liberal democracy while not perfect appears to be the “flavor of the month” on the geopoltic. of course the argument that ancap is a failure since it hasnt existed is not irrefutable it is something to consider.
why hasnt ancap society been created and sustained ?
I havent heard any convincing argument to explain this away. moreover, the overwhelming majority of the masses and elites in business, arts, politics, science, et al reject anarchism as a viable system.
I specifically stated that it is indeed hard to initially create an anarchist society. I’m not arguing that, Because it has absolutely nothing to do with how an anarchic society would defend itself once it’s already up and running.
Is it really even something to consider? If babies or toddlers always died when stranded on tropical islands, what exactly would the implications of that be on debating whether or not an adult would survive stranded on a tropical Island? It would have no implications on that scenario. I don’t really care why it hasn’t initially started for the course of this argument. That is another discussion.
insurgents are not game changers, they are simply terrorists. only statist armies can take and hold territory. indeed, the insurgents in iraq are finis. likewise, the insurgents or VC in vietnam were extinguished in the Tet offensive and they were a non-factor for the rest of the war. likewise, the northern alliance was locked in a stalemate with the taliban until the US intervened, then the taliban fell in less then one month with virtually zero US casualties.
Failed to see the main point. The insurgents worked better than a statist regime on a roughly equivalent scale, even with the lack of centralization, which specifically goes against your claim that centralized armies are better than decentralized in matters of defense. It matters not if they lost. They did better.
on the flip side, it is an equally hypothetical argument to claim that defending a competitor PDA from a statist threat would incur the wrath of the statist regime and INCREASE the chances that your ancap customers would be attacked. essentially what you are advocating is an entangling alliance that our founding fathers warned about.
Except for the fact that they now know about a mutual defense agreement, which would dissuade them, and it’s also harder for them to reach you since you still have the buffer. And how are the founding fathers even relevant to this? Unless you are appealing to authority to somehow back up your argument.
i dont see the logic in rewarding a PDA that attacks. 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.
No. The purpose of a PDA is to ensure their customers property is protected from agressors. The reason the insurance agency isn’t on the hook for the losses taken by an aggressive firm isn’t because they aren’t contracted to pay for losses of the aggressive firm. They don’t pay because nobody cares if you break your contracts with outlaws. How can an outlaw firm expect other agencies to honor their contracts with them, when they are clearly aggressing against innocent people. The insurance company would be underwriting the PDA for any losses they take while acting in a way that they are lawfully allowed to do (read: defend people’s property). And again because of the mutual defense agreements and the buffer zones making it harder to attack, yes, insurance companies would insure PDA’s creating buffer zones.
again the flip side to this argument is that entangling alliances lead to war. ---- see world war I for proof.
Of course you choose to ignore my section on how World War I had an initial aggressor, and amongst PDA’s mutual defense agreements would stipulate non backing of aggressive firms. It’s an insurance agreement. They aren’t going to pay you or help you out if you purposefully ram your car into a tree. Therefore, they won’t be entangling, they will just be alliances.
and good luck finding low rates for your PDA and its CEO “george bush” who likes to engage in defensive battles protecting other PDAs area of responsiblity from statist regimes thereby running up costs to both customers and insurance agencies.
George Bush “protected” Iraq for free. They didn’t pay him. PDA’s however, won’t do it for free, as stated earlier. They will be taking payment, and be performing duties that they are insured to do (read: Defend people’s property). So yes, the mutual defense agreement will make it more likely that a PDA are pulled into conflict through other countries, but make war waged against that PDA and the rest of the firms in that mutual defense agreement less likely because it is a deterrent against invasion. On net, it will be less likely to go to war. Especially when they don’t back PDA’s who are involved in aggressive wars.
on the flip side, what would prevent PDA X from aligning with statist regime Y to divide the spoils of PDA Z. statist gain power and land, PDA X gains market share, win-win.
By the very nature of PDA’s and states, they are inherently at odds with each other because a state is a territorial Monopoly on defense. And again aligning with a state and aggressing makes them an outlaw and they lose all of their customer base, stock holders and staff as shown later in that argument, all of which would happen before or immediately after they made the agreement with that state. It is both a short term and a long term lose situation for the PDA.
again the flip side is a set of entangling alliances with competitor PDAs and their problems. is that cost effective ? was the allaince system in place prior to WWI effective ? Is the USA engaged throughout the globe in a similar arrangement and two wars effective ?
i think that ancap PDAs will be inherently disinterested in neighboring PDAs in order to reduce costs and forestall being drawn into endless sectarian and regional conflicts.
