. Ordinary people however pay insurance - a little bit of money each year in return for the promise of a big sum in case of a low probability event like a house fire. If the government didn't have a monopoly on violence, ordinary people could have a security insurance contract so that in the unlikely event that they needed a private army, they would get it. Unfortunately, private armies are illegal in democracies, so ordinary people can't get such protection. You need to know the governor for that.

LatwPIAT wrote:
But I'm sure that in anarcho-capitalist society, this will all be solved by private armies hiring themselves out pro-bono to protect people from exploitation, lots and and lots of welfare, and the poor people being able to afford long-term protection contracts paid up front.

Again, you're arguing against something totally different from what I said. I have used an example of security contractors working for a cut of the damages. Is that pro bono? In lawsuits where the lawyer is on a no-cure-no-pay contract, do you think he's working pro bono too? Why should there be lots and lots of welfare? Just like most people pay taxes today, they'd pay for their security. The welfare would only be needed for the poor (and to the extent the damages-sharing model wouldn't cover it), which for reason you write would have to pay for it.

Smokeskin wrote:
And people do care more these days.

The fact that I used the term "Unsubstantiated claim" will, I hope, demonstrate exactly how much faith I place in the validity and relevance of that statement. [/quote] Slavery. Burning witches. Cutting off ears and hands. Flogging. Public humilation on a pillory. Work safety conditions. Child labor. Environmental concern. Level of violence. Women's rights. Child labor. Violence against children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage the wealthiest people in the world to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. The campaign specifically focuses on billionaires and was made public in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. The Huffington Post reported in April 2012 that "81 billionaires committed to giving at least half of their fortunes to charity".[1] As of July 2013, 113 billionaire individuals and couples and one family group have signed the pledge.[2]

LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
Markets suffer from failures in some cases, and governments can also do good. But there is a much deeper and fundamental problem with the incentives in government that will continue to cause it to make decisions that don't serve the people. I posted some links earlier to wikipedia articles on the research into it (and we're talking Nobel Laureates, not some fringe economics), but I'm sure you haven't read them.
A part of a [i]single[/i] wikipedia article, on the problems of lobbying in the United States of America, with research that deals primarily with a situation only in the US, and which is at times uniquely US-American. Take, for example, the problem that politicians need to rely on lobbyists to pay for their expensive advertising campaigns - this is not a problem that's systematic and endemic to democracies; it disappears when political parties aren't allowed to advertise via mass media or are not required to solicit private entities for funding to advertise with. If you really want to convince me that lobbying is such a pustule upon all democracies everywhere, I'd really like evidence and research that deals with all democracies everywhere, not research dealing with a single instance of a dysfunctional lobby-government relationship.

I'm sorry, but public choice theory only gets a single article on wikipedia. These are not links to individual cases, they are links to whole bodies of theory that covers a huge number of instances. There's plenty of additional stuff to read if you want to outside of wiki, but we can go up to 3 links if you want to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent

LatwPIAT wrote:
As for those Nobel Laureates, they don't really seem to feature heavily in the article, and there's no Nobel Prize in economics anyway; which Prize did they win, the Peace Prize? (Or did you mean they're laureates for the "Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"? - I guess you could actually be a "Nobel laureate" even if you didn't actually win a Nobel Prize, given that they economic memorial prize is issued by the same group.)

You are apperently not aware of what the Nobel Prize in Economics mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences: he Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics,[1][2] is an award for outstanding contributions to the field of economics, generally regarded as the most prestigious award for that field.[3] Although not one of the Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, it is identified with them, and prizes are announced with and awarded at the same ceremony.[3] As to what they won the prize for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Memorial_Prize_laureates_in_E... 1982 George Stigler United States Chicago "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation"[20] 1986 James Buchanan by Atlas network.jpg James M. Buchanan United States Chicago Constitutional "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making"[24] 2009 Nobel Prize 2009-Press Conference KVA-30.jpg Elinor Ostrom United States New institutional "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons"[47]
LatwPIAT wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:
I asked you previously how you suggest I refuse. I'd be very happy to be able to refuse without anyone drawing any guns. Why don't you just answer me? It is much easier that you just give me the solution so I and everyone else can see how that would work. Now, if you don't have a peaceful solution (and I don't believe you do), could you just acknowledge that you're wrong and we can move on and talk about the real issue?
You can refuse... and have them arrest you for refusing to pay your fines? You can refuse to pay the fines and not end up dead, you can refuse to pay the fines and not end up wounded; you can probably even refuse to pay fines and not end up assaulted. Pretty much the only thing you can't do is end up refusing to pay fines and expect to not have the state enforce (through prison terms) its moral right to collect those fines in spite of your refusal.
So your answer is that I can cross my arms, glower at them and say in a stern voice "I refuse to pay the 0.1% of my taxes that goes to fund your war in Iraw", and then have them fine me to twice the amount, throw me in jail for refusing, and then just let them take my stuff to pay the taxes plus the fines? Well, I refuse to let them drag me off to jail. How would that work?

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