A lot of people here are correct in noting that externalities are the result of a lack of property rights, but as has been pointed out this isn’t a particularly Austrian insight. In fact, a lot of mainstream economists have done work in this area. Even in an entirely free market externalities will persist and whilst it’s not necessarily true that they will undermine the provision of certain goods and services entirely, it is likely that alternative means of providing such goods will have have to emerge.
The fact of the matter is that whilst Hoppe writes about the alleged silliness of the notion of “externalities” he also conceives of ways in which they may be internalized by various other mechanisms and institutions.
I am flattered by your concern but I highly doubt you have many lessons to teach me about the reality of my existence. I’m perfectly at ease with what and who I am as a human being with all the inherent feats and flaws that that entails and without any illusions about either in one way or another: “we are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow worm”. I recognize the “evil” sides as much as the “good” ones; the problem with all utopian thought however is that the evil sides are, perhaps purpously by some and ignorantly by others, ignored. Human beings in general are not rational. To deny this is to be irrational yourself.
“When you stop holding communism up to be a utopia, that is when it will not only be desirable, but possible”. Sounds eerily familiar, and that’s my point.
You’re the one in denial, that minarchism is preferable to ancap because man is irrational. I will ask you again. Because man is irrational, do you feel that we are best served by institutionalizing the most violent and criminal among us as absolute authority?
An ancap world is one with an ideal that isn’t a compromise on human liberty. It’s not a compromise through minarchy which is anathema to the ideal.
You only claim ancap as a utopia, because you can’t reconcile an irrational world with rational intentions. And so, you would rather demand a gun be pointed to your head than to take your chances.
Or perhaps you are the living example of an irrational man unable to accept a rational premise?
How did Bowie put it (paraphrasing Lennon)?
“You think you’re so clever and classless and free, but you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
Concerned enough to reply in any case. If it’s any comfort, I’m concerned enough to do so myself, in a perfectly egotistical way.
Ah, but don’t you see, you’re holding on to just another kind of slave morality and the only difference with collectivists is the side of the political spectrum you’re on. They claim “capitalists” are keeping them down, you claim “collectivists” are keeping you down, and both villify the (un)consciously percieved strength of the other. The very fact that your rationally warranted ideals are not a reality is because of the existence of the irrational masses, who are as a whole stronger than you and me and all others that share our way of thinking combined, or at least strong enough to prevent our ideal from being dominant in the actual sense of the word. Reality does not deal in “should”, it deals in “is”. Your moral high ground counts for nothing without the force to back it up in a reality where might makes right.
Where is your capitalistic anarchy? You’re waiting for somebody to hand it to you just like socialists are waiting for capitalist principles to disappear, both of you trying to convince yourself of the weakness of the other while being frustrated by its strength, both equally unable to put either extreme into practice due to the indestructable force of the other. All justification you should be seeking for your own ideals is that they work for you and you can put them into practice and enforce them in as high a degree as you can manage, all the rest is superfluous.
You’d get a whole lot further if you thought of the play of force in economic terms just like anything else: reality is scarce and many different ideals fight over it, whether you call the resulting clash of forces a compromise or an equilibrium is a matter of semantics. That, again, is the entire point I made in my previous post and it’s why holding an ideological ideal and aiming at a practical feasability isn’t an incompatible state of mind.
I’m sorry but I don’t know how to interpret your question or what you mean by it, I think perhaps because something’s “lost in translation”? I joked in my previous post but apparantly it wasn’t funny
Could you please explain a bit more what you are asking?
First, the simple fact that you keep referring to “authority” as de facto violent and criminal instead of “authority” as rationally undesirable is slave morality in the same way that socialists refer to capitalists as baby-eating boogeymen.
Second, if you call for change you call for moving an inert mass, and you need to have an economically qualified reason for that in the sense of an improvement to be made, and not just any improvement but a sufficiently large one to warrant the cost of action. A few posts back I told you that “this system is bad as well” doesn’t cut it as sufficient reason to change it to something else, and this system is what’s there now so without changing that’s what it is.
