EiT, I’d like an answer to these questions.
Liberty Student, in the developed world we have all sorts of economic relations that are almost unheard of in places like Somalia, including but not limited to, complex financial instruments, various sorts of employment relations and the like. It’s these sort of functions that I’m talking about, and that’s where the difference comes in between tribal courts that rule based on tradition and custom and other sorts of private entities that might take care of such things.
Basically my point is that I doubt Somalian traditions have much to say about derivative markets.
Neither did the US government before the financial collapse. I’m not sure if it does now.
Are you saying that a derivative market is an “important function”? Are you also claiming that something inherent in Somali culture makes it incapable of dealing with a derivative market, should the need arise?
I’ll also repeat my first question which you have not answered.
What is the difference between a tribal court and a private entity?
Are you also claiming that something inherent in Somali culture makes it incapable of dealing with a derivative market, should the need arise?
There was nothing inherent in 3rd century tribal Germans that prevented the development of derivative markets; except that nobody thought of them.
Are you saying that a derivative market is an “important function”? Are you also claiming that something inherent in Somali culture makes it incapable of dealing with a derivative market, should the need arise?
I’ll also repeat my first question which you have no answered.
I’m saying that financial markets are kind of important, yes, if you don’t believe me Somalia is probably a good case example. Look at how economic and social conditions in Somalia and other backwards parts of the world are highly correlated with crop yields. Granted, I don’t think that’s the entirety of the explanation, transportation systems (something else being handled by governments in the developed world) are also kind of important in preventing this kind of dependency.
This question “Are you also claiming that something inherent in Somali culture makes it incapable of dealing with a derivative market, should the need arise” kind of shows how you missed my original point. Which is that citing Somalia as evidence in favour of market anarchism in the developed world is likely to be misleading. I never wanted to get into an argument about whether or not these functions could be handled by private entities just that Somalian tribes don’t have to handle this in the present, so you’d be wrong to generalize from this one case.
What is the difference between a tribal court and a private entity? Well, for one thing both institutions are optimizing on different margins, I think that would be the most relevant.
You said derivative markets, not financial markets. Are you claiming that Somalia has no financial markets?
Assuming you are correct that a stateless society cannot provide transportation, Somalia had governments in the past. Are you claiming that the transportation systems put in place by those governments are no longer available to the Somali people? Care to cite sources?
I didn’t miss your point at all.
Who cited this?
Why not?
What are those margins?
Liberty Student, if you want to get into quote bombing matches, go do it with something else. To answer your question “who cited this”, the answer is quite simple, StrangeLoop did in his original post when he said “Rather than meeting those expectations, however, the evidence is mounting that stateless capitalism can thrive! I am actually incredibly surprised by how much empirical evidence is available for this conclusion, and it’s much more compelling than the standard anarcho-capitalist appeals to old-school Iceland and the Law Merchant.”.
My answer was a simple point about the dangers of generalizing from cases like Somalia, with financial markets and transportation systems considerably less advanced than those in the developed world and other third sector institutions (can you even find my tribal courts of any import in the US?) that are far more prominent than in the countries that most Mises.org contributors live in.
If you’re not willing to be rigorous in discussion, that is on you, not me. I’m asking you to clarify your position, precisely because it seems to be so malleable.
Did he cite, “market anarchism in the developed world”? Or did he cite emprical evidence in Somalia?
Aren’t you the one making generalizations about Somalia and the [sic] “developed world”?
I’ve asked you to clarify specific comments related to;
What is a third sector institution?
There are no tribal courts in America, because America does not have a free market in law. With respect to law, Somalia is many times more developed than America is. I think the same case can be made when 13+ year old women are sexually molested by McDonalds employees at airports, and the wall street ponzi system based on bailouts and corruption to fund mass murder globally.
Can you make specific claims about Somali financial markets, derivative markets and transportation systems or are you only generalizing? Can you show them as more or less advanced than the US?
If you’re not willing to be rigorous in discussion, that is on you, not me. I’m asking you to clarify your position, precisely because it seems to be so malleable.
This has nothing to do with being rigorous, this has everything to do with the fact that quote bombing always turns into pedantry and sloganeering.
StrangeLoop wasn’t specific about the implications of Somalian anarchism, hence my post. He’s a more than sensible guy so I’m actually pretty certain he would be well aware of how limited the Somalian episode is in terms of applicability to the real world. But, others may not be, so I posted a warning about generalizing from third world shitholes to developed economies.
What is a third sector institution?
There are no tribal courts in America, because America does not have a free market in law. With respect to law, Somalia is many times more developed than America is. I think the same case can be made when 13+ year old women are sexually molested by McDonalds employees at airports, and the wall street ponzi system based on bailouts and corruption to fund mass murder globally.
Can you make specific claims about Somali financial markets, derivative markets and transportation systems or are you only generalizing? Can you show them as more or less advanced than the US?
