∃ action A
∃ demand for action A
Action A ⇒ monetary income
Opportunity Cost of action A < Opportunity Cost of supplying A (more difficult to conduct action A against other action A’ers)
Conclusion
revenue from supplying A < revenue from action A ⇒ monetary incentive for action A & monetary disincentive for supplying A
If we choose violence as A, it fits the premise, so the conclusion must be true.
Defending from aggression has a higher opportunity cost than aggression. It is harder to use violence on a bandit than on a peaceful citizen.
Implied premise: opportunity cost can be measured objectively.
Although there is no such thing as an invalid premise, from the standpoint of deductive logic, since we’re talking about the real world here, we must use inductive logic. Therefore, can opportunity cost actually be measured objectively? Since you’re the one making this implicit claim, the burden of proof rests with you.
Implied premise: incentives can be measured objectively. My response from above applies here.
Implied premise: no other incentives can exist besides monetary incentives. My response from above applies here.
The burden of proof rests with you to prove that all of your propositions hold true when substituting “violence” for “A”. You have not done this yet.
Here again there is an implicit premise that opportunity cost can be measured objectively. I’ve already addressed this.
The meaning of your last sentence seems to depend on what you mean by “peaceful citizen”. Until you provide that meaning, I (at least) cannot determine what you mean by that sentence.
Put informally, the argument seems to be that it is easier to be the bad guy who hits old crippled ladies with a lead pipe than the the good guy who defends them. Which seems to ensure a plentiful supply of bad guys and a scarcity of good guys.
Yes I can grasp the intended meaning of the argument in an informal sense. Whether the formal argumentation actually matches that meaning is another issue which I don’t think has been settled.
With that said, if it’s so much easier to be the bad guy who… etc., then why aren’t there bad guys all over the place?
Define “bad”. What % of the global population would you say is ancap? What % approves of (supports, or participates in) wealth re-distribution through taxation? In other words, the “bad” outnumber the “good” by such a margin that they are commonly referred to as simply “humans”.
Power (force) monopolies affect the subjective valuations and norms of agents subjected to them, including the definitions of terms describing such valuations/norms.
Define bad etc. Sophistry. The easy way out of any argument is to ignore the common use of a word and say define. and then ask to define words used in the definition. bla bla.
Are you sure that’s the only possibility? Or aren’t you taking this seriously?
Good point, although I don’t think that’s the definition Smiling Dave intended for “bad”. I also think, following La Boetie, that part of the resistance against (perceived) power monopolies can be weakened by (perceived) tradition. If you’re raised from birth to believe that the state is good and/or necessary, I’d say you’ll be less likely to resist it.
I don’t think z1235 was engaging in sophistry. He had a good and interesting point IMO, although it may have been rather tangential to the subject presented in the OP.
Additionally, many words don’t seem to have any “common” uses whatsoever, or the contexts in which they’re embedded make them appear ambiguous. I don’t see anything wrong with asking someone what they mean by a word in those situations.
Trying to show that agents interested in monetary profit maximisation prefer using violence to selling violence.
autolykos, the utility comparison is between the utilities as seen by a single agent, not different agents. So all it assumes is the preferences of an agent being in such a manner. Which seems reasonable(who would prefer robbing bandits to robbing citizens). But yes, it is not strict, but a conditional statement(hence being explicitly expressed in the premise).
The method is mathematical induction: if conclusion is true about all actions, then it must be true about any action.
Well, you again ignored the time element, so your argument, whether correct or not, is useless.
To prove anything about how people would act in the real world, you need to show how the incentive structure would change based on what the actions that the people will take based on the earlier incentives would do to the later incentives. You can’t just talk about what the incentives would be at time 1, say it is X, and then say that everyone forever will be subject to incentives X. People can try to forecast the future, and try to predict what the incentives will be in the future, which might change the incentives that they have right now. Ever if it would be harder and less monetarily profitable to attack a citizen instead of a bandit right now, you might think that attacking the bandit right now might change the incentive structure in the future, making people with sufficiently low time preferences want to go with attacking the bandit right now, though it will yield less in the present than attacking the citizen.
But, even if I were to accept everything about your argument, it still suffers from a serious difficulty. If someone were to start up a defense agency for a reason not of monetary maximization, or were to incorrectly start one up for monetary maximization, that company would then make it so other people wouldn’t be choosing between attacking a citizen or a bandit, but would be choosing between attacking a defense agency or a bandit. In that case, new defense agencies might come about because of the increased opportunity cost of attacking non-bandits created by the first defense agency, and those new defense agencies would make the opportunity cost go even higher for the next people choosing between “using violence” and “selling violence”, and so on, creating a re-inforcing circle, which fixes the problem that you are posing.
