Rettoper, you still here and trying to plan out the New World Order?–liberty student
liberty student, are you still delivering ad hominems deviod of fact, logic, and empiricism?
ad hominems deviod of fact, logic, and empiricism?
Rettoper,
Style note, to avoid aggravating your readers. You tend to get hooked on formulating and then endlessly repeating mantras like the above. This practice is exceedingly odious to the average reader.
sam,
Arguing that investment and venture capital will flow to a hegemonic PDA DOES NOT back up your position that a hegemon PDA will exist.
Of course, if investment and capital flows to a security firm it can more easily become hegemonic since it will have more resources to plan, train, procure, design, execute, et al.
moreover, during periods of volatility and uncertainty, the citizenry will logically flock to the PDA that is the strongest if only for security.
in sum, capital goes to profitable enterprises. The more profitable and competently run – the more capital that enterprise will receive. Eventually a PDA hegemon will emerge. At this point, nothing can stop it from assuming absolutist powers.
and why wouldnt it ?
Since doing so would reduce conflict (statist regimes are generally stable and without random violent crime), eliminate costs associated from competition, and bring wealth and power to the PDAs investors, staff, and management.
We are arguing about whether or not a PDA will be able to gain wealth and market share through aggression, and hostile takeovers. Arguing that investment and venture capital will flow to a firm who is indeed gaining wealth and market share through aggression and hostile takeovers DOES NOT back up your position that a PDA will be able to gain wealth and market share through aggression.
alexander, ceasar, tamerlane, khan, frederick, napoleon, lincoln, victoria, roosevelt, bismarck, stalin, mao, et al gained power via aggression.
By what logic and empirical evidence can you cite that debunks the utility of great leaders to gain power through violence ?
history has debunked your assertion that armed force cannot be used to gain power.
moreover, the hegemon PDA may not declare itself until its competitors have exhausted their resources in endless minor conflicts. Perhaps, the emerging hegemon only needs to use coercion as a last step in gaining power. perhaps, the top 2-3 PDAs will peacefully form a cartel during a weekend conference and declare absolutist power in the name of societal “peace and stability”.
in sum, we dont know that manner in which an emerging hegemon will achieve absolutism, we only know that profit is the PDAs motivation and that with power comes greater profit with hegemony comes even greater power and profits.
and lastly, you havent argued why a PDA wouldnt want to expand. and why it is impossible for a hegemon in the security industry to emerge. You have continually disagreed with all of my assertions without offering anything substantive other then your personal opinion deviod of fact, logic, or empiricism.
Yeah, checkmate if you ignore the queen in the way of your threatening bishop. Exactly the same argument if you completely ignore the statement to the right of the bolded text. You know, the part about disassociation, or the lack thereof. And no, I haven’t assumed that any court has a monopoly. The court is simply there to be a signal. Another court very well may have a stronger signal, and may have a different ruling. That doesn’t change the fact that court rulings will signal who is in the right to the people who trust them.
And then you deflect from blatant to non-blatant situations. In that case the PDA who simply attacks without taking a dispute to a court will be assumed in the wrong until proven otherwise by court rulings.
Like alexander, ceasar, napoleon, hitler, et al – the “early game” they will play by the rules, cultivate alliances, secure flanks, use diplomacy to curry favor and lull adversaries into complacency – however the “end game” will involve coercion and conquest.
In sum, we simply cannot guess what machinations will lead to the establishment of a hegemon. however, none can deny that (1) a conflict for supremacy will exist in anarchic society, (2) that eventually a hegemon PDA cartel will emerge, and (3) that nothing will stop this hegemon from becoming absolutist.
however, all you have done is cite your personal opinion to discount these events from occuring when history and human nature have confirmed that they are not only possible, but likely irrespective of the ideological system in place.
if anarchism was anathema to statism and absolutism, then why have so many statist regimes formed out of the detritus of anarchy of failed and collapsed states ?
both a free market and the absence of a central government have existed myriad times throughout history in the instance that a state collapses from either internal or external forces – yet never in history has a viable and sustainable ancap society emerged from this detritus. Indeed, it is usually statism
One of them will be shown in the wrong according to courts, and people will trust the courts they trust on those decisions, and not trust those decisions from courts they don’t. They will also disassociate from those who simply have a viking mentality to fight it out instead of going to the courts. And that comes with all the baggage of disassociation I mentioned before
and let the courts and the untrained masses enforce their decision once a PDA cartel reaches hegemon status.
for example, the CEOs of the top 2-3 PDAs representing over 75% of market share (and military power) decide to form a cartel to stop violence in anarchic society. Moreover, they will pick a favored arbitration firm to manage disputes (with their oversight). Also, the insurance industry will welcome the establishment of a hegemon since this will dramatically reduce conflict to latent levels.
your “trusted” courts and those that support them will likely end up on the chopping block.
