Tell me more about your / ancap’s vision of how a society would run then. Because I don’t see how criminal law is being handled. Who’s passing it, who’s enforcing it, is it even necessary to pass criminal law and enforce it in your view. I strongly suspect you’re going to say that all people should just naturally respect property rights and I consider that ill thought out and untested in practice.
Built on wealth distribution? No. America did not redistribute wealth for over a century of its existence. It did tax imports, if you want to call that confiscation. The articles of confederation did not do that however and were very much an instrument of truly limited government
I simply don’t agree that that’s the case. It’s making a jurisdictional claim. A jurisdictional claim does not confer ownership. A sherrif in an old west town enforced law but did not claim to own everything in the city. If you want us to accept this you’ll have to prove it rationally rather than just stating it. A jurisdictional claim is BY NATURE, jurisdiction qua jurisdiction is and must be a monopoly. You cannot have competing criminal law in one territory. Again, I don’t see how you escape that fact. Even if I agree that private enforcement organizations could be integrated into a society, you’re still going to need a body of law that is singular for a region. Otherwise what would these various departments enforce? Surely we’re not going to let THEM make law. You seem to imply there would be no law-making function in an ancap society. I just don’t think that’s possible.
Freedom is a middle-concept, and a lot of people don’t understand this. You may own your body, and control it utterly, but you are not free to use it to kill others. Same with property owned by people. It is easy enough to set up a state which is limited to one function. It would be easy enough to set up a state which cannot even own property! I just don’t see why you ancaps are so insistent that the state is a certain kind of boogeyman when the state can take multitudinous forms not extent in today’s world. Just as the American Democracy was not extent in its day’s world.
This is a logical train with so many contexts being dropped that it’s bending my brain just trying to unravel it. First, you rely on a concept of the state which holds as intrinsic certain qualities of the state which I don’t accept are intrinsic at all.
Second, a monopoly on force is certainly bad if it isn’t limited to using force against aggressors, to restrain them, in which case we call it a “justice system” and it’s certainly good. I can hardly understand why ancaps argue against a justice system. Not everyone can protect themselves. You raise this point as if all state coercion were whim-based placing people in a lord/serf situation–it need not be that way at all, and isn’t in most of America at least.
Third, this idea of loss of property control within state bounds is just fallacious. I mentioned a state setup with an intrinsic separation of economy and state. In such a society, if you owned something there’d be no difference between living there and in an ancap society. Property would be essentially invisible to the state unless criminal justice took it into account (robbery, etc.). Saying that this isn’t pure ownership in a mystical sense when it IS in a factual sense makes no sense to me.
Just because there’s a law that says you can’t unlawfully shoot someone with the gun you OWN doesn’t mean you “cannot be said to be the owner of that property”. This is just silly and lazy reasoning.
Unsupported logical leap that contradicts the facts of reality. Even in the most despotic of nations private ownership never actually disappeared. Ownership is so intrinsic to reality that it cannot actually be done away with.
Again you list something as intrinsic to a state that it need not engage in at all (and something I would bar it from).
Yes, an elected representative of the people. Which is far better than the alternative of the strong man, either in dictatorial form of the man with the gun form as in a pure anarchy. While the electoral system has its problems and limitations, I’m not sure it’s time to throw the baby out with the bath-water. But again, show me a large scale successful political system based on your precepts and that would be different. I, at least, have 19th century America as well as early-industrialization England when the state did not interfere in capitalism because it was so very new.
How about the producers of those goods. You’re, again, assuming the state must interfere in production intrinsically, I don’t see it. The state is there to uphold rights, that’s its proper function.
They should not be making economic decisions at all.
This amounts to an argument to limit government from interference in the economy… which is what I’ve been arguing. This doesn’t support banishing the state entirely unless you can prove that the state and economy cannot be separated.
Sure, sure. We’ve beaten it to death. I still think we’re not that far off. You’re just convinced the state is both iredeemable and has no proper function and I am not. In most other respects we agree.
“You’re just convinced the state is both iredeemable and has no proper function and I am not. In most other respects we agree.”
It’s true that minarchists and ancaps agree in a lot of ways. That said, this discussion is extremely common and one of the “great libertarian controversies”.
No government can be “legitimate” in any consistently meaningful way. It would be thrown out in any court if someone brought a contract before a judge signed by a few brazen assholes that claimed to bind everyone within some arbitrary territory. Oh wait, the constitution didn’t just bind everyone who existed then, but it would bind every child born within its territory thereafter. And who had this collective wisdom/power that surely we could not agree to bestow on some group today? It is silly, irrational to worship the powerful, well-educated, land-owners, slave-owners, who before running water as having the divine right to draft such a constitution. Minarchism is surely better than more blatant forms of statism but like any malevolent cancer it should be removed completely-if one justifies the state for being the only reliable means of allocating the resources in the industry of law/defense-it would serve one well to understand austrian economics and the important role private property plays in resource allocation. Look for Pericles within yourself and let the state goooooooo(fade out)!
“I shall slay thee collecitivism, with thy third leg of logic!”-GladiusRationis
Sure, and I agree with your sentiment here. However it’s also true that assumption of power and coercing everyone subsequently born into the same social contract is not an intrinsic quality of state power. The state I envision is established such that those entering it as adults do so of free choice and can leave at will, and children born within it are not considered under jurisdiction unless they too choose to join.
I don’t think the state should be involved in reosurce allocation at all, and such, again, is not intrinsic to state operation.
You guys keep listing things you hate that states do without taking into account whether a state need do them at all. Without attacking an intrinsic property of the state we have no reason to discard it totally.
At the very least I see a need for a criminal law making body which would hold geographic jurisdiction, possibly including civil law, though contracts may take care of the civil law question. This would probably be on the order of individual cities and nearby outlying areas but not entire regions like the US-states. And above it all would be a justice system whose primary goal is national defense and protection of civil rights. Beyond that, it would have elected leaders.
When you combine geographic jurisdictional lawmaking powers by the consent of the governed, it’s a state. Also, it has the right to use legal coercion to defend the rights of individuals, which is intrinsic to the concept of the state.
Because the nature of law qua law is that two bodies of law cannot exist in the same jurisdiction. Beyond that, there are those whom are helpless to defend themselves or whom are already under the power of an aggressor. These people (children, slaves, etc.) need an impersonal defender, and a system setup to tackle initiators of coercion in general.
Inasmuch as justice prevents aggression from within a jurisdiction (citizen aggressing against citizen), a nation needs defense against outside aggressor nations. Individual defenses may be sufficient against individual outsider aggressors, but cannot hope to stand against an organized professional army. I’ve never read much more than wishful thinking on how a nation without a professional army could stand against one with one.
Natural rights mankind possesses by nature.
This is true, but the purpose of a definition is to delineate intrinsic qualities that differentiate a thing or concept from all other things or concepts. To do that a definition must focus on intrinsic / essential qualities of the thing. Thus, if people go about defining a state in such a way that is not essential to the character of the state, they do themselves a disservice. If they further build argument based on a faulty definition, they do a disservice to themselves and their argument, and to clear thinking in general.
Both the founders of the society in their creation of the founding document, and the rights of the people to vote and bear arms.
The most important of these two is the insights of the founders, because this is the easiest place to set forth basic principles and create strong protections.
I reject the argument that the state is necessarily a despot; before the American democracy we had only kings and (terrible) pure democracies (meaning without recognition of basic rights). Progress is possible.
And again, I keep asking if there’ve been any large scale anarchist societies such as you guys are proposing, any reference to reality that reflects the ancap theories.
While the American democracy as founded was by no means perfect, and had a whole number of problems that currently are plaguing us today, a more tightly written document taking into account what’s been learned may have even more success.
By “jurisdiction” I assume you mean territorial jurisdiction - i.e. a delimited territory over which the body of law has (final) say. While you posit that “the nature of law qua law” is such that it’s bound to land, I think that can only be the case when the land in question is owned by a group of people who agree to live under a given law. In other words, I see law as inherently concerning people, not land. What do you see as “the nature of law qua law”, exactly?
What if “the law of the land” allows for children to be at the mercy of their parents (e.g. patria potestas) and slaves to be at the mercy of their masters? My point is that there’s no guarantee, whatever you might say about “the nature of law qua law” or even about “the nature of man qua man”, that people will behave the way you expect them to. I also don’t see how an “impersonal defender” could ever arise to protect anyone. Only people (i.e. persons) are capable of defense.
I’d very much prefer if you didn’t use the word “nation”, as it’s abundantly clear to me that the citizenries of the states you propose are by no means necessarily related by a common ancestry. I’d prefer the word “collective” as it’s free of the mystical connotations of the word “nation”.
So putting “collective” in place of “nation”, you’re saying that a collective needs defense against outside aggressor collectives. Again, this only makes sense to me if such a collective is necessarily a territorial collective - i.e. it’s a group of people who are considered to jointly own an area of land (preferably, but not necessarily, contiguous). Essentially, you’re talking about the earliest form of state without the reason for its existence, namely kinship.
Are there any rights that you would say mankind does not possess by nature? If so, what do you call them? I just want to be clear about your terminology.
On a more important note, I’d like to you to provide a systematic explanation of what you see as the rights that mankind possesses by nature.
