Geoffrey, I thank you for the resources. I read Anarchism as Constitutionalism parts I and II. I’ll get to Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism later. I found the former to present a case for the rule of man, not the rule of law.
Absent a “virtuous” society, I agree.
I’m unclear what you mean by structural incentives. Do you mean structural contradictions? If so, I disagree. Markets work, but human will is more powerful than markets.
Everything. I’m not aware of any group of individuals getting together to willfully disband a government and then practice market anarchy, so true, there is no evidence that constitutional republics are better. I can only argue in theory, based on human nature.
I’m interested in any examples you may have. (This is not an attempt to “call you out” – I really am interested.)
Again, did our republican system fail? or did we fail the system?
I’ll go back through those sections again, but I do not recall him adequately addressing waiver and estoppel.
I’m unclear how this assumes what I’m trying to prove. By inaction do we not give the U.S. the very authority it claims? Absent an affirmative action on our part how can we reject the proclaimed authority?
But his point was that you have no idea if all the colonists agreed with the process. Most people got no say in the matter whatsoever and were in fact forced to comply. Also, people born into the system get no say in the matter either, our compliance is still forced.
So when considering a republic you assume a virtuous society, and when considering anarchy you assume a populace full of crazy mobs who want to kill anyone disagreeing with them. Nice.
The system itself creates a tragedy of commons because as soon as you take taxes forcibly from someone to benefit others you will get plenty of people wanting to increase it. Everyone wants a peice of the largess congress has access to and no matter how small you start you’ll get to gigantic proportions. A republic functions exactly like a democracy in that respect, only taking more time to decline.
The structural incentives of government give the people in power the ability to grant favors in return for more money or power. Whether it’s a senator voting for a bill that would grant his state pork in return for votes, or a corrupt congressman voting and getting kickbacks. The power to regulate is left in the hands of those who most need regulating.
I understand and that was my point, i.e., by that line of reasoning a free market could never produce a form of governance because someone would always disagree with something.
Uh…no. I’m not sure how you deduced that. Both anarchy and constitutional republics require virtue to exist. So, I actually assume a virtuous society in anarchy, because without it, it would not survive.
Not with a government with limited powers. If you stay within the confines of the legitimate powers given to the government you could never increase taxes to provide largesse to others.
No that is how a society who has decided to ignore the rule of law performs.
But then they are acting ultra virus, not within the bound of legitimate/legal power. Thus, it is not the structural incentive, but the will of those in power.
Only through illegal acts and a complacent populace.
But because they enforce the system they can essentially choose what legitimate powers they have. Obviously, if it is a completely radical change, the population will rise up against them. However, if you make the move to more and more power slowly, then it’s only a matter of time.
Representative government encourages complacency. A person’s actions have little impact on who gets elected, much less what policies are put in place. It is in the government’s best interest to ignore the rule of law, because it increases their power.
Human nature will cause people in power to attempt to expand it. Instead of having to constantly provide checks against it, why not just avoid giving them the power in the first place?
As I said earlier a republic enourages a complacent populace.
Spooner already shows why voting and paying taxes cannot be taken as evidence of consent to the authority of the US government or its constitution. The same applies to staying in the country and other alleged forms of tacit consent. When you make leaving the country the only way to withdraw consent or declare that we don’t consent, you presume that the US government has legitimate authority and that it or the American people as a whole own the whole territory of the United States but this is precisely what you have to prove. Absent any valid and sound argument to the contrary, any property I own (including land) in the “United States” is mine by right, not the American people’s or the US government’s. Also, I think you’ve got it backwards in that last question. Absent any explicit consent on our parts, how can any proclaimed authority be legitimate?
Why would they? If they are innocent and object to a trial, that’s entirely their own problem. If they are guilty and object to a trial, they are tacitly admitting guilt.
If they are unable to attend for some other reason, they could certainly appeal the ruling made in their absence.
You keep making assertions without offering any proof. Currently, every insurance agency in existence has interlocking agreements toward the preemptive resolution of disputes, and many of them use private arbitration when that does not suffice. There’s no reason why a PDA wouldn’t do the same thing. If you think an organization would engage in an extremely costly war to protect a client who is at fault, you need to learn a few things about basic economics and business practice.
