Sure, most corporations eventually fail. However, most of those are small start-ups that the owner realizes won’t be profitable. If 10,000 PDAs are formed and only 10 ever get big, that’s not a problem at all. But I guess you are trying to illustrate a situation in which there is only 1, and it fails. What happens then is that if there is unmet demand in the market for security, one or more new PDAs will be formed. There doesn’t have to be a delay in which the society is vulnerable, either; if you understand the catallactic function of the entrepreneur, you will immediately realize that failure of a large PDA is one of the future conditions entrepreneurs must predict, and that such entrepreneurs would line up resources and staff in order to effect a seamless transition. And if security is valued highly BUT new PDAs aren’t ready to take the slack, people will be willing to pay much more for the services of the dying PDA until others are ready, keeping the PDA afloat and keeping everyone protected.
Also, central organization does not provide any more of a threat to the society than decentralized organization does. I think we’re using the terms to describe two different things. I’m using centralized to mean with a central, hierarchical command structure. A centrally organized PDA could have a CEO who is in charge of everything, lower ranking officers that command their subordinates, and private grunts at the lowest level of the chain of command. In contrast, decentralized organization would be something like Al Quaeda, will lost of “cells” that operate somewhat independently. The market would determine which mode of organization gets used. Neither is necessarily more likely to overrun the society.
Defending hunches would be a non-logical defense. But I’m not. My point was that “hunch” is an attack word that has no place in a carefully reasoned debate. It is only really useful in the following kind of argument: “That’s a hunch so ur wrong.” I would have hoped that you would label them assumptions instead. An assumption is something unproven that a logical argument relies upon. Using that word would have shown me that you were trying to engage me, not attack me. It also would have shown that you understand logical structures and terms.
No, it was a thought experiment. Since you obviously didn’t get it, I’ll distill it into something perhaps easier to understand: PDAs that collaborate provide a better service to their customers. Therefore, customers will favor those PDAs. Therefore, PDAs will tend to collaborate.
As to the first part, if such a mutual defense pact enables the PDAs to provide better services (defense vs. big states), then customers will reward these companies. Fantastic!
As to the second, how do they “take power from the citizenry”? I can’t even figure out what that phrase means when no government is present. Please explain.
As to the last, a mutual defense pact with a state will have several effects:
- Strengthens peaceful relations between the PDAs and the state, making war less likely.
- Results in the PDAs being better defended against large threats.
- Creates the risk that the PDAs will get stuck defending the state after it starts a stupid, aggressive war.
Customers will like the first two effects, but dislike the third. Customers will decide whether the pact was a good idea, and transmit their decisions through the price system. There isn’t a problem here.
By the way, this isn’t a “hunch”. It’s a thought experiment. You picked up the word “hunch” from Grayson Lilburne, and you use it far more often than it’s justified. Give yourself a little credit; call your imaginary situations thought experiments, not hunches.
Right. A very small anarcho-capitalist society would have a rather difficult time defending itself from large states. Perhaps such a society would use nuclear deterrent. Perhaps tribute. Perhaps they would threaten assassination. Perhaps such a society would be extremely undesirable to conquer due to its decentralized nature and dislike of government. Who knows? Such a society certainly has options, though.
I don’t assume that. In fact, the “sudden” part was an assumption you made earlier that I disagreed with! I think an anarcho-capitalist society would probably emerge gradually. But that’s just conjecture. The point is, I don’t make that assumption.
Besides, your point deals with how to form an anarcho-capitalist society. I thought we were debating whether such a society is sustainable and desirable. Thoughts on bringing about such a society belong in a tactics discussion, not in a sustainability one.
No. That’s a clever phrase, but it’s unproven and unscientific. The very word “corrupts” implies a value judgement.
Right. Because “society” doesn’t have any best interests. It’s a collective. People have interests. Not collectives.
All right, Aristotle, let me explain something to you. Whenever two people make an exchange, they both feel they are increasing their subjective utility. That’s right, everyone is better off. With peaceful, voluntary exchange, there are no losers. Everybody wins. They don’t break even. They win. Wow. You mean that everybody is better off? Yes. Wait, but what about exploitation? Doesn’t exist. No one was forced to make the deal. Everyone acted in their own self interest. Not just the corporation. Both sides to the exchange did.
An argument similarly fallacious to yours would be the following: How can corporations ever make money, considering all their customers act in their own self interest? And the answer is that people only exchange when the exchange furthers the self-interest of both sides.
Your fundamental misunderstanding here is your assumption that no one is rewarded for innovation without some sort of coercive monopoly privilege. Although I don’t have a history book with me, I do know that throughout history there have been other incentives for innovation; sometimes rich families pay for it, sometimes kings and queens, etc. In the modern world, a lot of people innovate for free. Just take a look at all the free software available at sites like this. At the link, you can find free programming compilers, free video editing software, free screen capture programs, and a host of other categories of free stuff that somehow got built without any monetary profit at all.
For a moment, let’s go back even further, to the beginning of humanity. In a world in which patents were not only nonexistent but inconceivable, somehow fire, the wheel, language, and agriculture got invented. How? Why? Those are difficult questions to answer. But there certainly must be some incentives for innovation besides monopoly privileges.
He is. Anarcho-capitalism == pacifism. It’s just that libertarians can’t spill blood for offensive (coercive) purposes. Defensive/retaliatory is perfectly acceptable.
Don’t trust your common sense ion realms of logic, science, and economics; it’s usually dead wrong. The average person’s common sense tells him that welfare reduces poverty, price ceilings make things more affordable, government is necessary to prevent exploitation of the consumer, and all sorts of other things easily disproved by even a cursory understanding of economics. So the fact that liberalism has an “obvious” efficacy is not at all a strike in its favor; what’s obvious to most people is simply wrong.
No problem. I was raised in a household where grammar was extremely important, so I notice grammatical irregularities much more than other people.