So I said “even if” you don’t think its theft, it doesn’t matter…
Or transferring money between accounts online…
This is usually handled by your bank. They’re in a better position to do so… but so what if they didn’t? Optimal security might not involve tracking down every perpetrator. Like I said, our current legal system is stuck in the stone ages. You can’t objectively measure the quality of internet security by comparing it to ancient statist security… the consumers of internet PDAs seem to think they’re pretty great btw.
I’m claiming PDAs will provide defensive services, which is exactly what internet PDAs are doing. You continuously toute the idea that PDAs will just use their guns to exploit their customers and then turn around and ignore it when internet PDAs have the ability to exploit their customers, but choose not to anyway.
You’re shifting the issues here. I mean are do you really think you’re winning the argument if you have to debate whether or not something is philisophically “theft”? You’ve completely abandoned your analysis of PDAs being able to exploit their position on the market because their capital can be used for both offense and defense. We’ve repeatedly stated why it doesn’t matter, and the core of our argument is that competition in panacea. You never address this.
I don’t think that you read my post very carefully. If your interpretation were correct, I would have been arguing that it would be impossible for a state to exist, but I don’t think to say the least that is a very charitable intepretation. I suggest that you re-read my post and try to respond to it in full instead of just picking out one sentence and sniping at it.
If you were correct, society wouldn’t even be possible. The reason why society is even possible is because, though you might get more in the shortterm by exploiting someone who you are stronger than, you might get even more in the longterm by not exploiting them and instead just trading with them.
Just open up the second chapter of Man, Economy, and State and you will see Rothbard explain in a completely uncontroversial way the reason why, if you are stuck on an island with just one other person, who might even be worse at everything than you are, you could benefit in the longterm by cooperating with them instead of subjugating them, even if you could subjugate them really easily.
Just open up the second chapter of Man, Economy, and State and you will see Rothbard explain in a completely uncontroversial way the reason why, if you are stuck on an island with just one other person, who might even be worse at everything than you are, you could benefit in the longterm by cooperating with them instead of subjugating them, even if you could subjugate them really easily.
Ok, I will give it a look. It hard to imagine how you would be better off trading with this guy if you could just take by force what you were gonna trade for, over and over again (like the state does). But I will take a look at it.
Yeah, that seems to be the case. Statism made stable society possible. So Ryan’s ideas sort of seem to have backfired.
And using a socially developed idea of ethics as a premise - that is a justification for statism(which has socially developed, everywhere), hardly an argument for anarchy.
Ryan, Rothbards example, even though true, doesnt show why racketing/robbing isnt profitable. The scale is totally different. A group doesnt lose the entire system of trade and work incentives of society by robbing a small band of victims. Anf if the robbing group is big enough to do damage the viability of long term capital accumulation, the robbing group is the state and holds back its robbing in the necessary scale to retain future profitability.
Sam, when attack and defense are the same(which my criterion claims) then your whole formula breaks down. Z and Y will be the same thing, D cannot possibly exist. Your formula will not describe anything, as there could not exist a situation which to compare with an alternative.
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.
What I mean is that, if he has two fish everyday, you might be able to take one of them by force, leaving him still with enough food to eat, so he will be able to keep getting the two fish per day, and you will never have to pay for the fish that you get everyday, because you will just be taking it from him, but the problem is that you are disrupting his ability to accumulate savings and whatever so he can make his production more roundabout and eventually be able to have five fish per day, and then ten, and so on.
If you could have gotten one fish for fifty blueberries today, but decided to take the fish instead, you are disrupting the possibility that you might be able to get five fish for fifty blueberries a year from now, and those extra four fish each time you trade with him then might be worth more to you than the fifty blueberries that you would have lost everytime you would have traded with him before he increased his production.
The problem is that you are looking at the economy like it is stationary or like exploitation doesn’t harm the progress of the economy. But neither of those assumptions hold up. If you exploit them now, you will be making it so they won’t have as much later as they would have if you didn’t exploit them. Maybe the extra stuff that they would have in the future if you were to choose to not exploit them over time would be worth more to you than the stuff that you would have to give up over that amount of time to be able to trade with them.
