We don’t need to agree. In fact even if “we” agreed it would make no difference. What kind of society forms in the absence of monopoly is dependent on the nature of the people in that society. I conjecture that if the society is made up of, say, what are now called Americans, private property rights of some type would tend to be upheld.
To others:
Talk of universal property rights and the NAP is conjecture about what will happen in the absense of monopoly. If it is anything else, who’s going to enforce it for all? Remember there is no monopoly anymore to keep everyone in line. It may not work, but we conjecture it will, and we have good reasons for doing so. Forgetting this and staying wedded to a monopolistic vision of anarchy opens up the argument to the types of criticisms and misunderstandings alimentarius is raising. This happens in almost every thread, but it doesn’t need to.
To me it is not about applying the NAP or property rights for everyone. I would say that is just Utopian thinking with the risk of becoming tyrannical if you push it to far with actions. More than likely it would never happen under the most ideal forms of anarchy and we have already seen how it will not happen under any tried form of government. What is important to me is what ills of society I am responsible for. Just because I cannot save everyone does not mean that I should not have a desire to have no part in supporting the evil that does happen. Just because I cannot save everyone does not mean it is okay to fund violations of the NAP in a vain attempt to “prevent” violations of the NAP, which is basically what “ideal” statism is.
That is one of the most frustrating things for me when debating with minarchists. They will act as if you have to solve all of the worlds problems yet their own arguments - forget about what evil others may be doing - have no moral ground to stand on.
They are good questions, but in no way refutations.
For example, he says:
“For this reason, it is better to trust one’s defense to an organization motivated by something more than pecuniary profit, whether this be love of justice, or homeland, or pride, or duty, etc. – to depend on individuals who, for whatever reason, are willing to fight at all costs, to their own deaths if need be.”
love of justice, homeland, pride, or duty -
profit, profit, profit, and profit. He fails to see that “profit” is nothing but a mental construct of the human mind. It is why man acts in the first place. He limits his definition of profit to monetary profit. But monetary profit is just a subset of psychic profit, and it is what makes economic calculation possible, without which no economic problem can be solved.
He doesn’t make the case for why “love of justice” or “homeland” somehow vanish from existence once profit and loss calculations enter the scene and enable the “love of justice and homeland” people to do their job more efficiently.
Chaos Theory is 2 short essays discussing how a society might be organized via contracting in the absence of a state. The primary objections Dr. Steele makes to Robert Murphy’s Chaos Theory are as follows:
Contracts cannot cover every possible scenario and so replacing state mandates with contracts cannot work.
I guess he’s saying that there will always be risk in the world. I’m not sure how this is an argument against using contracts where applicable.
Even if contracts could cover “everything” they would be too complicated for consumers to understand.
He says “Murphy no doubt holds multiple credit cards from different firms: I challenge him to tell me the extent to which each contract provides for private arbitration of disputes, what arbitration companies are involved, in what states, what the arbitration rules of those companies are, the applicable laws of the states, what the companies’ reputations are, and all the other things he says people will have incentive to learn.”
Just as no individual knows how to make a pencil, yet somehow credit cards still work.
Financial liability won’t deter crime.
Fair enough. I’ll buy insurance for restitution and a gun for deterrence.
Insurers won’t insure ax murderers.
I think this is the point of the system. If you ax murder, you will be ejected from civil society.
Even if they did how would an ax murderer pay for restitution without a job?
I always thought we were always supposed to be afraid of super rich James Bond villain types?
It would be costly for insurers to collect information and dangerous to the consumer for them to do so.
The biggest threat to my privacy ain’t some insurance company…
Insurance for defense would be subject to the free rider problem.
That is, until the insurers stopped defending the uninsured…
If markets are more efficient than central planning, then there should be no hierarchal organization within market defense providers.
WTF? I can’t calculate what this has to do with the calculation problem.
Markets aren’t safer and more efficient. For example the FAA may be over-cautious, since they don’t bear the costs of too much de-icing but do get and earful from angry families and their Congressional representatives in the event of a fatal crash.).
Hoppe explained nothing. A free society is only possible IF its members stick to individualism. That has nothing to do with capitalists and oligarchs, sorry! natural oligarchs, sorry!!! natural ‘elites’.
I am inclined to agree with you on this subject, at very best he hypothesized such things. No one can explain anything that has never been done in recorded history. There is no historical evidence to go with Hoppe “explaining” anything.
