No. I agree they aren’t the same.
So then you agree that, under some moral systems, one can act morally and self-interestedly at the same time?
Yeah.
@Autolykos
For the record, I don’t know who xarthaz is and I don’t claim any of his/her arguments. He seems to agree with what I am saying in general but I really haven’t commented on any of his posts, so don’t lump my arguments in with his/hers.
As to not answering you, I thought I had you covered when i talked about “ideological actors” and you responded. Most of your other posts have been disputing xarthaz. If I missed something, I apologize as this post has forced me to argue many different lines at the same time and I cant always keep track of everything.
Exploitation (from wikipedia)
exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for the benefit of others:
- Taking something off a person or a group that rightfully belongs to them
- Short-changing people in trade
- Directly or indirectly forcing somebody to work
- Using somebody against his will, or without his consent or knowledge
mgmcintyre and xarthaz are spot on. I have yet to see a valid refutation to the proposition (stated most recently **here **but argued many times before in other threads) that power (force) is not a good/service like all others. Great discussion from both sides, btw. Pls keep it up.
Well, if you accept what Mises, Hume, Rothbard, and many others said about power, that, because they always are a minority, the amount of power that they have depends mostly on the ideological support that the people give to it, your observation doesn’t seem very peculiar anymore. The more people support the existence and operations of a provider of law or law enforcement, whether it is a state or a private defense agency, the more money they give to them. Doesn’t that seem pretty unremarkable?
Just my first thought.
Because it can be used both to help and to harm consumers depending on how it is applied. In providing the “good”, you also have enough capital to provide the “bad” without buying anything special. Lets see what other goods and services are like that.
Internet security
Prescription Medicine (healthy vs lethal dose)
Taxi Drivers (safe driving vs threatening to drive off a cliff)
Gun Merchants (can either sell u the gun or blow ur head off)
Surgery (save life vs end life)
Skydiving (duh)
I mean practically any goods market can meet this criterion if we think creatively… In ALL of these markets, competition keeps proprieters honest.
Too late. You’re both essentially on the same “side”. So yes, I will lump your arguments together if I wish, thank you very much.
You apparently missed so much of what I posted that I find it hard to believe that it was accidental. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still your responsibility to go back and read what I wrote. Until you respond to the sections you “missed”, I will continue to conclude that you are unable to mount an effective counter against at least some of my arguments. Since your intention here seems to be what you see as “victory” (as exemplified by your attempts to unilaterally shut down the debate in this thread, and starting a new thread with an attempt at further limitations on the debate therein), the prudent course of action for you would then be to simply ignore me and hope that, in doing so, the other participants will as well.
Am I missing anything?
I sincerely hope that you are not insinuating with the above that I’m unable to “look things up for myself”. Otherwise, my counter-argument to that insinuation is well-prepared.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt (for now), I’ll assume that you’ve been using that definition implicitly in your posts in this thread. Let’s go over the items one by one:
- “Taking something off a person or a group that rightfully belongs to them” – I’d call this aggression, plain and simple.
- “Short-changing people in trade” – does this mean going back on an established agreement, i.e. defrauding someone? Or does it mean that one party to a transaction that he voluntarily agreed to later on changes his mind about how “fair” it was to him?
- “Directly or indirectly forcing somebody to work” – again, IMO this is aggression if it entails threats of violence where no prior threats or violence have been made.
- “Using somebody against his will, or without his consent or knowledge” – IMO, the first part is aggression and the other part is fraud.
So at this point, I have to ask: why do you insist on using the term “exploitation” instead of the terms “aggression” and “fraud”?
For simplicity sake you can just assume that when i say exploitation i mean what you have decided to call ‘aggression’. The use of force to achieve ends which are neither voluntary, nor mutually beneficial to all parities.
But subjugating a would-be murderer is by that definition “exploitation”, though it isn’t what he would call “aggression”.
So you have no response to the rest of my post?
With that said, you seem to be equivocating between the Wikipedia definition of “exploitation” and this new definition that you’ve provided. If you want to avoid committing the fallacy of equivocation, please be consistent.
Also, that’s not what I’d call “aggression”. See below.
Quite right. There’s a difference between initiation and retaliation. By (commonly agreed-upon) definition, initiation happens before retaliation. I define “aggression” as the initiation of either violence or the threat of violence.
Seem it would be counter productive for them to be adherents of logic no?
I don’t want to get into the libertarian justification for retaliation. We probably would agree on this point. Needless to say, prosecuting a criminal is not exploitation.
I have yet to see a valid refutation to the proposition (stated most recently here but argued many times before in other threads) that power (force) is not a good/service like all others.
I’ve yet to see a valid proposition to the effect that it isn’t, really. So makes two of us.
So seeing as my last post differentiating defense firms and exploitation firms has gone unchallenged and since mgmcintyre said the following
For the record, I don’t know who xarthaz is and I don’t claim any of his/her arguments. He seems to agree with what I am saying in general but I really haven’t commented on any of his posts, so don’t lump my arguments in with his/he
mgmcintyre, please show the following. Y’y’-Yy-Ff-Dd-X*x > Z’z’-Ff
Also show enough firms won’t “miscalculate” the above and choose D at the beginning, turning their miscalculation into an accurate calculation, and making F less profitable than D.
