What does this prove? Of course there is a market. We have a monopoly government that protects individual rights (at least a little bit).
“No. A market is an arrangement where exchanges may take place (buyers meet sellers).”
i disagree with your definition. That is not a free market which is the only market that matters in this discussion. There is a “market” in North Korea to but that isn’t preferable to a free market.
“just look at any underground economy for proof.”
are you serious? proof of what? No justice? Violence as a means of settling disputes? no property rights? The undergound economy proves my point. people settle disputes with drive by shootings instead of contracts.
Trade and free trade are different concepts. a “market” and a proper free market are seperate things as well. just because some trade can go on without property rights, courts, or laws doesn’t mean its a proepr system preferable to a free market economy where physical force is outlawed and all human interaction is voluntary.
except when the minarchy is doint unjust physical force? except where the is no voluntary relationship between the citizen and the minarchy?
Jeff,
Why do you think there would be no property rights, courts, or laws under Anarchy?
For Mises, the Free (or pure) market is an imaginary construction, a conceptual abstraction to use as a jumping off point for thought experiment.
In his words from Human Action:
The i____maginary construction of a pure or unhampered market economy assumes that there is division of labor and private ownership (control) of the means of production and that consequently there is market exchange of goods and services.
…
Only at a later stage, having exhausted everything which can be learned from the study of this imaginary construction, does it turn to the study of the various problems raised by interference with the market on the part of governments and other agencies employing coercion and compulsion.
That is the definition of a market, whether one finds it preferrable or not is irrelevant.
Its absolutely proof that a market is not a consequence of rights (as you previously stated), in fact the state is steadfast against them, yet the market still exists. Its a miracle! Further this notion of disputes settled only by violence is absurd, much of world economy currently exists underground and it isn’t exploding in violence.
So now its “proper” and “preferable,” thats all well and good, but please try not to conflate your idea of a proper and preferable market to that of the actual definition of a market, as its incorrect, and I don’t even find your “free” market all that proper or preferable (or free).
And if physical force was outlawed how could the law be enforced
“what, my description of people uncoecred, is somehow stalinist? did you read what i wrote? are you responding to what i wrote?”
Yes I am. How can you say no one is coerced when they have no rights protection? Of course people will be under coercion or the threat of coercion.
“they would be free from from coercion in as far as they avoid being coerced…this is a meaningful sense.”
Well isn’t that rich. They aren’t being coerced as long as they can outrun the criminals or defend themselves? And you call such a situation a free market? I say that “they would be at the whim of any thug” and your response is not if they can out run him?
“get it from a monopoly provider or get it from a supplier in a free market for that service.”
How is this market free before rights protection has been established?
“are they protected? by the stroke of the pen of the legislator?”
As compared the stroke of a pen by a legislature you improperly call a business?
“yes, true, before people will seek protection for their property, they will have property.”
How do they have property? Because they claim its there’s? Property to be useful requires a right to it that is protected. Your “property” is meaningless if you have no protection for it and you are at the mercy of any violent thug that can come and take it. You have no legal claim to said “property” unless rights protection already exists.
“people have property because they act in the world, and are moral agents. not because there is somebody, a 3rd party, that says, "this is your property, this is his property, these are the rules for using property ".. etc. “
I agree but for that right to have any practical benefit it must be protected. Rights don’t have any practical value if they are not secured yet you act like they already exist in this anarchist universe without protection first and then they after the fact go hire a government. Rights don’t come from government, they are unalienable but that doesn’t mean they can be exercised without being secured first.
“if one wants to defend from this, the solution is not to institute a monopoly service provider, but have competition in the deliverance of this service.”
What is competition for the right to use force mean in practice? A business is an agent of production not force. If business’s have the right to use force then why can’t I start a “business” and coerce the community to buy from me. How could you possibly say the mafia for instance is outside their rights? If anyone can just start a government and then claim the right to use force then you have endless violence and no laws. You just have gangs at war constantly. Like I said, in practice its tribal warfare.
Where do these business’s claim they have a right to use force but other business’s don’t?
“he certainly is not protected from a monopoly provider of the service, who can legitimate bleed him dry and outlaw anyone that comes to his defence.”
