Ultimately, in a finite world, with finite resources, and finite length of life, your freedom is potentially ALWAYS in danger of being limited by the mere fact that I also exist with an equal claim to such a freedom.
Not superior, different. Ask away.
Who owns the path?
I don’t have an issue with anything done voluntarily. I don’t see how anyone can claim the moral authority to stop any party/parties from interacting voluntarily.
This is another long topic worthy of a new thread, although I am certain it is familiar ground, so there are probably 50 threads already covering it. Are we done with understanding aggression, sound money, minarchism, anarchism, violence, theft etc before we launch into contracts and market exchange?
Somebody made a good point on lewrockwell.com that underscores the perverse incentives of State-provided services. If balloon boy’s dad had to buy a subscription to emergency services instead of just lolling about in the general funds/taxpayer pool, he might think twice about pulling such a stupid, thoughtless stunt. The ability to offload costs on taxpayers incentivizes foolish choices that would be punished brutally by the market.
Incidentally, the State will probably spend close to or more money to prosecute and imprison this man than his hoax cost the taxpayers to begin with. He’d otherwise be punished plenty with ostracization from employment and housing and being sued by his emergency service provider.
And of course, with the State, he can also apply for welfare.
Not true on both counts. You can have government and sound money. And you can also have taxation under a sound money system. I don’t see how sound money conflicts with government and taxation.
I’m not good with nomenclature (new to the field) so I’m trying to explain my thoughts with non-expert terms that carry minimal ambiguity. Are my arguments/questions unclear, or confusing?
The town,or if that’s too much, just assume that we both do (50-50 ownership). And how would your answer change if you owned 40% or 60% of the path? Btw, how does one infer (prove, claim) ownership of the path without a tax-supported legal (court) system and property registry? What happens if I think I own 100% (in my own non-monoply legal system) and you think you own 100% of it (in your own non-monopoly legal system)? Do we both keep walking until we bump into each other? How does a “free market” “non-monopoly” legal system reconcile this conflict? Or will it be resolved by our own non-monopoly personal defense forces?
If that I was what Lam is saying I think there is some distance between our positions, but I’m not sure that is what he’s saying. I took his point to be that a lot of the arguments put forth for anarchism work simply because of the assumptions being use. I hear a lot of arguments by “Rothbardians” that essentially depend on the assumption that everybody in a given society is a radical libertarian who gains for whom an invasion of his neighbours property rights would cause disutility.
Well, it’s no wonder that anarchism “works” under these assumptions, it works because you’re assuming the most favourable conditions, and unrealistic conditions to boot. The trick is to show whether or not anarchism works when we’re modelling men, not as radical libertarian ideologues but as rational actors in a world of uncertainty and incomplete information.
Like I said, quibbles regarding the moral strength of the average man are worthless. I think it’s far easier (and more accurate) to assume that most people are inherently selfish, at which point the question becomes which set of institutions will allow this selfishness to do the most harm and which will cause otherwise selfish actors to work towards “the common good”.
Your wording is a bit confusion, I think I know what you mean but I’m hesitant to attribute a position to you that I’m not sure you hold. First, I read a relevant anecdote a while ago (it was on a blog, I forget which but I have a strong suspicion it was O&M).
Gordon Tullock came up with a proposal to reform the way punishment operates in the US. I believe his proposal was that all crimes have the death penalty, but with a catch. When you’re put in the chair the executioner presses a button and depending on the crime you’ve commited (with the likelyhood of death increasing with severity of the crime) there’s only a possibility that the execution will occur. So if you’ve commited murder the chance might be 2/3 but if you stole candy it might be 1/100000.
The point is that humans are risk averse, and they have a tendency to overestimate probabilities. Now, I don’t think Tullock really meant this, so don’t get the wrong idea.
But as I understood your post what you said was “well, citizens can’t leave therefore incentives aren’t even relevant”. Which clearly isn’t true (it’s not even true that citizens can’t leave). Clearly if the US government were to announce tomorrow that any man who murders his neighbour will receive $1000 in the mail, murder rates would skyrocket. To be honest I find the suggestion that incentives no longer matter for whatever reason to be bizarre.
