ok get back to me after your done psychologizing
no deal. are you just here to troll?
Yeah, but the thing is son, with a theory of justice like that, you wouldn’t survive a day. You would either be killed or driven off into the wilderness (most likely killed). People tend not to put up with shit like that.
I asked you if you supported secession, and you answered yes, and then proceeded to explain options as everything except secession.
You’re either being insincere, or you don’t know what secession is.
Sure we buy law. Judges and police don’t work for free. Congressmen don’t work for free. Government is very expensive.
Who makes the rules?
You’re talking about goods, you’re not talking about free markets. Do you know what a free market is?
I haven’t established anything.
Correct. They are services.
This is incorrect. You haven’t made the case, I suspect because you do not understand what markets are.
You claimed the need for a uniform code of justice. Right now, Japan has different laws from America. They are in a state of anarchy with one another. Brazil is in anarchy with China, which is in anarchy with New Zealand. These are all competing agents with different legal systems. Their legal systems only apply to their own [sic] property. So if you really believe that law cannot be traded, cannot compete, and cannot be owned, and you really believe that law must be a uniform code, then it follows that you must believe we need one set of laws for the entire world.
If you allow exceptions for countries, and then you allow exceptions between states within countries, and then between counties, and then between townships and cities, well goddarnnit this is starting to get very close to an anarchy.
So do you propose we have a uniform code of global law (consistent with your previous statement) or do you think it is acceptable for America to have different laws than China, and for Montana to have different laws than Florida?
z1235: You’re arguing against poly-centric law but you don’t know how it’s supposed to work. Hence all your comments on the issue have been inaccuracies or oversteps. You also tacitly equate lawlessness with anarchy, which is understandable because that is the common use of the word. However, here we use a very specific definition of such words.
If you’d like to learn, bookmark and read this to gain a grasp of the subject matter.
How is my identity relevant? Address the content not the messenger.
Z.
I did not mention your identity. your content has been addressed. too bad if you haven’t noticed. others have.
Well, father, not if I got the bigger guns and you moved in front of me, as by MY law I’d have to kill you. I wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to make an important point here. What you just described is exactly the first step that primitive societies have repeatedly taken toward a unified legal and enforcement system. It has occured thousands of times through mankind’s history and has regularly converged toward a uniform system (Exhibit A: Planet Earth with it’s history of human organization). Through natural selection and market forces, societies that didn’t converge there have been taken to the proverbial woodshed of history and smothered.
liberty student –
I’d like to use this opportunity to address your fine analogy between agents ranging from a single person (the indivisible atom of freedom), through towns, counties, states, countries, and all the way to the planet itself (planetary justice). You may remember the part where I wrote about the amount of violence contained in human self-interest – that we agreed would be very hard to model. Well, consider this planet as one huge laboratory where the optimality and sustainability of various social structures (each with their own assumptions about human nature and self interest) are given a chance to compete. What if the correct model of human self-interest is exactly the one that produced the world as we see today – legal anarchy at a country level but legal uniformity within countries? Wouldn’t this at least question the soundness of the assumptions you must use in order to make anarchy sustainable? Where is the anarchy state that has sustained itself and has grown strong and prosperous to act as the beacon for all of us to see? To paraphrase Tom Cruise: “Show me an anarchy!”.
And no one can say that things may not change in the future. The amount of uniformity in law over this planet has only increased as commerce and technology has made the world more interconnected. Agents at every level have obviously recognized that trading SOME freedom in return for sustainability and prosperity may not be a bad bargain after all. We can sit in our chairs and discuss what-if’s until we’re dead. Most people would prefer sustainability and prosperity over idealism, hands down. The ones that didn’t… well read the thing about the proverbial woodshed of history.
Z.
Thank you for the link. I will be going on a long-weekend vacation tomorrow and will be reading the stuff from that list. Still, nothing beats a nice discussion like I’ve had here over the last few days. The best way to acquire food for thought, by far.
Z.
Like most statists, you confuse uniformity with top-down, coercive organization - ignoring bottom-up, voluntary organization. Though anarcho-capitalists argue for the validity of polycentric law, this is not the same as saying, “We think it’d be best if every individual had his own unique law concerning murder or fraud.” As we see with technology, language and money, we expect a level of uniformity in law to arise from the undirected actions of self-interested individuals.
And again, what do you have to say about the United States’ federalist system? We do not have a uniform legal code. Your city’s laws might conflict with your state’s laws, and your state’s with the federal government’s.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with you here. The problem is that the most you’ve done is assert that a monopoly provider of law provides greater stability and prosperity than competing law providers. You’ve done little to actually prove this.
I just described numerous systems in anarchy. The onus on you is to either accept such anarchy between states, cities and countries, or not. So please answer my question directly.