By “thing” I assume you mean “that which exists in physical reality”. With that meaning in mind, “state” (i.e. the word) isn’t a thing at all - it’s just a word. There’s no particular concept that it necessarily refers to. I can use it to refer to an apple if I want, and this usage would be no less logically valid. From it I can then form logically valid propositions such as “States grow on trees.”
Now, given the above, to talk about the intrinsic/essential qualities of a concept is simply to talk about the concept itself. I don’t see how any separation can be made there. Perhaps, though, you’re referring to separating out the more basic concepts that combine to form a more complex concept. Regardless, however, a given concept can be referred to by any given label.
My point here is that no definition can be “faulty” (unless it’s inherently contradictory, such as defining “state” to be “a square circle”), but two or more definitions of the same word can certainly be mutually unintelligible. In the interests of mutual understanding, then, it’s necessary for conversants to agree to common definitions.
First off, how in the world is a society ever founded? Are you equating society with state here? If so, why?
Second, a founding document can always be modified later, can’t it? Also, does a piece of paper per se prevent anyone from dishonoring it?
I don’t see how these were necessarily insights of “the founders” (presumably you mean the “founders” of the United States). That’s like saying the abolition of private ownership of the means of production was an insight of Lenin and his fellow Russian Bolsheviks.
Actually, the Ancient Greek poleis were exactly the kind of state you’ve hypothesized about. Indeed, most ancient states at least started out the same way as you describe.
I don’t see how the existence of any large-scale anarchist societies is the only possible reference to reality that reflects the anarcho-capitalist theories. Can you explain? If you’re implying that the absence of large-scale anarchist societies in history means that such cannot or will not exist in the future, then you’re making an argument from ignorance.
Again, that document could be changed or simply re-interpreted to the powers-that-be’s hearts’ content - provided that they come up with a sufficiently broad justification that most people swallow it.
If I’m reading you right, then the concept you’re referring to by the word “state” is (assuming the common meanings for the following words) “a group of people who jointly own a given territory and who follow a single legal system”.
I see a couple of issues with this concept, however. For one thing, there can arise a distinction between owners (i.e. “citizens”) and non-owners (i.e. “non-citizens”) residing in the territory in question. Are the non-owners equally bound to the legal system with the owners? If so, then this law you speak of is entirely territorial in nature - it’s “the law of the land”. Otherwise, if the non-owners are not bound to the owners’ legal system, then disputes/conflicts between owners and non-owners would then need to be settled by a “higher” legal system, regardless of where the dispute/conflict occurred or began. Note that this is a non-territoria**l kind of law.
Whether territorial jurisdiction or jurisdiction in general, the nature of anything that has “final say” is such that it must be the sole law of that jurisdiction. It is inconceivable to imagine a body of law with final authority which says two different things . A law that said it was okay to steal existing alongside law saying it wasn’t okay to steal is logically nonsensical (as a gross and extreme example).
Not so much land as jurisdiction, because a jurisdiction could be fairly abstract. For instance, the FCC has jurisdiction over the airwaves (even tho they shouldn’t have it), which is not a demarkation of land but a particular kind of property. I actually envision a future without rigid geographic boundaries. When you think about cities on the water and cities in space, you must think in terms of cities that are able to move. Thus, as you say below, it’s really law that follows a body of people who’ve agreed to be under it, since escaping that law is easy (by leaving the city).
I agree totally.
I wasn’t so much focusing on the “land” issue, I agree with your people stance. I was only trying to show that by, by nature, has both a monopoly and a jurisdiction, that is an area of human actiont that it presides over in order to foil initiation of coercion. This can be more or less abstract as I’ve shown, from base total jurisdiction over a landed territory to slices of property it’s limited to.
And, I’d limit it quite strongly to controlling ciminal action through a separation of economy and state provision in a founding document.
Such would be a violation of their rights under the federally guaranteed rights. That’s the only use I can see for a federal government–the protection of basic rights within cities that otherwise rule themselves, and protection from war. Slavery would be forbidden constitutionally.
As for children, they would be treated as property owners of themselves whose parents hold that property in trust for them. This is as accurate to the situation as we can describe. Children do self-own, but don’t yet have adult judgment or power. Putting parents in trust gives them the right to make decisions for the children along with the responsibility to do so in the best interest of the child. Fortunately most parents don’t need to be forced to do so, but it still gives you the society the right to intervene if the child’s right are being violated by the parent.
This, I think, is one of the most important protection a body of law provides, helping the helpless. I’ve not seen an anarchist answer to how the helpless are protected from aggression in an ancap society. In an ancap society, couldn’t slavery exist openly? I find that impossible to stomach. How does such a society help those now incapable of helping themselves, those already overpowered and now defenseless.
By “impersonal defender” I mean one whose job it is to stop initiation of aggression within society at large whether they have a personal stake in the outcome or not. I thought it would be obvious, but I was alluding to police officers. So, such impersonal defenders of individual rights already exist, and the system works fairly well. Only people are capable of defense, sure, but individuals who are already overpowered need people outside themselves to help them regain their non-overpowered condition.
Sorry, I don’t share your definition of nation as conflating ancestry necessarily. To me it’s just those living under a common bond of law. In the definition of the term, ancestry is just one possible quality, not an essential one. I won’t use the term ‘collective’ because it has many connotations I don’t intend. How about the term ‘state’?
All states require territory, because people need room to live in, so I’m not sure what you’re objecting to here exactly. Such a state need not jointly own anything. They can be a giant group of private owners, each owning land individually with a state that owns nothing overseeing it by simply enforcing basic rights among them.
There are people trying to invent fake rights today, meaning those not conferred upon man by reality. There is no, and cannot be, a right to healthcare, for instance, because such would mean a right to someone else’s service, which would be tantamount to salvery.
By ‘by nature’ I mean ‘intrinsic to him,’ not ‘nature’ in some mystical sense. More as in, it is the nature of a person to control himself, to own his body. By nature man owns himself and controls himself. Such self-ownership forms the basis for all subsequent ownership and the fact of individual control is what makes responsibility cogent, and by extension makes law prosecution possible, because we know whoever did X did so willingly and by free choice. You could not easily convict a person of stealing if someone else could control their body at will.
By nature man is given a body that he solely controls – conferring the right of private property and thereby responsibility for his own actions.
By nature man can think and speak – conferring the right of free expression and the responsibility for what he says.
By nature man must produce to live (initially just to eat) – conferring a right of production and the right to own and consume and dispose of what he produces in any way he sees fit and the placing on him the sole responsibility for failing to do so (ie: death, poverty, etc).
I could probably think of more given time, but it’s clear to me that the most important is the derivation of property rights and speech, the freedom to act. One can easily infer more basic rights by combinations, for instance man can move and walk–actually just corollaries of self-ownership and control–but together you can justify a right of free association, etc.
And while I say that nature confers rights, that’s not perfectly correct. Reality doesn’t confer rights, rights are a legal concept that recognizes the nature of man (or fails to do so depending on what rights a society grants, if any).
What history has shown is that a society willing to recognize the intrinsic properties of man by enshrining them in the form of legally protected right produces a society of free people, whose productive capacity is then unleashed to produce. It is this revolution of production that has produced the modern world.
I said “thing or concept”, one is phsyical, as you note here, the other is conceptual, without physical existence. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
A state is not a physical thing in and of itself, what it is is an arrangement, an organization, an agreement–what we might call a spiritual thing, or an abstraction. Abstractions don’t have physical existence, sure, but that doesn’t mean they are “just words.”
Look into the debate on life itself, as an example. Is life a “thing”? We know that the human body regularly switches out all the atoms it’s composed of in favor of new atoms over time, on the order of something like seven years. Your life is not any one atom nor any particular collection of atoms. What life is is a particular arrangement and order of interaction of those atoms. So too a state is not a thing but an arrangement, and in perfect form a willing arrangement of the participants.
On a simple level, we could look at a group of people arranged in a line and say that they are organized in a line. And your critique that a line is ‘just a word’ would be equally silly. Sure it’s a word, but it’s also an accurate description of the arrangement this group of people have chosen erect. So to is a state.
Not so. There’s only one thing the state cannot do without: the power of coercion.
While anarchs use this fact to denigrate it for the evils it makes possible, I submit they ignore how that power can be used rightly. And the right use of coercion, philosophically and actually, is to end the initiation of coercion / aggression. This is typically enshrined in a body of criminal law and a law enforcement institution. Whether that isntitution is public or private is not essential, and a private force as others have suggested would be insteresting to see, imo.
Such is absurb. Words are signifiers that point to signs. You’re attacking the mere form of the word while ignoring the sign it points to. While it’s true that any word could be used to refer to the state, in theory, you can’t destroy the meaning of the state by pointing out this fact.
Do you actually believe what you’re saying? I think you are confused my friend.
I do not give it.
Again, a definition must delineate a thing from all other things. To do so it must focus on essentials. If you’re including nonessentials in any definition then you are not going to be capable of dealing within it clearly and rationally. This is why defining terms is so important in rational discussions.
It would be sad if the entire anarchist movement were shown to be based on little more than a poor definition of the state, denouncing it for its non-essentials. And I say that not as a defender of statism in the slightest, but as a libertarian!
Again, I was not merely referring to the label.
