NA, how about you give us a hypothetical example of the problem you envision?
Before you answer the question, “Do the rich get a better service under anarchy?” we must first answer what the causes of being rich will be in a voluntarist society. When that is understood the disparity in service will seem irrelevant when it can be some a minimum level of cover will be almost certain to be available to everyone and the fact the poor are screwed today by police cover.
Why international arbitration doesn’t prefer big countries over small? For example both France and Andora have the same rights. The first reason is that it is too costly for big countries to fight even the smallest countries (which can team up by the way), and because usually people don’t want to offend other people if they feel close, and generally Europeans for example feel close to each other.
Any voluntaryist society will have to arise in a world of established statist powers, and will necessarily be a prime threat to the same. Further, there will be positions of non-voluntary power in the society, such as the entire web of law enforcement. Since power corrupts, it’s only a matter of time until the voluntaryist society becomes a tool of the statist world, if it’s even allowed to come into existence to begin with. If the outside world is oblivious to this gem of a resource, then it’s still only a matter of time until power corrupts from within.
To answer your question “how do people become rich in a voluntaryist society,” well, the same way people have always done: obtain as much power as possible. Providing a valuable service may be a means to that end, but where non-voluntary power is institutionalized (e.g. law enforcement) that end is inevitably the same.
You need the recognition as able to hire a lawyer in the first place before you worry about the quality of the lawyer you hire. This recognition isn’t inherent to humanity. It is contingent upon particular social structures. Currently the state provides that function. Libertarians haven’t explained what those structures would be in the absence of the state.
Just for full disclosure, I am very familiar with the libertarian position. I knew of and was a big fan of Ron Paul before his 2008 campaign, I’ve been on Mises since late 2006 early 2007, gone through most of the popular texts, heard the arguments, identified myself as a market anarchist for several years, the whole deal. So I’m not coming in here with some newbie questions. You should just assume that I’ve heard or read, and probably said and written myself, pretty much every argument there is out there. This isn’t to make myself to be some kind of authority or anything. I’m simply saying there’s no need for the 101s or basic arguments. We can move on to the more advanced, nuanced stuff.
Sure, but when you enter an arbitration proceeding you’re bringing to the table the social, political, economic status (and the associated rights, obligations, duties and liberties with that status) that has been conferred on or acquired by you. So before we even get to market mechanisms or emergent processes of law provision, there are political prerequisites that must necessarily be established for a libertarian order to come about.
The reason, I think, this crucial aspect is overlooked by libertarian theory (it shows up briefly in Rothbard’s unsatisfying discussion of his “universal libertarian legal code”) is that it usually employs some type of Lockean frame work where the state of nature and the free and equal status of individuals in that state of nature is taken for granted. Unfortunately, the inherent sociological status of individuals is not free and equal. That freedom and equality must be provided for by some institutional arrangement.
No, not just statist societies, all societies. And the statist ones have dealt with it the best so far.
You’re reifying existing territorial states as primitive actors. Ask Palestine, Tibet, Taiwan, Chechnya, Flanders, Catalonia if all states have the same rights. Ask the post colonial governments of Africa if they possess the same sovereignty as their European counterparts.
Funnily enough, you bring up the exact issue I am talking about in a different context. Sovereignty developed in Europe as a type of status recognition, bringing along with it political and economic privileges, among European powers. So sure, if you have attained sovereign status you will be treated similarly to other sovereign states. However, achieving that status is the tricky part.
No, not just statist societies, all societies. And the statist ones have dealt with it the best so far.
What’s their competition been when they’ve allowed it?
I’m not sure what you mean by allowed competition
Did not criminalise it.
That’s not really how political competition works. Either you can compete or you can’t. It’s not a matter of being allowed to or not.
How does political competition work, then? By not allowing alternative forms of organisation so that it can be deemed the best in class? Rome collapsed this way. The US is not even a few centuries old. It is also going to collapse. So will China. These are unstable walking catastrophes. So when you say “best”, what do you mean “best” at? Stealing? I freely grant there is no better thief out there, nor a more efficient one at lying and deceiving. If, on the other hand, you actually mean enforcing the rule of law and protecting their citizens, I’ll ask by what standard? This hocus pocus of government advocates to try and make states seem inevitable is just stupid.
Whom, precisely, is political “competition” meant to serve?
Well if you read the exchange between NAA and I, ‘best’ in that context meant best at providing an egalitarian legal status of those subject to its jurisdiction.
Again you’re using market terminology for political phenomena. There aren’t consumers to serve with political competition. The reality of political institutions is that they must be established and reproduce themselves.
Rofl.
How are they the “best” at that, precisely? Market terminology is perfectly apposite for the provision of a service. Special pleading won’t get you very far.
OP,
Watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqo7XMkbtEk (Rothbard)
Why exactly must they be established, let alone reproduce themselves?
States place individuals under a common condition of subordination. Everyone is subjugated by the state. This creates the overriding identity of the ‘citizen’ which everyone possesses. There is a measure of unit equality among individuals.
Whereas previously individuals’ identities were constituted by their occupation, lineage, personal connections and so forth. The social structure was extremely heteronomous and this lead to distinct bundles of rights and obligations.
Market’s exist in specific political conditions. I’m talking about the emergence of political conditions. Market terminology is inappropriate.
I have a gut feeling we mean different things by political institutions. What is a political institutions to you?
It’s not because a tax-funded bureaucracy claims to universalize the accessibility and quality of a service it renders to society as a whole that it really does that.
And it does not do that because of avoidable “corruption”. It does not do that because it is not possible to do it. It doesn’t even make any sense outside the realm of rhetorical fantasies.
There are many ways by which rich, powerful and other resourceful people will manage to get effective control of these services in practice, to the extent that it serves them better to do so.
This will happen whether the society is predominantly of privately run enterprises or of tax-funded bureaucracies created by political action.
It’s just a matter of economic incentives.
And there’s nothing any ideological predisposition can do about that.
In this case, I mean whatever you mean.