Third, you’re the one claiming absolute authority by being able to unilaterally set the standards of right and wrong in a moral and universal sense. I do no such thing, but you mimic quite the number of authoritarian systems in that regard. That alone sets some alarm bells ringing and in fact I as a side note suggest you step back for a moment and take a look at whether you’re actually helping your own cause by scaring probably quite a few of less determined people than me away from it with your barely tempered hostility which drips off nearly every comment you make. That’s not an attack, it’s a thought I have and which originated from realising that the best way to scare people away from communists these days is to draw out some of the most fanatical ones and get them to do their thing in public. I’ve been able to “convert” quite a lot of people to liberalism that way, I leave you to draw your own conclusions from that, you’re quite capable (without any sarcasm in case it comes across as such).
Fourth, it’s not a question of what would theoreticly be best, it’s about what practically is.
From those points, I refer back to the explanation of the ideological/practical duality in the post on page 4.
All I know in this regard is that every time I check back more people are following this conversation and I’ve been getting (several) comments and e-mails outside of - yet regarding - this thread from people who I had never heard of before and who seem to think that perhaps you’re not the only one with half a brain.
It’s easy to only discuss with people who almost always agree, it’s a different thing entirely to deal with differing opinions. You say I’m shadow boxing strawmen, I don’t agree and in fact could turn that charge around, but I will not because I think in this kind of discussion it’s a “weasel word”. I’m not your enemy but you seem to think that I am.
At the start of this conversation you thought you could do away with me and dismiss any and all points I made simply by asking me about “how many books” I’ve read on these matters, only to shoot yourself in the foot with it in the sense that I’ve read quite a few actually, even though I personally don’t think that having read a lot of books has to signify anything at all. Sure, you’ll claim that that wasn’t the reason for asking but everybody reading this including you yourself knows better, like you this is not the first debate I’ve ever been in, I’ve seen those tricks before.
Perhaps I should ask you about how many books you’ve read by Nietzsche to validate your opinion on anything remotely related to it? But I’m not going to, so don’t bother answering it because it doesn’t matter to me in any way at all: even if you haven’t I explained the essentials of it in previous posts as far as what is needed to understand them and I give you the benefit of the doubt of being intelligent enough to fill in the blanks from there.
Perhaps you see the difference in approach but I’ll assume that you’ll refuse to. No matter. I take no offense in it, just like when I pointed out the impoliteness at the very start once already in order to make it clear that it doesn’t affect any of the points that I make or my intent on explaining and defending them. Just to eradicate all doubt that some behaviour didn’t just went by unnoticed as to what was really meant, I am now pointing out a similar thing without any rancour. If any feeling at all is involved, it is perhaps mild amusement on my part.
However, all jest aside, I’d call that kind of pseudo intimidation a cheaper use of tactics and “shadow boxing” than the posts I make and put honest effort in to fully explain. As I said before, perhaps I misinterpreted, perhaps I did not and let’s leave it at that as far as I’m concerned.
Both actually. They aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re just mixing up terms. Perhaps I should ask about how much Nietzsche you’ve read after all (I kid, I kid
No, I’m in all honesty quite serious and think that the question is relevant and essential: where is your capitalist anarchy?
By the way, you have quite a few unanswered questions left yourself, but I’ll get into those tomorrow or the day after depending on whether I can free up some time. Feel free to look for them and start answering them on your own accord though if you feel like taking up the slack yourself. Until then, thanks for the talk and have a good night
So you dodged again. That’s fine. I will wait for you to answer Wilderness’ question.
FYI, I didn’t read the rest of your post. You can save yourself the energy next time. I asked a simple question, and if you’re not going to directly answer it, I am not going to indulge your rhetorical games. If you want to be relevant, debate honestly.
I didn’t dodge anything, your question was answered in several previous posts and I summarised those answers in my previous one along with saying that starting from those 4 points the post on page 4 explains the rest of my position about what I consider to be best in detail.