This discussion has taken a turn for the ridiculous. When you want to make the case that a country has a more advanced legal system than the USA because “I think the same case can be made when 13+ year old women are sexually molested by McDonalds employees at airports” you might want to try it with a country that doesn’t adhere to Sharia law in most parts. Whilst we’re at it, you might want to look up the whole issue of Somalian pirates, I’m pretty sure the wonderful Somali legal system handles those somewhat less than adequately.
And wow, are you really asking me to justify the statement “transportation systems and financial markets are significantly less complex in the third world than they are in the first world”? Because if so I’m going to tell you that a trip to Africa would serve as a nice reality check, because quite clearly you’ve never had to drive down the dirt paths they call roads or venture into their economic capitals. There’s a good reason that bad crop yields in the US have different outcomes than bad crop yields in Somalia, namely people not dieing en masse, and that’s precisely because of the financial markets and transportation systems in the US.
America doesn’t have a more advanced legal system than Somalia. They have a more advanced culture. Don’t conflate the two. Better people with more money can sometimes make bad systems work better than less developed societies with less money can make better systems work.
- If America’s legal system is worse than Somalia’s (I don’t know if this is true or untrue) then what implications does this have for any transition on America’s behalf to statelessness? In my opinion it makes such a transition more difficult and therefore makes the anarchist case weaker.
- Contra Liberty Student, Somalia’s tribal courts have nothing to do with statelessness. They have been around for a long time, that includes those periods of time where Somalia had something resembling a central governments. Once again, this makes the anarchist case weaker since those institutions that are currently making anarchism viable in Somalia are missing in the US.
- Anybody who wants to cite tribal courts in favor of free markets in law needs a reality check.
If America’s legal system is worse than Somalia’s (I don’t know if this is true or untrue) then what implications does this have for any transition on America’s behalf to statelessness? In my opinion it makes such a transition more difficult and therefore makes the anarchist case weaker.
It doesn’t really make the anarchist case weaker, it just means it’s harder for people to see it. Especially because most people have a natural and nurtured animus against market order and individualism to begin with.
Contra Liberty Student, Somalia’s tribal courts have nothing to do with statelessness. They have been around for a long time, that includes those periods of time where Somalia had something resembling a central governments. Once again, this makes the anarchist case weaker since those institutions that are currently making anarchism viable in Somalia are missing in the US.
Not so much. They are stateless institutions, though such institutions may exist alongside state institutions. Such institutions do exist in the US (private arbiters, face-to-face dealing and social norms) but they are weaker due to the greater wealth the US Government has, allowing it to be more centralized and invasive. America has enough material and intellectual capital to pretty easily develop market mechanisms for dispute resolution and contract enforcement, assuming people didn’t just try to build another state.
Anybody who wants to cite tribal courts in favor of free markets in law needs a reality check.
They’re not purely propertarian, but their system of torts and boundries does have a lot more in common with a market society. Obviously, Somalian culture isn’t liberal so that creates certain problems for them.
lmao
In most parts. Can you tell me where in the US you can avoid the TSA at airports? That’s precisely the point. Somalia may have Sharia law, but they also have a market (albeit not a perfect one) for law. The US cannot make this claim. The US has no legal market.
What is your issue with Somali pirates?
Yes, I am. I am asking you to back up your claims. Do you think it is unreasonable that I ask you to back up your claims?
You have been to Africa?
Can you prove this?
It’s pointless to use the context of this subject as a proxy for an argument over anarchism vs. minarchism in this case. His comment was best ignored.
LS, I think the crux of our disagreement is that I’m claiming financial markets in the US (amongst others) are more complex in the US than they are in Somalia. I really don’t want to get into a disagreement about something that even most anarchists would agree with, so I’ll be brief. Regarding transportation infrastructure, yes I’ve been to Africa (and no the plural of anecdote isn’t data), but the roads there are almost certainly less complicated and less sophisticated than those in the US. As for financial markets, do you think the average Somalian owns any stocks or makes use of any financial instruments at all? The question isn’t whether these are good or not (for the most part, they certainly are) but whether they exist and the fact is that in the US they do and if anarchy were to take over we’d need somebody or some entity to regulate them.
Likewise, even before anarchism there were things like Sharia law and tribal courts in Somalia, these don’t exist to any comparable extent in the US. There are far more impersonal relations that serve important economic functions in the US and the rest of the developed world, and my argument is that this creates problems when using case examples such as Somalia.
Finally, two brief points that aren’t really related to my original post but I’d like to address.
Can you prove this?
Well then let me ask you the question, why is it that bad crop yields in the developed world may cause economic misery for many but rarely cause mass starvation? Why is it that there is a strong correlation between deaths due to famine and the state of financial markets? I’d attribute it to the fact that in the developed world farmers can use financial instruments to hedge their bets and because transportation systems allow for arbitrage opportunities to be taken advantage of.
As concerns Sharia law, my point was quite simply that there may be competition in the provision of law. But the very fact that they’re all providing Sharia law or that the providers of law maximise something other than profit means that the market for law is highly imperfect.
Btw, many financial instruments exist as a by-product of state policy. You might even say most.