I disagree. If you define a table as having four legs, how is it that tables exist with three or even one legs? The number of legs beyond one is nonessential to the function of a table, which is that it supports things above the floor. That is a much better definition (though not conclusive). Here’s googles definition:
Table: “A piece of furniture with a flat top and one or more legs, providing a level surface on which objects may be placed.”
An attack on the definitions of words is an attack on reason itself. We strive for clarity of thought here, and that requires scrupulously defined definitions of words. I think you do yourself a disservice.
The terms are basically syononymous. Why are you objecting to its use? Should be clear from the context. A society often comes into existence by the free choice of individuals. Take the wild west period. A frontier town was not often a planned center, but the result of the free choice of many. Once this society was formed they might choose to organize, and in theory could form a state.
I would form a state by simply finding a region of property with no existing legal jurisdiction and then gathering a group of willing people together and drawing up a founding document to which people would be free to join or not.
As I’ve suggested before, the only place left to do this on the planet is the oceans (and perhaps the arctic poles. Underground is possible too. And, finally, space itself.).
A founding document can only be modified if it provides a mechanism for modification. So, it’s a self-determined question. It would be possible to firewall section of the document from ever being modified, such as a statement of basic rights and government limits.
That’s why you need law enforcement.
No, this was in context to your asking who protects the people from the government itself. And I said the founders of that government in their capacity of creating the foudning document. I was referring generally to founders, not to specific ones. Since I intend to found such a state (one day), it would be me, eventually.
Obviously if the founders are Lenin-equivalents then you have a much larger problem
Not true. None of the ancient Greek states had a statement of basic rights that could not be abridged by the vote of the majority. Just witness Athens’ voting for the expulsion / death of Socrates. They had democracy but never minority protections in the form of rights. Even the American founders thought democracy was a terrible legal system. They built a republican democracy, meaning a nation of laws not of men (ie, not of votes), with protections for basic rights. Democracy was redeemed by the use of law as ultimate authority and basic protections for natural rights. What’s to say one or more new legal concepts might not further improve the concept and function of the state to what we want in a society?
What I mean by that is that theories need to be tested in the real world, by, you know, actually running a society along those principles and seeing what results. We’ve seen tons of communes, and they tend to fall apart. We’ve also seen communes run on a national scale and they’re trainwrecks. History itself proves communism a failure.
As with science, political philosophy should be tried against reality by actually running a society along the lines proposed, because reality will ferret out the weaknesses or blindnesses of the philosophy, reprove where it needs more work, etc. Such creates a historical process as well by which philosophies can be improved with input from the actual, from what resulted.
It’s not unlike building a computer program and then actually attempting to run it! No one would build a giant program and then expect it to work perfectly on its first try. Running the program rams reality against the theory and shows faults.
Without doing that, what other possible epistemological method could anyone have for improving the theory? If theory does not reflect reality, what good is it?
I am not making that leap, only questioning whether it has occurred and if not why it hasn’t. We’ve had anarchism for well over 100 years now. (I’ll ignore that the early communists were previously anarchists, just out of charity.)
Again, a founding document need not allow such changes. Secondly, the founders are in control of how difficult that process is. For instance, it’s easy to envision writing rules of parliamentary proceduce into a founding document that make it possible for a minority to lower taxes and for a super-majority required to raise them. Or the same for borrowing money. (altho, better to simply abolish taxes entirely).
I agree with all of that except the ‘jointly own’ provision. They may individually own it. Furthermore, the law would apply to non-land owners within a territory as well.
Nah. In this society, there are no rights citizens have that non-citizens don’t. The primary cause of conflict between citizens and non-citizens in states today are the perks citizens get that non-citizens aren’t supposed to–all of which are attached to the existence of the welfare state. Without a welfare state the source of conflict is removed.
Example: in my society people are not taxed to send other people’s children to school. School is a purchased private service. Why would anyone care whether a citizen or non-citizen were purchasing that service? We don’t get upset when foreigners purchase our products, we encourage it. Thus it would be the same there.
Similarly, the US states give out all sorts of welfare and free money, ostensibly to citizens, but increasingly to noncitizens. That fact combined with massive state spending deficits creates problems. But again, if the state were not handing out welfare, there’d be no issue.
Apart from that, the rights citizens have are no different from that of non-citizens.
Essentially, I’d like to create a state where citizenship is virtually a non-issue. If you enter a city you agree beforehand to abide by the laws of the city. This is outright contractual. At that point you’re a contractee to the laws of the city. Where is room for citizenship? All people will have their rights defended, citizen or not, and have full freedoms and protections by virtue of being human beings.
We can build protections into contractees much in the same way we use citizenship now, but the two concepts are distinctly different.
Agreed, it’s territorial, but you can’t make a logical leap to the state owning that territory thereby. It’s just a jurisdiction. I actually like the federal/state system America has, but I would modify it. I would have a federal gov that can only protect national borders and defend rights on a national scale. Rather than states, we’d have individual cities as laws to themselves. I could write much more on that but I’ll leave it there for now.
What other kind of jurisdiction do you think there can be aside from territorial jursidiction - or, more generally, propertarian jurisdiction?
Do you think it’s possible to separate law per se from the enforcement of law?
I think you’re still confusing propertarian with non-propertarian jurisdiction in the above. If a person escapes the law by leaving the city, then the law is bound to the city (i.e. the area of land), not the people who comprise it. Otherwise, the person could escape the law without leaving the city. Whether this city is movable or not is irrelevant - it still concerns law being fixed to property, not people. Yet the law is intended to govern people, isn’t it?
If you’re going to implicitly define “law” as “a set of propositions that restrict permissible action”, then logically speaking, people cannot be bound two contradictory sets of such propositions. But again, I must stress that even this definition of law concerns people, as it is only people who act. So the jurisdiction concerns people first and foremost, and their property only by extension.
However, if I’m understanding you correctly, once a person has agreed to form your kind of state with some other people, he cannot voluntarily leave it without leaving the area under the jurisdiction of the state. Let’s say this person came to own land before he made this agreement. The implication is that forming a state with his neighbors leads to him de facto (if not de jure!) relinquishing his claim of land ownership. After all, if he still owned it, then he could leave the state without leaving his land. Because he must now leave his land in order to leave the state, the state therefore has a de facto higher claim of ownership over his land than he does.
At best, I consider this a form of theft. At worst, I consider it a form of slavery.
This is known in some circles (which you may be familiar with) as “dropping the context”. More specifically, who said anything up to this point about a federal government?
Now what if either a federal government didn’t exist, or the list of federally guaranteed (!) rights didn’t include those rights?
Again, you’re dropping the context. I didn’t ask you to describe your ideal state. I was asking you to admit to the very real possibility that “the law of the land” may not be the way you want it to be.
I don’t see how slavery could exist openly in an anarcho-capitalist society where people respect the notion of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. Any slavery contract would be unenforceable at least at the point that the slave decided to break it.
Based on your questions about society helping those incapable of helping themselves, it seems to me that you believe in an illusion of certainty. Tell me, how does legislative fiat upon a society guarantee that that society necessarily will help those incapable of helping themselves? If no one wants to help someone, guess what? He won’t get help. That’s true regardless of whether there’s a state ruling over the society he’s in.
A body of law provides no protection against anything. People who choose to follow a given body of law are what provides it. Given that people have free will, this means that, at any given time, some or all of them may choose to do otherwise. There is no escaping this.
Would you agree that, for someone to be sufficiently motivated to do that job, he must be given rewards that he values higher than those he would or could get from not doing it? Furthermore, would you agree that, if he does happen to have a personal stake in the outcome, that the rewards offered for going against his personal interests must outweigh those interests in his mind?
On another note, does rescuing overpowered people require a single monopolist organization?
Sure, I don’t mind using the term “state”, as I do think it’s an apt term for what you’re describing - especially since you implicitly consider a person to relinquish his claims over (territorial) property once he joins a state, however unaware he himself may be of that.
By that reasoning, a member of such a state can leave it without leaving the land he owns. Do you agree? Why or why not?
I see a very important difference between ownership and control. To me, control is a value-free concept, but ownership is not. In other words, I consider ownership to embody legitimate control. Since legitimacy is entirely subjective, this means that whether one owns himself (i.e. his body) is entirely subjective. A person certainly controls himself, but whether that control is considered legitimate by himself or anyone else is another matter entirely.
None of these follow.
I would say that, while rights per se are in no way dependent upon recognizing the nature of man, those rights which are most in line with human nature will, ceteris paribus, result in the fewest conflicts.
Ironically, many peoples of the world are not free despite living in societies with legally protected rights that allegedly guarantee the opposite.
It depends on the definition used for “exist”, doesn’t it?
No, but definitions concern words.
Strictly speaking, even atoms aren’t “things” by your implied definition. They’re composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Furthermore, protons and neutrons are themselves composed of quarks. (Electrons are a kind of lepton.) It may not even stop there - quarks and/or leptons may be composed of even more fundamental particles.
In any case, whether “life” or anything else is, logically speaking, a “thing” depends entirely on the definition presumed for “thing”. That definition is always a premise and cannot be proven or disproven - it can only be accepted or rejected.
It’s only an accurate description of the arrangement when a certain definition is presumed for it. If I define “line (of people)” as “a group of people arranged in a circle”, then a group of people arranged single-file, one in front of the next, could not be logically called a “line (of people)” by my definition. My definition would sound absurd to you because it’s simply not the definition you’re used to. But that in no way makes it illogical, because it’s just a premise.