If you don’t read my posts I don’t see how it’s my fault when you moan that you don’t see me answering your questions; pretty irrational methinks in a context where the only communication is that of writing a post. It seems you not only set the rules of right and wrong but also are the sole dictator of what is open to discussion and what is not
As to some of the unanswered questions I posed that are left:
I go to Mars and claim it as my own entirely and do so based on the legal rights I myself and my company have set up, we don’t care about yours and we don’t care about what any third party has to say about it. If you try to invade what claim as our legal property we’ll retalliate, even if you think that we don’t legally own it
“practice what counts as “homesteading” is up for courts/arbiters to decide”: who says that other courts care anything about what you call homesteading; if there is no overarching set of rules there is no reason to think that they’ll honor the concepts you want them to use, there’s nothing stopping me from setting up a “court” that says that property is decided along entirely different lines. If the views of my court are directly opposed to that of yours then there’ll be conflict, armed conflict and it won’t take too long. And that’s even if you go along in the absurdity of living with 20 sets of laws on a square kilometre all intermingled in the first place despite of what you see right now about the effects of different ethics having to live alongside eachother. I again refer back to the post on page 4 and the inherent conversion costs and reality showing that it isn’t feasible to live together with people who have directly opposed views, even under the same system of laws. Say Sharia law says that I as a non-muslim have to pay tribute to my muslim neighbours, and I say I do not and I don’t care about what any 3rd party has to say about it and neither does the muslim court: armed conflict. You either have the same rules for all or no real rules at all instead of that stemming from the barrel of a gun. The result: what you have today, the most powerful group calling most of the shots and a single set of rules that remains.
You don’t believe in benevolent despots but you believe in benevolent billionnaires. Again, what exactly is keeping the local billionnaire from enforcing the “prima nocta” principle for example on a poor part of the population who have no money to stand up to his mercenaries, while he makes his money off of other parts of the population who don’t experience any hinder at all. But I guess you dismiss the fact that there are eccentrics and psychopaths in billionnaire circles as there are in others.
“but it would be in his rational interest not to enslave the population”: fine, let’s say he just enslaves you and nobody else because he thinks it’d be ironic, I know I’d get somewhat of a laugh out of it if he let you go after a day, and whether he keeps you or not it won’t put much of a dent in his patrimonium. But you seem to think you’re rambo incarnate and that with 1 gun you’ll stave of swat-like private militia’s who felt like it. It isn’t too far fetched that some would perhaps enjoy making a sport out of it to crack the supposed tough nuts just because they can, in the same manner that Gail Wynand did in The Fountainhead. Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game
“the person claiming the property may lack enough recognition from other members in society”: So we’re basicly back to democracy and voting to ensure popular/majority support of a particular rule. “there is such a thing as shunning”: ah yeah, the fear of being shunned will stop all violence and possible oppression. I say nothing about the rich de facto wanting to enslave the poor, I say that they could if they wished to do so in the system you’re describing, and I say that the problem will arise due to human nature. Abuse of power is just as likely to come from any type of power no matter where it originates. Force is the only thing that matters, and if force is decided by purchasing power I don’t see how that makes it any less arbitrary in any way at all. That’s the key thing I’m questioning here, beyond talk of good and evil. What makes your court less arbitrary than mine and what recourse do you have if you have relatively less purchasing power (=force) even if you consider moral justice to be on your side, just like how you feel slighted by the system you live in now and have no way around it.
say that I own a piece of ocean, any piece, doesn’t that imply that anybody who pollutes anything into the ocean de facto will have to end up paying me. If the guy who owns the plot of ocean next to me sells pollution rights then my piece of ocean will get polluted as well; who’s responsible: the guy next to me or the original polluter who ends up paying the entire ocean as one thing links to another? Any serious polluter has to pay the entire ownership of the ocean? How is that going to work realisticly. As far as fishing stocks are concerned, a lot of fish are migratory: they’re the property of whoever’s stretch of ocean they happen to be in at the time?
the comment that “it hasn’t been tried yet” sounds as empty from you as it sounds from any communists who says the same thing: it wasn’t their version that has been tried but some evil irrational stirred things up. Just like communism, it has been tried as it was the original state and its practical implication died out. I explained the reasons I see for that in my post on page 4. You think you make a sound arguement by dismissing mine by saying it hasn’t been tried so I can’t know what the effects will be while at the same time using “it hasn’t been tried” as justification that it’ll definately better? What makes you think you’re able to predict the future where I can’t based on the same single premise. If that isn’t “shadow boxing” I don’t know what is.
I don’t see where your (and consequently my) claim on “absolute truth” is in essence more morally justified than the idea of any other crackpot. You have not proven the existence of natural law, what gives you the right to deal in absolutes.
In theory “poor” victims can get a lawyer take their case to court by offering a share of the restitution they’re paid. In practice, there’s no money in defending a woman in the hands of an otherwise broke pimp who drank and gambled it all away. The questions of whether or not the woman “should” be helped or not is one thing, but I’m not claiming to have all the answers, I even come to inquire after them since you seem to do, so there we are.
