Seiben,
No I’m saying PDAs have a harder time expropriating than states, because states socialize their costs.
agreed
There’s a demand for protection. If any PDA became a threat to liberty there would arise an instant demand for protection from it…
so you acknowledge that a PDA could become a threat to liberty and that competition would result.
however, are you rejecting the possibility of a monopolistic PDA taking and holding absolutist power over the rest of anarchic society ? Why would they need to surrender security to placate the “market”. why would they need to further cater to potential customers when they had the means to take or destroy competitors hold on the centers of gravity – water, energy, transportation, food, weaponry, et al ?
No Hitler was crazy. The war was fought between crazy ideologies, nazism vs communism vs imperialist democracies. No factions cared about long term economic health. If people had to choose to pay the costs of war up front, they would have realized “OH its cheaper for me to just buy land instead of building ten thousand tanks and losing tens of millions of young men! Derp”
what would prevent hitler, mao, FDR, et al from gaining power in the form of a talented CEO of a monopolistic PDA or insurance company ?
free market forces have not/will not deterred war in the past over religious, cultural, territorial, or security motives. Moreover, if all wars were unproductive, then why have so many been fought? Were leaders (ceasar, khan, frederick, charlemagne, napoleon, hitler, et al) simply stupid and miscalculating, and will this violent afflication suddenly be removed simply because the market is now in play?
No the United States can attack pretty much any small crappy country it wants. So can China. They just don’t do it all the time because its really bad press, and it costs a lot of money.
It appears that you are admitting that the current geopolitic deters war in the same way that the free market anarchic society would, bad press and costs. I think it is unfair that many anarchists think that all leaders, particularily those in liberal democracies, are blood thirsty, self interested, and miscalculating evil rogues who start wars for self-serving motives.
You seem to not understand that the fundamental difference between a PDA and a state is privately born costs and socialized costs. If you socialize costs you run into the same moral hazards you keep hearing about with bailouts etc…
You misread my statement. I have never questioned the efficiency of the capitalist system relative to statism. I have questioned the assertion that increased efficiency will remove the factors that have led to war since the dawn of civilization. Because a PDA is more efficient doesnt mean that it will stop doing what PDAs have done since the beginning of civilization.
So if madagascar had lots of wealth you think it would be attacked? See what I’m saying is that as long as madagascar is a peaceful trading partner, there’s no reason for anyone to invade it…
peaceful nations that possessed some strategic prize (oil, minerals, sea lanes, fresh water, arable land, et al) have been annexed throughout history. Moreover, these wars have had costs yet nations still went to war because they perceived the benefits outweighed the costs. Also, many wars have been fought for reasons that had nothing to do with economics.
Are private armies immune from engaging in conflict for cultural, religious, ideological, et al motives?
Are you saying that wars will no longer be fought for economic motives (fresh water, minerals, arable land, oil, sea lanes, et al) simply because the antagonists are private.
If states are economically ignorant, they will go around attacking and trying to enslave people. This is becoming less and less the case.
liberal democracies have been very aggressive and warlike in attacking and defending against statist regimes despite the fact that they operate within the constraints of the free market. They purchase all of their materials and munitions from the free market. These goods are subject to market forces when the dept. of defense (DOD) buys them. Often the DOD rejects weapon systems because they are priced too high. So no, the USA is not ignorant economically. OUr actions abroad are severely restricted by market forces as would a PDA be.
you are probably mistaking the USA for a statist regime with a command economy like the former USSR.
No, if you have to bear the costs of your actions war becomes unprofitable. Its only when you can pass the costs on to citizens but reap all the benefits yourself, i.e. statism, that war becomes a way of life.
you are under the impression that states can spend with impunity in funding wars. This is not true. The USA has been very selective and limited in purchasing weapon systems and other defense expenditures. While your statement is true with respect to pure command economies, it is wrong with respect to liberal democracies.
Indeed, even deficit spending and dollar manipulation cannot forestall wastes in defense spending. Due to these emerging fiscal and monetary demons, the DOD has been forced to scale down or cancel numerous weapon systems and strategic goals.
still, if the benefits of war outweigh the costs then war will be the result.
Interestingly, since PDAs reduce costs, this will make conflict more likely since it will be more profitable due to the lower costs of waging war will make plunder more profitable or culture wars less costly. Heretofore, unprofitable wars will now become profitable due to lower costs to wage war . Hence more war under the anarchic system.
