If all government is inefficient then it might as well be abolished correct? However, if we have private courts, wont the courts be influenced by the one who pays the most money? I know that this is probably the same with state courts, but how would a private system of courts be bettter than a government system of courts?
How Could A Voluntary Society Function?
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Well, yeah, I mean…for courts and stuff, I mean…you need a government for that.
Just kidding.
“The Possibility of Private Law”
I understand this now. Public perception does play a big role in this. If a private court was bribed and people knew about it, that court would go out of buisness, sso then the free market is a fair system which regulates itself, and also if a buisness hurt the environment, the people would notice and the buisness would get in trouble. And also one can always use multiple private companies for the arbitration to make sure that the ruling is accurate (like in the repitition of a scientific experiment). Also it does make sense that the 2 parties that are disputed would go to a court that they both agree on for maximum fairness (in which if the government was the monopoly, you’d have no other choice but the government).
Also, how would private armies work?
If country a with private armies got attacked by country b with state armies, how would the private armies muster the resources and money to be able to defend against the state army which had the massive funding from taxes and government power monopoly (also how would this same principle apply to building a highway system of roads and railroads etc.)
Check this thread out:
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/critique-my-walmart-wont-enslave-us-all-argument/22528
The only issue I haven’t addressed is the monetization of the debt.
Clayton -
I’d like to reiterate support for Chaos Theory.
Clayton, do you have a permit to carry that brick? Seems like a weapon to me.
So then if government is totally pointless, then how did it get here in the first place? When man first came into the world, there was no government. And if government is so inefficient how could it possibly be conjured in the first place?
if government is so inefficient how could it possibly be conjured in the first place?
One of the nice things you learn thinking about politics and economics is to apply logic consistently.
Your proposition: If system A is so inefficient, how could it possibly be conjured in the first place?
The implications: If system A exists, then it must be efficient.
The application of the same logic consistently: If the Soviet variety of Communism was so inefficient, how could it have existed in the first place?
And yet it existed.
Hence, your argument is invalid.
Possible reasons for why inefficient systems exist:
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People don’t realize they’re inefficient
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They’re in someone’s interest
It might very well be a combination of both.
Chaos Theory is a very good book. I read it all in one sitting and it was just a phenomenal work. I would also recommend For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard.
I think government is a product of the market in some ways, but then acquires the power, mostly through culture and ideology, to maintain its market position through force without people getting upset, at least not all the time.
I don’t think the worst thing about government is that it’s “inefficient”. In any case, the question of efficency is always relative … efficient to what end? In my view, the government is actually quite efficient once you realize that its telos is to live at the expense of others. It does that extremely well.
The worst thing about government is that it is a double-standard. One law for agents of the State and another law for everybody else. And you raise an excellent point in this regard - since humans naturally abhor double-standards and are loathe to willingly accept them, how did we all end up in this situation?
Here is Hoppe’s answer. I am not satisfied with Hoppe’s answer. My view on the matter is still evolving but my present view is that we have to separate the State into two attributes. The first attribute is a kind of “natural government” such as pertains in tribal, clan or other very close-knit communities, such as the Amish. In this kind of government, too, there exist double-standards but they are a lot more like the double-standards in the parent-child relationship in that it is not difficult to see how the arrangement benefits all parties involved, despite the existence of double-standards.
The second attribute is the imperial or the State qua State whose sole purpose of existence is self-aggrandization. I think this aspect of government is always indicative of a systemic imbalance in the natural order. In regard to this component, the relationship between the State and its subjects is unilateral and wholly parasitic. There is no mutuality whatsoever. The modern State attempts to wrap itself in the cloak of the tribal/clan government by presenting itself as a wise uncle who “nudges” us in the right direction for our own good. The case in fact is diametrically opposite.
How this attribute comes to be and persists is difficult to explain but I think that part of the solution lies in putting the problem in its true perspective. In my theory, I posit (but can’t yet support) the following:
- The imperial State is neither constant nor progressive but waxes and wanes
- Changes in the fortune of the imperial State are correlated with rapid changes in the social order which may, in turn, be caused by unique historical events (the little Ice Age, Europeans landing in South America, etc.), technological breakthroughs (Agriculatural, Industrial Revolutions) and so on.
- The imperial State is not a blind expression of some kind of general will but is the result of willful exploitation of rapid social changes by individuals, families or other organizations to increase their own wealth and power
- Periods of relative social stability tend to wear down or “even out” the power of the imperial State until a sort of uneasy truce is reached between the parasitic and productive classes
- Even at its most lethal and powerful, the imperial State only manages to massacre a relatively small percentage of the population (this doesn’t make it any less terrifying, however)
- Humans (and human families) naturally vary in their aptitude for the acquisition and exercise of material wealth and power - it is not easy to decide whether the classes that exist in a society are the simple result of this inherent variability in humans or whether they are the result of the intensification of the parasite/producer dichotomy which the imperial State imposes on the social order.
Summary: The imperial State (double-standard, parasite/producer society) exists because when the social order undergoes rapid change, the old social norms and laws which had previously developed during the last period of relative social stability and had ground the progression of parasitism more and more to a halt are no longer useful to this end. People are open to exploitation in new ways that they do not even yet understand. The early exploiters win the race to exploit these new weaknesses in the social order and then begin “reinvesting” the proceeds of exploitation to preserve the existing weaknesses and even to create new weaknesses to exploit (e.g. propaganda). Over time, however, new social norms and laws develop which negate or at least mitigate the new forms of exploitation until some kind of stasis/equilibrium is eventually reached (barring the emergence of new, rapid social changes).
Clayton -
Wasn’t that double-standard there from the very beginning in family and tribal life? @OP This isn’t quite private courts, more like government courts in the unusual situation of having to compete for clients, but I think it will address your misgivings nicely: http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/TIL.PDF
Sorry Clayton, you did address my question.
So my next question is, then, can’t we state things more efficiently by saying that the state is just too large - that it’s grown beyond a human scale (close-knit tribal relations with elders). This is really an argument via evolutionary psychology: like our eating habits, statism is a modern-world problem (albeit way less modern than large-scale dietary issues), being a direct result of the fact that population sizes have grown faster than our brains could handle them. The common economic fallacies are a major manifestation of that maladaptation. Is this too simplistic?
@AJ: I think that’s a pretty good way to put it but what’s missing (missing in EP, too) is an understanding of the adaptive role of law in readjusting the social landscape to cope with the misalignment between the hardwiring in our brains and reality as it is. Rape is one (perhaps overused) example - the human brain and physiology is clearly wired for the fact of relatively commonplace rape in the Ancestral Environment. By comparison to that environment, rape almost never occurs today.
What gives? Well, the threat of direct or legal retribution. And I think this reasoning extends to every imaginable maladaptedness of our psychology. I think we can think of the social order as a kind of virtual landscape that is constantly morphing to “re-balance” the costs and benefits of various courses of action so that those courses of action which have become maladaptive through some rapid change in our environment are suppressed by the social order itself.
Clayton -
If you ask me, violating self-ownership is never moral, even by one’s familial/tribal elders.