And when they do that, their signal is completely destroyed in the minds of people who previously trusted their judgement, which destroys the purpose of going to the court in the first place, namely, to convince people to not disassociate with you when you act violently towards someone. It will never be profitable to simply “rule on the side of x” for that reason.
how will the courts and the unarmed masses enforce their decision on a hegemon PDA that has just declared itself ?
amusingly, I can see it now: the lawyers for the “trusted” arbitration firm are handing out citations and judgments to the tanks as they roll over the courthouse gates.
I will respond to the balance of your post when I am back to work on Monday or hopefully sooner. I am getting kicked off the computer so IT dudes can work on the system.
Dear Retopper,
Please direct all your complaints about a HEGEMON PDA 1000 TANKS KEKEKE to Washington D.C. They will be sure to listen.
On another note, in a post-statist world, the people would be very aware of the risk of a PDA getting too big. Which is a reason why economies of scale may not be a valid argument in the market of defense. For every additional bodyguard and rifle, the reluctance by the part of customers of employing that PDA goes up, with the proportionality varying according to that society’s past experiences with a state. The more weary it’s population, the more a PDA will have to answer their concerns.
If even you, a STATIST APOLOGIST, can foresee the risks involved with a PDA getting too many guns, imagine a FREE MAN living in ancap. Don’t you think he will be specially reluctant and demanding towards a PDA, and that the PDA would either have to trimmer down beyond a certain point, or have equivalent assurances, transparency in regards to it’s policies?
You really think people would be like, “sure, I’ll pay this guy three thousand dollars a year even though I don’t know what the f*** he’s doing with my money, and may be building up an army to reestablish a dictatorship and enslave me and my children for a couple decades”
Believe me, no, believe in YOURSELF, because if YOUR theory has any merit, and of course it does because no anarcho-captalist hasn’t thought the same thing at least once, then it WILL BE considered by man all around, to the best of their own intelligence, and the PDA’s will HAVE to answer accordingly if they want any money.
…
I was going to quote and dissect your post, but really it was so full of garbage that I’d rather not double the amount on this page. I’ll just list what you did wrong.
- Keep insisting rogue PDAs can be profitable even thought you admitedly don’t know how. THEN DONT SAY YOU’RE SURE?
- Conflated coercive and entrepreneurial action like they’re the same thing;
- Implied communist dictators could run profitable rogue PDAs (lol really); completely piss on everything that’s austrian even though you had already admitted multiple times that the free market is more efficient,
- Thinks a PDA is just as likely as a president in mishandling nukes. No, the incentives are not the same. Try again.
- Trying to sell liberal democracies and separation of powers like its the new hot sh**. It is a pile of crap alright. But it ain’t hot.
- Says rogue PDAs have more privacy and control in a free market, while giving the state a free pass.
- Says rogue PDAs are more efficient in a free market, while forgetting that defensive PDAs are at the very least proportionally as efficient. And that the state is more effective at coercion anyway.
- Completely ignorant on how anarchic law systems can work and saying crap like PDAs don’t care about justice, big LOL to that. Is he even reading anything?
Thats about it.
If you don’t mind me from intervening(:p) for a second, couldn’t the same thing be said of our classical liberal ancestors who saw first hand the dangers of tyranny? I mean early Americans were alot more scepitical of consildated power than we are today, but we’ve gradually grown to accept it as an inevitability that absolute power will continue to grow. So why wouldn’t the same thing happen to an anarchist enclave several generations down the line as a PDAs continues to gather more market share and consilidate power?
