Not at all, I was just trying to emphasize my point about the market process. I admire you for taking on those people on the other forum. Sorry for any confusion.
oh kay my bad. All good.
I see the establishment of governments as being based on the institutionalization of perpetual plunder. When a gang exploits a community for an extended period of time to the point where it becomes intergenerational, when people are simply born into the situation. In the early stages it is rather obvious to the people at large that they are being plundered. But when enough generations pass and when the plunderers propagandize as to create an ideological legitimization, it becomes institutionalized and the people have no inherent ideological resistance to it. The original stage of conquest is forgotten and it is assumed that this is how things always were. In earlier times the propaganda took a religious form (either the plunderers were thought of as literally being gods or being descendants of gods, which later was watered down into having the sanction of the gods). Today it’s more secular but the function is the same. As I understand it, there is first an initial conquest stage and then afterwards the state resorts to ideological manipulation to legitimize its power.
Brainpolice, that all sounds plausible - and for this to actually work, if one digs deeper into its essential dynamic, it would require collusion by groups of people with a vested interest in that institutionalized status quo. Which sadly points to their being a generalized ‘those who benefit’ (as in reaping the rewards of perpetualized theft) and 'those who lose out (as in the unduly burdened in this dichotomized scenario). Pretty easy to extrapolate the eventual outcome …
I like “an-archy”, being “rules without rulers”.
It’s also very important to make the distinction that it is not “chaos”.
The vast majority of people only bump up against laws because the laws are restrictive. A person carrying a gun, for instance, walking into a bank to do business with that bank is no danger to anyone. Yet it is against the law and the peaceful individual can be punished for harming no one.
The criminal carries a weapon into a bank in order to rob it, all the laws in the world make no difference.
In “an-archy”, codes of conduct are mutually agreed upon. I can put a sign up in my store “no weapons allowed” if I want to, but do I really want to create a gun-free-zone a-la Luby’s Cafeteria? A criminal walked into Luby’s, armed, killing at will because no peaceful people broke the law by carrying their own weapons inside. Now that is chaos, created by law.
Very well-said.
The best overall book on this topic is van creveld’s Rise and Decline of the State. It is so great. I can’t understand why it is not better known. Copyright issues keep it from being online, which is really too bad. it is dazzling.
Looks amazing. I’m buying it.=D
Quick follow up; I have opened another blog post, this time instead of coming at it from an ‘ask away’ perspective, I lay out the arguments in favor of anarchism right away and put the statists on the defensive:
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=67751
Looks cool, but I was reading one disheartening review of it on amazon:
"Lots of good thoughts here, and an interesting historical account of the rise of various types of governance. Unfortunately, when van Creveld talks about things I know about already, he gets a lot of them wrong – for instance, p222, where he asserts that by 1939, ‘every American’ was ‘issued his or her social security card’, and that ‘the Dept. of Health and Human Services had been created.’ HHS was created in the 1970s, under Carter, and to this day not every citizen has a Soc. Sec. card.
So if so many details are wrong where I know the facts, what about the places where I don’t? And if the details are wrong, how good is the big picture?
This book makes you think, and has a lot of good references, but I don’t trust its conclusions."
http://www.amazon.com/review/R38OZXLYLLTNV0/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R38OZXLYLLTNV0
When you read it, did you find it to be factually unreliable?
I don’t know how correct that reviewer is, but just by looking at the HHS’ history I think he is wrong.
See here.
Hmm that’s odd, when I punched ‘Department of Health and Human Services’ into wiki it said it was created in 1979.
At numerous times in the book, Creveld says “which” where “that” is clearly more appropriate, and I found several misspellings of “archaeopteryx.” Clearly, his conclusions are suspect.