Eh, I’d say more like a PDA refusing service in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
While I acknowledge and don’t deny that the rise of rougue PDAs could be a problem in a anarchist society I think the biggest threat against an anarchist society would be external forces.
Ok, but tell me first how this specifically pertains to a stateless society or are we now discussing: what to do when the police is incompetent, in general?
I wonder why it is that every statist General in the history of military warfare has always complained about the difficulty of combating a relatively decentralized military opposition.
In a much reduced form.
I wonder why it is that every statist General in the history of military warfare has always complained about the difficulty of combating a relatively decentralized military opposition.
I assume you’re alluding to guerilla warfare and possibly Iraq and Vietnam. Guerilla fighters being successful and untouchable is a myth. They generally are just a nuisance, nothing decisive. Oh and guess where they often get funding from? Other states.
In the event that a state did engage in conflct with a anarchist state I believe that like with other conflicts, people are going to gravitate towards a central power that they think is necessary for stopping the conflict or afterwards for rebuilding.
But that wasn’t the point I was trying to make as. I don’t know how a state would respond to a anarchist one whether it be direct or indirect, but they definitely wouldn’t just leave them alone.
Defense agencies have financial constraints that governments do not, namely that they cannot just externalize the costs of any unwarranted aggression onto their customers. Acts of war do not make any financial sense.
wars don’t make financial sense? says who?
i’m pretty sure it was more than emperor’s ego that led rome to conquer almost the whole of modern day europe. conquering smaller nations provided them with slaves, minerals, new trade routes, new customers for their products, etc. and that actually in turn made it easier for them to conquer more areas (increasing returns to scale?)
relating that back to an anarchist setting, funding a “war” could be easy. i could easily imagine a pda selling “lottery” type tickets to its customers to pay for profiteering excursions. “buy a ticket for a chance to share in the spoils of war if we win!”
so the real limit on your funding as a private organization would be the expected rate of return on any given war and that will be a function of 1) the “spoils” (how much loot, land, etc you hope to gain) 2) the “costs” of going to war, which relate directly to the “strength” of your enemy 3) your probability of winning (also dependent on the “strength” of your enemy) 4) the risk aversion of you investors.
once you see that, its easy to imagine that if you had a pda that was much much much better at fighting relative to other pda (such that expected gains exceded expected losses), then it might make financial sense for that pda to conquer all of his “competitors”. so like Jackson LaRose was saying, I see nothing discussed thus far that would prevent the possibility of a single pda from gaining a monopoly.
In which case you will not be hard pressed to come up with numerous examples of them being beaten.
War and slavery are profitable. But they aren’t the most profitable endeavors… see manumission.
In which case you will not be hard pressed to come up with numerous examples of them being beaten.
Whether or not I produce a laundry list of anti-guerilla campaigns is irrelevant to what I originally stated, but i’ll list some examples:
The British in Malaysia
The French in Algeria
The Americans in the Phillipines and arguably the natives, Iraq, and Vietnam
And several in Central America
Guerilla forces suffer from decentralization as a fighting force and lack of way of a way to effectively get funds and supplies. Anti-guerilla tactics often revolve around capitalizating on those weaknesses. Ironically it was the British who were some of the first to come up with effective anti-guerilla tactics. And the reason I included Vietnam and Iraq is because when it came to actually fighting guerilla forces, the odds are stacked against guerilla forces despite what they teach us in the indoctrination camps because they are poorly supplied and trained.
I didn’t ask you to provide us examples of “anti-guerilla campaigns”. I asked you to name examples of wars guerrilas lost.
Barring Vietnam(since we left). I did list examples of successful counter-insurgency campaigns. They aren’t a centralized entitiy so they aren’t going to waive a white flag and say “we give up”.
You can not pass sentence on the outcome of any war without first knowing both sides’ war goals. The guerrillas in the Philippines and in Iraq were not beaten. They ceased to fight once the Americans fullfiled a greater part of the demands they had put forth to stop fighting. Therefore they won a qualified victory.
The property owner who has almost everything to loose and almost nothing to gain.
Are you saying that incentives in a statist regime are no different form the market? I thought you were keen with public choice theory and all of that.
What is so special about your “lottery” type tickets, as oppose to just issuing bonds or stocks in order to finance the expansion of business? I don’t get it.
So are you saying that my argument is wrong about any financial constraints on a private company to go into war because they can just raise the money? In other words, there are no financial constraints because there are no financial constraints. simple as that.. Just so I know before I answer this.
All the stuff about probability, risk, etc… which I would insist on referring to uncertainty, is basically referring to entrepreneurship. So your entire argument is basically an assertion:
'There are no financial constraints because it is easy to imagine that entrepreneurs would invest in the endeavor of war. ’
That’s basically your entire argument based on assertion in one sentence.
Neither is profitable without the State.
I thought we were discussing my question,
“What would prevent warlordism”
Though our discourse, we have been brought to the hypothetical scenario you refered to in your last post,
The possible outcomes of PDAs refusing service in crime-ridden areas within a stateless society.
And?
To temper that a bit, I also acknowledge that there is a certain inertia in expansive conquest which would hinder these monopolies from growing very large, but it would rather be more analagous to gang territories in the real world, perhaps up to the size of a city-state.
Unless you are admiting that your question was a set-up to enable you to dodge having to acknowledge any answer by arguing semantics (which you claim to hate) you are going to have to accept the answer.
Either your original question was a shorthand for “what prevents warlordism” or you are putting words into our mouths. I don’t know of anyone that claims ancap would be utopia without a single instance of warlordism ever.
You’re thinking in statist terms which is why these hypothetical scenerios can seem plausible. Without the power to tax and resort to conscription, this is all very unrealistic.
War is not profitable. It is a process of property and human destruction. The psychic profit that exists for the emperor and the narrow special interests that could profit in a statist regime are no longer present. Think concentrated benefit, dispersed costs. Typical public choice theory.
Also, PDA’s are not States. If you destroy or “conquer” a PDA you do not conquer its customers. In fact, you conquered nothing! You destroyed property. Its customers are long gone and the defeated PDA is worth nothing.
Student’s analysis is rather superficial. It ignores the source of wealth in a capitalistic society, which is the value of resources utilized to serve consumers. There is no intrinsic wealth that the PDA can just hope to regain if it is successful in its conquest. If it destroys its competitor then it has destroyed its capital value also. There is nothing for the investors (buyers of “lottery” tickets) to gain here or recoup. What’s more, the capital value of the aggressive PDA is likely to also tank, and even before it engages in such a costly and irrational course of action. As soon as it looses its customer base, its capital value will be worthless undermining the very foundation of the initial assumption about the successful PDA setting out to conquer its competitors by force rather then by competition.