It certainly is. If it costs less to just take X vs giving something else in exchange, X will be taken. A lion profits from eating a gazelle. What’s even more profitable is power/force : the potential to destroy, i.e. make someone not exist anymore. As such, power doesn’t even have to be used to dramatically affect the subjective preferences and cost/benefit calculations of human actors under its realm. Because of this, power seems to converge to territorial monopolies with the regularity of gravity pulling apples down from trees.
Minarchists acknowledge gravity and propose that a plane must be used for flying from A to B. AnCaps ‘hate’ (and a priori ‘wish away’) gravity to argue that floating is much better (quieter, smoother, simpler) than flying on a plane.
Nir, we’ve debated this before. