You are correct about the question but the answer I am looking for is how to prevent power from becoming monopolistic without concentrating power to do it.
Well, first, you’ll never come up with something foolproof. Libertarianism need not be (and ought not be) utopia. So I can’t suggest a plan that will do everything right and nothing wrong. In addition, consider that what we’re really trying to do now is predict the path freedom will follow - always a fool’s errand. That being said…
The answer to preventing monopoly is competition. When an insurance company defaults on its promises, this is an opportunity to enter the market. When one defense firm gets to a point where it will soon take over, the other companies have an interest in banding together to say “hey, cut it out now.”
I agree that the answer to monopolization is competition but when the defense companies band together wouldn’t that then be to much power in to few hands and wouldn’t that present its own problems? Even in a free market wouldn’t there need to be some regulation other than companies banding together? Please forgive me for all the questions for I am just now beginning to understand this concept of free markets.
When you say “What happens if a group of people get together and decide to enslave everyone else?”, that’s exactly the way things are now!
Once a true free market exists, it isn’t profitable for a handful of people to enslave everyone else. If they started getting close, then everyone else would band together to resist.
Once people realize “Taxation is theft!”, then there will be a LOT of resistance if someone starts getting close to forming a new government.
I think, again as an imperfect prediction, that they would band together only long enough to deal with the crazy agency threatening to upset the world. Look what happens in other industries - there is a tendency towards cooperation that goes along with the tendency towards competition, but not towards cooperation to the point where companies just spontaneously merge or form cartels.
On that topic, a large difference is that if an industry does cartelize, including the defense industry, a strong incentive is thereby given to other firms to enter the industry, offering a more moral and cheaper service. The cartelization raises profits, which increases the incentive to enter the industry or provide a good substitute.
If an industry wants to get unfair profits, it needs to not just cartelize, but also threaten the use of force against anyone who tries to compete. This is how the mafia makes money; it’s how government provision of defense works as well. If, despite all this, it were cartelized, we’d end up with what we have now. There might still be a difference in people’s minds though - people accept the mafia, but do not think that arguing against the mafia is immoral.
For those wondering about totally private defense and law services, Robert Murphy does a great, consise job in Chaos Theory:
Try giving Dominick Armentano’s articles on monopoly on Mises.org a read. They’re very informative, and he deals with so-called monopolistic forms of competition quite deftly.
-Jon
OK, even assuming this is correct (which I don’t agree with), then HOW can an organization do such things unless it uses the resources that it claims to be available to it?!? I don’t read in that statement any PRODUCTIVENESS which creates the things necessary to do that ‘role’. And I’d love to hear HOW ‘protection’ is done! Nothing I’ve seen or heard of re government is anything except a ‘warning’ to ‘not do’ and the to punish AFTER the fact (of the wrong doing). Nothing sounds protective (preventive) about that.
Jain
You do it.
Monopoly is a social convention. If everyone agrees that there shouldn’t be a monopoly, there won’t be one.
What about serial killers and thieves? Would a private police force jail them and give them a fair trial or just go out back and shoot them.
Why the PDA would ride over them with a tank and then get little kids to clean the blood off at below subsistence wages! [:O] Cheaper than bullets.
-Jon
Quite simple. Law and order exists when the majority wills it, even with government absent. Law and order does not exist when the majority does not will it, even when government demands it.
Although such a concept would appear at first glance bizzarre and even dangerous to the average American, it is easily substantiated with empirical observation.
And this is why the culture of the majority matters, much as anarchists like to pretend it doesn’t.
Sure, the “culture of the majority” matters, but it is not necessarily “democracy”. There’s no problem with majority rule as long as there exists an opt-out from the majority decision. This exists in lots of private organizations today, and is not considered tyrannical or authoritarian by libertarians or anarchists.
For example, a majority of people disliking recreational cocaine use is not the same thing as having cocaine users fined, imprisoned, or executed. There could be several different responses, from uneasy toleration to outright and active shunning.
My point was more that the rule of law exists only when the culture of the majority admits of such a thing. If the people of a civilized and moral culture woke up tomorrow to find their government gone, they would still be civilized and moral and would continue with commerce, charity, etc. In debauched, immoral cultures, people resort to looting and theft when the government withdraws or is deposed.
Sounds like you’d have a government, and be no worse off than you are today. The exception would be that the citizens who were previously free would offer constant resistance to this new ruler, while when you establish a government that accomplishes the same thing you instead get the support of the masses.
I would just as soon not have a government but the fact of the matter is I am forced to have one based on the decisions of people long dead. I would like each generation to have the freedom to decide how they will live. In order to over come the form of government that we now have we must be resolved to destroy it and if that can be achieved without violence great, but probably unlikely. Not to mention we will need something to replace it and a way to get people to understand it and support it.