That is not what a limited government is. Secondly how is there dispute resolution if you and I have different governments that don’t recognize each other’s laws? The only way to enforce anything is through violence just like when real governments can’t reach an agreement. Don’t you see the absurdity of claiming that government is evil while at the same time claiming we should let private citizens declare themselves the government (with all the duties and powers of a real government) whenever they want and let them compete on a “market” and then saying this is ok because we’ll call these governments business’s? A business is not a government they are fundamentally different things. One is an agent of force and one is an agent of production and voluntary interaction.
“a government with the right to take an involuntary tax, is by definition not protecting property rights but the opposite.”
I agree. As I said you can have limited government financed voluntarily.
**“**just like any industry competition keeps businesses honest. competition keeps businesses effective. competition keeps businesses satisfying customer needs.”
Competition amongst governments is contradiction in terms.
“well we hardly need to call it ‘government’ when it has no monopoly.”
You don’t want to call it what it is because you want to evade the nature and context of what were are talking about and you think you can do this if you call it a business. A business with the right to use force is not a business it’s a government. What gives one business a right to use force and not another one? Microsoft can’t use force but Nirgraham Securities INC. can? How so? By what right?
**“**the answer is obviously that there exist other institutions with a stake in providing justice that can be appealled to if justice is at issue.”
How do they have a stake in providing justice when they are a for profit industry representing one group of consumers over another group? They are by definition biased and partial. It’s a blatant conflict of interest.
“lol, precisely!”
Precisely what? You are advocating tribal warfare?
“governments go to war as they have no eye on profit and loss. whereas its absurd to think of businesses so doing. businesses have a stake in peace. we dont go to war, we go to correctly solve justice problems, or the next best compromise… in reality archism is nothing more than tribal warfare between ruling elites and the ruled, and the different ‘nations’, whereas anarcho-capitalism is harmonius and characterised by the economic means, not the politic”
First off just because you call a government a business doesn’t make it so. Secondly once you have given this pseudo business the right to use force what need do they have for profits? They can use force just like a government (because they are government whether you call them a business or not).
What you say about business is true only because they CAN’T USE FORCE and depend on voluntary interaction and then you claim a business that CAN USE FORCE (in reality it’s just a voluntarily funded government) would behave the same way. What keeps business harmonious is that they can’t use force. You are then claiming that you can make a business a government (give them the right to use force) and they would still act the same way? Yeah right.
Lastly what right does a “private business” have to use force to begin with? If they can claim a right to use force then why can’t every single other private person? Why don’t we all just be vigilantes? That is basically what you seem to be advocating.
True, in my opinion. Many private businesses misspent their resources and went bankrupt, the same way as many governments mispent their resources and also went bankrupt.
Governments such as the one in Monaco has done a great job in multipltying resources.
Wow, this thread is getting long. I am taking my time with you more than I would other posters that have made sweeping pronouncements against anarchy, and I will tell you why. I say you post earlier as Lyceum and you seemd a genuine sort, keen on learning about austrian economics. I even note that we two had an amicable exchange. I used to be a minarchist too, so i can sympathise that there is lots to understand that you wont have seen (cant have seen) spoken of else where. This is like anarchy central. its ground zero for red pill maps down rabbit holes distribution. and it is pretty heavily motivated by economic understanding, which you seem open to.
ok then /
people would be under coercion or the threat of coercion, only if there were people coercing them or threatening them with coercion. contrary to yourclaim, they would not be coerced just simply from the bare fact that they were not under the jurisdiction of a monopoly protector of rights. (such an institution would in reality only attempt to protect rights whilst definitionally denying others,and would most certainly not be divinely protecting rights, as minarchists often assume)
you are confused. they arent being coerced if they arent being coerced. i.e. there must be someone coercing ,before we have a problem of coercion. the problem of ‘coercers’ logically comes after property ownership. Furthermore, there is nothing about ‘ownership’ that requires a monopolist ‘recogniser’ ‘defender’ ‘protector’. granted that property owners need help protecting themselves and their property from whatever agents threaten them, you are denying them freedom by saying that they cant get protection and law services from anyone else other than your minarchy. anarchists grant them freedom to receive the best possible private property protection at the lowest possible cost, from honest providers, that want to provide for them. how can you object to this on moral grounds? it seems your objections boil down to ‘property owners should not have to pay for law and security’, well of course, in an ideal world they wouldnt need to. but the purpose of any kind of law and security (be it minarchy or voluntary) is to deal with the imperfect word we have. given that they must be allowed to get help in protecting their property, shouldnt they be free to choose to get better help than worse help, as they would under anarchy, as they would not under minarchy>?
