“The natural order is people or groups of people battling for resources. Capitalism arises when the state protects private property. Some trade might exist in the “natural order” but not full-blown capitalism. Even if you had anarcho-capitalism, landowners could form de facto states.”
Thoughts?
Nope. I don’t see any actual thoughts presented in that argument.
Either way, try
http://candlemind.com/projects/progclub/file/michael/getEducated.php?listID=16
and specifically
and
It is true that for capitalism to exist individual rights must be protected. It is not true that such protection can only be provided by a government.
Suggest OP reads For a New Liberty by Rothbard.
I thought for a long time that landowners might form de facto states too, band together, etc. But such would require aggression, and could be legitimately and legally opposed in such a society. Each man is a sovereign in a free society, but they would be unable to become a sovereign over any other man.
One man could subject himself to another voluntarily, but the minute that consent was removed he’d have a problem and would not be able to remain a sovereign over another. Thus, it would not be sovereignty at all, but license, and license can never become a right unless that right is voluntarily granted (which in the case of owning a person, can never happen, but license over goods could become right if purchased or given).
The real problem for a free society is how to deal with the person that, in the face of a crisis, stands up and screams, “Someone has got to do something!” It’s this sentiment that has resulted in states in the past, imo.
There has got to be a free-market answer for that person compelling enough to ignore any aggressive solution.
I think we do have those solutions and could make a stable free state. We would do it with voluntary subscriptions, with protection services and the like, and ad hoc corporations to achieve specific goals.
Need a bridge built? Get together an ad hoc group, form a corporation on the spot with all concerned people as members, put up money and solicit investment to complete the bridge. Once complete, those who financed and supported the project can even earn fees from the new successful bridge.
Now -that- is how we can replace and supersede everything that government is and does.
Begging the question. Capitalism (in the Misesian sense) arises when private property is protected. But the question is whether the state is necessary to protect private property.
Again, I refer to For a New Liberty by Rothbard.
Property protection is nothing more than a service, like any other. It can be provided by free market courts and private protection services better and cheaper than by a monopoly coercive government provider.
If the government produced cheese and maintained a monopoly by law on cheese production, would we question whether a free market can produce cheese?
“Begging the question. Capitalism (in the Misesian sense) arises when private property is protected. But the question is whether the state is necessary to protect private property.”
This is my guess as to why this perspective doesn’t convince minarchists and other folks who believe in the legitimacy of the state:
The problem comes about when you define law as a service. Certainly, there is an instrumental aspect of law provision which is susceptible to the same criticism that any state provided service is (that the market is more efficient). However, there are non-instrumental, constitutive capacities of law, which I think is really what supporters of the state are worried about when anarchists talk about abolishing the state, and this capacity of law is simply defined away in libertarian political theory.
There are requisite arrangements of social status and recognition for “free markets” to function (such as the ability of participants in a market to engage in free negotiations), and as far as I’ve seen libertarians simply assume that these condition hold as opposed to explaining how they could emerge and reproduce themselves. The state was the institution that created the wide spread conditions of equality that allowed for market capitalism to arise in the last 400 years, so when you talk about getting rid of that institution you need to have some type of explanation for how the constitutive effects of the state will be replaced, not just assume them into existence and focus on recreating its instrumental functions.
Rothbard suggested the creation of a Libertarian legal code to take care of that. To this the courts of a region would pledge themselves and live by, and compete on the administration and procedures to carry out such a code.
So, I don’t think it’s absent from libertarian thought, just hasn’t much been focused on. I for one am dedicated to seeing one created and implemented in my lifetime.
Exactly. One of the most important functions of the state (perhaps the most important) will, according to Rothbard, be replaced by a libertarian legal code that law providers will bind themselves to for some reason. Sounds like constitutionalism without any account for the institutional structures necessary for its reproduction. For all practical purposes, I would call that absent from libertarian theory.
Until this issue is properly understood by libertarians, much less adequately addressed, your arguments will be unpersuasive to the vast majority of people and for good reason.
That’s what I hope to address in my eventual proposal for autarchy, is a system that fills in the gaps to implement in reality a libertarian legal framework, which would incorporate a legal code.
It would be pseudo-constitutional, but only apply to those whom subscribe to that document. Much as one might choose to subscribe to the US constitution. And in the course of any transaction, the transactional partners would need to declare in advance under what rule set they are going to conduct the transaction in case of dispute. Subscribing to a set of basic legal principles is the answer.
Eventually, a region will have a stable set of free-market produced ‘rules’ that replace the function of legislatively-produced law in western societies and these can be considered always active, essentially returning us to free-market common law.
This can include people entering an area, such that you can create entire societies around a basic set of principles. And of course, the libertarian’s most basic law will be voluntaryism, of which everything else is corollary.