Competition: would it not take quite a bit of time for another company to emerge and create some new roads? What are the citizens supposed to do if they have to drive to work on a regular basis?
Protests: sorry angry protestors, I’m not allowing protests on my roads, and if you do it anywhere else why should I care? It’s not as if I GAF whether or not you dislike my dictatorial corporation.
Mutual aid: let’s just see how long you can survive without my roads.
Hahaha. When I saw where he was going with this I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s just a rehash of Walmart owning the entire world.
Completely useless. He disregards the market process of exploration and the importance of the use of knowledge in society.
But surely when a certain system (private roads in this case) is proposed, you have to face the problems it creates!
Of course it would take time for another company to emerge. Any solution you could possibly propose will take time, and I could just as easily ask you what you expect people to do in the meanwhile. People are supposed to do whatever they are supposed to do. The answer to their problems won’t fall out of of the sky.
You didn’t mention boycotts. You’re just positing a corporation that simply doesn’t care whether consumers are satisfied or not, doesn’t care about effects of its behavior on its reputation, and doesn’t care about whether its holding prices high will attract outside entrants. You can do that if you want, but I dispute whether that’s a likely scenario. Does the CEO have devil horns too?
Why do you also assume that all the roads are owned by one entity? Empirically, at least, in free markets there are usually several competing utility companies. Cartels are also quickly broken down when there is free entry.
Mutual aid doesn’t necessarily mean that people go without your roads, though they might well and decide to take another route/mode of transportation. Your roads are competing with every other alternative on the market, after all. It may also mean that they provide each other with cash to make the purchase.
Again, there are plenty of possible solutions. I don’t think its me that has to defend them all, since real life is much more complicated, so much as you that needs to justify why you are so certain that people are stupid and incapable of solving problems like this.
Perhaps. But I think the “problems” in this case are not so much caused by private roads as just the general human desire to be a jackass. They will be present under any system you adopt. And there may be all sorts of ways of solving them. People have come this far.
There is no thing as objective law. Period. So what seems flakey about customary law?
Law is many things to many people. The only consistent, defining factor of law is that it resolves disputes nonviolently. No system of law, whether it is statutory, common, or customary (or whatever) will have all perfect laws. But the more centralized a system of law, the less people can experiment with law. If there is a bad law, that’s it. But with decentralized law, if there is a bad law, it sticks to a local area. Good laws spread, bad laws won’t.
Sat. 12/05/26 21:56 EDT
.post #156
Let’s make things even worse.
In addition to doing all the rotten things you’ve mentioned, let’s give this dictatorial corporation six more powers:
In other words, let’s turn this dictatorial corporation into…a government.
It seems to me that, even in the highly unlikely, worst-case scenario, the free market is preferable, and by a considerable margin.
Thanks for that link, JJ. Great read.
Good old Mr1001nights.. produces one of his most retarded videos yet.
Strawman after strawman… first case [1] Intellectual Property… would be NOTHING to stop everyone else emulating the aliens ‘inventions’ etc.. down comes most of the OP’s bs.
I was asked this question on reddit and attempted to answer it but my answer was ignored, was that you?
I don’t believe in government owned roads, I just am skeptical of having all roads be private (I would like there to be at least some voluntarily funded roads built by communities).
Perhaps there could be a mixture of “public” (community built) and private roads.
Too many fallacies, but I stopped at 3:57. His business “quickly becomes an astounding successs, consumers love his products and this drives millions of businesses out of the market.”
Back to reality, that business is Google, and it has CREATED untold opportunities and market expansion, it has vastly improved the productivity of the entire world. Case closed.