The only organizations that can do that are states, which have a slave populace to extract their money from, and a magic printing press to enrich themselves at their slaves’ expense.
Absent a legitimized, compulsory monopoly, niether of those things could possibly exist. A PDA has the simple choice of operating fairly and non-aggressively, or going out of business.
Oh yes, the “everyone in this world is a rapist/murderer in disguise, except for me” argument. No, sorry; you’re wrong. People don’t refrain from killing, stealing and vandalizing their neighbors because of the presence of state agents 15 minutes away. If that’s the way you are, seek help. If not, realize that you’re not some sort of angel among beasts. People like to get along with other people, and in a free market one cannot become powerful through fraud or violence. They do it through excellence and a good reputation.
Anyway, you’re still avoiding the basic argument: you have doubts about market anarchy that lead you to believe it might lead to x, y, and z - so you advocate an organization which is the institutionalized version of x, y, and z. It’s quite baffling.
It’s like saying that since we don’t know how to cure lung cancer, we should encourage people to smoke 20 packs a day from birth.
Lofty ideas, but it would not work. There are several reasons:
You continue to talk about how a “business” would operate. Sure, if the investors in a company wanted to turn a profit, as reasonable men do, then it is best for them to be non-aggressive, and not to protect someone that is. You forget the other motivators. Power, religion, family, race, these are all factors that may sway some men to act in a irrational way. No, I do not feel I am an angel among beasts, please stop with the ad hominid attacks. But you act like serial killers, serial rapists, the KKK, Hamas and groups of people do not exist in numbers that matter. They obviously do. Surely they would not profit from their aggression towards others most likely, but that is not what they want. They feel they are either doing what “God” would want or they are simply fufilling their desires. PDA’s would not be able to deal with these groups because they would have to infringe upon their rights. Which leads me to my other point.
Who would grant the PDA’s the right to infringe upon the rights of others? If a PDA were to believe someone guilty of a crime, would it not be infringing upon their rights to forcibly bring them to jusitice? How would they gather evidence, for it would surely violate someone’s right to compell testimony or to search a person’s home. Some impartial court could not hold someone in contempt, for that would be a violation of their rights as well.
How would property rights be uniform? Some people may claim that there are no such thing as copyright laws, that you only own exactly what you create. So if you were to write a novel, nothing would keep someone from reprinting your work and effectively stealing your profits. Who would determine the legitimacy of intangible property? Would their exist no trademarks, patents etc.? Surely you will say that your “impartial courts” would settle this. But clearly there will be differences of opinions on these issues, and everyone will know where the courts stand on them. So people would not choose to go to a court that was against their viewpoint.
If you look at groups like the ones you mentioned they were a reaction to having some other group force their will on them. KKK was a reaction to forced integration and reconstruction in the South. Hamas from Israeli occupation.
Serial killers and rapist aren’t really a ‘voting block’ so don’t really fit into any governmental model that I can tell. They are the direct result of political actions meant to keep a minority group in line in some countries and are seen as a valid political end by the ruling class of those regimes though.
Why wouldn’t a PDA be able to deal with an aggression committed against one of their members anyway? Isn’t that the very definition of their job?
Why would they need to infringe the rights of others?
If they were tracking a suspected murder and were 99.999% convinced they were guilty of the crime then they could proceed to start a criminal complaint against them. If they were say 60% sure but needed to gather further evidence through violating their property rights then if they were correct their trespass would be justifiable but if they were wrong then they would have to face up to the crimes they committed in pursuit of their job.
Today, if the police suspect you of a crime they can force their way into your home, surveil your communications and imprison you during the lenght of your trial and if it turns out you were found innocent you have absolutely no recourse against them because all their actions were legal under the current legal code.
You are mixing up what is just with what is moral, quit doing that. Yea, yea, we all want the monopoly power to impose our moral code on others even though it doesn’t measure up on the Just Scale.
This has been discussed quite throughly if you were to search google with ‘site:mises.org “intellectual property”.’
Doesn’t that happen today, MAFIAA shops around for the judges they like when they send out their bulk lawsuits.
And as for ‘stealing your profits’, is that one of those intangible properties you are refering to? Didn’t quite realize libertarian ethics had a natural right to ‘profits’, maybe that’s in one of the chapters I haven’t quite gotten to in The Ethics of Liberty audiobook.