Is it acceptable for America to have different laws than China, and New York to have different laws than London, or not?
It is a very simple inquiry. No need to diverge into unprovable claims about human nature, sustainability, or armchair philosophy etc.
I’m asking you to respect the debate and answer the question definitively.
This is actually the anarchist position because you’re saying we ought to consent to fund an MDA. No one is disputing that we should probably pay for security, we’re disputing that it is optimal to be coerced into paying for security.
I’m not ignoring bottom-up. I (and history) don’t care how uniformity was achieved, as long it’s sustainable and stable beyond the threshold required for a society to prosper. If anarchist poly-centric (bottom up) legal system is indeed able to create a sustainable and stable uniform system, wouldn’t you think it should’ve done it by now, at least once? Don’t you think there has to be something inherently related to human nature that has converged ALL of 1000+ attempts at human society to converge towards uniform law and enforcement? I mean, even communism has had a record of sustainability and stability over many millions of people-years. What’s anarchism’s record? Doesn’t that fact bother you even a little bit, or at least question the assumptions that you take for granted in your anarchist model?
“We expect” is the key phrase here. Perhaps you expect or assume too much?
Obviously there is (and has to be) enough uniformity – both between agents at the same level and between levels in the hierarchy – to make the whole system sustainable. If large differences do appear, they’re resolved by force and it’s not always pretty (the Civil War), and almost regularly at large costs to society. Additionally, there is a uniform legal meta-system in place for arbitrating all potential conflicts between these levels of hierarchy via the Supreme Court. Ultimately, what I have to say about this is not important. History is the ultimate judge of sustainability and optimality.
Little or enough, that is your subjective judgment, I’m afraid. It’s obviously enough for me.
Z.
We have enough centuries of human history to at least HINT that perhaps paying for security with ONLY money may not be a good enough bargain. Seems like we ALSO have to throw in at least some FREEDOM into the bargain pot, I’m afraid, as this part has been THE single most prevalent descriptor of any sustainable society known to man.
Z.
im sorry i dont do hints and appearances. give me facts and arguments or go away.
No, I meant literally. Please show me one now, or point to one that has existed in the past.
What do you mean by “acceptable”? Yes, I accept different laws over different territories. In each and every one of those cases, the laws there regulate and limit the freedoms of each and every agent contained in them, so SOME level of “coercion” exists at every level of the hierachy and all across the planet. It is also apparent that a lot of uniformity (and “coercion”) exists over large swaths of territory and population. Perhaps just large enough to ensure sustainability? Cities within a state and states within a country are obviously not allowed to chose laws that are in large conflicts with the laws of the hierarchy above them. I don’t think that any US town would be allowed to have this law: “Any townsman that sees a car driving above 25mph down Main Street MUST shoot to kill the driver or pay a $10k penalty.”
So you can perhaps talk about poly-centrist “anarchy” between country laws but I have a feeling that it is not the anarchy you’re really idealizing about.
Now, in return, how about you definitively show me an actual (real) anarchy society either now or in the past.
Z.
Why is money alone not good enough? It is good enough for the military industrial complex…
You’re suggesting I would also need to give raw freedom? Let me just get out the bag where I keep my freedom and I’ll give my freedom-chips to the MDA. Oh wait, that would be voluntary.
Your burden is not to show that I need to “throw freedom into the bargain pot”, but that there are no alternatives to coercion.
Is this coming from the coercive branch of the anarchist spectrum? May I propose that you simply disregard my posts while I continue my discussions with others? Net result would be the same for you, and slightly better for me and perhaps for others.
Z.
Definition of Anarchy: When A and B have no single authority to solve their disputes. (partial) Definition of Government: When A and B have exactly one authority to solve their disputes.
The only anarchy the state resolves is between individuals, where A and B are citizens and the judge is government.
If A and B have no adjudicators, or more than one, they are in anarchy. This scenario exists right now. If I am A and B is the state, there is no third party to settle our disputes, so we are in anarchy. If A is from Bolivia and B is from Cuba, they are in anarchy because there is no third party to settle their dispute. Etc etc.
Here is a condition under which Anarchy does not work: If A is much more powerful than B. The state is more powerful than any one individual. Therefore, anarchy between the individual and the state is be disastrous. See history.
Honestly, I don’t know. I wish it was. I wish I could simply buy security and prosperity without giving up ANY freedom. I’m only observing that giving up some individual freedom (being subjected to a uniform monopoly law and enforcement system) has consistently been a characteristic of every society that has ever existed. There has not been a single one that’s been able to sustain itself without that ingredient.
It’s impossible to prove a negative (a non-existance of something – or, alternatives to coercion). It’d much easier for you to prove the existance of an alternative, if indeed one actually existed in reality.
Z.