If 51% of any society, ancap or otherwise, is suddenly in favor of enslaving everyone else, how could it be prevented
By the same logic, if 51% of any society wants respectable, just private protection, how could it be prevented?
Check and mate.
Wheylous
The essentials of your argument: We need to use violence to prevent violence preemptively. Correct?
Large states put each otherin check, each with its arms around part of the worlds resources. If they let go of them. and human nature hasn’t changed, then those resources will go to whomever is best able to fight off the rest. If you have faith that people would simply agree to an orderly assignment of the world’s goodies–were they to be up for grabs–then you have a much sunnier vision of mankind than I do. I predict chaos, constant skirmishing for territory–and the creation of replacement states, each bigger than the latest, all so as to re-establish control of the same resources that were let go.
Marko
I match your M16 and raise you a Gatling gun!
Those are strictly for Wal Mart employees.
So if ten people, each with a gun, end up on a deserted island, they would best lower the likelihood of violent conflict if they: (1) elected one of them to whom they would all hand their guns, and (2) made him sign a letter (constitution) in which he promises to act against his own (human) nature? Would you agree to this “deal” if you were one of these people?
If conflict avoidance is your ultimate end, here are some predicaments where conflict is almost impossible:
a. people encaged in solitary confinement
b. dead people
All you need to avoid violent conflict is to give someone the overwhelming power (authorization) to enslave or kill, and you’d be all set as far as potential conflicts are concerned. Are you sure that conflict avoidance/prevention is your ultimate end?
So you refuse to answer the question?
Wheylous
By the same logic, if 51% of any society wants respectable, just private protection, how could it be prevented?
Check and mate.
It couldn’t be; but it wouldn’t be an improvement on public law enforcement.
Bingo.
+2 z1235!
You think that companies which seek to eek out inefficiencies are inferior to government?
Inefficiencies in a private system: cut costs, reformulate strategy
Inefficiencies in a public system: we need moar money!
z1235
All you need to avoid violent conflict is to give someone the overwhelming power (authorization) to enslave or kill, and you’d be all set as far as potential conflicts are concerned. Are you sure that conflict avoidance/prevention is your ultimate end?
Death avoidance is the ultimate end. Individual rights are predicated upon the survival of individuals–on the right to life. If survival itself depends upon securing control of limited natural resources; and such control cannot be maintained absent a limited state system, primarily in the form of a combined defense against competing collectives; then individual rights must be partially subsumed by a state system–only to the extent necessary for ensuring life itself. If technology advances to a point where individual survival is either no longer dependent upon limited natural resources or no longer physically imperiled by other humans, then the state might dissolve naturally.
Wheylous
You think that companies which seek to eek out inefficiencies are inferior to government?
No. But law enforcement isn’t a profit-making enterprise–and shouldn’t be one. If it were, then staff could be cut, presumably, to save money; everything would be done as cheaply as possible; poorer neighborhoods might turn into lawless districts; etc.
If individuals have no rights, why live?
You could very well avoid death while being locked up in a dungeon and being raped every night for the rest of your life. Are you sure that is your ultimate end?
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You didn’t answer my question: Would you give your gun to the elected one on the island?
But law enforcement isn’t a profit-making enterprise–and shouldn’t be one. If it were, then staff could be cut, presumably, to save money; everything would be done as cheaply as possible; poorer neighborhoods might turn into lawless districts; etc.
Neither should food production. If it were, to same money, everything would be done as cheaply as possible. Poorer neighborhoods would turn to ghetto starvation camps.
In fact, education shouldn’t be a profit-mkaing enterprise. If it were, teacher salaries would be cut and we’d have dumb teachers teach our children.
Hey, healthcare shouldn’t be profit-based. If it is, people would flock to the cheapest, worst doctors.
You need a healthy dose of this. You’re the one ignoring human nature.
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The OP scenario depicts the world as it currently is. The history of the 20th century makes this painfully obvious. War tariffs and, embargoes, and trade wars generally have preceded each of the major wars of the 20th century. The famous quote, “When goods don’t cross borders, armies will.” Hence, there is an inherent connection between war and protectionism or economic imperialism or both.