Dont get me wrong guys, ive myself many times used the argument of: demand for defense is vastly bigger than that of offense, making market for pda’s stable and non-aggressive.
However when assuming that offense and defense are the same thing, the argument breaks apart.
Sam, X and Y do the same thing. Even if Y does return the good, you are making the thiefs stronger(in fact you will be making the BETTER thief richer, and the lesser thief poorer), by taking part in that exchange. That is why the exchange is exploitation, the equivalence of the attacker and defender.
Autolykos, your argument on stealing/robbing in walmart is en example of the imperfections of the state, not the fundamental flaws in my criterion. My definition of exploitation IS my exploitation criterion! How can you possibly not have seen it, i have repeated to no end as the fundamental basis of my claims!
If A hires C to use action on B that B used on A(in this case, aggression or threat thereof), it is exploitative business(C exploiting A). This means that the best Bs are also the best Cs, which makes the problem created by B a paradox(better solution is also a bigger threat), and leads to B being C(through elimination of weaker Cs and Bs). This is an analytic statement, the analysis is in the realization of the homogeneous nature of the actions of B and C.
Extra state social structures can exist because they do not fill my criterion.
The time distinction between attack and defense assumes all participants to follow NAP and homesteading principle(and proportional punishment theory, which is really an infant theory as even rothbard admitted) in a specific interpretation. In real life, defense is often considered to be something that isnt defense in the rothbardian sense. But even disregarding that, the time distinction in no way addresses the fundamental claim of my criterion, that attack and defense being the same type of action(and the resulting problem of financing defenders leading to stronger attackers).
Ryan and Autolykos, a compulsory, territorial monopoly of the provision of law and law enforcement is exactly what the stronger guy is in the island situation. Even if the little guy demands(threatens) the big guy to hand over some money, the little guy is still not the state, as it ultimately rests on the judgement of the big guy(assuming that the small guy has no chance of beating him). You see, Rothbards premise already implies the state. The concept of being the undisputed strongest guy in the area cannot be seperated from being the state.
Sieben, the guy in the island example is the monopoly of violence(and law and all that jazz) both on his and the other guy’s property.
Sieben, none of your latest examples fill my exploitation criterion.
No, that’s not why. None of your examples satisfy the linked two points (posted for convenience again below).
Of course. See the points below. They are significant to me. They also remain unrefuted to me, after many discussions over the last year. Value is subjective, I guess.
It doesn’t matter. So long as he doesn’t use his force and stop others from defending themselves he is not behaving like a state. There will always be a biggest PDA, or a group of PDAs that could join together and kick all the other PDA’s butts, but the point is you have a lot more to gain by trading with people than attacking them; than by defending them rather than exploiting them.
A PDA might be able to steal my television today, but he won’t get a lifetime of customer revenues for me or anyone else. You continuously ignore the fact that competition stops the market from failing. You can’t just arbitrarily say “whoah the market will be cornered” in this one imaginary scenario and pretend like it will go unsolved forever.
There has still been no address of the internet example. Its really pathetic because internet security ought to be more capricious than physical security. At least some people know how to use guns to defend their homes. Hackers can attack thousands of targets with a click of a button and no one has any idea how to defend themselves without an internet PDA. We are not “exploited”.
You’re basically saying that the higher a company’s power relative to other companies, the more you pay… well let me modify my stupid examples.
Internet security - the better the company could be at hacking you, the more you have to pay for their protection
Prescription Medicine - the more market share the doctor has, the more likely he will be able to temporarily exploit this market share
Taxi Drivers - the more relative amount of taxis owned by crazy taxi drivers, the more likely you’ll have to pay up
Gun Merchants - they have a ton of guns.
Skydiving - yeah more market share like above…
INTERNETZ
but regardless, all the best things are unprecedented. We’re trying to provide good theoretical reasons why anarcho capitalism would work in the 21st century. Anarchism failed before because the market was unable to solve the collective action problem of defense. High communication costs allowed communities to be overrun by exogenous warlords. As our communication costs approach zero, the question must at least be re-opened. In an experiential vacuum, we have to default to theory.
Sorry, no. You have perhaps forgotten our previous discussions. Don’t mean to sound patronizing but have you ever tried “negotiating” a deal with the monopolist power (force) provider in your town/village? The higher the discrepancy in power (force) between the two negotiating parties, the higher the price that the weaker party must pay in the exchange. “Voluntary” leaves the theoretical realm and enters an existential one.
The internet security example is irrelevant. As others pointed out, all parties involved operate under monopolist power (force) providers (states) and their behavior is significantly incentivized by that fact. The cost for McAfee going rogue is much higher than mere client ostracism. Finally, I can simply unplug my laptop, and go tend my gardens if the internet security is not to my liking. Try doing that with a monopolist power (force) “provider” sitting across your dinner table.
FYI, I won’t have the time to start another one of these discussions. Just wanted to stop by say that I enjoyed this thread.