One thing I don’t really get about AnCaps, is why isn’t a lot of the agencies that they envision up and running today? I understand that government is quite the inhibitor; but like the typical argument against monopolies, it’s not like there eyes are smart enough to act everywhere.
To that end…
Does anyone know of some currently running relatively cheap PDAs to support?
Does anyone know any good places to start a PDA?
-In terms of the U.S. government not caring (or, if some of you want to discuss places in your locale where the government wouldn’t care, that’s fine)
and
-In terms of there being enough demand.
Anyone know any ways to start it up any current legal framework?
Also, I might as well open this up to any plausible business that we could give advice to each other to start to supercede the government in. After all, the benefits are twofold:
Aside from the state prohibiting any serious competitors there is the problem of pro-state ideology that encourages people to turn to the state for solutoins and this also sometimes leads even to an-caps envisioning PDAs along quasi-statist lines. That said, the private security industry is a booming one in America. As is the private arbitration and mediation industry.
It depends on what you mean by PDA. Sure private security agencies exist today. Just think of the rent-a-cops from companies like Allied Barton that you see around places and events. However, if you want to talk about actual police force and justice system, you’re going to have another problem.
You can’t create a company and go out with the intention of fighting crime. You can’t just go over the government’s head and enforce your own version of justice. They have a monopoly on “the law.” In fact, they are “the law.” I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that at least in the US, there is nowhere that you could go where the government wouldn’t care.
The closest thing that I’ve ever seen to a legitimate private defense agency is where I go to school at the U of Pennsylvania. The school pays for its own “private” police force. However, all of the officers have legal authority granted to them by Pennsylvania and must enfore all of their laws. My guess is that this kind of thing is pretty hard to get worked out with the state, although it does serve to illustrate the private sector being superior to the government. From pretty much everybody’s point of view, the police that we have on campus are far better than the average cop in Philadelphia.
I think you guys are giving the government way too much credit. If you treat it like an omnipotent beast, it will continue to be so.
In all the hundreds of millions of people and thousands of square miles the government lords over, you’re telling me there isn’t even one square mile where a PDA would not be fansible? If this is the case, you guys seriously have no hopes in hell, despite whatever ‘education’ mantra you may preach, to be able to achieve some sensible promise of liberty.
I find it a very sensible approach to get together even possibly on this very forum to start a business to oust the government in whatever small manners possible. Even if for the moment it requires slight cooperation with the state, at least we will have a little bit more freedom, and thus have a greater foothold.
Who are “you guys”? All of us? Because I don’t think your claims apply to me. In fact, you seem to be making very strong and sweeping claims based on little evidence.
Alright, I apologize. I am just a little bit frustated at the way freedom is being achieved currently, you might say, when it seems that soceity is going backwards? It appears logical to me if Capitalism is supposed to be the way that an AnCap functions, then it should follow that Capitalism should whole-heartedly be the item that brings it up. Or, what I am trying to suggest here, should be a plausible suggestion for its transition.
No problem. Check out the work that Gil Guillory is doing. It’s along the lines of what you are looking for. And I agree that libertarians need to stop trying to achieve their victories through the state; more of us should be doing what Gil is trying to do, which is develop alternative institutions.
PDA’s are established in the Rio slums and in Iraq. This is what happens when things degenerate to what Sam Francis called “anarcho-tyranny”: peacable folk are terrorized both by the government and by criminals that the government is either powerless against or in league with. It happened to an extent in New Orleans, when both the thugs and the police joined in the looting post-Katrina. People then joined with their neighbors, family members, churches, etc. for collective defense.
In Rio, to be specific, the poor are brutalized both by corrupt cops and violent criminals. So they turn to the drug dealers for protection and maintenance of the social order.
Here’s the dynamic: drug trafficking, being illegal, is controlled by thugs who then terrorize the “favelas,” or slum neighborhoods. So the community hires ex-cops, ex-soldiers, et al. for protection, again, from the corrupt cops and thugs the cops are either powerless against or in league with.
Government-funded martial training does have its advantages. MS-13 apparently encourages its members to sign up.
I did want to clarify my view of the drug trade. It’s not that the drug trade is inherently violent; it’s that the drug trade, being illegal, generally goes by default to the sociopaths. A counter-example would be drugs on college campuses, where you don’t see dealers machine-gunning each other over territory.