no doubt, any private fringe rebellion can kill innocents and damage infrastructure, but they rarely are a force for societal change, and when change occurs it results in a statist government. Moreover, you cant wage an effective guerilla campaign without an extreme measure of coordination and central governance. the most successful insurgencies are the ones that are centrally led, trained, funded, and planned – not ad hoc decentralized campaigns from disparate forces trying to achieve the same goals.
Tell that to the insurgents in Iraq, who were better than the coordinated and central government forces. Besides, PDA’s wouldn’t be ad-hoc, they would just be decentralized and disparate. And that doesn’t mean they can’t coordinate their efforts in order to minimize costs and redundancy of efforts.
however, I will acknowledge than when expertly arranged and nurtured, mutual defense alliances can deter war and provide for more security. History and logic confirm both benefits and liabilities of seeking out alliances.
Cool
I disagree.
the purpose of a private enterprise is to make a profit, period. If a net profit can be gained by annexing a neighboring ancap enclave for its natural, material, human, or geographic value – then the PDA will engage in armed conflict. moreover, the purpose of a private insurance company is to make a profit. If they can fund profitable enterprises, they will – irrespective of whether these enterprises are peaceful or violent.
Come on guy. Keep a thread of conversation in your head. Remember the past, and what I’m responding to. You stated this:
Rettoper - “I thought that the purpose of these private defense agencies was to engage in actions that reduce the frequency of conflict. I wouldnt be motivated to insure a PDA that was hell bent on creating buffer zones in competitor PDAs markets thereby inviting conflict.”
Clearly, I was responding not to the purpose the PDA has for the PDA, but what purpose the customer has for the PDA. Because that is what you were describing when you stated “I thought that the purpose of these private defense agencies was to engage in actions that reduce the frequency of conflict.” I mean unless you meant that that is the way that profit is generated by the PDA, which clearly goes against you stating that war can be profitable for a PDA, as it would increase frequency of conflict.
in sum, if all war was unprofitable, then why have so many occurred?
If armed conflict was unprofitable, then why have so many PRIVATE enterprises and individuals engaged in armed conflict ?
I specifically pointed out this strawman to you before. Can we remember what I said? Oh wait, it’s written down somewhere, let me go see.
Sam - “The argument isn’t that all wars represent a net loss to the aggressor, nor that PDA’s will not attack if they determine that they will net gain from an aggressive war. The argument is that aggressive wars in anarchic societies with PDA’s will not be profitable.”
So remember, we aren’t arguing that war is not profitable for the aggressor in all cases. Just in the case of a PDA existing in anarchist society in full swing.
you are making the oft used, never supported fallacy that once ancap society is formed, the utility of armed conflict in gaining a net increase in wealth, security, fame, power, et al will disappear.
Other than the fact that I supported it, multiple times, and you have yet to respond to them or have agreed with them. Here, let me quote a few of them for you.
C) Insurance companies will refuse to pay for losses taken from an aggressive war
G) They will lose customers that they already have who don’t like aggressive wars.
F) The risk of becoming outlaws by being involved in an aggressive war will dissuade most of your lower staff, causing your costs for lower staff to sky rocket.
E) Stock holders will hardly see the immediate benefits of an attack, and will quickly pile out of the company in the short term, cutting off further funding. There’s also the potential for stockholders to become outlaws, so that adds to the cost of being a stock holder, further driving down it’s value.
And the Pièce de résistance
ANYBODY who works for said firm would instantly become an outlaw. The price you have to pay someone to become an outlaw is astronomical. Let’s just take the 100 billion dollars. If you have 100,000 people working for you, that’s 10,000 dollars each, and that’s without ever paying your stock holders. You’re telling me that 100,000 trained professionals (roughly what it would take to invade and hold Iran, and that’s being generous) are going to become outlaws for 10,000 dollars? 100,000 dollars (1 trillion dollar price tag)? 1 million dollars (10 trillion dollar price tag)? Mercs right now make 150K-250K a year without being an outlaw (I don’t know if that price will hold). You’re going to pay them 4-7 years of pay to make them an outlaw? And that’s if you can get 10 trillion dollars to invade Iran. The upfront costs for becoming an outlaw firm is prohibitively expensive, and that’s before you even see any dividends for stock holders. It’s absurd to think that a PDA with existing customers, big enough to invade Iran would even consider the offer.
So yeah. Each of these refutes the idea that a firm will be able to both become an outlaw by starting aggressive wars, and profit from it.
