It’s because you want a monopolist provider, Steph. There’s no way to have the monopoly without initiating force. It’s not possible. You said any upstart could not act because that would be initiating force. IOW: there’s some “right” which the government has as the monopolist such that it and only it will be the provider, i.e. that it has the right to be the monopolist. But where does this right come from?
Let go of “limited government”'; it is a floating abstraction.
Your insistence that this be a monopoly “overarching” institution is precisely why all governments fail. There is no check on monopoly government, and thus, government always becomes tyrannical when it has absolute authority over “legitimate force” because it also is responsible for determining what legitimate force is.
Does it respond to claims against itself? If someone uses government to create violence, who will stop them? Government?
This is why many of us favour anarchy. We don’t need a monopoly government. We don’t desire one size fits all laws, nor do we desire one size fits all enforcement. We certainly don’t desire one size fits all service.
As I wrote in my last post, objectivism only gets it 1/2 right. Laissez-faire is not monopoly government. A government which is prohibited from abridging our inalienable rights, is only capable of performing any other duty, by abridging our inalienable rights. It’s a paradox.
That’s the whole reasoning behind the U.S. Constitution, as opposed to the Articles of Confederation. The federalist pushed for more government power to protect the citizens. The Anti-Federalists papers point this out well and tried to refute this boogle-man that the federalists kept advocating. The federalists felt the individual states were not powerful enough to stop all the so called predators of the new union. And now we have a State that runs on the fears of national security. You said no other agency can rise up and oppose this “overarching government” of yours. Thus a monopoly, as you pointed out, is established on protecting the people thus the basic right of self-defense is abolished it seems by your “overarching government”. The U.S. Constitution Preamble states, “provide for the common defense”, that is the job of the U.S. gov’t. Now obviously other powers were given to the U.S. gov’t. When only one entity is given the sole power to defend against coercion that entity needs to survive:
1- What happens when the voluntary money stops flowing in? How will they eat?
2- And as you’ve already shut down competition to this “overarching government”, how will this “overarching government” stop any competition? You also stated it can only solely respond to coercion and thus the conclusion that nobody can self-defend for we have to wait for this “overarching government” to come and respond.
It’s the idea of monopoly/centralization of power - those are the free market’s nightmare.
Stephanie, your proposed government is voluntary insofar as it’s not taxing. However it’s a legal monopoly. It is the sole provider of security/arbitration by FIAT, not because the customers have chosen it as the best provider.
You’re advocating mercantilism, not laissez-faire.
If case you might feel curious, here’s the original presentation of ‘overreaching’ laissez-faire.
Gustave de Molinari - The Production of Security - [b]1849[/b]
That begs the question, then, why does the government not, “appear to be initiating force?” What makes the government a legitimate entitiy of retaliatory force and another entitiy an agressor?
If Mrs. Jones is agressed upon, for example, Mr. Smith steals her purse, do we agree that the sole victim is Mrs. Jones? Do we further agree that Mrs. Jones has the right, under the one law that you mentioned, to seek restitution? Do we agree that Mrs. Jones has the right to use force to obtain that restitution?
So I’ve read the Roy Childs letter. He says:
“I do not intend to undertake a full “model” of a free market anarchist society,”
Has anyone provided a model?
“If a person chooses to initiate force in order to gain a value, then by his act of aggression, he creates a debt which he must repay to the victim, plus damages. There is nothing particularly difficult about this, and no reason why the free market could not evolve institutions around this concept of justice”
How do you propose to figure out which party in a litigation is telling the truth? Just because someone claims force was initiated against him doesn’t mean it was.
“We advocate competing agencies of protection, defense, and retaliation; in short, we claim that the free market can supply all of man’s needs – including the protection and defense of his values. We most emphatically do not accept the basic premise of modern statists, and do not confuse force and production. We merely recognize protection, defense and retaliation for what they are: namely, scarce services which, because they are scarce, can be offered on a market at a price. We see it as immoral to initiate force against another to prevent him from patronizing his own court system, etc.”
How does it work???
Give me some examples of “competing laws” and how a dispute can be resolved thereunder.
Rothbard, David Friedman, Morris and Linda Tannehill, and others have provided possibilities. But it’s simply impossible to provide any sort of model beyond general possibilities, due to humans having preferences, free will, etc.
Private courts/arbiters/etc.
Having a monopolist provider of justice gives little recourse when the monopolist tends to rule on behalf of itself.
You can’t get what you want, Steph. Humans aren’t like being able to predict where the moon will be 5 days from now.
Arbiters. 3rd party resolution companies. That you lack the imagination to come up with such in no way means we’re wrong.
thats the point you know. there is no model, no higher authority, no one guy telling and knowing how stuff will practically have to work. thats a hard mindset to get over, but realize that people solve problems all the time and if they have big incentives due to problems concerning themselves, they find good solutions, unlike the incentiveless bureaucratic system
“Similar” to how it is now.
Currently the average policeman doesn’t get a call from a politician each morning telling him to get up and go to work you know.