Again, see above for WWI analogy. Also, see above for PDA payment argument. You’re thinking of it all wrong. Imagine it more like a cellphone service. Verizon wireless has their own contract customers, but it also has pre-paid phones that you can buy. It’s not like they will refuse to serve you if you have an sprint plan. Also, verizon wireless sells bandwidth on their networks all the time to other companies. Wal-mart has a service called smart talk which is actually entirely based on Verizon’s network. An analogous PDA service is completely feasible because this setup overcomes all of the same objections that you think exist, but don’t effect firms decisions in reality.
civil disobedience works in rural backwaters like vietnam, afghanistan, et al — but it doesnt work in a relatively modern urban center like kosovo, iraq, et al. the centers of gravity (food, water, energy, transportation, commerce, et al) are more centralized and can be controlled by an invading force which compels potential insurgents to behave. moreover, who said the statist invader was interested in “nation building” – see china and russia to learn what happens to insurgents.
Obviously securing the centers of gravity will be up to the PDA’s, and those customers will obviously be paying more in order to secure them. Iraqi Insurgents are still able to make costs of invasion astronomically high, even in Iraq. Sure given any sufficiently one sided battle, an anarchic community will fail at defending itself. But that doesn’t make the existence of insurgents any less of a deterrent. And remember, we aren’t talking about a state invasion. We’re talking about a PDA, who has yet to install a state in which it can constantly extract resources from the populace, and civil resistance will stop them from doing that, or at least make it much more costly.
I agree, and this will handicap ancap societies from engaging in preventative and preemptive war which must be “on the table” to insure security. see israel 1967.
If a preventative and preemptive war is truly that, then it is not an aggressive war. The PDA’s will surely have to convince the insurance agency of that, but if they can convince the Insurance agency that there will be fewer losses from a preventative war then an invasion by that state or firm, and that that state or firm will indeed invade absent the preemptive war, the insurance agency will underwrite it.
i dont understand this one. do you mean that insurance companies will pay for non-customers defensive expenditures if they deem this effort prevented their insured PDAs from having to fight ? That makes sense since they are rewarding a non-customer or PDA who is doing the heavy lifting against a common threat. however, when the statist regime finds out that insurance company X is funding PDA Y then you can bet anarchic enclave X is going to get a cruise missile up its ass. this is called total war and it implies that any source of funding or military support however indirect will invite attack, generally air missile or bombers. perhaps, nuclear.
We aren’t arguing about statists, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s profitable for an existing PDA to start an aggressive war. This clearly doesn’t apply to them. Or if it does, then other PDAs will have all the same measures that that PDA has. And what is your obsession with enclaves? It’s not like the insurance agency can’t have it’s money and resources in different places. It’s part of being an insurance agency. They will contract with their own PDA’s to protect their property as well (which would obviously include stopping cruise missiles and nukes from attacking them). It’s not like that risk will stop insurance agencies from arising being profitable. Also, good luck convincing the world that nuking an anarchic society during your aggressive war was a necessary maneuver. And this isn’t an argument specifically against anarchy. Nuclear threat is an argument against ALL societies.
here your constantly jumping back and forth from preventative war, defensive war, aggressive war, et al. it is all relative, one societies aggressive war is another societies preventative war. if france invaded germany in 1939 while the wehrmacht were engaged in poland than WW II would never have happened yet by your definition if the french were an ancap society they would lose insurance protection and that would dramatically undermine its ability to defend itself against future attack.
No, France wouldn’t lose insurance protection if they could convince the insurance agency that that they were going to be invaded later on as well. And the insurance agency would have been much more willing to allow it since they would be monetarily on the hook for all of the damages from the next invasion.
in sum, basically your entire argument parrots what happens in the global geopolitic between states. ancap society will produce nothing earth shaking or new. same ole’ same ole’ crap.
the only sure thing in the geopolitic today is that liberal democracies dont fight each other, if you want lasting peace and free trade, look to liberal democracy.
You still haven’t refuted that “same ole’ crap yet.” The reason liberal democracies generally don’t fight each other is because of mostly free trade. Anarchies will have that same condition, only in much greater quantities.
with respect to iraq, a pacific PDA or industry of PDAs that neglected the iraqi WMD threat would inherit an energy market of $10/gallon gas.
(1) ancap PDAs would remove sanctions from iraq and disengage.
(2) saddam would then be free to develop nuclear weaponry as was his intention if/when sanctions were removed,
(3) saddam would then engage in aggressive war throughout the middle east with the intention of capturing 70% of the worlds most accessible oil reserves. essentially you have a significant percentage of the worlds oil supply in the hands of a miscalculating meglomaniac. the markets would price in the uncertainty associated with this development and gas would skyrocket.
(4) good luck developing alternative sources of energy with no intellectual or property protections in ancap society while 95% of transportation grinds to a halt for years until alternatives ramp up.
(5) lastly, saddam had previously committed the worst case of environmental terrorism in history, any attempt to attack him after he obtained a nuke could likely lead to an irradiated oil supply in the middle east and $10/gallon gas for years.