He did say the importance is in the individual. The way America, for example, is supposed to work is you are free and you have your liberties, and they are only taken from you if you decide to rob someone else of their liberties. That is the logical end of any body of governance, not that it’s like that at all. Basically, do what you need to do, but don’t rob, cheat and steal from others to get it. His stance also relies on the majority of a population being educated enough to see his point, also another sad thing about America, how ludicrously stupid the average group of Americans are.
PS. I love how a topic can seemingly be dead, but new life is breathed into by a single comment. I need to come here more.
Violence must be predictable and subject to control and inspection. It cannot be handed over to the individual alone. Criminals must be handled by the state in accordance with known procedures
That isn’t so much an argument as a statement of faith. WHY must violence be predictable and subject to control and inspection? WHY can the individual not be permitted to employ it in a just fashion (self defense, retrieval of property in a communally sanctioned fashion, lawful vengeance, etc.)? I agree that criminals should be handled in a public fashion according to procedures established to discover truth and restore peace as well as humanly possible, but why is the State required? Understand that law and even courts of law can exist, and have existed in the absence of the State. Hopefully another poster will be able to point you to one of several articles run on this site on that very subject.
For who is the State? Are people invested with the authority of the State really that much more trustworthy than other people? Are not politicians, policemen, state-appointed judges and such not individuals, themselves? And in the absence of a lawful option to push back by persons not in the employ of the state, do not those individuals employ violence in the very fashion the person making your statement fears people would employ it? Or are men governed by angels?
“Voluntary” in what sense? I have heard it said that according to some technical usage of the term the US has a “voluntary” tax system in that we report our tax liability ourselves, rather than the government tracking it for us… but that usage does not resemble common usage by any stretch . Or does he support the notion that we should be able to opt out of taxes altogether?
My only question to all of this is; where would one (any private citizen) receive the training required to operate today’s weapons? That is to say, where would a citizen go to learn how to operate an F-22, or an Abrams tank? Would the market rise to fill this roll long before any perceived invasion of the Anarchist…“state”? Or would it be last minute training?
This is actually something I’ve always wondered about, as well. Citizens banding together and using privately owned firearms, and those provided by other citizens is all well and good. But this also presents a logistical problem. Would the market select a common caliber of firearms, and also supply the ammunition to feed those firearms? What about munitions? It is no longer the 17-1800s, where battles are fought with cannon, musket, and horse.
So let’s expand the scenario a bit. Let us say the US is Ancap “state”, now let us say the Chinese and whoever else decide to invade tomorrow, with no warning. Would the markets fill the gap of early warning systems (radar, SOSUS nets, etc), and would they also fill the market for land/air/sea based fighting platforms without a standing army to fill the demand?
I always thought they meant voluntary in the sense of the word that you can not pay, but you will still have to suffer consequences. i.e., imprisonment, confiscation of private property etc. I know this sounds nonsensical, but it the state we are talking about.
In a proper situation, if you chose not pay taxes, you should be able to live on just fine within the confines of you community. This should probably mean that all people who would choose to pay taxes would be anonymous. In this situation you would also not be denied the right to defend your own property, family and friends.
The true joke of that statement is the idea that violence is in any way or form predictable. I would suppose that the idea that could follow there is that if the state gives itself the “duty” of dishing out violence as it sees fit, then it is indeed predictable. Cops being under trained and over stressed will fire 42 shots into an innocent man reaching for his wallet. That is predictable. 19 Philadelphia police officers will mercilessly beat 3 men who they see as guilty, despite the fact that those “criminals” were never given a chance to face their accusers (as secured by the Constitution). That is predictable. A man murders his wife when he finds her cheating on him. Not predictable in any way, especially by the state. They only wish to secure for themselves the “duty” of forcing violence upon this man themselves ex post facto.
And as previously stated, all members of a body of governance are in fact individuals. This person seems to be making the mistake of elevating the individuals onto a platform as a whole, removing the individuality of the people and also relieving them of the personal responsibility of their actions (or crimes). Societies have handled criminals since long before there was a state. An axe murderer didn’t get away with murder, even when that axe was a crude stone tool.
“Known procedures” is an interesting statement. The state is in fact not capable of acting in a timely manner when some new thing happens. So, it still falls to the individuals involved to make a timely decision. Lacking a procedure leaves it open to personal feelings on the manner, and personal bias will follow that.
That is just one man’s opinion.
I hope they fix “edit” feature soon, Sometimes my grammar makes me seem like a total Mo.