“there is really no exploitative profit from slavery”: rationally in our way of thinking there isn’t, irrationally in the minds of a lot of others (collectivists, fascists and sadists) there is. I’d guess you’d be surprised about how many people would still be very much ok with having some involuntary slaves. If you think that under your system when I go and capture some people from a distant jungle tribe and they’re perfectly capable to get legal defence in your system, you have lost all touch with reality. There is no overarching legislation to stop me from setting up slave trades in people who are as much able to defend themselves as africans were when they were imported to the US, how do you figure they would have went to get legal help. A lot of people are too stupid to work out things as they are, let alone work out things when born in slavery or forced into it. I don’t think that stupidity warrants enslavement when somebody decides he’ll take some slaves (the south shall rise again?) but a lot of people don’t share this view even though you perhaps might.
“I thought you agreed that there is no economic incentive to instigate a war? Well then, where is your consistency?”: I fully agree: there is no rational incentive to instigate war but their are millions of irrational ones, and that along with the irrationallity of the masses is the entire point.
“We’re all for voluntary societies where people embrace free exchange under a system of property rights.”: as I explained, so am I in theory but I have no illusions about practical reality
“Where is the evil in anarcho-capitalism?”: What does it matter as far as practical reality is concerned? Being “evil” excludes existence as much as being “good” guarantees it.
And crucially:
“How do you think governments form?” → “Because people like you end up supporting it, or even advocating for it! But this is exactly the reason why a limited government cannot stay limited. Once you establish the coercive monopoly on law and violence, then there is no way to keep it from expanding. No piece of paper is going to protect you from economic laws.”: And it’s exactly the reason why anarchy does not remain anarchy and stateless grows into a state: no normative right is going to protect you from economic laws, the laws of evolution and society are as economic as the biological ones are.
"In a Stateless society, people can opt out of one defense agency and switch to another. If one agency does become criminal and manages to overcome the market, then you end up where you want to be anyway. ": That’s what history has done though, we went from stateless to this unless you’re proposing that statelessness was not the intial form and the state was born with microbial life. Also, that’s not what I said, it’s not what I “want” to happen, it’s what I know that will and see that has in spite of my personal preference, not because of them. How are you going to stop anarchy from evolving into democracy, what’s going to make it different this time around, good intentions?
if I gather it correctly you claim that in your view of things there is nothing arbitrary about the opinions you hold; you have all the answers as based on an absolute objective and universal truth, and personal preference has nothing to do with it. Natural law might bring you some solace if this is in fact the case, but reading along with the extensive (to put it mildly) thread about it I don’t consider it as “proven” beyond doubt just quite yet, but maybe you’re holding out on something
How do you plan to go about setting up your capitalistic anarchy from this point on, practically. Secede? What’s stopping you right now, how come “thy kingdom hath not come”? The arguement for the existence of different legislations in the same area being possible falls flat on its ass by just looking at current reality: what’s stopping you from setting up your own system of legislation at this exact moment if supposedly different laws can coexist in the same geographical territory? The simple reason is that this is impossible because the stronger group will supress the weaker one, just like what’s happening now. You can yell about your natural rights as much as you want, the stronger group has you by the balls. I use this kind of language to illustrate my point: the reason why constant anarchy being possible is out of the question is because the stronger group dominates and a single de facto uniformal system is thereby installed which keeps the rest down, and the only right that counts in reality is that of the strongest.
In short: where is your capitalistic anarchy.
The problems mentioned here come from your interpretation of things; in mine they don’t exist and the duality of theoretical ideal does not have to clash with practical feasability; the burden of proof lies with you for claiming that reality isn’t what it is supposed to be, not with me for claiming that history and reality are what they are due to evolutionary processes and the interaction of forces behind ideals in the sphere of civilizations.
As to the question of whether I’m irrational or not:
It depends on what we’re talking about here. I can sometimes be irrational about all in all minor grievances which end up annoying me more than would be rationally warranted. I sometimes can be irrational in the sense of for example getting annoyed at what I consider to be stupid drivers, which is pretty irrational if all there is to it is that you have to brake for a second and lose perhaps 10 extra seconds on the whole trip.
