You’ve been going off topic and it’s got the point where this whole thing is ridiculous. You claim that clans and militias will get involved to help a single negro? Insurance companies would defend the property of their clients. You’ve dragged this whole thing off topic to the point where you’re speculating about the Black Panthers. The fact of the matter is that insurance companies won’t always behave in a manner acceptable or deemed just by Aristotle fans.
Insurance companies would be forced to defend the property of their clients. So yes, if a few blacks try to hassle the members of the white community, they’ll be be removed with force. Would it escalate? No, things escalate with the state as a result of a build of ethnic tension that wouldn’t exist without the state. So this glorious black revolution of yours? Won’t happen.
Somehow you’ve turned this into an irrelevant discussion concerning who would win in a fight Black Panthers + Crips vs. Blackwater + Klu Klux Klan + Neo Nazis.
By the way your remarks about an ethnically tense environment miss the point. Without the state there are no ethnic tensions, if you don’t like somebody you don’t associate with them. Without the state telling white people that they need to accept negroes into their bars, universities and homes there is no resentment, so your answer misses the mark.
As for what I said, I said that a revolution can’t be looked upon as successful if it doesn’t get rid of the state, not by libertarians at least. And perhaps statist revolutions bring people on to the street. Although, not even then. Libertarian ones? Not likely. The libertarian revolution will be the state collapsing as a result of competition. So next time you want to play the victim and claim I’ve been putting words in your mouth, don’t bother. You do it too.
Your right that the neo-nazi/KKK/crips/panthers thing is irrelevant. In fact, it’s a simple issue. They may not be perfect Aristotleians but, logically PDAs will have to respect property rights/indiv. rights.
Here’s a logical Proof:
Humans Act Reason: Axiom
Humans act to purchase cheaper products Reason: If humans act, they will buy cheaper products
Engaging in warfare against blacks or homosexuals or anyone else will increase prices Reason: Duh.
Therefore: As a result people will choose the cheaper companies that only protect rights.
Do you deny that Humans Act? Didn’t think so. Do you deny that deny that people purchase cheaper products over expensive ones? To do so would be to deny one of the logical basises for AE and since your on an AE website that would be a performative contradiction. Do you deny that this warfare would increse prices? I can’t see how an entrepreneur can provide more services without raising rates. Especially considering the costs of fighting other PDAs or Panthers AND those who defend themselves. It would be impossible. It doesn’t matter if they are Aristotleian libertarians or not, the market saves the day. This is one of the great advantages of AnCap (i know you don’t like the name, but I’ll stick with it.
None of the above is any Nirvana fallacy about everyone becoming Rothbardians, it’s rationalist economics. Like I said Hoppe has made this argument many times as has Block and every advocate of Rothbardian AnCapism who has adressed the subect.
I usually agree with you or LS over Marko, but your statement is like saying that unions are technically possible in a free society. Yes but they would epically fail almost immediately.
I don’t understand what you have found disagreeable. I’ve made two claims, the first being that those that provide defense will not do so out of any respect for rights but desire for money. The second, which is a corollary of the first, is that they won’t always respect rights or provide justice as advocated by Aristotle or Henry Veatch.
In fact, my original position was merely that philosophy will not determine the policy of insurers, rather economics will. Somehow, from there this whole thing has devolved into “who would win in a fight, Black Panthers or the Kl Klux Klan?”. In fact, I agree with you, and Hoppe, and most libertarians that insurers will progressively adopt and refine their policies and as a result there will be tendency towards insurers’ becoming more libertarian. My only claim was that this has nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with economics. Although, I did also point out that insurers will have different understandings or coercion or provocation, but once again this can, and usually will be solved without coercion.
I don’t understand what I’ve said that’s so disagreeable, other than pointing out the obvious. It seems to me individuals (not yourself) have been trying their hardest to find something that I’ve said to disagree with. For example, the black homosexual in the white community, which was blown up into all kinds of silly speculation.
Too bad that doesn’t follow. From “humans act” it doesn’t follow they buy ‘cheaper’ products…
…It’s possible that some people may enjoy lynching other people and will pay for it. Moreover, if there’s demand for a lynching market (so to speak), then entrepreneurs will provide a cheap lynching service. Maybe you like to lynch blacks whereas other people prefer to lynch asians. Or maybe WASPs too. Who knows ?
So what ? Porsches are expensive. Yet people buy them.
I think that is getting things backwards. IF people believe that individual rights are valuable, then individual rights will be protected (by PDAs and other means). If on the other hand people think that individuals of group X don’t really have ‘human’ rights then an amoral provider of “justice” will provide…criminal services.
Of course, given that morality is subjective (or so I was told) all this doesn’t really matter.
In this situation, it does. Sure it’s not as true as what I could have said. I should have added if the service is of roughly equal value.Of course, this assumes that to Christians, for example, the costs of stamping out prostitution around them is worth paying much, much, much more for simple protection insurance. Or that this is valuable to enough Christians for it to be profitable for an insurance company to do this. Not happening. To be more accurate, demand curves slope downward.
I refer you here. Once you except that AnCap will eliminate or at least properly respond to this agression, seeing it properly respond to this is not so hard.