FINALLY. Thank you for the link.
So, some excerpts:
“What would happen in a dispute between an anti-capital-punishment agency and a pro-capital-punishment agency? Obviously there is no way that if I kill you the case goes to one court, but if you are killed by me it goes to another. We cannot each get exactly the law we want.”
Oops. Now what?
“People living in desert areas might want a system of law that very clearly defines property rights in water.”
And this would be different from all kinds of property rights - how?
“If it is obvious what the correct law is, what rules of human interaction follow from the nature of man, then all courts will agree, just as all architects agree about the laws of physics.”
This is something I thought we’d already agreed on - that the basic “rule of human interaction” is that no one has the right to initiate the use of force.
“The most serious objection to free-market law is that plaintiff and defendant may not be able to agree on a common court. Obviously, a murderer would prefer a lenient judge. If the court were actually chosen by the disputants after the crime occurred, this might be an insuperable difficulty.”
Indeed. That’s what I was getting at. Do any of you have an answer to this? How about some rational answers? In reading that letter I saw what Childs was getting at, with the comparison to rules of steelmaking, and man’s ability to reason and judge for himself in all other areas, so why not in the area of government/defense. I’m still not convinced, but if all people have to offer in response to my questions are insults and condescending remarks (with the exception of nirgrahamuk), that doesn’t tend to give me confidence that you have any answers.
“Under the arrangements I have described, the court is chosen in advance by the protection agencies.”
What of the individuals who don’t select a PDA/Court until after they have an issue? Are they just out of luck?
Why do you believe humans can be mathematically modeled, Steph?
What I am asking you to do is take a situation - there are millions of cases that have already been decided for example - and explain how you see such a dispute being resolved when each side has access to its own set of laws. Show me that what you advocate can work in practice. What safeguards are there to deal with different laws being invoked by each party?
And then, once you have settled the dispute, how do you enforce it if the losing side reneges on paying up? What method do you propose to deal with that situation?
Is that a mathematical model? I wouldn’t have thought so. I’m simply asking you how you envision these every-day scenarios are going to be handled by the system you propose.
mathematically model humans. Can’t be done. You want a hard-and-fast rule; I can see that. You want to know precisely. Doesn’t work like that.
Tell me: why are YOU incapable of creating those scenarios on your own? What blocks you from it? This is an honest question–not meant to be hurtful.
What blocks me from coming up with a scenario in which there are competing governments, competing laws, competing courts within the same country? The fact that to do so would require me to reject the concept of inalienable ndividual rights.
Yes, I absolutely think there is a hard & fast rule with respect to individual rights and that it is the job of government to protect those rights.
It’s really a question of whether government should be active or passive. An active government is one that initiates force by passing laws that abridge rights and by enacting tax legislation. A passive government is voluntarily funded and is only activated when someone asks it to perform its role of protecting rights.
If you reject the idea that government has to do no more than passively protect rights., then it means you don’t accept individual rights as inalienable. It means you are saying there is no such thing as the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property & pursuit of happiness. You are saying that at the level of government, it isn’t possible to protect those rights. Which means - it’s not possible to protect those rights period.
And so, I ask you to provide a concrete example of how the system you advocate would work in practice. I don’t see your anarchy system as capable of working.
Non sequitur.
That is impossible while maintaining a coercive monopoly.
Choose, Steph: a monopoly or competition. Slavery or liberty.
I ask you again: why do you want to mathematically model humans.
Yes ignore every post I write… but here you say, again, I can’t defend myself and my rights. It’s the governments job. So I get shot at and have to wait for the government to arrive. The Military State you advocate to arrive.
Way to avoid answering the proposition. If rights are subject to the same law of the marketplace as packets of cereal, then the result is whoever can pay the most gets his way. Basically you are saying that Rights are marketable in that way. Alternatively, there is a compromise available- you give up some rights in exchange for what?
Because it can be done.
If A, the initiation of force can be banned, therefore B, there needs to be a mechanism to enforce that law.
The law itself acts as security against the government initiating force. It provides that coercion may only be used in retaliation and according to objective rules of evidence, fact-finding, etc. Governments to date have been permitted to initiate force and THAT is why they have failed to protect individual rights.
It is only slavery to agree to that law when what you want is the freedom to initiate force.
No, that is not what I said. Protecting individual rights covers a broad spectrum and it is not always feasible to call for official assistance in the middle of a crime being committed against you.
If you are attacked, you absolutely have the right of self-defense. You would have to defend your actions in a court of law, providing someone brings a lawsuit against you for the actions you took in self-defense. A proper government would support your having to defend yourself.
But if someone robs your home, should you have the right to run over to the house of the guy you THINK is responsible and take action? No. In that situation you should be able to file a lawsuit and put the matter into the hands of law enforcement to defend your rights to your property. You would have to turn to objective third party to ascertain the truth of your allegations and provide you with restitution.
I’m sorry, wilderness, I didn’t mean to ignore your other posts. I will go back in the thread and respond to you. Work has intruded among other things unrelated to board issues.