I, for one, don’t ignore how coercion can be used rightly. I agree with you that non-initiatory - that is, defensive - coercion is, generally speaking, legitimate. What I challenge is the notion that a given body of law must or can only be enforced by a single institution. That is, I challenge the notion that legitimate coercion must be monopolized.
With all due respect, I don’t believe I’m confused in the slightest. Nor am I trying to destroy the concept that you call “state”. I’m responding to your apparent assertion, however implicit, that there is a single correct definition for the word “state”. Certainly I recognize that you’re calling a certain concept by that word, and I’m trying my best to fully understand that concept.
As far as I can tell, very few concepts - perhaps none at all! - are perfectly atomic. In other words, concepts can be subdivided and combined on at least a nearly infinite basis. For example, one could distinguish between “states with Ministries of Silly Walks” and “states without Ministries of Silly Walks”. There’s nothing logically invalid about this, or any, distinction. Platonic Idealism is simply wrong.
Perhaps anarchists are simply using a different definition for the word “state” - one which meshes poorly with your conception of it, but which accurately represents theirs!
If you’re referring to both the label and the concept it labels at the same time, then at best I think you’re equivocating and at worst you’re making a category error.
If I define “table” as “a piece of furniture with a flat top and four legs”, then pieces of furniture with flat tops and three legs or even one leg cannot logically be called “tables”. There is no ideal “Tableness” out there that we must strive to understand.
Clarity of thought is achieved by logical consistency. Clarity of communication is achieved by this plus a common (but nevertheless arbitrary) semantics.
If you’re going to equate “society” and “state”, that’s fine. But why switch between the two, then? Regardless, my own definition of “society” is very different from my definition of “state”. My definition of “society” is “any arbitrary grouping of two or more people interacting in some way”. As you can see, this definition allows for societies to exist within and among states.
Would these people be allowed to own property within this state? Would they then be able to leave the state and retain their property?
I don’t see how that follows. A founding document that doesn’t provide a mechanism for modification can, at least in theory, be modified whenever anyone (in charge) wants to. Even if such a “firewall section” were provided, the founding document could (again, at least in theory) later be modified to remove the “firewall” provision.
And we again run into the problem of quis custodiet ipsos custodes if law enforcement is necessarily monopolized.
Then what did you mean by “The most important of these two is the insights of the founders, because this is the easiest place to set forth basic principles and create strong protections”?
On the one hand, a statement of basic rights can always be abridged by the vote of the majority under a state. Who’s going to bring sanctions against this majority, and what sanctions?
On the other hand, I was referring to the Ancient Greek poleis being essentially jointly-owned territories where the joint owners (“citizens”) by and large had either real or perceptual common ancestry. They could also be said to have been “nations of laws” - just different laws from those which you propose. Really, though, I don’t consider any state to be a state of laws and not men. All states are states of men, for laws have no meaning without men.
By “new legal concepts”, do you mean things like a “right to healthcare”? Because apparently a lot of people think that (relatively) new legal concept might further improve the concept and function of the state to what they want in a society.
The whole notion of “running a society” is anathema to anarcho-capitalism. I, for one, would be interested in helping to build an anarcho-capitalist society. However, I think this would entail somehow obtaining “sovereign land” (i.e. land that is not beholden to any government for property taxes, at the very least), and this would probably require a highly non-trivial investment in various forms of capital. Assuming it could be done, I and my co-investors (hopefully many) would divide up the land by auction or by prior agreement, and then form whatever social arrangements we found suitable. No one person or group would run the society.
You should know that science never proves anything in a logical sense. All it does is ever-more-closely ascertain the likelihood of things being one way or another. One cannot even say that such as communism is (i.e. must always be) a failure.
Then I guess I don’t understand the point in “questioning whether it has occurred and if not why it hasn’t”. Can you explain?
The section of the document that disallows such changes can itself be struck out, theoretically at any time. The same thing goes for the rules of parliamentary procedure.
Why? Did all of these landless individuals agree to form or join the state? Again, if any of these individual landowners decides to leave the state later on, does he then have to leave his land?
Well, if citizenship is virtually a non-issue in the state you’d like to create, what’s the point of creating one at all? It sounds like what you’re really interested in creating is a legal system. But yet again, I must ask: if someone who agreed to follow your legal system and who owns land in the city later decides to stop following your legal system, does he have to leave the city (and thus “his” land)? If not, then now the city has two legal systems, one for that person - he’s now a “law unto himself” - and one for everyone else in the city.
The point is that jurisdiction, if freely given, can be equally freely removed, can’t it?
I would think jurisdiction would always be over some kind of property. Open to elucidation on the concept tho.
Sure. I don’t have a real issue with the idea of competing private law enforcement, apart from that we’ve never really seen it done in the real world. But I’d like to.
What benefit would be gained by allowing people to escape law within the city?
I think you’re thinking that a city in my ideal state would be something like state property when I don’t agree it would be. I would have the city initially own by the guy who bought that land and began setting it up as a city and selling parts to people. Anything not bought/leased by others belongs to him. That’s why you must contract to specific laws before entering the city. Thus, no one in the city is able to escape the law, they’re there only on condition of abiding by it. This further allows grand competition between cities for the best legal provisions. And since it’s a city on the water/space, everything floats/flies, if you don’t like one jurisdiction it’s easy enough to sale to a new one, unlike on land where homes are fixed and moving carries a high cost comparatively.
Correct. To form your own state you would have to leave the jurisdiction / territory of the existing state. Anyting else would constitute two bodies of criminal law in the same place, which is not going to work. However, this is only true at the city level. The overarching federal law would leave societal experimentation and general law enforcement to the city-states.
I envision a world where people could setup just about any kind of state they want, as long as they respect basic rights. You want Sharia–fine, but if you sentence someone to death for changing religions they must go willingly to the gallows. If they try to flee you have no right to enforce it on them for something not protected by the federal level (converting from islam in this case).
You want an anarchist state where there’s no organization at all? Easy enough to set up. Group all like-minded’s together on private property, or divide it between yourselves, and no one can set up jurisdiction over you. Which is just about the only way an anarchist region is going to practically come into existence.
Lastly, there’s on more thing, civil law may be competitive under a monopolistic criminal law, allowing multiple bodies of civil law in the same region. However, it may also be that simply abiding by contract could achieve the same end as what civil law and courts aims at so it may be entirely unecessary.
That’s an interesting point I’ll have to think about some more. Since I envision the state hierarchy as something one buys into willingly in order to enter an area owned by another (basically contracting to enter), the terms of ending that contract would be spelled out in advance and they’d know what they were getting into. Thus the contract would likely include provisions that should one no longer agree to willingly abide by the law one’s recourse is to leave, not merely drop out and consider themselves immune.
Besides which, the federal level is charged with protecting basic rights, meaning one need not be in or of the state to be protected not prosecuted for such a crime. We can’t only prosecute non-citizens for, let’s say, murder. Murder is murder whether you are a citizen or not and you can be held.
So, what effectively would leaving the state mean for someone within such a minarch society? You have no obligations to the state, no taxes, no fees. And you can still be prosecuted for any crimes you commit.
This philosophic reach from jurisdictional coverage to so-called control seems to be a common conceptual equivocation among anarchists… or maybe it’s just that I’ve seen it said so many times lately. But I don’t see it. It amounts to a logical leap. Where exactly is the loss of control of land, of ownership? Let’s say it was possible to set up his own state within the bounds of another city. I actually see no problem with that. He’d just draw up a new body of law, and contract with people coming onto his land, and could be a law to himself. Now that I’ve considered it, it would be perfectly possible.
That doesn’t mean he could declare murder to be legal, etc. Basic rights don’t change, so he wouldn’t be gaining anything. Except people probably wouldn’t want to come visit anymore cause he sounds like a crackpot Sure, by all means, setup your own criminal-law state within another jurisdiction. I agree now. Long as there’s defined borders between that jurisdiction and another.
But you’d probably say, well, aren’t I keep him still under the federal system? Yes, I am. But there’s great virtue in that in the long run. One man cannot provide his own defense or deal effectively with continent-scale issues and crises. Would city-states be allowed to choose a federal government or opt out completely. I don’t see why not.
I did. I’ve been saying it for a few pages(?) now?
Well, since I’m writing the constitution, it does.
Then I’d form my own gov. Which is why I framed it in the context of my ideal state.
How does the slave break such a contract when they’re locked in a prison unable to communicate with the outside world. What guarantee do you have that all those in a society would respect seld-ownership and NAP. You’re coming off rather naive here.
Hah, it will certainly be more likely to help the helpless if a professional police force is out trying to do just that rather than, in your words, relying on the idea that an entire society would respect NAP and self-ownership, and relying on a slave making their escape before they can be helped. You say a slave contract wouldn’t be enforceable, who tells the slave-owner it’s not enforceable and that he must not keep enslaving these people in an ancap society with no authority figures, no law enforcement? Polyanna.
A body of law provides legal sanction for the use of coercion to stop the initiation of coercion within society. This is a very, very basic principle. To not understand the utility and purpose of a body of law in a society just baffles me. To further suggest a society might be safer without one is even more astounding.
We know all societies will have criminals, what’s holding back the criminal element in ancap societies? Each individual? How does an individual deal with organized criminals? Only an organization purposed with upholding justice can do so.