I’m going to take this as you changing your argument as presented in the OP. The way you wrote it in the OP could only be logically interpreted as being true for all actors and at all times. It would be nice, then, if you’d edit your argument in the OP so it will accurately reflect what you state here.
Assuming the preferences of an agent being in such a manner makes the argument “if one prefers to engage in violence, he will (likely) engage in violence” to be a near-tautology. It says nothing about how many people will actually have such preferences, and where those preferences stand in relation to all of their other preferences. Also, the burden of proof remains with you as far as demonstrating the “reasonableness” of robbing “citizens” over robbing “bandits” (putting your words in quotes because I’m not sure what you mean by them). Note that I will reject any appeals to “common sense” as necessarily appeals to subjective valuations.
So although you’ve sidestepped having to demonstrate how utility can be objectively measured (hint: it can’t), by doing so you seem to have taken away the intended thrust of your argument. It remains for you to show that there will necessarily be a sufficient number of people who prefer aggression (what you deviously call “violence”) over non-aggression such that all people will always be divided into exploiters vs. exploited.
You are mistaken about what mathematical induction is. From Wikipedia:
Furthermore, your concession that utility is subjective makes an appeal to mathematical induction especially inaccurate, as the latter (as defined by Wikipedia) necessarily applies to non-subjective things, such as natural numbers. The subjectively-valuating “human element” remains steadfastly with your argumentation and must be addressed.
Finally, let me add that you have yet to 1) prove that all of your propositions hold true when substituting “violence” for “A”, and 2) provide the definition you’re using for “peaceful citizen”.
Violence ⊆ Actions, hence replacing A with it is a correct procedure according to premises.
The only objective valuation assumed is the profit maximisation of enterprises. Something that Mises himself applied aswell to many of his sequences.
Eveyone: This exploitation argument, as far as i can see, is a strict case against abolishment of State. It is a strict case of showing market failure, due to the nature of action itself. It is a purely praxeological argument, in the Misesian sense.
For those who don’t know, that funny-looking symbol is mathese for “belongs to the set”.
Now with that said, while violence is an action, your claim above is meaningless when at least one of the premises is under dispute (as against reality). So far I’ve questioned the validity of your last premise, namely “Opportunity Cost of action A < Opportunity Cost of supplying A (more difficult to conduct action A against other action A’ers)”. Let me also question two more of your premises, namely “∃ demand for action A” and “Action A ⇒ monetary income”. Since we’re talking about reality, not pure logic, it would seem that empirical evidence is in play. You have yet to demonstrate that these three premises are necessarily true in reality. Re-stating your argument does not advance the discussion one bit.
What makes profit maximization of enterprises objective? How are you defining “objective”? Can you provide one or more quotes of Mises that support this? (Hint: I think you’re confusing “objective” with “rational”.)
Nice try at unilaterally ending the thread. Of course, it hasn’t worked.
With that said, how are you defining “strict case”? If you’re defining it the way I think you are, then not only is it not a strict case, it is no case at all. You have repeatedly ignored the burden of proof that necessarily rests with you in demonstrating the validity of your assertions against reality. Indeed, for a strict case (per my understanding of the phrase), you must show (if not prove) that the premises you’ve listed must always and everywhere be true for what you call “violence” (I’ve assumed you’re using commonly accepted definition there, i.e. “physical force”).
I’m now going to quote the parts of my last post which I believe you have not addressed. I will continue to do this until you address them. Furthermore, until you address them, I will conclude that you are conceding the points that they make.
…
On second thought, there’s no reason for me to do this, since the only thing you addressed in my last post was where I asked you to “prove that all of your propositions hold true when substituting ‘violence’ for ‘A’”. And you didn’t even provide a proof there, as I’ve shown above. So really, the entirety of my last post stands unrefuted by you. I rest my case… for now.
I don’t get it. A is an action, what is the distinction between performing an action and supplying that action?? If I act violently, that is supplying violence, is it not?
The real question is the relative cost of offensive and defensive measures. If it costs more to defend a house against break-in than the value of the property which is to be secured against break-in, then security is not viable. Vice-versa and aggression is not viable, absent systemic distortion of the relative costs of aggression and defense (i.e. stupid laws, police/law monopoly etc.)
Oh good point. I saw this myself and meant to bring it up, but you beat me to it.
Still, I think what Xarthaz meant to say is that the opportunity cost of initiating A is less than the opportunity cost of responding to A with more A. If that makes sense.