It appears you semi-responded to this last one, but not really. You didn’t get to the main gist of my argument as I’ll show later when I respond to that argument.
moreover, since ancap society is more efficient than statism, we may see more conflict since the net costs/conflict will decrease. in a statist world, the costs of waging war are high due to inefficiency thereby reducing the net gain of a possible war. in contrast, the costs of waging war in an ancap society are smaller due to increased efficiency thereby increasing the opportunity for gains in heretofore unprofitable conflicts.
Well you didn’t back off so here we go. You miss the other piece of the puzzle. If anarchism makes the costs of conflict go down, what does it also do to the cost of defense? It makes the price of that go down as well, thus allowing people to have access to more of it, thus making the cost of attacking go back up to what ever level it came down from. In fact, because anarchist customers will be more motivated to defend than attack, there will be more R&D into defense than offense, and the costs of defense falling will drastically out strip the rate of falling costs for offense. Why will anarchists be more inclined to defense than offense? Because there are relatively fewer offensive applications that won’t lead you to becoming an outlaw, as opposed to defense.
again, private companies are in the business of making money, if the PDA can gain a profit from armed conflict, then they will do so. and they will find venture capital, investors, banks, et al to fund the war for a percentage of the plunder.
Agreed. If the PDA can gain a profit from aggressive armed conflict, it will do so. But it will not be able to gain a profit from aggressive armed conflict, thus, they won’t do so.
in turn, these profitable PDAs can increase the quality of service to customers through capital improvements, R&D, marketing, et al. In contrast, overly timid PDAs and the companies that insure them will not have the resources to compete successfully against more aggressive and profitable PDAs
This won’t happen because aggressive PDA’s won’t be profitable.
we did not invade iraq “to be paid”. it was a preventative war motivated to protect global oil markets, prevent non-state faith based terror groups from obtaining WMD, punish and deter human rights violations and genocide, promote representative government in the middle east, and counter violent islamic extremism.
in sum, the war in iraq was the culimination of years of bad policy that was dumped in george bush’s lap. Within this environment, the following options were available to the US:
Irrelevant since you already admitted good Mutual Defense Agreements will lead to less war, and thus a more profitable PDA.
in sum, a PDA could easily find funding to annex 70% of the world’s most accessible oil reserves.
in addition, would a profitable large PDA reject $100 billion from the saudi king to destroy iran’s nuclear capability in a series of low cost low risk air strikes ?
Not if those actions made all it’s employees/stockholders outlaws.
investors dont give a rats ass who a rogue PDA aligns with as long as its actions turn in a profit, period.
what is all this talk about outlaw ?!
if an outlaw or outlaw behavior turns a profit then the outlaw will be considered a hero to those that funded him.
By asking that question, you’ve shown you haven’t even done cursory research into anarchist law. Listen to this essay by Robert P. Murphy, since it’s much to long to get into right now. It essentially means that anarchist courts will no longer have you in their courts since clearly you’ve violated their laws and will no longer abide by their decisions in regard to this. Until you abide by their decisions against the aggressive wars, you will never be able to use any of those courts, which makes you fair game to anybody who wants to steal from, enslave, or kill you. That is a really REALLY large cost to you, and so the PDA firm who want’s you to do something which will make you an outlaw, has to pay you MORE than not being an outlaw is worth, which would be significantly higher than 4-7 times your annual salary, since it has to support you being an outlaw for the rest of your life, and since you can make that much without being an outlaw in 4-7 years time.
verizon and any other private enterprise doesnt give a rats ass about cooperation. they dont cooperate with competitors to be good citizens. they only cooperates when they can profit from the action and increase market share over their competitors. I guarantee that verizon or any PDA would never expend resources or cooperate with a competitor if it wasnt profitable irrespective of the damage to the rest of the industry of society in general.
when have corporations rejected profit for the good of competitors or the community in general? and why should they? if they arent in business solely to make money they fail.
end of story.
You state the obvious, and then expect me to think that is a refutation of what I said. It isn’t. I’m ARGUING that it IS profitable to cooperate with competitors in defense from a mutual threat since taking it out now, when you have an ally, will be easier than taking it out later when you don’t. But again, you already agreed to that.
i dont know exactly what you are getting at here. My point was that if you have disparate competing PDAs, with disparate funding sources, and numerous free riders responsible for protecting vital centers of gravity it is infinitely more difficult than a single statist military, a single statist command and control, and a single funding source (no free riders)
What I was getting at was a point towards this thread of the conversation. Which was about PDA’s not statists. A PDA won’t be able to invade and take over because they don’t yet have the passing on of costs to unwilling customers yet. Those unwilling customers will resist, thus making it harder to extract resources from them. That is all. It was another point as to why a PDA won’t become a state through invasion/forced monopolization.
it doesnt matter what kind of war is fought. if it is profitable, it will be fought irrespective of whether it is just, unjust, preventative, defensive, et al.