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If “bigger is better” for whatever reason, then why stop at national governments? Clearly, a world government would - by the same logic - be that much more enlightened than national governments are relative to their subordinate local governments. Hans Hoppe argues this point here:
- Armed conflict is costly. The primary motivation in saying “everyone should pay for their own security costs” is that this rationalizes the decision to engage in conflict by forcing the individuals affected to count the costs to themselves.
In the modern world of socialized security, the decision to go to war is predictably irrational because the decision-makers do not spend their own money, do not risk their own lives or the safety of their own assets or their own families except in the very rare and extreme situation that they blow it and get completely defeated. Even in this case, the outcomes for military and political decision-makers is usually quite favorable by comparison to the effects of war on commoners. Yet in the case that the war campaign succeeds, the proceeds and spoils of the war will accrue to the political class which launched the war.
Public choice theory (and praxeological analysis generally) tells us precisely what to expect in this case: too much war! When a decision-maker does not bear the costs of his decision and benefits from risks his decision forces others to take, the decision-maker will make the wrong decision, frequently. The modern state is aggressive, territorial, war-mongering for precisely the reasons outlined above.
Private actors are no different than public actors (the public/private dichotomy is just a convention), so they are just as avaricious as States. The difference is that private actors don’t have millions of taxpayers and conscripts to fund and fight on their behalf. They must pay the costs of battle out of their own pocket and they must risk their own assets and their own security. This changes the equation considerably.
Walgreen’s has millions of dollars of valuable real estate and inventory. They might like to decapitate CVS by kidnapping its CEO but they also know that CVS retains a crack security agency which has the ability to burn down ever Walgreen’s store within a matter of hours if Walgreen’s indulges in the feudal violence of kidnapping the CVS CEO. And CVS knows vice-versa. Hence, the stable equilibrium is to not fight. The larger the capitalization of the business we are talking about, the more skittish and averse to open battle it will be for the simple reason that they have more to lose. It’s very easy to blow things up with modern weaponry. Not so easy to put them back together (what might be termed “the Humpty-Dumpty principle”).
Clayton -
Wait, wasn’t there a book written about something like that?
Clayton to the rescue!
z1235
So if ten people, each with a gun, end up on a deserted island, they would best lower the likelihood of violent conflict if they: (1) elected one of them to whom they would all hand their guns, and (2) made him sign a letter (constitution) in which he promises to actagainst his own (human) nature? Would you agree to this “deal” if you were one of these people?
The need for a state with a modern military is like the need to hold onto your gun. There are only so many coconuts on the island (Earth) and everybody wants to live as long as possible. You’d be crazy to give up your gun in the same way that it’s crazy to give up the protection of the state. Your anti-state argument is like an anti-gun argument. In a world that isn’t safe and has only so many resources to go around. you need a state/gun to best ensure survival. An ancap society is like a community of individuals with guns in a world of nations with Tomahawks and drones.
You’d be crazy to give up your gun in the same way that it’s crazy to give up the protection of the state. Your anti-state argument is like an anti-gun argument.
Non-sequitur/misunderstanding of the year!
His argument is about monopolies on force, not gun rights. In his scenario would you create a monopoly on force? That’s what you advocate. Allowing people to keep their guns in the analogy is analogous to allowing multiple privaet companies to work at the same time.
I’m a little late to this thread, but just wanted to direct you to a talk that David Friedman did on the subject. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched it, but I’m pretty sure he addresses most of the questions you’ve raised.
Clayton
The OP scenario depicts the world as it currently is!
Once again,we largely agree.
If “bigger is better” for whatever reason, then why stop at national governments?
A world government would be possible were there not existing nations in competition for limited resources. It was a scramble throughout history that has led to a huge stalemate across most of the globe. But the underlying scarcity of resources and inability to share them, which makes states necessary in the first place, remains. I’m not proposing something that doesn’t exist; I’m defending what does.
Armed conflict is costly. The primary motivation in saying “everyone should pay for their own security costs” is that this rationalizes the decision to engage in conflict by forcing the individuals affected to count the costs to themselves.
Armed conflict is more prevalent in stateless areas where resources and control are, at least in the eyes of others, as yet unclaimed and undetermined. Laws and trial and jail are also deterrents to armed conflict, costly in many ways; it works well here–so why change it?