Mon. 12/05/28 21:28 EDT
.post #157
Seems like both of these are non-governmental, i.e., “private.” Maybe the word “private” connotes, for you, something negative, exclusionary, and potentially “dictatorial.” In some cases this might obtain. You can think of gated communities, for example, where access is restricted primarily or exclusively to members of the community and their invited guests or visitors. But, you can also imagine things like race tracks, large mall parking lots, roads or “ways” between townhouse-style condominiums, and even competitive, for-profit electronic-toll highways, such as this one:
Granted, this is not a true free market example (see financing and management), but it suffices to illustrate my point, namely, that “private” doesn’t necessarily mean “exclusionary” or “dictatorial.” These enterprises only survive by attracting customers, so their private owners have strong incentives (i.e. greed, and the desire to eat) to “play nice.”
So only anarcho-capitalists are biased?
Agreed.
Agreed.
Actually, I think this scenario is more likely when a state exists, because the state considers itself (so to speak) to be the true owner of all the land under its jurisdiction. But it has an interest in letting people believe that things are otherwise.
On the other hand, I’m confused by your statement that “nobody is there to enforce any law against purchasing private property”. Why do you make that assumption? It seems to me that you’re implicitly switching to your preferred definition of “anarchy”, which is synonymous with “chaos”. However, anarcho-capitalists neither desire nor advocate chaos.
I think reading about the self-ownership principle might help you here. To me, liberty requires respecting self-ownership. But that means respecting what’s essentially a property right in one’s own body. So there’s no necessary dichotomy or dilemma between liberty on the one hand and property on the other.
Finally, if you were to ask me whether I think one or more states could arise from anarcho-capitalism, my answer would be yes. That might surprise you, but I see the rejection of (consistent) self-ownership as the founding principle for every state. Even today, a majority of people seem to reject consistent self-ownership, because they seem to think that parents own their children (in some cases, until the state-defined “age of majority”).
With all due respect, I think you’re trying to hold onto something that I call “the illusion of certainty”. What I mean is that you seem to be assuming that, with a state, you would necessarily be rescued from such a situation, perhaps even within a certain amount of time. But how does that follow? Indeed, when it comes to the United States, there have been multiple court cases that have clearly explained that state agents have no legal obligation to protect individuals. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there have been similar court cases in other countries.
No serious anarcho-capitalist believes that abandoning the state will usher in Heaven on Earth. I think it’s safe to assume that (what we see as) injustice will still occur even in the absence of the state. But I also think that abandoning the state will necessarily amount in less injustice occurring thenceforth, as the state cannot continue to exist without committing injustice.
Check out what the Afghani and Iraqi “insurgents” have done against the US and allied military forces over there. No, the latter haven’t entirely left (yet), but they are pulling back quite a bit.
I think a counter-balance to interpreting “the law” differently is keeping “the law” as limited as possible. One could say that this is what classical liberals really meant by “limited government”.
I would consider myself to be a classical liberal, and I agree. One thing you should take into account is that the Rules of Engagement have made U.S. forces equivalent of putting a huge guy in a street fight forcing him to wear boxing gloves and adhere to strict boxing rules while he’s fighting a no-rules street fighter with brass knuckles. It’s how to British lost and, unfortunately, it’s how our military operates. There are no rules to war.
So there’s your answer. The only thing I think you have left to abandon is the notion that there must be a territorial monopolist in settling disputes. Such a monopolist would have to resort to aggression to enforce its monopoly, which conflicts with the non-aggression principle.
For one thing, my understanding is that the official British rules of engagement weren’t as strict as the official US rules of engagement. For another, US military forces have broken their official rules of engagement many times over. I don’t know about the British, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they did as well.
That depends on what you think the point of war is. Do you agree with Clausewitz, that war is politics by other means? Or do you take a more primitive view - that war is simply about trying to exterminate “the enemy”?
Also, my understanding is that wearing boxing gloves means your hands are protected far better than a pair of brass knuckles, and is one of the reason for the large increase in brain damage and fatalities and serious injuries compared to bare-knuckle boxing. (Which focuses far more on body hits.)
So basically, you give one guy these gloves, and as long as he has them on he can keep breaking faces of the guilty and innocent alike, without feeling any pain from it. Yeah, an apt analogy for warcrimes under the cover of humanitarianism.