If we’re talking about whether I think I’m being irrational within the confounds of this conversations, then no, I don’t see how I am.
I say that some of the people here are irrational for saying that the world “is” not what it “should” logically and rationally be, in spite of the evolution and economical balance of forces active in it and for not understanding the limits of human rationality as a whole as to be able to reach “ideal states”. If you do, by all means feel free to elaborate.
The fact that I claim the impossibility of implementing anarcho capitalism doesn’t mean that I can’t hold it as an ideal to strive for, just like that the unachievable ideal of running as fast as a race car doesn’t have to clash with trying to run as fast as I can and train myself to do so anyway.
Dot care if some jerk starts by owning the moon. if the jerk has lots of land, that he doesnt use. (i.e. we wouldnt agree had had ‘homesteaded it’ in the ‘traditional sense’. then the value to him outside of his phsyicic gains will be what he can earn from selling off the land to others.
courts care about pleasing their customers so as to get their customers money. they go about pleasing their customers by providing the justice customers demand, if most consumers of justice are libertarians, then it will be libertarian justice that they provide. (i.e. actual justice). is this hard to understand? when two people disagree, the result is not necessarily armed conflict. maybe mutual dissapointment is an option… maybe punishing the wrongdoer by ostracisation if a move compatible with justice.
the billionaire doesnt not have the consent of the populace to be a wielder of legitimate violence. in fact the opposite. i dont think you have been paying attention. the dynamic powers of the capitalist free market system ,are all geared to incentivising peaceful cooperation. whereas the opposite is true in any kind of archy, which incentivises being the state, being the criminal.. there is no such position to occupt in anarchy.
you hypothetical is true under minarchy. as such its irrelelvant to a contrasting exercise
you are teh won that believes force is provided by purchasing power, you have performed a ridiculous unwarranted recudtion. surely a component of providing force is purchasing power. but its not the whole story.
you sue the guy that polluted you. if he feels he has a claim against whoever ‘miss’-sold him pollution rights then thats his business.
socialism has indeed been tried. what has not been tried is utopion communism with new socialist man. key differnece, having not yet tried something that can be tried. having not tried something that could not ever be tried
if you dont believe in morality, you have no credibility to enter moral debates or criticise others morals poisitions aparpt from grounds of personal aestheticism (whcih is another way of saying you have not entered moral debate). if you do have a moral system. .and its not libertarian. and it therefore involves the moral permissabilty of initiating aggression against innoccents, it would seem to be an inferior moral theory right out of the gate by any ‘common or laymans understanding’
your woman has been hurt and victimised. we do not have a theory of time machines that allowes us to go back and have her avoid the crime. it seems you are merely asking for her to receive charity. well whats the connection to justice?
no justice agency will want to be associated with such a violator as you imagine, as such you would have no justice services. see how much you like that. you are basically putting up a flag to the much wider more powerful libertarian society that a new state is forming ‘;here’. and this tieme the libertarians have the guns and the power, the new state wouldnt stand a chance…
wars are symptoms of states, of monopolies on force. states allow irrationalities to persist and not be weeded out by reality through the free market system of profit and loss. as such the irratiojnalities, persist, bloom and blossom, result :war.
we dont have illusions about practical reality.
profit and loss dude, profit and loss.
there is no economic law entailing the founding of states. what are you on about? you are just tossing words around without care. evolution, society. well, i can do that too. magumbo brockheads, lillian farthweights.
the evolution of states is bound up with peoples ideas of states. consent is vital to states. do i need to evidence this? ergo, if states can not get consent. they can not persist, not long exist, particularly in the face of viable alternatives. which there ‘could be’ if only a sufficient number, a critical -mass, removed their consent. Tthe libertarian project is one of educating individuals unitl there is this necessary critical mass, to achieve viability.
what do you object to about the notion of private property, or about the injunction against aggressing innocents? i believe libertairianism is sufficently simple for a layman to grasp. so it could certainly have wide appeal (approaching univeral appeal)
I guess I need to spell it out more. As a person, named Christophe, in general are you being irrational? Are you or are you not an irrational person? Same question, asked differently for elaboration purposes.
We don’t know how a stateless society will function; surely, we can hypothesize how it will function, but we can never know for sure. In a similar vein, we could never have known how the American constitutional republic would have fared during the drafting of the Constitution; such things are beyond our knowledge.