In other words, would they need to be paid. Sure.
If he does have a personal stake in a particular criminal conflict he should recuse himself. Impersonal justice is what law enforcement requires so that objectivity can be as closely attained as possible.
As I said, I’m open to the idea of competing law enforcement orgs. It’s competing law that is impossible within one jurisdiction.
I’d still like to see you prove that conceptually with something like a syllogistic chain of reasoning instead of just contuinually asserting it
Sure. He’d be free to setup his own jurisdiction. However, if he violated basic rights of others he’d be ethically invadeable, as would anyone else.
Legitimate or not, it’s still a fact or reality; a person controls themselves. Control is an essential characteristic of ownership. Thus, to own one’s self is to control oneself, and one controls one’s self by nature. When the fact of self-direction is recognized by law, we recognize self-ownership.
Conflicts with who or what. And why do they result in the fewest conflicts? Because they are recognizing facts of reality.
Not completely free, sure, as it is measured along a continuum.
Definitions merely use words to denote an existing phenomena.
That’s a good example, as the abstraction of ‘atom’ is similar to the abstraction ‘state’ in that it describes an arrangement of things.
Then explain to me, doesn’t an ancap society reject a state-backed hierarchy that does this? Let’s say you had a state that did nothing but run a law enforcement agency designed to do exactly this. It wouldn’t be perfect, nothing is, but it would for the most part do its just. 1. wouldn’t that be acceptable to you based on your agreement of how coercion can be rightly used here, and 2. doesn’t that contradict the ancap assertion that all state hierarchy is irredeemable?
But I’m not asserting that. While criminal law qua law must have a monopoly in its jurisdiction I don’t consider the enforcement mechanism to require the same monopoly.
But you attacked the sign, not the definition. When we say a rose by any other name is still a rose–that amounts to me argument. You seemed to be saying the definition is arbitrary because the word we use is abritrary–I cannot agree to that. The definition is essential, the word, the signifier used to signify that concept or thing is not essential.
Well, I’m certainly not trying to rise to the level of platonic forms, only trying to assert that attacking the state for a characteristic that is nonessential to the concept and function of the state is not really an attack on the state, but on that nonessential characteristic. To conflate the two is to make an error of reasoning.
I’m sure that’s true. I’m sure they’re taking a more historical look at the state. But philosophically the state need not be what they attack it for. Thus, their reasoning about it may not be entirely consistent nor applicable.
The challenge is to find the essential characteristics of a thing. Four legs is not essential, so it would be a poor definition. I think you’ll find in the field of defining that finding a definition that subsumes all forms and excludes nonessentials is the main difficulty and object. That doesn’t mean there’s a search for “platonic tableness” only that a definition seeks to entirely contain its subject while leaving out the nonessentials.
Yes, yes. Would they be allowed to setup their own city-state within another one? Yes. I doubt it would happen much in practice tho.
A founding document must provide procedures for its own modification. Since it is the highest law of the land, how do you suppose it can be changed if it itself states that it cannot be changed? You mean the guys in charge could break the law and change it? o_O
Okay, I get it, you haven’t read the rest of the thread where I continuall agree with another poster that enforcement need not be monopolized Only the body of law itself.
If the founders set up the document correctly then that alone can prevent the state from becoming despotic. By this I mean things like limiting gov powers, abilities, writing in proper basic rights, and things like a provision guaranteeing a separation of economy and state, etc. If the state is being lawfully conducted, these provisions will prevent a lot of tyranny from beginning at all. Especially if the founding document firewalls particular provisions from being changed at all.
That function is provided by the bill of rights and enforced by the courts and the executive branch ostensibly, in our society.
The idea of “nation of laws, not of mean” is meant to be understood as a nation where the law is conducted by written statute and not by the whims or words of rulers. I’m surprised you didn’t read that in for that’s its common understanding.
Hell no! LOL. I mean things like separation of economy and state. Who do you think I am? Right to healthcare, I’ll fight you first! Step outside!
That’s a fake right, a non-right. There cannot be such a thing as a right to healthcare, as that would not be a right that would be a privilege and amount to the idea that a doctor owes people his services without compensation, which is de fact slavery.
One of the most evil things I’ve ever heard of is what happened when Brussels instituted national healthcare. The doctors tried to flee to country. Many made it out, but when the establishment realized what was happening they actually drafted the doctors into the army to prevent them from leaving. Such is no less than tyranny.
We could do it on the water. I’m building out the concept now. What’s needed is economic incentive. You need a medium size company that needs factory space and can live with lots of automation. Normally they’d pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent factory space for a year, not to mention fees, regulations, etc.
So, why not invest that money instead in a floating factory built inside a large-size tanker ship, and kept in international water. You live rent free, you boat people out a week at a time if need be, or run it remotely. Should be immediately profitable. From there you build more factories which creates a market for both transportation and local services and entertainment. Soon you can build some seasteading lillypads for permanent residents or those tired of boating back all the time, and it really just snowballs from there.
In comparison to capitalism, yes I can.
I disagree. If the document disallows all changes to section 1 of the document, and that provision and rules for changing the document is in section 1, how would it be legal to change those rules? It would not be at all. I can’t believe you don’t see that. It’s very much like writing an algorithm. In fact, I’ve been looking into a way to embody law in algorithmic form rather than statute but it’s just something I’m playing with right now…
Yes. They must agree / contract to the existing laws just to enter the territory.
Depends on what they agreed to upon entering. Most likely yes. At the least I’d think they could easily float away their property.
Just because there’s no financial perks to being a citizen doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want to be one. Just that it doesn’t cost the society money to do so. Primarily you need a justice system to not live in fear continually and worry about the strong man in society ready to rob you.
Again, there may be provision for that upon entering the society. But barring that, he’d be a law unto himself only within the property he owned / his jurisdiction. And he’d have to make other contract to his law upon entering his land.
If you must contract and agree to the laws to enter, stands to reason that if you want to break your contract on code of conduct that you must then leave. I doubt many city-states would want to deal with crackpots setting up their own justice system within their city-state which would inevitably lead to leeching the existing judicial system or patchwork judicial boundaries But the entire issue can be handled at the point of entering in the first place.
I haven’t had the time to read the whole debate you have posted on here quite recently, but I want to state my opinion on national armies:
While the police force is an individual-targeted institution (as in I hire the policeman), an army is a collective to “defend the nation” which again creates a state acting in the “common good” instead of the “individual good.” Hence, I believe that even in a minarchist government, the government should not create an army. Instead, it should be private. This makes armies quite a bit easier to handle than the court system (in terms of converting from minarchy to AnCap) because as long as the army gets funding, it runs, etc. In general, an army is collective, and since the government should not do anything collective that denies individual liberty, armies are not a function of a minarchist state.
I tend to think of an army more as an organization than a collective. And the nature of war is such that each soldier acts in THEIR individual good, because they don’t want to be killed
What if the monopoly was taken out. You allow private armies, you allow city-state armies (national guard equiv), you certainly allow privately held weapons, but I still see this need for a professional army for the more complex parts of warfare:
For instance, an airforce. Million dollar aircraft flown by professional pilots. The private equivalent is… what? A professional army historically has continually trumped a citizen army. This was as true in Egypt as it was in Sparta. Athens did not have a standing army but did have hoplites (slaves) to fight for them which the Spartans did not (the Spartans still had slaves, but did not employ them to fight, iirc).
What the Athenians did have was organization and technology. One of the most interesting facts of Greek history is how Athens handled the Persian threat. At first the city-states pooled their money and sent it to Athens to build a powerful navy. It worked, the Persian threat was averted in time. But soon that yearly payment for the war effort went from voluntary to considered tribute, and the Athenians used the war power they’d gained to now extract these payments from its sister-cities, turning into a despot.
Without a professional army under the rule of law, any mincap society would be vulnerable to the same turn of events, of a private army growing huge in order to counter a threat and then having the might to take over that same society as it pleased. So, I’m not so sure about this suggestion.
A minarchist can allow a collectively-run organization to exist. I think you’re importing that idea that the gov itself shouldn’t be collective to what sorts of organizations can now run within the society, of which the military need be only one. Personally, I’m not as wary of collectivism as I am of coercion. If those in the society’s army are there of free will and under contract, then I have no problem with it. They know what they signed up for.
You allow private armies, you allow city-state armies (national guard equiv), you certainly allow privately held weapons, but I still see this need for a professional army for the more complex parts of warfare
Yes, private armies. The idea is: if an army would exist in a democracy, it would exist without democracy. If people realize the need for an army, they will come together to create an army with the funds society deems necessary.
A minarchist can allow a collectively-run organization to exist.
Yes, of course. Yet not a compulsory one. A private army is dandy, yet not a public one which EVERYONE must support.
As to the corruption issue:
You are viewing this through a statist capitalist viewpoint where capitalism has lost its teeth and the people are helpless. There would of course be safety measures. For example, you can have the bank account of the army be transparent and fluid, with an individual able to withdraw his money from the army at any time. There can be safeguards to prevent misuse. You simply do not see them because so much of the protection has been offered for free.
Note also that the state army itself may become too large. Plus, with private armies, there might be competing armies, and no army in its right mind would want to have to fight the others.
I’ll have to think more on that, but it seems compelling, and more likely in the future than now.