Yes it does, because it has everything to do with whether or not that firms employees become outlaws or not.
anarchism doesnt eliminate immoral behavior, it simply makes it more profitable to engage in immoral wars since those funding and waging the war receive 100% of the plunder.
Says the man who’s always saying “Give me the quote where I said it’s Impossible for liberal democracies to go to war”. So, what am I about to say hmmmmmmmm. Did I say anarchism eliminates immoral behavior? By the way, Anarachy also makes those funding the war pay all of the costs of war, thus offsetting the plunder.
in contrast, you will have peace within a geopolitic of liberal democracies because those funding war (taxpayers) dont receive the plunder of profits from war, hence the wars for profit are far and few between and the leadership that engages in them are summarily voted out in the next election.
Unless they trick/obfuscate the voters into thinking it’s not a war for profit.
how would you or anyother ancap adherent know what the market would do ?!
i am constantly amused when ancap adherents claim they know how the market would perform under certain circumstances. If ancaps are so cocksure about predicting market mechanisms they why are so many of them dependent on government funded student loans ?
in sum, you dont have a clue how market forces would react to competing PDAs and their interests.
So how exactly is it that I’m predicting what the market would do. All I said is that if a PDA could convince an insurance company that they would have to pay out less money if the PDA under took a preemptive war, that the insurance company would allow it. How is that at all predicting whether or not the insurance company would be convinced?
Also, that’s rich coming from the man who stated the following
the bottom line is that a PDA or a cartel of PDAs will emerge as a hegemon
and…
enclaves are essential to a profitable PDA. Why, it is far easier to have most of your customers in the same location, it is far easier to defend them from threats then to have them spread out all over the friggin countryside thousands of miles apart. so naturally PDAs will represent specific enclaves for economic reasons. however, I agree that funding isnt dependent on geography, but quality service IS!
So how is it that you accuse me of pretending to know what a market would do, and then you state this? And protecting one enclave isn’t mutually or economically exclusive with protecting another. And one PDA protecting an enclave also isn’t mutually or economically exclusive with another PDA protecting the same/overlapping territory. All those situations can be equitable.
also, if I am a PDA I dont need to convince anyone but venture capitalists, investors, and customers that a particular action is profitable. If a competing PDA is a threat to my security then nuking them is a reasonable course of action to protect my investment from loss.
If I’m a statist or liberal democracy, I DON’T HAVE TO CONVINCE ANYBODY. And if you do it in an anarchist society, you are instantly enemy #1 on everybody’s radar. Also, you have to convince your liability insurance company to back you in even owning a nuclear weapon, which again, is explained in the anarchist law link I provided earlier. It essentially goes, that for anybody to do deals with you, they need some guarantee of follow through on contracts, and some guarantee of restitution if you violate their rights. Thus you need proof of having a liability insurer, who is on the hook for all rights that you violate. They in turn, get to regulate you as part of that contract, up to and including, limits on the amount of possible damage you can do, thus never ever ever letting you even touch a Nuclear weapon with a 10 foot pole (since there is no real application that a nuclear weapon can be used without causing massive damage that that liability insurance agency would be on the hook for). Again, for more, please listen to that essay.
manifestly absurd,
if that was the case we wouldnt have invaded iraq in 1991. we would have continued to engage in a lucrative oil trade with them and kept the global price of oil low.
You can’t be serious. Really. They invaded Kosovo. We had a Mutual Defense Agreement. And please, please argue with the principle of charity. It’s not like I said trade stops all wars. I said generally as in, some things could over come that disincentive when it comes to states (like insane dictators). Your doing the exact same thing that you harped on everybody else for doing. So get your head out of your ass.
