The failure of Anarcho-Capitalism

In that case, my arguments against you seem to stand.

Excuse me, but I did figure that your definition of “exploitation” is your “exploitation criterion”. I’ve been pointing out how it doesn’t lead to the conclusions that you claim it leads to. How can you possibly not have seen it…? :wink:

You’ve already implicitly conceded that time is not subjective (given your failure to respond to that part of my last post to you). Hence you also implicitly conceded that there is a temporal difference between initiation of violence and retaliation. If you are not defining “aggression” as I am, namely “the initiation of violence or the threat of violence”, then do tell, what definition are you using for “aggression”? Otherwise, I can’t make sense of the first part of your “criterion”, namely “If A hires C to use action on B that B used on A (in this case, aggression or threat thereof)”, because to me, retaliation (what A is hiring C to do) does not constitute aggression.

Now if your “criterion” is truly an analytic statement, then it is a premise, and as such it can not be proven nor disproven, only accepted or rejected. So why should any of the rest of us accept it? :wink:

I don’t think it’s an analytic statement, though, because if it were, then given your apparent definition for “exploitation”, the proposition “C is exploiting A” can only mean “C is using means on behalf of A that were done against A by B against B”. There can be no further meaning gleaned from that statement, based purely on the definition you’ve presented. So it almost seems as though you’re relying (or, at least, banking) on the rest of us to equivocate between the definition you’ve put forth and the definition we’re used to using. In that case, what you’re doing here is really just a sophisticated attempt at trolling.

You would do better, in fact, to simply claim that those who are best at wielding defensive violence would also be the best at aggressive violence. Your “exploitation criterion” is irrelevant. We can then go into the reasons why aggressive violence is not preferred over defensive violence by those who are the best at using violence. From what I can tell, your claim is that this is an illusion; following Hobbes, you’re arguing that, in fact, aggressive violence is overwhelmingly preferred over defensive violence. The reason why it seems otherwise, you say, is because most people have been prevented from wielding aggressive violence.

Empirically speaking, however, that does not seem to be the case (as I’ve already talked about before). Additionally, it seems difficult (if not impossible) to measure in absolute terms who is “better”, let alone “best”, at using violence. Somehow I think you already realize these things, hence your attempt to mask your underlying argument with your “exploitation criterion”.

First off, by what measure(s) of “strength” do you purport that one guy on the island is “stronger” than the other? My point here is that, as I mentioned in mgmcintyre’s question thread, the concept of “strength” is very context-dependent. Suffice it to say that brute force does not always win the day.

I also fail to see how either guy on the island has a territorial monopoly over anything on the island. “Assuming that the small guy has no chance of beating him” is quite an assumption to make – one that I categorically refuse to make myself.

Regardless of what Rothbard may or may not have meant, I’d say that things such as “who is the strongest in the area” are always in dispute. Look at sports, for example. Even after a particular football team wins the Super Bowl for a particular year, some people will dispute that another team was, in fact, the better or “stronger” team. Nothing of that sort is ever finally settled.

In that case, my arguments against you seem to stand. - what argument would that be?

Counter-productive to positivism yes, but not counter-productive to being rational actors.

Autolykos, You have no strict criterion in determining whether retaliatory violence is aggression. Rothbard himself admitted this. Also, you have not shown what the difference is between aggression and retaliation(in the sense of producing the good, which is what matters in the marketplace, not whether it fits a category in someone’s ethics theory).

In fact, it will be impossible to show the two things being anything but the same thing. Both are violations of property rights. From the fact that the only difference between offensive and defensive violence is whatever ethical theory anyone attaches to them, it follows that the ends toward which the production of violence is used, is completely a subject of the moral beliefs of the producers. If the producers follow NAP& related ideas then the outcome will point towards our ideal, if the producers believe in monetary profit maximisation, they will go the route of robbing as mcintyre said, no one can pay more for defense than they will when getting robbed.

Regarding Rothbards 2 men on the island example, Rothbard himself took the physical dominance of the stronger guy as a premise. Him being the state follows that. If you reject him being the state, you reject Rothbard’s premise and your argument bears no relevance to his example.

Read my posts again.

How do I not have a “strict criterion” in determining whether retaliatory violence is aggression? The burden of proof rests with you here.

Why don’t morality and ethics matter in the marketplace? Isn’t the very notion of private property a necessarily moral and ethical concept?

You dont have, because the theory of just retaliation is totally a topic of subjective valuation(though this doesnt matter, as the ethical theory attached to violence to define just and unjust violence can be whatever).

And the more important thing, private property is effectively about control. Who controls his property is its owner, who doesnt, effectively doesnt own it.

Well, it is a good thing that we don’t have to assume that!

Well, if that is statism, I’m not an anti-statist! But, either way, I don’t think that my example included the stronger guy forcing the weaker guy to pay him for defense, which is what the term “compulsory” means in the definition.

Read my posts again. - I read them all. The only thing I saw you say about my argument was that people will behave according to their morality and i shouldn’t discount that. I already answered that question. I did see where you said my argument implies you should steal from Wal-Mart and that if you pay for a good you are being exploited. Those things don’t make any sense and i never claimed either of them.

