Confusion and semantics. I don’t know about you but I don’t live in a free society. What’s more, I don’t think there’s a sinlge free society on earth, so I doubt you live in a free society either.
I wonder what you mean by ‘we live in anarchy’.
It’s true. In a free society, you would have to work at work, not post at Mises. [:P] [;)]
In a free society I would be able to work even less than I work now, and yet afford more stuff.
Next =P.
Exactly!! We seriously need to reconsider all the terminology we use, because all the words are based on an assumption that the State is always with us.
Redefined with this realization,
Anarchy: the absence of any territorial concentration of power sufficient to significantly coerce
State: a monopoly PDA taking advantage of its monopoly on force to extract taxes for anything it wants. (It is a profitable business, because its costs are zero and its revenues are non-zero.)
I wrote a post a while back covering this crucial issue in greater detail: A Redefinition of Terms in the Anarcho-Capitalist Paradigm
I would really like to revive this one.
I contend that any monopoly PDA is eminently liable to aggress, and that this is true to such a universal extent that our definitions will more cleanly align with reality if we simply consider the State equivalent to a PDA that got too big (just took a different route to the same result).
Other PDAs would be incentivized (by market demand from any consumers that share the concerns we are now talking about) to prevent the aggressing PDA from aggressing, and from growing.
Naturally, if the market demand from consumers is what provides PDAs with the incentive to ensure their rivals don’t merge and get too big and start monopolizing and aggressing, then the more consumers understand the concept we are discussing, the more likely AnCap will be to succeed. Seems a matter of education, which is why I’m all over this thread. If we could clone Tom Woods, we’d have it made[;)]
Thanks for bringing this up, tacoface.
I agree. I’ve never disputed this. I think it’s the same for anybody. Once they realize what they are doing - the question is - will they upon their own free-will continue to do it. Yet some in government are not outside the law. There are undoubtedly real criminals knowing exactly what they are doing and they are like any other criminal in the street. It the sophistication and level of crime, that I pointed out, that makes governmental individuals criminals. There are blue-collar crimes, government crimes, and street gang crimes, etc… Justice, even currently, has various of fields of crime that no one individual in the field of justice pursues. Justice is a very large field and investigates a wide array of crimes. That’s why there are numerous different departments in say for instance, a police station. If you are talking about the average Congressional person that signs onto bills thinking they are doing good for the country, etc… then no doubt they are under the same propaganda that most people in the country that vote or don’t vote may experience. It’s when they are given the choice. An educated choice. I believe many in government currently know not what they do, and the same goes for any one individual governmental or not.
I agree. The state is a monopoly PDA. It is what I think is a corrupt, dishonest PDA due to it’s injustice. By dishonest I’m thinking in terms that Spooner used in his description of honesty with justice.
I’ve tried to use this argument before as well. It’s why I consistently post to nay-sayers that politicians don’t wake us up in the morning and call for us to go to work. We are desiring and doing the jobs we perform, not because some government official decrees that Jane works at the grocery store (now maybe in some kind of sci-fi futuristic world this might happen[:P]). People desire to work the jobs they do on their own accord. Even if they don’t like the job, it has nothing to do with a governmental official telling them word for word - don’t like your job. People are thinking own their own and having their own desires. yes I agree.
I want to reply to posts in here in more detail but I’ve been posting from an iPhone,which is intolerable to use with these forums, and I will reply in more detail when I get on a computer. I just wanted to say that I am under no illusions as to the originality of this idea. I came to this conclusion by thinking about how society would function in the absence of an aggressive PDA dictating how everyone live under the PDA’s rules and the best conclusion I came to was for everyone to have a contract with everyone else they deal with as to how they are to interact peacefuly together. If the person does not agree to your contract, and you do not agree with theirs, simply do not interact with them. There is no need for natural rights or objective morality if you have this. All that matters is might and how you use it to deter aggression.
Is this different from panarchism?
More like a big gangster. It can even offer protection against other gangsters or other services (whether we want them or not), but only coercing you first.
I agree. It is a big gangster, a corrupt PDA. Like any other gang that delivers by the point of a gun. These are the ones to stay away from. I think the government is a shyster.
I see this as shopping. Yet I’m being coerced to buy into this particular unjust PDA service. If truth and justice rises to the surface more one of these days the significance upon being educated and choosing wisely before having to buy into a service or product will be more apparent to more people. I have much to learn myself, but the initial inclination is realized. If choice can be someday mustered into this particular area of the market a more flourishing liberty will fall upon individual hands.
The responsibility will be in the individual’s true judgement - not minds inhibited by coercion to stay contingent and thus minds made up by others who are not me, you, or anybody else. Minds of an individuals’ own unique life capable of choosing, absent the unnecessary coercion in whatever it may be, thus the contingent doors may be actualized by the individuals own capable nature, and in liberty this flower may bloom.
peace
I think this is similar to David Friedman’s conception of ancap, which I have become increasingly sympathetic to.
Law and anarchy are underdeveloped fields of libertarian theory.
But I disagree with this. A monopoly can mean many things. The most successful PDA is not necessarily coercive, nor did it gain its market share by being coercive.
A state, no matter how small, always starts out as a coercer. That is why I think calling the state any form of PDA is an error, and one that can lead to errors such as your post if carried forward.
I think it is counterproductive to keep insisting the state is a rogue or failed or monopoly PDA. It has never performed as a PDA, and it never will.
Also, in a market, you confuse the incentives for a monopoly. A monopoly “PDA” would be less likely to be coercive, because that would create competition. It’s been my experience that as firms gain share, they assist creative destruction by being more conservative, not less.
I disagree. For me, “anarchy” means living in a society where people, in general, refuse to pay taxes or obey the dictates of some people calling themselves “the government”, regardless of the punishment
I think we are interpreting “big” in different ways (my fault). Picture a local PDA covering only one very remote small island town. It would be small, but if it had a monopoly it would be prone by basic facts of human nature to becoming a de facto State, extracting subscription fees compulsorily. So the issue is not size per se, but rather size in relation to its jurisdictional territory; in other words, territoriality.
Same with a State. If the federal government gets too invasive, competing forces will emerge.
That’s very true. However, I maintain that there is a fundamental difference between gaining market share in a non-violent service and a violent one. There is an important difference between Microsoft having 100% market share in OS sofware and browsers over the entire US territory, versus a PDA having 100% market share over that territory (even if it got there by being a paragon of non-aggression and libertarian principles). In the former case, a substantially superior OS software and browser will eventually emerge and take away market share; Microsoft does not have much coercive power to quash competition. However, in the latter case the PDA has coercive power in spades, of exactly the right kind.