Also, I know what your going to do. You’re going to jump all over the insane dictators thing and jump around screaming “Insane CEO’s, Insane Board Members”. And then I’m going to have to remind you that profit seeking firms will not allow such people to become their leaders, since those types of people will lose them money for all the reasons posted before this.
liberal democracies dont wage war because we share a common bond of respect for life and liberty, AND those that wage war (military), those that command war (civilian leadership), and those that fund war (taxpayers) represent disparate and competing interests that tends to reduce the chances of war being fought for other than security reasons. moreover, unlike ancap PDAs, these entities are all transparent. in contrast, PDAs in an ancap society would develop weapon systems, train, fund, and execute provocative actions in the shadows thereby increasing distrust and global tensions.
moreover, liberal democracies understand that they dont represent a threat to each others security, only statist regimes need fear liberal democracies.
But really, if you want a list of reasons why that’s bullshit, Here you go. That at the very least, stands to the same standard of proof that your Iraq 1991 example of free trade not stopping war.
absurd assertion. preventative war and a war to annex resources of any kind can be the same. a PDA can attack and take a strategic target to prevent a threatening competitor PDA from obtaining vital war making resources or a geographically critical position.
history is full of peaceful, non-aligned, and prosperous nation-states and anarchic enclaves being overrun by large armies seeking to deny the strategic value of the enclave to another competitor.
I didn’t assert anything. I told you the argument you made, and the argument you quoted had absolutely no relation to each other. If a preventative war and an annex resource war are indeed the same, then that firm and it’s employees won’t become outlaws, not because it’s an annex war, but because it’s a preventative war.
diseconomy of scale doesnt mean that a walmart like PDA cant out compete smaller PDAs. It simply means that when a PDA reaches near monopoly status it may not be as efficient as when it was slightly smaller. it doesnt imply that it will lose power relative to smaller competitors.
What do you think inefficiency does? It loses you market share, and thus power relative to your competitors. That is just mind boggling to read.
the bottom line is that a PDA or a cartel of PDAs will emerge as a hegemon and then your “utopian experiment” is shit out of luck and subject to the whim of a single CEO or corporate board, hence you have absolutism or oligarchism.
No see, you are pulling this straight out of your ass. You have zero evidence or even logical arguments as to why PDA economies of scale will overcome the dis-economies of scale and calculation problems, and allow a firm to grow to such a massive size that it could over come all of the previous objections stated to become an outlaw firm that will be able to take over an entire anarchic society. Becoming an outlaw firm is a MASSIVE cost due to having to pay every one of your employees enough to become an outlaw. Lasting monopolies have never existed without state interference, and while that certainly isn’t a convincing argument to me and the other people here, it is certainly an argument that has convinced you before. Sure a dominant firm may arise, but the very second it tries to forcibly expel its competition, it loses all of its employees and stockholders who don’t want to be outlaws, and the firm collapses since it’s costs have just risen astronomically with all of its funds leaving. If it’s a cartel of PDA’s, why wouldn’t one or two of them refrain, and gain all of the rests market share, employees, and stockholders cash at a ridiculously low cost since a whole bunch of them just quit their jobs/sold their stock, and all without becoming outlaws. Cartel’s fail when ever its not in their members interests to be faithful to it.
since 1776 we have seen unparalled improvements in civil and political rights within liberal democracy, especially if you have been a slave, woman, or didnt own property. moreover, the system has demonstrated that it is dynamic. Today in Europe we are seeing dramatic reductions in the size and scope of government as the people see that the welfare-warfare state in untenable.
the same will occur within the USA starting in 2010 and progress further in 2012. admittedly the process is slow, however the upside is that it is largely peaceful and substantive change can and does occur.
nonetheless, the next 20 years will be critical. if we cant reduce the size and scope of economic coercion that is damaging societal health and well being then the ancap alternative will become more popular, sadly the statist alternatives will likely gain favor to a greater degree.
however, I will be on the ancap side, if the heretofore successful although not perfect, experiment with constitutional federal republicanism fails.
You respond with unanalyzed trends to praxiological arguments. All the same though, you’ll be on our side eventually. Since 1913 our economic freedom has been deteriorating faster than our civil liberties have been growing, and we’ve been killing more an more people as we go. Excuse me if I don’t see the trend towards freedom as a whole.
PDAs consolidating and merging will lead to a hegemon PDA which in turn will lead to absolutism. so when your PDAs seek out competitors to align with in mutual defense arrangements you might increase security while the downside is that you centralize security which is more dangerous to societal security from the establishment of a single hegemon PDA with most of the munitions, trained fighters, and control of vital centers of gravity.
if you want lasting peace — democratized the globe.
See above.
thanks for the link, however I will read it later since I dont want to lose what I posted.