YEah well what happens in the future, if like, we all happen to become coke addicts and then there’s these UN pimps offering to give us some if we sell ourselves into slavery for the new intergalactic order and they trick us into signing the contract with lines of cocaine over a holographic glass table whereby they own us and our descendants for eternity? Doesn’t that completely renders any effort we put today into not getting raped 24/7 by the state meaningless?
No, in fact it doesn’t.
And we haven’t gone back to monarchy, we’re still in what is arguiably a representative constitutional republic even though the constitution is considered obsolete.
Lol for irony.
yuberries,
Keep insisting rogue PDAs can be profitable even thought you admitedly don’t know how. THEN DONT SAY YOU’RE SURE?
trying to predict how a hegemon PDA gains power is equivalent to trying to predict how a microchip manufacturer would gain monopoly status. If you can predict and explain how any company can be profitable then perhaps you should be running one.
In sum, your argument is absurd. Of course, I can cite numerous examples of profitable firms and predict that future firms will be profitable while not knowing the manner in which these future cartels or monopolies emerge.
Conflated coercive and entrepreneurial action like they’re the same thing;
you need to read my previous posts, it is getting ponderous trying to educate those that dont. Unlike other industries, the actors in the defense industry are directly engaged against each other.
In sum, your argument that competing PDAs wont engage in armed conflict with each other is absurd. By your definition, PDAs would never engage in coercion to achieve either profit or security, yet why do PDA exist if not to protect customers/clients from other PDAs or statist threats?
Implied communist dictators could run profitable rogue PDAs (lol really); completely piss on everything that’s austrian even though you had already admitted multiple times that the free market is more efficient,
you need to read my arguments more closely, or ask for clarification if you dont understand them. When I cited Mao, I was challenging the assertion that all coercion is rejected by the masses. I used the example of Mao to illustrate that often in history coercion or armed conflict is supported by the masses. I did not, nor have I ever stated that armed force by statist entities would be more effective in qualitative terms than anarchic entitites.
you stand corrected.
Thinks a PDA is just as likely as a president in mishandling nukes. No, the incentives are not the same. Try again
a hegemon PDA would be more reckless than a constitutional federal republic since power within the PDA is opaque, centralized, and profit driven.
In contrast, power with a constitutional federal republic is transparent, decentralized, and driven by security.
in sum, within a geopolitic dominated by democracies the utility of nuclear weaponry would be eliminated since the deterrent effect of nukes would not be needed. IN contrast, within an anarchic society the use of nukes would be driven by profit and security hence the threat would always exist.
Trying to sell liberal democracies and separation of powers like its the new hot sh**. It is a pile of crap alright. But it ain’t hot.
if there is a substantive argument in this statement, I have not been able to find it.
Try again.
Says rogue PDAs have more privacy and control in a free market, while giving the state a free pass.
your ignorance of the seperation of powers within a liberal democracy is palpable.
read my previous posts (try reading them before making ad hoc unsupported statements from the hip):
funding for war (taxpayer), allocation of funds (congress), command of forces (civilian executive), oversight of forces (Congress), waging of war (military), intelligence gathering (bureaucrats in at least 12 disparate agencies), profiting from war (defense industry), defense of homeland (state militia and law enforcement) AND all of these agencies and entities are transparent to each other.
Moreover, unlike a PDA – the land, sea, and air assets of a constitutional federal republic are competing and disparate branches.
IN contrast, within an anarchic society all of these powers are controlled by the single PDA.
in sum, your cavialer disregard and ignorance of the real threat posed by a hegemonic PDA cartel or monopoly is dangerously naive at best.
Says rogue PDAs are more efficient in a free market, while forgetting that defensive PDAs are at the very least proportionally as efficient. And that the state is more effective at coercion anyway.
Read my posts. I have stated repeatedly that a statist regime can easily overrun a smaller anarchic society by sheer mass alone irrespective of the qualitative edge of the anarchic defense. Moreover, a strategic defense posture is an invitation to predation since a society does not expand its power base by engaging in defense measures. The PDA that becomes dominant is the one that is expanding its market share and wealth relative to its competitors, hence more aggressive.
Of course, on a tactical level defense has the advantage. However, history has shown that brillliant and aggressive leaders can overcome the force multiplier of defense easily. Crack open a book on military history.
Completely ignorant on how anarchic law systems can work and saying crap like PDAs don’t care about justice, big LOL to that. Is he even reading anything?
your statement is dangerously naive at best.