What the hell was that? That had nothing to do with my point. This entire section is about a PDA invading in an attempt to occupy the invaded land and extract it’s resources, not a preventative war. Also throwing out IP as another bullet point in your favor, when you know full well there are arguments that IP doesn’t encourage, but retards IP development which you haven’t even come close to refuting, is moronic. But I will leave that to another debate for now.
of course, poorly run overly aggressive or too timid PDA will go out of business. eventually a single dominant PDA will emerge through increased market share, mergers, and acquisitions (economy of scale) . then you will have no safeguards or mechanisms in place to prevent against absolutism.
You have to prove economies of scale. You can’t just say it as an argument for monopolization of an industry. Do you even know what diseconomies of scale are? How about the internal calculation problem?
lastly, whats wrong with working within the framework we already have ? namely, liberal democracy has built in mechanisms, checks, and balances to forestall a return to statism that is not present in ancap society.
a balanced budget amendment would protect us against frivolous or politically motivated schemes like wars on terror, wars on poverty, wars on pollution, et al.
it is far easier to work within our constitutional federal republic then to scrap a system that has undermined statism, dramatically increased civil and political rights since 1776, and increase standards of living to unprecedented levels.
capitalism and peace can be achieved within liberal democracy, we dont need to risk changing to an unproven perhaps unsustainable system when all that is required is to further attenuate what we already have and that the overwhelming majority of citizenry across the globe acknowledge is a good system, albeit not perfect or even perfected yet.
How about the fact that those checks and balances are failing, and they will never be put back in place due to a massive public goods problem inherent to democracy, which is knowing your government representatives, Researching and knowing the correct policy to put in place, knowing how your representatives would vote, going out to vote for that representative knowing how little your vote counts, having to go against major lobbies with way more money, marginal interests, and time than you. You expect a ridiculous amount of people to do that. Sorry, it’s never going to happen. For more, I’d really really REALLY recommend you watch this lecture on it.
This in fact is the real force that anarchists have to deal with. Until we can over come this just once, we will never see an anarchist society. But, we only have to overcome it once. Liberal Democracies have to deal with it forever.
the similarity between the PDA and the statist military is that they are both self-serving and they both have competition. The statist competes with other nation-states, while the PDA competes against other PDAs. of course it could be argued that the PDA is more accountable to its “customers” then the statist despot, however the bottom line in any company is profit. moreover, if the PDAs managers can gain a profit at the expense of either the company’s long term health or the customer-- history has shown that they will cash out their golden parachutes and retire to some tropic villa.
moreover, a dominant PDA run by an ambitious and charismatic CEO (alexander, ceasar, napoleon, et al) might be inclined to gain unlimited power over its competitors and 100% market share by assuming absolutist power.
That isn’t an argument against Mutual Defense Agreements. Not even close.
private companies are not infallible, in fact 99% of them go out of business from failed policies. while this isnt a problem with virtually all goods and services since it involves creative destruction or an allocation of resources from unproductive enterprises and industries to productive enterprises and industries within national defense or ancap societal defense failures are fatal and they only need to occur once to end the ancap experiment once and for all.
Liberal Democracies are not infallible. What’s your point. Again, this isn’t an argument against Mutual Defense Agreements, nor PDA’s. Also, the failure of one PDA’s business structure does not mean the entire industry’s failure. The other PDA’s will acquire very cheaply all of the failing firms remaining resources, and be able to use those resources for defense.
free riders. the ancap society would have them, statist would not
Bullshit.
moreover, i made the argument many times in this thread and previous threads that ancap society would be decentralized mosiac of many distinct and disparate ethnic, cultural, racial, religious, et al enclaves . all of them with no common experience or bond to bind them together. In contrast, liberal democracies like the USA are a melting pot that has a strong societal bond of common history, politics, heritage, et al we are strong because we are different and bound together nonetheless.
In anarchy, Gold (not green) is the only color that matters. Also, that’s a pretty lame argument. The reason the U.S. is a melting pot (to the extent that it actually is) is because of freedom of movement for capital and labor. This would be even grater in anarchy. And they would have common businesses serving them all. Why do you think McDonalds is a business on every corner of the earth. Why do you think that the Geico of PDA’s wouldn’t have customers throughout the anarchic society? There’s no reason for them to not cater to each of those enclaves even if they did exist, which they wouldn’t because of that same melting pot you claimed.
moreover, ten of thousands of Americans have sacrificed their lives to defend constitutional federal republicanism partly because they believe it to be effcacious, as opposed to ancap society in which nobody appears to risk more than hot air to defend or promote.
They also did it before there was even a constitution in place. What makes you think people won’t defend their communities? Your enclave model is bullshit as shown above. People are charitable, and Anarchy will make them more so, not less. People fight for ideas. Anarchy is an Idea, and would gain the same support as any constitution could muster if it were just a wide spread. But even if they weren’t, it’d still be better defended than your average liberal democracy.
in summary, if anarchism is to be taken seriously for more than a fringe ideal, then it is about time for some adherents to put some skin in the game instead of tacitly acknowledging the superiority of liberal democracy by enjoying in its fruits, albeit with some whining.
I’m sure you’ve heard the critical mass argument before, so this is just a rehash of an earlier refuted bait.