What are you talking about? Do you not understand the calculation problem? It says that the state will have no idea whether to use steel or aluminum or whatever because it doesn’t have price inputs. They’ll have no information about real world scarcity or actual demand for the commodity. They’ll misallocate the resources; blow it all on tanks one month and then figure out later that there’s a shortage and they can’t make planes because there was no price to tell them to cut back…
you dont seem to understand that the DOD operates within the constraints of the free market pricing system. The DOD doesnt set the price of anything it buys, the free market determines the price of skilled labor, innovation, aluminum, titanium, jet fuel, gunpowder, uranium, steel, transportation costs, et al.
it the DOD spends too much money on tanks, the price of airplanes, ships, et al will increase due to the use of scarce resources that are devoted to tanks instead of planes, ships, et al. I understand this completely. however, you dont understand that the DOD and virtually every other nation on the planet except command economies (cuba, north korea, mozamibique, et al) operated under the constraints of free market pricing.
No because governments are involuntary.
Not quite. You can run for office, become president, senator, representative, governor, et al. Moreover, anarchists have the wherewithal to change the system from within if they choose and their ideas are popular or voted for by the “political marketplace” of ideas. Or you can move to the another nation (or PDA) of your choice if you dont like the USA.
Lastly, nobody is stopping you and other anarchists from taking up arms and securing power by force as was done by classical liberals in 1776. Or anarchists can continue to whine and moan, but none of these actions are involuntary, you have a choice.
This appears to be a primary impediment to anarchic goals, mainly the lack of a plan. Moreover, this ideology is rife with hypocrisy and the lack of adherents willing to make substantive sacrifices to promote its realization since many anarchists tactily accept statist dominance and legitmacy by “gaming the system” by greedily accepting student loans, government jobs, et al.
You go out and attack everyone in a geographic area and force them to pay taxes to support your idea. A PDA with built in checks and balances is still private; funded voluntarily on the market… it is not a monopolist of law.
What would prevent a PDA from achieving monopolistic force and “crossing the rubicon” and going absolutist ?
In contrast, the overwhelming majority of Americans and other citizens are confident (based on the absence of serious civil disorder) that their governments with its checks and balances and decentralization of power politically, economically, and militarily will not become absolutist.
i am not convinced that by gutting liberal democracies’ global dominance and replacing it with an unproven anarchic system (if that is even possible) will not play into the hands of statists who will use this as an opportunity to take power from naive well -intentioned anarchists.
the most feared word to a statist is liberalism, not anarchism. since liberal democracies have been the bane of all absolutist ideologies since 1776.
IN sum, I think the statist would welcome the elimination of liberal democracy and I bet that the ranks of anarchic cheerleaders would be rife with statists lying in wait to gain power once liberal society crumbled.
Well the “actors” in the global stage act irresonspibly because they are states, not individuals.
the issue is more complicated than you are stating. the leaders of states are accountable – see 2010 when the democrats will be voted out en masse. Moreover, it appears that obama will be voted out unceremoniously in 2012. The political and economic infrastructure that supported these malinvestors will also lose power, privledge, and income. Unquestionably, liberal democracy is less efficient than ancap society, however it is unfair to make the sweeping assertion that the political actors and their cronies in the private and public sector do not suffer irrepairable losses themselves from inefficient, wasteful, and corrupt policies.
moreover, we have seen that professional managers do not suffer and are not accountable when the corporations that they control fail and the shareholders lose everything they invested. The free market is rife with instances of professional managers who act irresposibly without risk to themselves as companies collapse while these managers move on to the next corporate victim with lucrative golden parachutes in tow. and if they are exposed, they still have hundreds of millions (even billions) to retire comfortably. the free market is victimized by crooks and miscalculating leaders too. Many times these corporate crooks only need one “heist” to guarantee them a comfortable life of leisure.
and when this corruption occurs within a dominant PDA (corrupt leaders are attracted to power, like flies to shit) then anarchic society crumbles, absolutism emerges, and we are back to square one as in 500 BC.
I dont think the hundreds of millions of citizens who acknowledge that statism is a vice are willing to dismantle the very system (liberal democracy) that has rolled back the evils of statism for an unproven, potentially vulnerable system.
note that the extreme hate for classical liberalism that is a very disturbing trait of all anarchic movements, this has a strong statist undercurrent.
if a successful revolution or evolution occurs dont be surprised to see yourself on the chopping block by co-conspirators who you thought were ancap, but were statists laying in wait – as they are always in times of strife waiting to take the spoils from well intentioned humanitarians and idealists who have done the heavily lifting to force change and the removal of liberal society.
So you make a deal with the PDA’s CEOs and commanders, saying that if 3/5 the insurance companies vote a certain way, they can hit a killswitch that will set off bombs in the heads of the top officials, and a new set of leaders will move in.
your going to have to find another example, I dont think any competent CEO is going to assent to a bomb in his brain. And if any would, I dont want this fool defending me. The point is that a PDA could/and will go absolutist, there are no substantive checks to this eventuality.