No law has sway that cant be enforced. Moreover, both actors have to submit to arbitration in order for anarchic law to be effective. My assertion is that the dominate PDA will simply underwrite its own arbitration firm and disregard all others that dont rule favorably.
In sum, your courts have made their decision, now let see them enforce it. lastly, we dont know the manner in which a PDA will attain hegemon status, perhaps it would align with a hegemon arbitration agency thereby insuring the profitability and power of both.
fortunately our founding fathers and other philsophers understood the absurdity and folly of your naive views and created a framework that would limit statist abuses, albeit it not perfect and still evolving.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…" – Adam Smith
And we haven’t gone back to monarchy, we’re still in what is arguiably a representative constitutional republic even though the constitution is considered obsolete.–yuberries
I am always amused by the absurd arguments of the ancap against liberal democracies (the dominant system today) as being "obsolete"while the utopian system they prefer has never existed. Moreover, virtually every single leader in the arts, business, politics, science, academia, et al reject anarchism out of hand. In addition, the percentage of adherents among the masses is less than fringe.
The paradoxical absurdity is that many of these “diehard” ancaps are students attending college on the public dole or tenured academics at public universities. Many have never met a payroll, managed a business, or contributed capital to a successful enterprise. Moreover, while tens of thousands of our finest young people are risking life and limb to defend an “obsolete” system in hellholes halfway around the globe – ancap adherents wont risk a trip 10 feet from their refrigerators and computer desks to defend anarchism.
indeed, the fringe ancap will be voting, paying taxes, complying with local, state, and federal statues like everyone else, albeit with considerable whining and empty bellowing.
Try saying that fast 100 times.
We’re not Ancaps because an Ancap society in attainable and tenable. We’re Ancaps on principle. I’ve made this point to you already. Furthermore, we understand (or, at least, I do) that principal is irrelevant to you and that you seek what attainable and tenable, that is, liberal democracy (although, ironically, liberal democracy has always failed).
Appeal to authority and appeal to popularity.
I was gonna say “hasty generalization”, but then I realized that you put “many” in your post. Congratulations for not making a hasty generalization (something that has become common of you).
Btw, since when is signing up with the state to kill innocents (or, otherwise, commit crimes) with stolen resources a way to “defend anarchy”?
And when they do that, their signal is completely destroyed in the minds of people who previously trusted their judgement, which destroys the purpose of going to the court in the first place, namely, to convince people to not disassociate with you when you act violently towards someone. It will never be profitable to simply “rule on the side of x” for that reason.
Your views on human nature are dangerously naive at best.
When a coalition or group of people cannot attain desired ends by peaceful means, they will use force. Moreover, those that are skilled at wielding force (the defense industry) will use this skill set to attain ends.
it is absurd to think that large interest groups will forego the attainment of desired ends simply because private arbitration agency X says they are not entitled to these ends. These masses will align with a favored PDA and challenge the courts for power. Indeed, these challenges may be slow in materializing, but they will be inexorable.
In sum, power will be in the hands of the largest and most effectively organized interest groups and the PDAs that align with them – not the courts.
It would not be lawyers who “declare war” on a firm, it would be a signal to everybody in the society that looting said firm is only going to be stopped and punished by said firm. That signal will reach everybody in that society, including it’s employees, bank, stockholders, and indeed, other PDAs. It’s declaring a free for all on the company, and anybody who partakes will still have access to non-violent dispute resolution, and will have an untarnished reputation of non-aggressive behavior, thus not causing people to disassociate.
This is a societal house of cards. A PDA that took valued resources that were being squandered or mismanaged by a competing firm would be applauded rather than vilified.
A firm that hoarded resources or charged exorbidant fees for passage through a strategic transit point would be inviting predation if they didnt defend these valued strategic resources effectively. Moreover, only the interested parties would be involved in any armed conflict. Most disinterested actors would simply stand by on the sidelines. once the aggressor secured the valued resource, business as usual would resume and the defeated firm and its customer would be condemned for their shortsightedness and poor management.
in sum, aggression is only punished when it is not successful. History has shown that when wars are fought those not directly involved do not risk wealth and security to any great degree. Moreover, once the matter is resolved, the aggressor is forgiven and the war forgotten.
