The existence of Government as “Market failure”.
This point is kinda rhetoric and slightly in jest, but also serious. And also, understand this is not a serious way of assailing free markets. I am a committed anarcho-capitalist. I’d just like to hear this forum’s thoughts on the matter.
The inability to stop government tyranny, as we currently experience, could be called a market failure. Sure, you can get an off shore company to help you protecting some wealth from the looters. But, it isn’t really widely available, cheap, or as effective as I’d like. And you can, with great effort emigrate from the territory of one slave master to that of a slightly kinder slave master (think to South, or from the to the ). You can also buy and save precious metals to help in not being ripped of by inflation. But, in summary, the existence of government (organized crime) is a market failure, as there is so little the market has been able to do against its chronic exploitation of the people.
As is obvious, the market can better take care of every security issue a million times better than government. Yet, it is very inadequate when providing protection from government. And, ironically, this is the greatest threat that mankind faces and, yet, the market fails us. It’s kinda depressing.
So, as to my way of thinking, to understand it, you have to think about the difference between regular criminals and government. The market failure must lie in the different between the two. In every integrated and non-consequentialist moral and ethical respect, both are the same. They are identical! Both, of course, use force and violence/threats of violence, and thus, according to the nonaggression principle, both are equally criminal and equally condemnable. They only differ in the most superficially depressing way. They only differ with regards to the mass’s beliefe/credance in one’s apologetics (it’s ok to aggress against the innocent if it’s in the interest of the public good) and not the other’s (admittedly, common criminals, unlike government, don’t get too far with their rationalizations for aggression). Basically 100% of the populace think of non-governmental criminals as entirely bad and totally unacceptable. They condemn the entire concept of crime (non governmentally sanctioned crime that is). Yet only about 1% or less (anarchists) take the rational position that government is totally evil and completely unacceptable in any form and totally bankrupted of justifications for their acts. Sure, a lot of people much of the time think this or that government policy sucks and even in some cases think that it is criminal (probably most would say the holocaust was criminal, even though, non-anarchists don’t really have a consistent and strong principled moral/ethical argument for it being crime as, other times they are ok with the initiation of force against the innocent by the government as long as the outcomes are nice, like parks, or health care, or redistribution of wealth, or executing criminals, etc) Anyway, the market is good at dealing with private crime pretty well, but it sucks at helping us from government (a sub-species of crime). It, in my judgment fails us.
I don’t know, I’d be very interested in hearing people’s thought on the Idea of the very existence of government as a market failure. Think! If the market is as great as we market enthusiasts think, then shouldn’t it be more capable of protecting us from government?
Thanks