First we assume they can outnumber or outfight the blacks or homosexuals. Then we assume that they will pay higher prices. There are many racists who may not speak out against black lynchings, but are they willing to pay for them? Doubtable. Do you know how much wars costs? How much cops spend on vice control? Now imagine how much they’d spend on vice control if the vicers had defense of their own of roughly equal caliber. It’s not a porsche we’re talking about. Over the course of a few years, this would be many porshsches. It’s prohibitively expensive, at least for the masses. Unless someone like Bill Gates decided to attack all the prostitutes and johns in America with his private army. But that would lose him computer customers. And he would be spending his own money, not others. So it’s a diferent case entirely.
I think either before or as a result of accepting PDAs a large number of people will be libertarians. I would say a large majority. Again, baseline service will be cheaper. The incentive is to choose it.And I hope your not ascribing amorality to me–I’m a natural rightser, thank you very much, with a strong belief in the ethics of argument.
I understood (part of) your position. On the other hand, I don’t think that’s the whole story, as far as libertarianism is concerned. Also, I do realize that cooperation produces more wealth (and so cheaper prices) than warfare, but that doesn’t mean that (some) people won’t choose warfare over cheaper prices.
I guess it’s only speed we disagree about then. I think this would happen quite quickly. This is just like the debate people had over unions a week or two ago. Unions quickly die in AnCap land. There’s no point in even arguing about rather or not they’d technically be “allowed” to exist. Aggressors will be “allowed” to exist, but they will fail epically and quickly through competition and consumer choice.
That I must concede chief. While it will logically be basically libertarianism I wonder where PDAs will fall on issues of disagreement among us. Of course, immigration will be solved by the end of the State: AnCaps only disagree about present actions assuming a state. I mean, issues like abortion, for example. What then?
Won’t peaceful companies save up money from these profits and be better prepared to defend themselves in your view?
Also, for the poor and middle class cost would prohibit it. So assuming there’s enough religous rich people to pay for stamping out prostitution, private courts to agree with them and a they have a superior paramilitary force they could win. But would any entrepreneur choose this path, when being jailed by other PDAs’ is a risk? The tooth fairy is more likely to exist.
Well, that’s the problem. We assume that the cost of doing that is high. But that’s just an assumption. If we go along with the tribalist model that (some?) anarcho conservatives seem to favor, then I can speculate that in a place where there’s a majority of puritanical christians (or muslims ?), stoning call-girls won’t be that expensive…
Yes. And they are not outlandish assumptions, IMO. Again, think of a mostly white ‘community’.
Oh but that’s the public sector at work. We know full well that the private sector is way more efficient. So it can be more efficient at violating rights, too.
Not at all. I’m playing devil’s advocate/trying to show that economics alone won’t decide what happens in/what a free society is.
True but it will also be more effective at protecting them. Therefore it’s not illogical to assume that the cost of violation will remain remarkably high as compared to the now much lower cost of protection. As a percentage it would still be out of the price range of MOST people. Only very few people would be able to afford this for an extended period of time. Remember there’s no inflation. In order to finance the First World War the US had to massively raise taxes. And inflate. And provide for the jailing of dissidents. Similar financial means just wouldn’t be available to the poor and middle classes. Those that had enough money would be forced to choose between spending money on this or on consumer goods/investment. I think we know where the average American and average person would spend this money. Food. Car. Wal-Mart. After costs, it wouldn’t be too profitable for the PDAs to search out these kind of folks, would it? Be it a war against chinese people or gay people it’s going to cost, and the costs have to be paid up front. In addition, when the state wages wars on its on citizens (anti-drug, anti-prostitute, etc.) they generally aren’t allowed to fight back. They would be able to here.That’s not in the average Puritanical Pete’s, christian or muslim or zoroastrian I don’t know or care, price range.
I can’t say what percentage of society would be able to afford this, but not a lot. And now from what I absorb people on the top of the social ladder, in modern semi-market societies who got there by market means quite frankly are less likely to give a damn about social things like that. Whose more opposed to fornication and pornography, as an example? Hugh Hefner or low-income baptists? How do you think Hugh Hefner’s golf buddies feel about it? To ask these questions is to answer them. And further more, would more wealthy people invest in prostitution or try and raise an army to stop it? There would be far more of the previous. Therfore, such an attempt would be an epic fail, as the kids say. Would any paramilitary force volunteer for that suicide mission?
For the majority of GS’ demography, these kind of things are simply beyond their paygrade. Someone Bill Gates rich would still be fighting the other people who think it’s none of his business. They might boycott his computer company. Even if Bill Gates decided he doesn’t like pornography or blacks or prostitutionhe can afford his own island to escape the masses and their choices. Or it might be cheaper for him to even to give people 1/4 off their software if they agree not to engage in these activities as forbearance. That would be legal, but again extremely expensive. The fact that I think that’d be cheaper, goes to show how much I’m estimating his potential costs to be… here.
Do you think that this would be affordably priced so that the nonmillionaire footwashers could afford the luxury of pushing people around?
This is just an instinct sort of thing, but social justice will sort itself out when people have the means to secure their opportunities in the market.
Right now, race relations, religious incompatibility, sexism etc are tied to the fact that the state provides a political club for each group to grasp after and attempt to use against their opposites.
Remove the state, and these groups (all of them) simply have to strive and survive based on their own merits. And while I am under no illusion that they will all have equal success, I don’t see why they can’t have equal opportunities for success.
The state subsidizes a lot of funny stuff, when Byzantine or Giles mention it, they do get cheeky and try to frame it in the least politically correct fashion, but really their argument is for competition of ideas and social structures, acknowledging that not all structures have the same goals, or will measure up equally under a single standard.