So now we’ve taken to comparing French statists versions of defense to free market defense as if Andre Maginot had the ability to voluntarily contract with people to become their PDA. But again you make baseless assumptions about a market by simply pointing to one instance where something not even remotely similar failed. Charging people for defense subscriptions is a revenue stream which already is a profitable venture. Do I really have to point to private security to show that defense is profitable? There’s no need to attack that fact if you are arguing that Aggression is simply more profitable then that. But again, you assume you are correct, and then use that assumption in your argument.
THose engaged in preserving resources and power rather than expanding power are doomed to be overtaken by a more aggressive competitor. In sum, you cant gain and hold power by maintaining market share.
An aggressively run PDA will see capital and power increase relative to a static foe. Indeed, all firms desire to increase in size and wealth. The PDA would not be any different.
In sum, the PDA(s) that expands their power, by whatever means, will eventually gain hegemon status. Once this status is attained, then the freedom associated with utopian ancap society dissolves very quickly.
So let me see if I get this correct. Specialization of labor leads to creating a industry. Then once an industry is created, economies of scale occur, and they coalesce into a hegemon. So without the economies of scale, they would not become a hegemon, and specialization of labor has done nothing to create a hegemon. Therefore the hegemon argument really does rest on economies of scale. Wait, Isn’t that EXACTLY WHAT I SAID IN THE FIRST PLACE? Let’s look back…
strawman.
A PDA of “accountants” could be dispatched easily if a warrior class was in society at large. You need both specialization of labor among those with a skill set to wage war and an expected union of these warriors in order to dominate society.
it would be a no-brainer that a coalition of the top PDAs would eventually get sick of unfavorable arbitration rulings against them and simply join forces to assume absolutist power.
Moreover, society might welcome (in the short term) the elimination of armed conflict that would come with a absolutist oligarghy.
In sum, it is grand naivete and folly to think that a coalition of dominate PDAs would NOT align to take power, wealth, and security from the rest of society.
What provision or a praxalogical a priori debunks this ?
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…" Adam Smith
And we haven’t gone back to monarchy, we’re still in what is arguiably a representative constitutional republic even though the constitution is considered obsolete.
Why haven’t we gone back to monarchy?
Mainly because the relatively free people would resist going back to clearly less free states of subordination. The statists, knowing that, don’t even try, because they would be wasting resources trying that route. They’re fine the way they are now. Statists get to slice a bigger pie.
The way to rule now is by convincing man he has to coerce his neighbor for his own good, and the neighbor to the man, with the statist as the supreme authority. That way everybody is coerced into a social contract that nobody signed. Man is freer in degree, yes, but subtly subordinated still, in a different way.
Because the powers that be have fabricated a way that they believe morally justifies their extortion of society. Democracy effectively depreciated the need for monarchy. Democracy is a far more efficient way to pillage the individual than monarchy ever was.
Cite any physically violent private entity and I’ll tell you how it benefits from the state. It will either be directly helped, by subsidy or law, or indirectly protected, by crappy public services that don’t stop it (yet have to be paid by thus misallocating capital that could better defend the taxpayer) and corruption.
The well known mafias all over the world for example benefited (and still do) greatly from the illegality of certain products. The cops take care of the efficient entrepreneurs, and all thats left is a black market where you have to pay off and/or fight the cops to stay alive. If drugs, gambling, or prostitution weren’t illegal, then the mafias would have to outcompete common businesses, and that means if they were to buy ammunition and hire thugs, they’d be wasting additional capital on an activity that can be countered by defense or retribution, and always is countered in the long term due to the diffused information propagation in the market. No one gets a free lunch for a long time, unless it’s institutionalized - protected, publically accepted, subsidized.
By the same token, so are shoemakers. So what?
Not never, never. But much less likely to, than a state with a subsidized army. Because they take the full blows at their own expense, not with the lives of drafted soldiers or taxpayer money.
You’re still not comparing vis-a-vis, and you’re giving your silly system too much credit. The state is also filled with men, and even more so likely to attract sociopaths due to its monopolistic and coercive nature. Only because it’s written in a piece of paper that the state shall not misappropriate taxpayer money, doesn’t mean they don’t have the full incentives to do so. Elections are subpar to market competition, separation of power is subpar to… market competition, lol. Corruption is easier because you can’t switch courts or judges. Everything a central planner can think of is subpar, if it wasn’t, then he wouldn’t have to monopolize it and coerce people into paying him, he could just outcompete the PDAs by having the most transparent and efficient institution.