i think it would help you to distinguish between institutional market intervention, and chaotic market intervention. the former would be government, would be big state, or minarchy. interfering in this industry or that industry. chaotic market interventinos would be deviations from libertarian law on an adhoc basis. this thief stealing that property from this person.
you are asking me, how can i call the market free before rights protection has been establish (by an instituinally rights defying minarchy)?
i answer : the market is institutionally free in that there is no government, or singlle monopoly agency that definitionally encroaches en-mass against personal liberty and private property. admittedly there are potential issues of chaotic market interventions, and there must be voluntary free market competetive institutions which seek to address these chaotic problem. in minarchy, these chaotic problems exist, and a monopoly provider free from competition must also face the chaotic problems, can it somehow hope to tackle them better than organisations subject to profit and loss? subject to consumer demand?
by securing of rights, i am hoping you have in mind as i do the chaotic market interventions ( the institutional ones can be avoided by avboiding states, minarchies included). securing property rights against chaotic interventions, costs, given that it is to happen in the real world, it will not become somehow free, and perfect, if we imagine that we task a monopoly minarchy to go out there and get it done. the opposite. to get it done, to secure it and keep it secured we need organisations subject ot profit and loss.
Historical Point, this tradition of we dont need the ‘government’ for anything is not a new invention. Gustav Molinari, F. Bastiat , etc…
well, we distinguish between legitimate force and illegitimate force. force for defence of property is legitimate etc. im confident if you consider you will discover the answers yourself. Will a ‘rogue’ mafia institution be profitable, nay worse than that, remain alive, given a large majority population of libertarians that pay money to trustworthy, professional, law and security experts. they would be fighting a war with society. they would lose. There are books you could read on this. … your perspective seems quite randian on this topic. If a book would be too long to get into have you read Roy Childs letter to Rand? I could post up extracts from D Fridemans ‘Machinery of Freedom’, or quote some Rothbard at you.
besides which, i would encourage you as a general guide, to always pose your sceptical question against anarchy, also against minarchy. make sure you
dont give minarchy a free pass by not challenging it the same way you do anarchy. to wit. if just one ‘tribe’ has legitimate authority to use violence, and the others do not. is this a recipe for peace? or war/slavery/parasitism? what is minarchy? (hint, its one tribe having legitim…)
There are books to read here, obviously you will not be satisfied by a few lines that i write, so is it fair to ask. at least know i have asked similar questions as i learned and i have been satisfied. a few points so that you dont feel i ignored you. the only way to enforce things is not always violoence, sometimes its the threat of being cut off from the division of labour, from being the guy that no one can do business because your reputation preceeds you. you are strawmanning me with your talk of private governments allowing everyon to use force. the issue is legitimate force. self-defence.
A business is not a government they are fundamentally different things. Agreed. One is an agent of criminal theft and violence, and one is an agent of production and voluntary interaction. It is the latter that I want protecting me from chaotic market interventions, and the threat of institutional market interventions arising (i.e. your kind of minarchy)
**
oh good, you agree. well you half agree. If i have expertise in law and protection, and i have private property i can use to protect, like my van, and my gun, and my briefcase. what right does the minarchy have to treat me like a criminal if i offer other people the chance to buy voluntary service from me, instead of the minarchy? you see even with only voluntary donations for your minarchy, it is still by definition not protecting property rights but the opposite, since it forbids people putting their private property to legitimate use (i.e. when it would make them competitors) and their personal liberty similarly. and further it deprives everyone of the freedom to get protected by people that might protect them better, or cheaper, or some combination of the two.