I still have trouble imagining how a private jet owner is going to stand up to a foreign professional fighter pilot >_>
When it’s something like handling nuclear weapons, I think we need a state mechanism where everyone in the society can have a say…
Inasmuch as protecting society from inward aggressors is the proper function of government, I’m still leaning towards protection from outward aggressors being a proper function as well.
Do you think law concerns states (i.e. conditions) or actions? I would say that, since I see law as concerning actions, and only people can act, law necessarily concerns people. Hence jurisdiction - applicability of law - is always over people initially and over property only by extension.
If a man defends his home and himself (if not also his family) from an intruder, would you say that he’s enforced any law? If so, would you say that his enforcement of the law was private?
What about security guards, bodyguards, and the like?
Okay, let’s work this out step by step. At first, there’s an area of land, which we’ll call A, which is owned by one person, who we’ll call Smith. Then Smith starts to invite people to buy or rent pieces of his land. Before entering (i.e. setting foot onto) his land, Smith asks each person to contract to specific laws. Let’s say that everyone rents land from Smith except for one individual, Jones, who buys a piece of Smith’s land outright. If Smith’s law has jurisdiction over Smith’s land, then that’s the same as saying Smith’s law has initial jurisdiction over A. Let’s call B the area of land that Jones buys from Smith. Obviously, B < A. Now if Jones now owns B, Smith cannot also own B. Therefore, Smith only owns A - B at this point, and his law has jurisdiction only over A - B. Make sense?
With this in mind, it seems to me that you’re referring to all of A as “the city”, which would necessarily include Jones’ land after he buys it from Smith. But to say that the law necessarily applies to “the city” is a contradiction, because if Jones is on the land that he now owns, he’s not on the land that Smith owns. Since the contract presumably applied to Smith’s land and not A specifically, to say that Jones is still beholden to Smith’s law on his own land is contradictory.
Your hypothetical federal government would have jurisdiction over this “anarchist state”, wouldn’t it? Hence it wouldn’t actually be an area of anarchy (I consider “anarchist state” to be an oxymoron and I have no idea how you can do otherwise).
How are you defining “criminal law” versus “civil law”?
This is pretty much common sense when it comes to entering someone else’s home or other property, isn’t it? Basically anarcho-capitalists such as myself see (what we call) the state as not only disrespecting property ownership on a systematic basis, but also being generally allowed to do so.
Okay, I think we’re starting to converge on this issue. But let me ask you: who gets to define what is a crime and what isn’t?
I had assumed that you believed otherwise - that is, the seceding landowner would not be allowed to draw up a new body of law (as you put it).
Property ownership involves defined borders, doesn’t it?
However, I think we’re each using “law” in a different sense. What you call “basic rights” corresponds entirely to my conception of “law”, but it’s only a subset of your conception. You also include under “law” any/all contractual arrangements (that presumably don’t violate the “basic rights”). Maybe a more useful terminology for our purposes would be “public law” for referring to what you’ve called “basic rights” and “private law” for referring to the contractual arrangements. The only remaining question, as I see it, is the nature of “public law”.
What you call “the federal system” is what I’d call “natural morality”. I don’t think it takes the establishment of some federal government for nearly all people to consider killing, injuring, attacking, taking property, or damaging/destroying property to be wrong when neither defensive or consensual. The vast majority of people don’t steal, murder, etc. because there are written laws proscribing punishments for people who are considered to have done such things.
On the other hand, like I mentioned above, if a man enters a city-state and buys some land within it, he’s no longer part of the city-state. In fact, I don’t see how it makes sense to even talk about “city-states” when they’re simply amalgamations of privately-owned land.
But what about all those people in the world whose “natural rights” are being violated? How will they be helped?
I think you read too much into what I wrote. Of course there’s no guarantee that all those in a society would respect self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. Likewise, there’s no guarantee that all those in a society will respect whatever “rule of law” is presumed to govern it. There is never any guarantee for anything, in the sense of absolute certainty about (some point in) the future. On the other hand, if the slave is locked in prison unable to communicate with the outside world, any contract concerning his slavery is technically irrelevant.
Although it depends greatly on how you’re defining “authority figure” and “law enforcement”, I never said that there wouldn’t be either of those things in an anarcho-capitalist society. What I said is that they wouldn’t be monopolized. Again, if a man repels an intruder from his home, I’d say he legitimately exercised both authority and law enforcement. I’d also say he legitimately exercised coercion against the intruder. Such a situation is perfectly possible in an anarcho-capitalist society. To supplement this kind of personal protection, I’d imagine there’d be individuals and even businesses for hire. On the other hand, there would be individuals and businesses for hire to provide direction, guidance, and consultation in interpersonal disputes. A common term for such people is judge. Why should that be monopolized?
Where did I make that suggestion? I don’t see where I ever did.
Everyone has the physical potential to murder, assault, steal, vandalize, etc. The vast majority of people hold themselves back from doing so the vast majority of the time. There are no decrees necessary to hold those people in check, because they almost always do it themselves. So the question is what to do when they don’t. That’s what I consider the proper place for law.
Right. So that means either they’re paid by the people who hire them, or they’re allowed to take what they want from people. I know which one we both agree with (the former), so that’s really a moot point. But my intention here was to hopefully dissuade you from believing that any/all enforcers of justice would do so simply out of the goodness of their hearts. That would certainly be naive.
I agree that he should recuse himself, but will he? Since there’s never any certainty about the future, the next best thing is to provide incentives that hopefully (or can be reasonably expected to, given precedence) outweigh the benefits he sees from doing otherwise.
The more limited law is, I think the broader its jurisdiction can be - if that makes sense.
Well, given what you’ve written elsewhere, it seems like I was largely wrong about you believing that.
So essentially you already believe in self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. I think that’s good. Just keep in mind that, if you believe in them, that means you consider them to be applicable to everyone. In other words, the “jursdiction” of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle is over all humans equally.
If by “control” you mean direct physical control, then I’d say that control is not an essential characteristic of ownership. A person can own a house and not live in it, for example. He can even rent it out to someone else. Is he controlling the house while he’s not living in it and someone else is? In a direct physical sense, hardly.
On the other hand, I don’t see how there can be ownership without legitimacy. Yes, it’s a fact of reality that a person controls himself, but whether that control is legitimate or not is no fact at all.
Conflicts between/among people, of course. I wouldn’t call it “recognizing facts of reality”, though - I’d call it “most accommodating of human nature”.
“Free” can be defined in an all-or-nothing sense, right?
Here we differ in two ways. One, I consider a definition to explain what a single word refers to. Two, I hardly consider definitions to be bound to existing phenomena. I can coin a word, “harblegarble”, and define it as “a purple one-eyed unicorn”.
So the state would be the law-enforcement agency. Would it allow competitors? If not, then I’d consider its use of coercion against would-be competitors to be non-defensive and thus immoral.
Okay. So I can move on to the issue of what you call “criminal law”.
I didn’t attack anything. To go along with your Shakespearean analogy, I merely pointed out that, if you call a rose a bumblebee, it would smell as sweet. You don’t have to call it by the name “rose”.
But it’s clear to me now that our real dispute here is (forgive me) over what each of us calls a “definition”. You consider definitions to be attached to concepts, whereas I consider them to be attached to words. That’s why I consider the phrase “the definition of a concept” to be nonsensical - at least in my own semantics.
I still see you as trying to sneak in the assertion that the concept that you call by the name “state” is the only possible concept that that name can be applied to. If I or anyone else is attacking a characteristic that is nonessential to your concept of “state”, then 1) he’s attacking a different concept of “state” and 2) he probably doesn’t fully understand your concept of “state”. A lot of what I feel like I’ve been doing in our exchange is figuring out exactly what you mean in terms that I can understand - if that makes sense.
Right, it may not be entirely consistent nor applicable to your (different) concept of “state”. Neither your concept of “state” or theirs is right/wrong - they’re simply different from one another.
I’m assuming you really mean "the essential characteristics of a thing or concept" in the above. However, I don’t see how defining “table” as “a piece of furniture with a flat surface supported by four legs” contains anything that’s necessarily non-essential. Maybe you see the four-legs requirement as non-essential, but that doesn’t mean it is non-essential. Do you see what I’m saying? It seems like what you’re arguing is the same as arguing that me defining “table” that way is wrong because it doesn’t match your definition of “table”. That of course begs the question: logically speaking, do they have to match?
Whether it would happen much (or at all) in practice is irrelevant.
I mean exactly that. What would necessarily stop them?
Yeah, sorry. Like I said, I have a lot of catching up to do in this thread.
Again, those firewalls could be removed. Otherwise, what do you think would ensure that the state is being lawfully conducted?
You’re now talking about the United States? In that case, keep in mind that all branches of the US federal government are paid out of the same purse.
Written statutes can be dictated by the whims or words of rulers, such as a majority of Congressmen.
That’s not what I meant. You talked about the notion of “new legal concepts” being useful. You didn’t qualify “new legal concepts”. If a person considers a “right to healthcare” to be a “new new legal concept” that’s useful, what’s to stop them?
Well, if you define “right” as “something granted to people by the government”, as you seem to do, then a “right to healthcare” can certainly exist. I agree with you that it’s tyrannical, but my point stands nonetheless.
Would you store my boat on board in case I decide I’ve had enough?
How so?