It linked to a Wikipedia article on welfare.
valid argument. increased trade and interaction among disparate groups leads to reduced tensions and greater cultural integration.
however, liberal democracies offer the same trade and interaction benefits among disparate groups without the uncertainty associated with surrendering security to disparate, competing, and shadow PDAs
why gut an existing and popular system that offers the same benefits that you even admit, MCDONALDS.
Because certainty exists in liberal democracies. The certainty of having your half your income forcibly taken from you. The certainty of liberal democracies turning into corporatist states, and then into fascist states. The certainty of your money losing its value. I would rather be uncertain of those things, than certain.
Mcdonalds exists in more places than just liberal democracies. Clearly something else is the cause.
moreover, no ancap has convincingly explained to me why PDAs are even necessary if market forces eliminate the need for armed conflict.
If nothing else, then states will still exist, and so armed conflict may be necessary. Everybody pays the PDA hoping they will never have to use the service, and just like medical insurance, it uses all of that money towards the customers that do need defense. War would be considered like a natural disaster, and the PDA is a protection against it.. The go where needed, and all their customers not in that disaster are helping pay for it.
they will defend their own tiny religious, ethnic, racial, communal,et al enclave – but they will be less inclined to defend an adjacent enclave that they share no common heritage, history, or political system.
free riders will also deter effective resistance to neighboring areas under attack. for example, there is no provision to ensure that everyone impacted by a threat contributes to its defense. moreover, a free rider who is not protected could be in possession of an important strategic or geographic resource or objective. essentially, a PDA would have to expend resources defending a non-paying customer in order to protect paying customers or investors.
in reality, if my PDA cant defend me, I simply move my business to the bigger aggressor PDA thereby rewarding aggression.
if you cant beat them, join them.
paradox of defense within an ancap society
in sum, I havent read much on the free rider issue. I am interested to learn how ancap society adjusts for this eventuality.
if you dont respond convincingly I will read more from hoppe, rothbard, murphy, dilorenzo, et al.
Here’s an argument against free riders I made a few years ago.
Road owners would have a much larger incentive to protect an entire area. They would probably own a network of roads in an area and would pay for the defense of those roads. Seeing as they would service the people in that area, they would add into the cost of the use of those roads the defense of those roads. Everybody would be paying, there would be no free riders. Just as there would probably be a network of road owners figuring out how to allow people to easily use their roads interchangeably (think roaming with wireless companies) they could also work together to coordinate defense, and reduce transaction costs. If any network of roads refused to add to the defense fund (or provide for it’s own), it could easily be made policy within the road owners association to cut off connections from roads owned by the defecting firms, or putting defense fund tolls on all exits from the defecting firms road network.
It’s just one solution I came up with when I first became an anarchist. Robert P. Murphy has another essay on private defense about the free riders. But rest assured that the larger businesses will ensure that there is enough money being paid in order to protect their businesses, even if there’s a few free riders. And again, the state has a much larger free rider problem e.g. welfare, social security, Medicare, Medicade, Public schools etc. I’d ask you not to continue to argue the free rider problem in this thread though, since another thread was created for that.
who says you have to take and hold anything but the centers of gravity ?
in the case of iraq, you send in a small navy and marines to take the strait of hormuz and charge exorbidant fees for iraqi ships to transit.
over 50% of the worlds most accessible oil reserves pass through this choke point.
How much do you think you could charge before it becomes cheaper to move it through another route? How long could you hold it before another firm was paid just as much to take you out, and without having to pay their employees to become outlaws? Not to mention that if you fuck up, and you don’t succeed in taking over the strait, you are still an outlaw firm, and now you don’t have that income. By the way, That’s 40% of the worlds seaborn oil shipments, and 20% of the world’s oil shipments. Care to explain the how you came about to over 50% of the world’s most accessible reserves?
it is ludicruios to think that a for profit entity would try to take and hold iraq in this manner.
moreover, it is equally ludicrious to think that the USA liberated iraq for short term profit
in sum, those arguing the efficacy of ancap society dont have a clue how ancap civilization will play out ----otherwise they would be putting their “money where their mouth is”
in reality, most of the ancaps on this site are pimply faced college kids getting subsidized with taxpayer money in the form of student loans.
probably, few have ever met a payroll or ran a business for themselves.
It’s also ludicrous to think that a firms employees will all accept becoming outlaws for chump change.
And with that, I think I’m done. This has taken way too much time. I’m gonna go program something.