Lowly criminals who have nothing to lose, therefore don’t fear retribution.
Oh ok.
I’d suspect however that a society filled with people that support killing and stealing doesn’t last for long.
Lol, jesus christ.
Is your state more “transparent, decentralized, and driven by security” than the PDA because you wrote in a piece of paper that they ought to be?
What are the incentives, rettoper, for a statist to be transparent, as compared to an entrepreneur? He only has to be transparent enough to convince 50% of the active voters. Not even taxpayers, because not all taxpayers care; they just get their tax refunds, welfare, and vote for whoever’s on their party ticket like the last 4 years. And only in 1/4 of the years that come election time. Past that, who cares, his pay won’t go any higher, his reelection is just as certain. So that means, A politician doesn’t have to be even 1/8 as transparent as an entrepreneur. The latter which has to be as transparent as consumers want him to be, 100% of consumers, 100% of the time. Any lower and it means a direct profit loss to him. And as unpopular he becomes, the more he nears bankrupcy.
Decentralization? You got to be kidding me. One monopolized, coercive institution is more decentralized than every single entrepreneur in the area? You got to understand the market isn’t limited on how many companies are running, it means everyone. Everyone is a potential entrepreneur, and everyone is able to enter any market. A shitty market means profit opportunity for new companies. While a shitty state means everyone is f***d.
And you still don’t understand that the company only profits if it serves well that which its paid to do. For PDA, profit does mean it’s efficiency rate on defense; its ability to defend it’s customers from aggression. That is exactly what it means. He defends less, he profits less. He becomes less popular, he profits less. For a state? Votes mean nothing over the 50%+ needed, he’s either elected or not, It signals the chances he has of being reelected, sure, but nothing past that. His wage doesn’t go up, his job doesn’t become any easier. In fact, if a politicians approval ratings go up, it’s more likely an incentive to screw up; because he can “afford” losing some voter base and gain some cash in some corruption scandal, and still get reelected. And again, it’s only from four to four years, so he can actually screw around for three years and only compromise some useful work nearing reelection to look good. It’s much much easier to scam the people when you’re in government.
I didn’t get this. You mean there’s no incentives for a state to nuke another because they can’t profit from that? Okay well, a PDA wouldn’t either. A PDA gains from it’s ability to defend, and launching nukes comes as an added expense that doesn’t pay them back anything. In that sense, it is the same for the state, but the difference that I can think is again, the state gets it’s nukes for free. The guy who was just put in charge? He got that big red button in front of him for free. There’s no way he’s going to be more cautious with it than someone who had to work and deserve his position, and someone who’s aware of all the consequences of his actions.
Doesn’t have to be, it will be as (de)centralized as its customers would like; as transparent as its customers would like.
How does a PDA expand if not by doing what it is paid to do? If it deviates from it’s contracts, it will become unpopular, memberships break, and bankrupcy ensues. A state on the other hand, can violate the constitution with much more leeway. It only has to not anger everyone enough for a revolution. What’s harder, keep a customer, or keep a voter?
Can doesn’t mean they generally do - and I believe that the proportion of which an explendid offensive penetration happens, an explendid defense also does, even if one is more commonly reported than the other.
If they disregard everyone else, then he’s a black sheep PDA, which is no good for defending. It would be no different than a bank that issues notes that no one takes. Or cellphones that work only within their headquarter’s building. Etc.
We’ve already been through that. If even you, a statist, can foresee that coming, you think the ancaps most worried about that possibility would immediately see it coming and 1- require additional assurances from the PDA or 2- quit membership and look to fund a smaller PDA.
And it turned out it didn’t even last two hundred years, LOL. But it’s ok, I’m not an empiricist, I won’t hold that against you.
Hiding behind the troops is truly despicable.
I’m surprised anyone is still posting to this thread.
Hiding behind the troops is truly despicable.
I’m surprised anyone is still posting to this thread. – liberty student
Is there a substantive empirically or logically supported point to your statement ?
Please clarify.
Oh the irony.