On the one hand, it may not matter whether it’s legal. People in the US federal government do things that are illegal, even unconstitutional, all the time. But on the other hand, just because the rules for changing Section 1 are inside section doesn’t mean a new section can’t be added which is said to supersede Section 1. And finally, people aren’t computers or robots. They don’t just automatically obey written rules just because they happen to exist.
And when the territory they’re on becomes their territory, those laws no longer apply on that territory, right? They may still apply to the territory that isn’t theirs, but that’s beside the point.
I don’t know why you answered my question strictly in terms of your floating sea-city idea. My question contained the word “land”, didn’t it?
What’s the point of being a citizen if there are no added benefits, advantages, or “perks” to being one? I mean, even if citizens each received a t-shirt that said “I Became a Citizen of Tankeria and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt”, that would be something, wouldn’t it?
Or he could repel them from his land, right? Because he could consider them trespassers, right? (This, of course, assumes he hasn’t committed any aggression against anyone.)
No, it can’t - not unless the city-state owns all of the land within its borders. That’s been my whole point. If someone buys land outright from the city-state, regardless of whether the city-state is owned by one person or a group of people jointly, the land that he bought cannot logically be considered still a part of the city-state in a “private-law” legal sense. (Obviously the “public law” is presumed to have jurisdiction everywhere, not just over the city-state.)
Never really considered it, but I would say law concerns exchanges, meaning action between two people. I wouldn’t use action because that means a single person alone, and law has no place in regulating the individual, only keeping justice between them. In the same way, the idea of freedom or law would mean nothing to someone stranded on a desert island, as who could possibly restrain him or violate his rights
Sure, sounds right to me. I’m not sure what regulating a state of being would even mean in practice or theory.
Sure, that sounds appropriate, he’s enforced law and he’s privately enforced it. However, as I said, not everyone’s capable of their own defense all the time.
I’d allow private security. The real question is how trials are taking place. Should we have electable judges? Surely we can’t have free market judges for criminal law, or can we (civil disputes it’s fine, but criminal? doubt it).
Right, but Smith still owns all public areas, such as streets, etc., which he may or may not sell, and would likely only sell if the buyers agree to continue with the city contract (or leave). I forget what this is called in terms of property but it’s something like a legal attachment that comes with property. It’s actually a current problem in contract theory, as if you buy a property with conditions already on it, how can those conditions ever be removed? In theory they cannot be, and that’s too much power to give the sellers. Otoh, you can say if you don’t like the provisions simply don’t buy.
It might be more reasonable to simply require that if a person legally separates themselves from the city and continues to live within the city bounds that they must also then provide security on their property.
I agree it’s a weird state of being, but it’s also the only way an anarchist state is likely to come into being
In this case we’red building a society so limited that unless we’re in a state of war the anarchists shouldn’t have any contact with the federal authority at all. Well, the other cases would be if the anarchists are allowing gross injustices within their territory, in which case the fed should step in to stop aggressions–which is its sole function in my state.
Criminal law involves the abrogation of basic rights, theft, murder, etc. Civil disputes are those surrounding contracts and agreements and other things that don’t have an ethical component: marriage / divorce (which the state should not have any part in), business and contractual disputes, etc. As in current practice, some disputes have both a civil and criminal element, which are handled separately.
It may be that any civil dispute which requires the use of force within society should go to a gov civil court which exists alongside the private courts of dispute (which would be primarily used by businesses). Thus, any dispute where one party is refusing to come to court or where you require things like attaching a bank account, etc., would need to move up to the public civil court. Even the private arbitration courts might eventually need to move up to a coercive institution. But I don’t think it should have a monopoly on anything but coercion. Obviously a private and coercive court is a contradiction in terms. But since it is necessary within a functioning society it has to come from somewhere, somehow.
So essentially, through your questioning, it seems that my ideal city could really only be kept intact legally if everyone is leasing/renting property from the original large-scale owner. This more limited form of ownership would allow the original owner to contract leasees into a legal system while maintaining the ability to bar entry to offenders.
two bodies: the founder(s) initially (one time try) and elected representatives concurrently. The founders by means of the statement of basic rights enshrined in a founding document which is essentially unchangeable. This document should be quite basic, only enshrining the most obvious and important rights. Such would prevent the fed authority from overstepping their bounds in time and growing in power as we’ve seen lately.
Any more fine-grained law making should be at the city-state level and made by elected representatives. But I have a number of ideas for things that could be tried. With a modern age, we could move back to direct democracy by using a web interface to allow all individuals in a society to vote on proposals.
I had another idea yesterday that perhaps elected representatives should be conflated with the law enforcement organization entirely, such that what we think of today as the equivalent of a congressman would also perform the work of a police-officer. Such would allow representatives to see the direct impact of any law that gets made/passed.
As to what kind of elected body, how, or even if, I would leave that up to each city-state. So, it’s a society that allows for widescale experimentation, unlike the US-states and their silly blue sky laws and copycat constitutions.
I would think each city-state should apply for recognition as a city-state under the fed authority in order to be included under its protective umbrellas, in something like an appeal for protection from aggressors. The eventual goal being to allow cities in other countries to do the same, such that this way of life, that is Freedom, can be spread.
Such would put my society at odds with the dictatorships around the world. And that’s just how I like it. It is morally permissible to invade any country aggressing against its occupants, with the intent to protect individuals against aggression. Properly constructed we could free the world.
You convinced me I don’t think many would like to do it, but perhaps it’s permissible.
Always.
Sounds good. Except, “private law”? Sounds like a contradiction in terms. “Contractual agreement” might substitute and be more apt.
Right, but that knowledge doesn’t provide a protection against an organized enemy state.
I consider that most property owners within one region would want to form a prevailing legal order to deal with the problem in society, specifically crime. This has virtually always happened in the history of humanity. Fighting it isn’t going to work. Directing it into something useful will. Informing it with principle will.
I answered this previously, that it’s morally permissible to step into any situation where a human’s rights are being aggressed by anyone and put a stop to it. This is the nature of the justice system and applies on an international basis as well.
One reason I like the idea of a state on the water is that you’d be able to float a city down to some troubled region and provide aid, support, even military-defense as needed with a base local to the problem. You’d be free to pick up those who want to leave the city for another land. This is something many around the world would love to do, to leave their situation and find a rational place to work and live in peace, but they currently have no options.
The prerequisite for helping others is to get our own damn house in order. With America’s statist ambitions, we’ve backed ourself into a financial corner. A free state such as I propose would have no such debt problems, and the people would be more wealthy and productive than americans. Beyond that, I intend to write the ability for regions to appeal for entry, allowing them to either be moved out by willing organizations within the society or institute our legal system within their borders. Should be both very rewarding and fun to see the result of all this. Dictatorships around the world would have their brains fried.
My point is, in my society there’s a professional police force (or private) able to walk into that situation and free the imprisoned, and no such ability within an anarchist society unless a citizen wants to stick his (lone) neck out. Any organized crime can prevent that from happening quite easily, but in a state which puts forth a statement of rights it must also back those rights with some enforcement.
What body of law is there in an anarchist society? Without that, what does a police force know to enforce? What’s the legal procedure of arresting someone?
Right, but I still don’t see in there a place where the defenseless are being protected after being overpowered. An orphan child being held as a slave, who protects him?
Okay, sounds like we agree on that principle at least.
Lol, yeah, I wouldn’t be that naive.
Sure. It would likely be a crime to be personally involved in a conviction in some self-serving way, just as it is today.
No, I agree. That’s why I want the fed to be as limited and basic as possible, doing only one thing–enforcing basic rights. The most difficult thing is to prevent people from adding fake rights onto the tail end of that.
Of course. It’s not that I think someone loses their personal jurisdiction by joining a legal federation, but that they think they will gain something by acting corporately. If a person doesn’t need to provide for their own defense, they’re free to specialize in a work area. That’s a more important principle than we give it credit for.
No, I don’t mean only direct physical control, I mean control in every sense possible. You don’t only control your arm, you also control how it may be disposed of, destroyed, sold, or given away, etc. Same with the house. If you rent it, you’re maintaining title and certain rights over it. To rent it you’re selling those rights to another for a set period, but you’ve not given them up completely. You could, in theory, rent an arm to someone else–allowing doctors to cut it off, attach it to someone else, and then reverse the procedure at some later date. We don’t do that for obvious reasons but the analogy to control of the house is applicable. You own it both physically and in terms of title, but I’m glad you made me clarify that concept.
Define legitimacy in this context.
It shouldn’t be. Total physical freedom is why it’s possible to hurt others. True freedom is a middle concept and applies to an entire society, meaning you’re free from political / economic / interpersonal coercion. Now, total freedom is why coercion is possible, because someone can still put a gun to your head. But the state of freedom means a society that is protecting the individuals within it from aggression and initiation of coercion, and it is doing this by means of coercing the aggressors to stop aggressing. This is political freedom.
If we look at a slave owner, we might say he’s free. After all no one is coercing him. But in fact he’s coercing others. So he is not living in a state of freedom, but of tyranny, tyranny over others. Freedom for a society means a lack of coercion on individuals.
Because of this, as I said, freedom is a middle concept meaning free to swing your arm until it meets the end of another’s nose.
But you first created a new word before defining it. In this instance, the existing phenomena is the word which has no correlation to reality, but it still exists. As a word, or a thought, or a nonsense word.