That point is important, because the difference between biological competition and social competition is the fact that biological competition is a zero-sum game, but social competition isn’t. And the only reason why social competition isn’t a zero-sum game is because we can produce things. The stuff actually grows instead of remains the same. So what you are doing is assuming that the stuff stays the same over time, and concluding that it would be better to fight them instead of trade with them. Well, of course. If you assume that the amount of stuff remains the same, you are talking about a zero-sum game, and you are therefore talking about biological competition, where your gain is my loss, and my loss is your gain. What I am saying is that the assumption that you are making which makes it make sense for you to think that people would just exploit each other is in fact the exact assumption that changes between biological competition and social competition, if you know what I mean.
Maybe you should put it more complicatedly, because I have no idea what you are talking about. The stronger person voluntarily trades with the weaker person. How is that like statism?
He has the monopoly to violence in his area. His islander buddy is essentially his capital, and to make his capital most useful to him over a long period of time, he maintains good relations, respects his property, trades. Everything the modern state also does. Depending on the stronger person’s charisma and wisdom, he may even be able to de facto tax the other guy without damaging future prospects. In any case, the stronger guy is the state, and thats why he doesnt damage the other guy.
Where is his monopoly? I always thought that the phrase “monopoly on violence” made no sense, and it looks like I am now witnessing a case where the fact that it is nonsense is finally leading to an error.
Instead of calling a state a monopoly on violence, which makes no sense, call it a compulsory, territorial monopoly of the provision of law and law enforcement, which is the definition that I use, and you will find that they are just two guys on an island trading with each other, where one happens to be stronger than him and better at producing stuff, but where there is no state to be found.
If you want to maintain that statism exists in that arrangement, don’t count me among the anti-statists anymore, at least in your definition of the term. I don’t have any problem with two guys on an island trading with each other.
Sam, when attack and defense are the same(which my criterion claims) then your whole formula breaks down. Z and Y will be the same thing, D cannot possibly exist. Your formula will not describe anything, as there could not exist a situation which to compare with an alternative.
So you are saying that exploitation and defense are fundamentally the same? How so?
If X steals from me, and I pay Y to get back what was stolen for me by stealing it from him, you are saying that Y should just not return it to me? Are you saying that there is absolutely no possibility that one of those firms could “Miscalculate” and return it anyway? And would not other people who want their stuff retrieved then start buying the “Miscalculating” firms service? Would that not increase the “Miscalculating” firm’s market share, bringing in even more money? Would that not be exactly what I’m talking about with D? And would that not be fundamentally different from F?
Let’s have another whack at it. Let’s say I hire Y to protect my stuff. You are saying that Y should simply steal my stuff. Are you saying there is absolutely no possibility that one of those firms could “Miscalculate” and not steal it? And would not other people who want their stuff protected then start buying the “Miscalculating” firms service? Would that not increase the “Miscalculating” firm’s market share, bringing in even more money? Would that not be exactly what I’m talking about with D? And would that not be fundamentally different from F?
In ancapland, we all have monopolies on everything inside our private property. Governments are not lame because they have a territorial monopoly on violence and law, they are lame because they go and attack other people and stop anyone from defending themselves against its exploits.
What I mean is that, if he has two fish everyday, you might be able to take one of them by force, leaving him still with enough food to eat, so he will be able to keep getting the two fish per day, and you will never have to pay for the fish that you get everyday, because you will just be taking it from him, but the problem is that you are disrupting his ability to accumulate savings and whatever so he can make his production more roundabout and eventually be able to have five fish per day, and then ten, and so on.
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.
It’s not applicable. There are particular circumstances every time a stateless society is dominated by a state. All we can gather from these historical examples is that, under those particular circumstances, anarchy failed, perhaps due to the same reasons you argue. This does not mean that anarchy will always fail, or that the reasons you put forth are applicable regardless of circumstances.
Again, you need to stop looking at the issue so narrowly. It is not a one-off game in which the only decision is to exploit or not exploit. I don’t believe your general point is wrong, only that institutions and social norms can serve to increase the costs of thuggery. It may well be true that, in a vacuum, the stronger will find that the potential costs of exploiting the weaker are far lower than the potential benefit, but there are ways to increase the costs and decrease the benefits.
Peter Leeson’s work was mentioned earlier. In response to the exact argument put forth in this thread, I defer to… Peter Leeson: “Trading with Bandits.”
Well, I have no idea why you think that it solves the calculation problem, but, yeah, how much someone exploits someone else has to do with their time preference. The higher their time preference, the more they will exploit the person. But that has some interesting implications, because, the higher the time preference of someone, the lower their production will be in the longterm, because they will chose less roundabout processes of production and so on.