But if I must respond … look a N.O. after Katrina. People who were acting in their own best interest simply looted the empty stores b/c there was no law enforcement and Wal-Mart was unable to defend itself. So yes, in the absence of anyone preventing you from stealing, you are better off doing it. How would it have helped the Katrina victims to send a check to Wal-mart for goods they already stole and had possesion of? It would be moral, but not economically beneficial.

Uh, I guess that I will just wait until you contradict yourself again.

Well, we don’t use the term “property rights” to just mean control of something, we use it to mean legitimate control of something. So, no, both aren’t violations of property rights, only one of them is.

Ah, there is the contradiction. Why do you keep saying that, on one hand, they are the same thing, but, on the other hand, they are different?

I again see some evidence that you ignored my response to you on the last page. I wonder, if you don’t think that “ethic[al] theory” has anything to do with “the marketplace”, what do you think it has to do with? I will come back to this in the next section.

Why do you think that following moral rules and trying to maximize your monetary profit are mutually exclusive alternatives? Why wouldn’t following moral rules lead to maximizing your monetary profit and why wouldn’t trying to maximize your monetary profit lead to following moral rules?

Ryan, I mean effective property when i talk about property. That is effective control. Which is unrelated to any ethics theory.

I dont suggest they are different when i say that there are ethical theories related to them, its just an observation of how violence is often interpreted as. Whether its the NAP theory, or some other of the hundreds of ethics theories, they are all interpretations rather than charecterisations of the action.

The issue about monetary profit: No one can pay more for defense than they will when getting robbed.

I already responded to that a bunch of times.

I understand that, yes, in a single, isolated situation, the more powerful person always will have the incentive to just take the stuff from him, because it he will always get more from taking the stuff than from trading for it. But the problem with your argument is that they aren’t just single, isolated situations, they are one of many.

If what you are saying were to be true, society wouldn’t even be possible. What you are saying doesn’t just call into question whether anarcho-capitalism could work, it calls into question whether any organization of society whatever could work. The only reason why society is possible is because, though it always is the incentive for the more powerful person to use force to take the stuff of someone instead of trading with him in the shortterm, it might be the incentive for the more powerful person to just trade with him in the longterm.

I responded to your argument here:

Well, you used the term “property rights”, which doesn’t just mean “effective control”, it means legitimate control.

Ryan, the idea doesnt question the viability of society. In fact it suggests that state is the most stable form of society, as though everyone is getting constantly robbed there, the amount of being robbed is limited by state’s owners wish to preserve future “dividends”

No, they definitely are “characteristics of the action”. If they weren’t, how would they develop? Do you think that people just make up “ethical theor[ies]” out of nowhere? What you don’t understand is that “ethical theor[ies]” have a purpose. They aren’t just arbitrary. They have a purpose in action. They guide people to do what is in their self-interest in the longterm. You keep saying that the only difference between attacking someone and actively defending someone are the “ethical theor[ies]” about the situation, like that has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Well, it does. The “ethical theor[ies]” about the situation tell us whether it is sustainable or not, and other things.

One of the important points is that, though you might be able to “take by force what you were gonna trade for, over and over again”, you will be disrupting his ability to amass even more stuff that you could trade for. - I already countered this argument:

This is correct. But I could also take half a fish, still leaving him some surplus capital to invest.

Then, his output would still grow over time, albeit, more slowly. The percentage surplus I allowed him to keep would depend on my time preference as an exploiter. The more Surplus I allowed him to keep, the less I could consume/steal in the present but the more i can consume/steal in the future. Notice this dynamic seem to solve the calculation problem supposedly faced by monopolist defense providers.

BTW, this solves the calculation problem b/c it answers the question, how much should I spend on defending my ‘asset’. You should spend up until the last dollar spent equals one additional dollar in exploitable wealth, given time preference considerations.

Great, and I already countered that “countering” of that argument:

How does that have anything to do with the calculation argument? And how would you even know how to “spend up until the last dollar spent equals one additional dollar in exploitable wealth, given time preference considerations”?

I’m not disputing that statism works. It does. We can’t say that it doesn’t, because it is here, we can see it all around us. But why won’t you consider the possibility that private defense agencies could work even more effectively, because they would have an even longer time horizon?

What you are saying is that statism is the most stable form of society because states decide how much to exploit the people based on “future dividends”, and they chose to make it a moderate amount.

Well, you haven’t shown why that setup would be more stable than anarcho-capitalism, where the private defense agencies decide how much to exploit the people based on the same “future dividends”, but chose to make it not a moderate amount, but nothing at all.

I understand that, yes, in a single, isolated situation, the more powerful person always will have the incentive to just take the stuff from him, because it he will always get more from taking the stuff than from trading for it. But the problem with your argument is that they aren’t just single, isolated situations, they are one of many. - this actually makes the situation worse for the weaker party. A defenseless party still has techniques it can use to induce the powerful entity to trade legitimately with them. Some of those techniques are made less effective by the introduction of multiple possible exploiters.

I highly recommend this article as it speaks DIRECTLY to what we are discussing and has some very good points in it:

http://www.peterleeson.com/Trading_with_Bandits.pdf

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Okay, I will read it.