However in terms of communication, the idea is to get meaning into the head of another, and words must be precisely defined for that to work. And then when we get to reasoning, logic, and political theory it is even more important.
What else? That’s its only ethical reason to exist. It’s the only thing that I can’t imagine stripping away from government due to the nature of law. Well, the state would be a law creator, a holder of jurisdiction, the enforcement could be privatized, or more likely would have a state apparatus but allow for private competitors.
Yes.
You don’t, but that has nothing to do with the definition… color me confused.
Ah. I think the definition tries to capture a concept, to capture meaning of a phenomena, thought, emotion, thing, etc. And if successful it delineates this thing from all other things. And the primary process in doing that is both stripping out nonessentials (like number of legs in a table) and building a definition which encompasses the variety of the thing or concept (such as the definition of a table as 1 or more legs).
No, I’m really asserting that what the state’s been attacked for by anarchs has, so far, been for nonessential characteristics of the state. It’s like if you attack a fat guy for being fat then condemn all people. Okay? But not all people are fat. Not all states are aggressors against citizens.
Haha, well that’s probably my fault then. However, I really think that this is not merely my concept of a state, but rather the irreducible logical consequence of what the state must be in minimum form. At its minimum it forms a body of law which it enforces. That is, the irreducible quality of the state is the ability to use coercion legally within society. And if it’s true that this coercive power can be used either for good purposes (stopping aggressors) or bad purposes (aggressing against citizens), as you’ve already agreed, then why do we reject the state as a concept for the latter when it can still perform the former?
It really isn’t just my concept of a state. The state is a fact in the real world and can be analyzed as such.
Yes, it does mean that four legs is nonessential. The essential is at least one leg to hold up a table, whatever form that leg takes, because–and now we meet up against the demands of reality–everything is affected by gravity. Without the one leg you don’t have a table up off the floor, you have a board laying on the ground–and that’s better described by a different word, ‘board.’
What I’m basically saying is that reality must be our epistemological reference point. It is the basis of reasoning, and of logic.
That the citizens/law-enforcement would likely sue/arrest them. There’s still room for checks and balances after all. They could be prosecuted for that as surely as any criminal, since that would make them law breakers. If your point is that a society needs to be generally law abiding to hold to law, I agree, yet you also said only a small minority are law breakers–thus every society tends to live by its laws generally.
They could not be removed if the founding document states they cannot be removed. Come on man. As you said, people are generally law abiding. To propose an entire society would become law-breaking is to go beyond the bounds of reasonableness.
Laws allowing whim-based decisions in public officials should be barred. In any case, most of the problem is removed by separating economy and state. There’s not much room for whim in criminal law.
Primarily that a right to healthcare would contradict a right to self-ownership, for one thing. Which would be one of the basic rights.
No, I consider a right only a legal aknowledgement of rights we already possess by nature of being human beings. The idea that the source of rights is government is an evil concept. They are rights by nature, intrinsic to us as people.
Haha, you’re free to leave any time.
Under capitalism, a society can feed itself. Under communism, a population starves. This is historically proven and true. Hell, North Korea’s starving right now. Russia has starved. Mao killed 20 million people during his “great leap forward” of communizing the farms. And Pol Pot murdered 25% of his country trying to do the same.
The idea that communism is more efficient economically than capitalism is historically disproven and a failure as an economic/political system.
I suppose if your real goal was obtaining control over people, then communism would be a raging success But in terms of what communism itself predicted ‘We will bury you (economically)’ says Kruschev, he was utterly wrong.
As for whether it must always be a failure, addressing the qualifier ‘always’ specifically, yes it will always be a failure in comparison to a capitalist system for the basic reason that communism does not organize human energy in accordance with its nature. Just as water will always be a worse fuel for any engine than gasoline, so too freedom is a better fueld for human production than despotism and tyranny and central control.
It’s a good point. But I don’t consider any state to need perpetual existence to be a success. And since it’s easy to leave the state, that’s a self-check on its own excesses. The rulers start being despots, start your own thing. It is the prerogative of humanity.
The best safeguard, of course, is an educated populace devoted to the principles of NAP and free exchange. That’s everyone’se goal here at least, I hope.
For one thing you can’t enter without becoming a citizen, since becoming a citizen means agreeing to the laws of that jurisdiction and little more. Beyond that, see my section above where I talk about allowing others to declare themselves citizens as pretext for invasion to free oppressed peoples. Declaring yourself a citizen of my floating state is one way to escape despotism wherever you are. That’s a pretty huge despotism. To simply escape aggression and live free is a pretty massive benefit in my book, even if it is a wholly passive one.
Correct. Would be no different than asking a guest to leave.
In my scenario, one owner does own it all, because the state is being setup by a property owner of a large region intent on building a private city in its place. At which point he vests his control rights in a legal system while maintaining his ownership rights. But the state does not own, the citizen who set it up does. The state has only authority to check aggression within its bounds, and the citizen owning the city simply contracts with those wishing to enter seeking their agreement to be bound by the city-state’s law system. It’s all up front.
Unless he’s agreed to join the legal backbone as a precondition of purchasing / leasing there. Such preserves both his choice and the overarching legal structure and legitimacy.
Sorry, I’ve been busy, but I am still willing to continue the conversation, perhaps at a slower pace.
I admit to not knowing the difference [between mutualism and anarcho-communism]… is it possible to summarize the difference?
Well, I’m not intimately familiar with either tradition, but from what I understand, mutualists take an occupancy and use approach to productive property but a more propertarian approach to consumer goods. So workers produce goods collectively, sell them on the market, and then distribute the revenue amongst themselves in some sort of democratic fashion. Communists extend occupancy and use to consumer goods as well. There are no traditional markets or currency in a communist system. Everything is distributed according to need (which might mean that goods are simply free for the taking at some point).
My definition: an entity to which an individual functionally has exclusive access because other people have agreed to to let them have exclusive access.
My definition is intimately tied up in voluntary agreements. It requires no force or violence, but also says nothing about what would end up being property.
I may not have a problem with property as you define it. I certainly wish that others have exclusive access to certain entities at times. However, where I might disagree is on how these agreements are to be enforced. What ancaps seem to argue, correct me if I’m wrong, is that these contracts are to be enforced by private courts and protection agencies. So if a factory owner and a group of workers sign a contract, I presume that the contract is somehow enforceable by one of these third party protection agencies. If so, then it seems that there must also be a contract between the PA and the owners and workers. The obvious question is, who enforces the contract between the PA and its contractees? Another PA? Then we run into a reductio ad absurdum. The answer I usually hear from ancaps is that the market will enforce the contracts between PAs and their contractees. So if a PA fails to uphold its contract, people will simply not hire it again. But if markets are really capable of enforcing contracts, then why do we need PAs in the first place? If workers appropriate a factory, why not just say that the market will prevent them from being hired again? And surely the breach of contract capable of doing the most damage is that of the heavily armed PA. This has pretty much led me to reject contract theory as such.
What I like about stating these things in terms of predictions about what we think would happen in a free market, we get away from arguments about who is wrong and right, we get away from talk of violence and force and conflict, and we instead get to talk about people and the choices they would make, why they would make them, etc.
I agree that this is a good approach.
Most importantly, though: in this kind of formulation, would someone like you be willing to let “capitalists” practice their own definition of property amongst themselves, knowing that you also get to practice your definition amongst other people who prefer the same definition as you, even while you accept and realize that there will be friction and dissatisfaction on both side where the two groups interact with each other?
Yes, I don’t believe in forcing people to organize themselves in a certain way. Most socialist anarchists believe that people must liberate themselves. If people are content to live under hierarchy and earn a wage, then that’s fine with me. However, if a group of ancap factory workers decide to appropriate their factory and ask me for assistance, my decision to help them would not be impeded by the fact that they previously signed a contract to recognize the factory as the property of the “owner.” Additionally, I may try to persuade ancap factory workers that it would be in their best interest to forget their contracts and appropriate the factory. But I certainly wouldn’t force them to do so.
Would you consider such an arrangement preferable to the current arrangement (I’m almost certain you will say “yes” to this, since the state would be eliminated)?
Yes, but I’m not sure how possible it is for both to exist. I think your version of anarcho-capitalism is probably more compatible than others though.
Also, Hill (and Pony, if you’re still here and still speaking to me), I an interested in the following, given the context that I’ve presented in which we are talking about making choices in a free market of contracts: can you explain why you would choose to formulate contracts with others that use the kind of “property” concept that you prefer? To simplify the reality: if there were a group of people using the capitalist definition of property, and another using your definition, why would you choose the latter? Is it a “moral” choice (perfectly valid reason to make a consumer choice, btw, I’m not mocking it)? It is a self-interest choice (also perfectly valid), e.g. you think that your life would be better - materially? Spiritually? Something else - in the latter group?
This probably warrants a much lengthier response. But I will say that I think I would be better off both materially and spiritually. I think such a society would foster the type of relationships, opportunities, and products that I value.
two bodies: the founder(s) initially (one time try) and elected representatives concurrently. The founders by means of the statement of basic rights enshrined in a founding document which is essentially unchangeable. This document should be quite basic, only enshrining the most obvious and important rights. Such would prevent the fed authority from overstepping their bounds in time and growing in power as we’ve seen lately.