So the people who have lower time preferences will be able to run legitimate private defense agencies in a more effective way than the people who have higher time preferences will be able to run their own gangs, and the fact that the legitimate private defense agencies would be making it even more dangerous to be a part of one of those gangs, they will be making the requirement for being a part of one of those gangs be an even higher time preference, which would make them even less roundabout and therefore even less productive, and so on.
So a reinforcing circle develops causing the legitimate private defense agencies to get stronger and the illegitimate gangs of thieves to get weaker.
And therefore the stronger the private defense agency, the lower the time preference of the people running it, and therefore the lower the chance that they will exploit people in the way that you are talking about.
It’s not applicable. - Ok, i agree. We cant derive experimental results from an examination of history no matter how many linear regressions, bayesian networks, etc. (or whatever else) we come up with.
(on a side note, i have been wondering if we could use simulations, say like MMORPG to get over this hurdle. For example, I noticed the longer a WoW server has been running, the higher the price level is at the auction-house. Why … because Blizzard put an infinitely expanding money supply into the game. Its not like that gold you picked up from the hob-goblin or whatever actually came from anywhere, lol)
So the people who have lower time preferences will be able to run legitimate private defense agencies in a more effective way than the people who have higher time preferences will be able to run their own gangs,
Yes, this is a very good point. you may be on to something here. Time preference could distort the relative value of actions taken by the potential exploiter. Ill have to tink about it.
But that could also just mean that the lower time preference monopolist-exploiter will do better over time and wont be as bad b/c they don’t steal as much.
First and foremost, I’d like to note for the record that mgmcintyre has failed to respond to any of my posts. Since he’s had ample time to do so, I can only conclude at this point that he is unable to mount any successful counter-argument. Assuming that to indeed be the case, he has elected to try to “win” by simply ignoring my arguments and re-asserting his own. The rest of you can make of that what you will.
Are you claiming that charitability and morality in behavior are one and the same? If so, why? I made no such claim myself.
I fail to see how they suggest formation of state as opposed to total violence. The burden of proof remains upon you here.
Where and how has the alleged “exploitation industry” been monopolized? As far as I can tell, I have plenty of opportunities to steal from Wal-Mart. I may get caught and I may not. But the fact that the probability of me getting caught is less than one means that no monopoly over the alleged “exploitation industry” actually exists. And yes, I’m sure there have been people who have exploited in Wal-Mart and other places. However, by your logic, monopolizing the exploitation industry would imply that no other exploitation can happen whatsoever. Obviously that is not the case in reality.
I’d also like to point out that, as far as I can tell, no systematic definition of “exploitation” has yet been provided by either xarthaz or mgmcintyre. Perhaps they expect the rest of us to be mind-readers. But until they provide the definition they’re using, or until the rest of us develop telepathy, any and all arguments that they use which involve the undefined concept of “exploitation” will remain ambiguous at best.
Are you now claiming that time is subjective? Otherwise, I fail to see how you can support this claim. The burden of proof seems to remain with you here as well.
Are we supposed to take this as an analytic proposition, or a synthetic proposition? (Reference)
Thank you for your round-about admission to being a Hobbesian. It took you long enough.
With that said, why do you discount the potential (let alone the existence) of extra-state social structures? Or can you prove that their existence is necessarily impossible?
And how exactly is that the case? Has statism socially developed everywhere?
You have simply asserted that you’re considering attack and defense to be equivalent; that is, your proposition “attack = defense” can only be understood thus far as an analytic proposition. Therefore there is no reason for (any of) the rest of us to agree with this assertion. We can simply reject it and move on.
On the other hand, I have noted a way to distinguish between attack and defense without resorting to ethical argumentation. You essentially countered that time is subjective, which so far seems to be just yet another analytic proposition on your part. Perhaps I should note now that, if time were subjective, that causality (or, following Hume, the perception thereof) would be impossible (to perceive). Need I say more?
He does? You mean that it would be necessarily impossible for his allegedly enslaved islander “buddy” to fight back? Are you really prepared to make that assertion?
Having an actual monopoly on violence would mean it’s impossible for anyone else to engage in violence. No state has an actual monopoly on violence, because violent crimes still occur under its rule.
