That statement is somewhere in the range from naive to ridiculous. Firms do not compete for “defense of life and property” they compete over profit or income opportunities. There is no reason to belief that a “security contractor” will be of better “service” or “nicer” then a small to medium state with limited government will be. So if anyone fails in their reasoning here, it’s not mises, but the anarcho-capitalists.
What is the legitimate basis for you to establish such a government?
Who operates a state or a private defense agency?
Is that an attempt to evade the practical question on how different forms of government or lack thereof would operate under real life circumstances?
That might be indeed a more relevant question. But why not deal with the practical, real life issue at hand:
Will “security contractors” under anarcho-capitalism be a beter order then a minarchist order?
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Who practices the practical, any practical, in general?
of course, like in any market. lets try to avoid ‘special pleading’
The key difference is that firms can’t tax their customers. So they will have more incentives to satisfy their customers when they have competition than an enforced monopoly of government does (not to mention the unlikelihood of branching out in other industries like education, etc.). The quality or “niceness” of the services is irrelevant (and it’s all subjective, in any case).
I don’t get it. If you’re against restricting competition in any other industry, why is law enforcement or dispute resolution any different?
Who cares? “good” is subjective. People as well as companies have different needs or wants. My husband loves $600 cell phone but I’ll just go for the cheapest. We’re both happy with our preferences. Would you advocate banning cheap cell phones and making only the most loaded available? Or vice versa?
All I care is that no one can steal my money and make it seem acceptable. Under anarcho-capitalism, choosing security services provider wouldn’t be much different from shopping for a wireless plan. Or you could choose not to pay anyone at all, buy your guns and maybe even join a volunteer neighborhood patrol. Options would be abound.
This is a very telling statement, and also a false one. Your ethical “principles” seem to be a collection of ad hoc emotionally-based preferences. Even emotional preferences are derived from the information one has absorbed subconsciously through one’s education and experience, so you do get your ethical beliefs from somewhere.
Unfortunately, this ad hoc collection does not amount to a principle. Let’s take your own example of punishing people for not calling an ambulance when passing an injured person. The only principle I can identify here is that one must render assistance to anyone in need. But how is need to be defined? What type of assistance must one render, and in what amount? Your example makes it seem fairly innocuous, as the subjective cost of the action of calling an ambulance is, to most people, very low. However, it’s no logical distance at all between that and requiring people to render other sorts of aid, in greater amounts, and to those in lesser degrees of “need.” There is no difference in kind between what you propose and full-blown socialism, there is only a difference of degree which admits of no objective measurement.
In the end, what you’ve actually done is to deny the existence of ethical principles at all. Ethics is simply what the majority wishes. I trust I don’t need to provide examples of how that could go horribly wrong.
Regarding the problem of the family in which children are beaten: This issue can be addressed perfectly well by referring to the non-aggression principle. It need not be a case of the other families arbitrarily imposing their will. If the questions “Is violence being initiated?” and “Does the subject of said violence desire assistance in ending it?” can be answered in the affirmative, then the intervention of others is consistent with libertarian principles. The answers to those questions may sometimes be difficult to determine in practice, but that there may be difficulties encountered in adjudicating any particular case in the real world does not invalidate the principle.
My first impression upon reading the title of this thread was that it was most likely an argument based on the fallacy of the golden mean, and after reading the opening post, that seems a pretty sound impression. That something is “extreme” or “ideal” does not in and of itself make it incorrect.
No I’m asking by what legitimate authority you establish and sustain a government.
Eh I wouldn’t go that far. What I mean to say there are objective ‘goods’ in the world. Like if I were to give you and your husband a vial of cure-all in which you would never be sick, have to worry about tooth decay or any genetic disorders, then that would be an objective good for both of you would it not? I think there is a line [ and I will admit that isn’t always clear ] where objectivity ends and subjectivity begins.
lol. Firms compete over customers. The way to attract customers is to give them what they demand. If customers demand justice then that’s what they will get, and as cheap as possible…thanks to competition.
Too bad that you can’t understand that monopoly doesn’t work. You might console yourself with the though that Mises didn’t understand that monopoly doesn’t work either.
LOL. No, it’s like preaching christianity in a forum full of rational free thinkers. IOW you don’t have an argument, only silly appeals to emotion
Yeah, that’s why we need government. To magically solve emergencies… at the point of a gun.
I was talking in the context of market transactions. There’s simply no way to predict people’s choices with a hundred percent certainty. That’s why entrepreneurship is risky, after all. What matters is that enforced monopolies don’t have to concern themselves with people’s demands as much since they don’t have competition to worry about (or they do it inefficiently, see public education).
this struck me as a good point. perhaps Mises shaky monopoly theory , which has been revised by his peers and followers can in part explain his minarchism…
Ok then I kind of agree with you more but not totally. I mean to say I agree that we cannot predict people’s choices 100% but we can deduce what they are likely to buy [ food, water, shelter, clothing: Not individual pieces but something from this overall grouping ]
Still the preferences will differ. What’s good for you is not the same for me. My point is: let the customers decide and providers adjust their offers accordingly, instead of one big monopoly forcing on you what they think is “good” and making you pay for it whether you want it or not.
If I may, this is why the subjective and objective gets confusing at times. It is objective that each person values (prefers).
Then you are making assumption that people are rational to make the clear choices. Kenneth Arrow and John Forbes Nash already proved that market is not perfect. I don’t have to worry about being sold to slavery when accepting software agreements.
Just look at any health care industry, they hire people to deny claims. You are being totally naive if you are saying none of those people needed those treatments. Funerals will always be the most cost effective treatment. And when genetics get better, it will get easier to predict sickness, meaning if you can predict a sickness wih 90% accuracy, you will be paying 90% of the costs out of pocket. And that’s no problem if you are rich and healthy but not everyone is. Consumer choice is nonsense in emergency situation. If you get a heart attack and some random guy drops you off to the nearest hospital, its up to a doctor how much he wants to charge, you will get the bill when you wake up, and hope its something “reasonable”. There’s no freedom of choice there. Some doctors have lost totally ethics in name of profits in this case.
For example in a car insurance, if the company denies claims, then its bad luck but nobody has to die. How many of you have been denied a life-saving treatment, hm?
If a demented person signs a contract giving all his property a to thug, there’s no problem there because hey, its a freedom of contract. Nothing unethical there. It wasn’t a fraud.
Almost nobody here thinks we are slaves. We’re free to leave the country if we wish. Many people here live a long life, have wife and kids, and have fun in life. And in the second place, the whole argument that “state is a slavery machine” is absurd, some states act more and some states act less responsibly like companies. They are all human organizations just like companies. Just because they are funded by force, doesn’t mean they would not exist if only voluntary payments were allowed. If 95% of the people support the existence of the state, first they could form, fund it by themselves and force 5% to fund it. They could just call it “State Ltd.” to piss you off, because hey force was supplied by demand.
Its really an authority problem. Reminds me of some guys in the army.
haha very funny.