What will the government tax? What form will they collect it in if there is no legal tender? If your town decides to stop trading in gold, and start trading in silver, and there is no legal tender law, how will the state collect its payment in gold? What if the next town uses copper? And the next diamonds? And the next, squirrel pelts? What if individuals within a town start trading in different goods? Some trade buttons, day old heels of bread, dandelions or felt caps? How will that be taxed?
No, you make broad generalizations without defining specifics. If you say there is a system that is in some way better than anarchy, then argue that system specifically. If you cannot, then you can’t support the positive claim that it is better.
All I am asking, is that if you make a claim, make sure you can support it. When you claim human nature is violent, and then you claim you wouldn’t necessarily be violent, then you’re either refuting yourself, or making the case you are not human. Which can be very confusing.
If we both own the path, we have a conflict because only one of us can own the path at a time. If we both have equal claim on something, that is the same as neither of us having claim on it in a dispute.
If someone owned the street, that person would be able to define the right of way for you and another party. If you and another party are moving across unowned land, you only control where you are, not where you are not. And so if there is a collision, the party initiating the collision would likely be considererd the aggressor.
A line from first appropriation to possession if we’re working from homesteading theory.
Conflict.
I can’t answer precisely how it will be resolved because I am not prescient nor do I have perfect knowledge. I can suggest that negotiation or trade are possible and economically advantageous ways to resolve the conflict. We do it all day, every day when we walk down hallways or on state sidewalks. It is not going to be radically different once clear ownership (and hence rules of conduct on said property) are laid out.
We’re way off topic now. I have to work, I’ll be back later. In the meantime, I recommend you read the sources provided earlier in the thread.
Not if human behavior (nature, or character, on average and over large swats of the society’s population – Did this explain this term a little bit better?) forces society to allocate too many resources away from production and toward protection of freedom and property.
I’m glad that you recognized that there is violence (and there has been through history). I was starting to get worried for a minute there. Do you actually want me to quote statistics for murder, theft, and fraud globally and over the last few centuries? As I said, get back to me in few 10k years after you have educated the masses that violence and stealing is not their optimal group strategy – that they’d be much better off if they all just got along (the “cumbayah” argument) – though (even then) violence and stealing may still often be optimal on an individual basis, that is, in absence of uniform laws and their enforcement to nudge their incentives in the right direction.
throughout history, even before the arrival of legal tender, governments have been taxing in kind.
Since they didn’t have coined money, ancient households had to pay taxes in kind, and they paid different taxes throughout the year. Poll taxes required each man to deliver a cow or sheep to the authorities. Merchants transporting goods from one region to another were subject to tolls, duty fees, and other taxes. etc.
Look, minarchy is a nice idea, but it’s just too dangerous for one agency to have a monopoly on the legal system. There needs to be some way to constrain police and courts from engaging in predatory, exploitative behavior. Polycentrism is the optimal solution because it has the checks and balances inherent in market competition. Paper constitutions are second-best because they can only approximate market competition (not to mention being interpreted and enforced by the very agency they are supposed to constrain!).
So maybe minarchy could work if human nature was altered, but given what we have, it’s just too risky.
throughout history, even before the arrival of legal tender, even before the arrival of coin, where trade was done by barter, governments have been taxing in kind.
what’s your point?, my point is that if we have government, they can certainly tax with or without explicit legal tender laws on the books, and they can tax with or without the institution of sound money. and not only can they, but they used to.
They can do anything they want. They are a gang of crooks. However, the person I am debating with doesn’t recognize them as crooks. They recognize them as a legitimate provider of law.
What do you mean? Do you want me to list all possible and/or likely manifestations of human action/behavior? OK, how about everyone’s self-interest for ones self and for his closest family?
I have my own reasons, the same way the ones stealing and killing have their own, I’m sure. My actual optimality function is not the same as everyone else’s, and I’m not even addressing how close my perception of that function is to the actual one. Are you claiming that violence and stealing do not exist, or that they do exist but are still not perceived to be optimal to the self-interest of the perpetrators?
He wasn’t derailing the discussion. I proposed minarchy + sound money as a more viable alternative to anarchy, to which you replied that sound money is somehow conflicting with government and taxation. Apparently it’s not. Discussion back on rails. [:)]