[quote="Jeff"] **“***just like any industry* _competition keeps businesses honest. competition keeps businesses effective. competition keeps businesses satisfying customer needs.**Competition amongst governments is contradiction in terms. [/quote] **_well, thats only a problem for you because you are being tenacious in using a bad word for good ideas. the good ideas are protection, justice law, security. competition in delivering these services is NOT a contradiction in terms. its good economic sense. government by definition is involuntary , monolothic and monopolistic (in your sense of how you use the word government) and so when you arbitrarily say that if its protecting, helping justice, definining good law, etc. then that makes it a government, you win by a horrible slight of hand semantic trick that wouldnt convince anyone but yourself…
i have probably covered all i need to in this thread but i dont want to be misinterpretted as not having read your other comments, or lacking responses to them, so i’ll just be cursory. pointing back to already referenced arguments. here we go.
questions that melt away if you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate force. no-one has the latter right, everyone always has the former. inthis sense security firms dont have special priviledges, tehy are just specialising. just as restaurants specialise in serving tasty food, even though they have no special priviledge that enables them to do so.
this might be one of those when you more need a book. …
i understand that customers do not want biased and partial justice and law services, but the opposite, as such watch profit and loss solve this problem for you…
i dont think you understood me when you wrote this but perhaps you are getting closer and do need me to go over this again…
i never ‘called a government a business’. i dont hand out ‘rights to force’ as you put it.
I have taken away from this that presently the biggest obstacle is your ad-hoc concept of force, and how libertarians think of force.
No - the monopoly government doesn’t protect individual rights. It takes them. The government is established and operates by stealing property, and if a person would happen to resist this thievery, then expect the government to violate liberty and potentially the life.
Government cannot multiply resources. That is economics 101. All government action necessarily shunts a free market outcome. The only way to “multiply resources”, either by creating/discovering more or ordering them more efficiently, is free exchange. Government policy necessarily has to take from one, and give to another, or to confer a privilege to one, at the expense of another.
Government creates nothing the market cannot provide, except privilege through political favour. Usually, privilege leads to a destruction of wealth and reduction in prosperity.
The same one which supplies you with any number of goods/services you consume…
You seem to think the state is the source of this protection, as opposed to the main means of overriding and negating it…
Essentially, let us ignore everything we know about government-enforced monopolies when it applies to the domain of law and order, and refuse to acknowledge the inherent subjectivity in the government’s monopoly on provision of said services, out of a bogeyman-esque fear of private competition in the sphere of defence, law & order. Right.
Yes, it protects the individual rights of 10 people and attacks the individual rights of 50 people. The balance is a net loss.
Governments are monopolies on force. That is what makes their use of force a problem.
A monopoly on force grants a particularly important power: the ability to wage war with little regard for profit and loss, because the lost money can be recouped from the people by force through taxes. Also, people can be conscripted and otherwise forced to help with the war effort.
A non-monopoly defense business is subject to profit and loss considerations, because it cannot take money by force, at least not without facing a major shitstorm from loss of customers, opposition from other defense companies, refusal of cooperation from courts, massive blow to reputation, etc., etc.
A non-monopoly defense business cannot conscript people without paying for them, otherwise that would be enslavement and be subject to all the sanctions mentioned above. Again, highly unprofitable.
I know this must seem an alien concept to you, but it always comes back to the fact that free competition is superior to monopoly, even in the field of violent force. The way anarcho-capitalism (or anti-monopolism) deals with warring factions is the division of business fields, so that no one party controls many major power centers (courts, police, media, military, etc.) in a given territory. Warring factions are really just small governments in that they have monopoly force in a given area or among a given race or other group. Also, some cultures may not be ready for anarchy. Anarchy in Iraq or other place with deep ethnic tensions and strong religious beliefs that run counter to property rights may not be ready, but the US is. Whatever minarchy can do, anarchy can do better, because enforced monopoly is nothing more than a cancer fed by ignorance.
Oh my god, I made this topic a few days ago and left it in hope that it would get 3 or 4 adequate answers and now I am faced with 4 pages of information!
Thanks guys! It will take me awhile to read it all seeing as I am laden with extraneous activities, but I will post any further questions then.