First of all, its going to be hell for the statist to attack any PDA. They’ll lose more attacking than they’ll gain by looting everything… secondly if you think the way liabilities are distributed is stupid, you can always offer to buy up both the liabilities of main and boston, since by protecting both you can offer lower premiums to the customers. The market well automatically set up PDAs along territorial significant lines.
I disagree, statism fears competition because competition exposes its shortcomings. An anarchic society represents a survival level threat to statism, as a result they would risk everything to prevent the anarchic regime from reaching critical mass of being able to fend off attacks. However, I think that there are so many obstacles to an actual anarchic society being formed that the statists dont have much to worry about right now. Moreover, i think that statist elements will be heavily embedded within an emerging anarchic society that they would likely take over the reins of power at its inception. in contrast to the well intentioned naivete of the pure anarchists, the statist is a devious brutal thug who could easily brush aside (isolate, torture, and kill) the idealistic anarchists.
You have yet to prove that it really is profitable for private forces to engage in plundering.
if the costs of plundering decrease through the productivity of the anarchic system, then heretofore unprofitable plunders become profitable. Moreover, not all wars are fought for economic motives. you break up the former USA its melting pots will coalesce into a mosiac of disparate, balkanized, distinct, vastly different, and distrustful cultural, racial, ideological, et al enclaves - - war will result, and not for economic motives alone.
We don’t have free riders because people simply buy insurance, transferring the liability of the many to the liability of the few
you know that the USA did not intervene in WWI and WWII until absolutely necessary. Moreover, democracies like switzerland and sweden did not intervene at all. In an anarchic system, it is near impossible to get a free rider to come to the aid of a neighboring anarchic enclave under attack by a statist rival.
The free rider problem is not internal, it is among neighboring anarchic enclaves protected by disparate competing PDAs. THey will not risk resources to defend a competitor, more likely they will hope for a statist victory so they can pick -up some new customers from the detritus of war.
Bidding down costs doesn’t mean “cheaping out”. It means that profits are marginal. It would be stupid to pay for a defense plan that only had a 50% chance of working…
I stand corrected.
you are correct and I should know this. Of course, the pursuit of profit within an anarchic society would lower costs and improve quality at the same time, while profits as a percentage of overall economic activity would be miniscule. In contrast, with a statist command economy where profit is vilified, there would be mountains of waste and cost overruns since there would be no reward or incentive to lower costs and improve quality.
thanks for reminded me of the obvious. I was starting to sound like a fool leftist.
State elites don’t care about the common man. Not in any time and especially not in war. You rely on some sort of aesthetic duty of state elites to rise up to the challenge and suddenly care deeply about the proletariat. Its simply unrealistic.
I agree that statist elites dont care about the common man, but if they fail to win wars they lose power and oft times end up on the chopping block. they are motivated to continue to hold power and losing wars in very bad for statist leaders. As a result, they will not hold anything back to win wars. History has shown that statist regimes can fight vigorous wars and die by the millions to defend themselves, they are not the pushovers that you claim. if an anarchic society took the statist threat for granted, it would likely end up on the ash heap of history as so many peaceful, efficient, and free societies adjacent to aggressive statist regimes have painfully learned.
False dichotomy. People pay PDAs BECAUSE they want to survive. Profit is a signal for the market to adjust to these needs. Without profit, states are just blindly guessing when to prioritize security.
i agree, also profit rewards innovation and improved productivity that BOTH lower costs and increases quality.
Yeah it helps but im not relying on it.
if the anarchic society was moral. Would it favor the use of nuclear weapons, premptive attacks, preventative wars, et al ??
and if not, do you reject the notion that these aggressive measures have no utility in insuring societal defense and survival against external threats ?
I actually think that in terms of “global actors” there would be fewer. It doesn’t make sense for there to be a hundred fractured african countries when really they are all at risk to the same warlords etc… To overcome their collective action problem, an insurance firm could offer to buy up all their liabilities and then defend then. So before you had a bunch of uncoordinated governments unable to organize an effective defense against wandering warlords, and after the insurance/PDAs get involved you have a small number of much larger organizations defending the territories.
who would defend against a rogue insurance/PDA ?
moreover, we already have an effective mutual defense pact on the geopolitic — it is liberal democracies which have never waged war against each other. for example, it is highly unlikely that the USA (the most warlike liberal democracy) will attack canada, UK, belguim, netherlands, germany, sweden, norway, finland, denmark, france, spain, austria, japan, chile, costa rica, et al.
I will respond to the balance later. I am worried about accidently deleted what I have already posted.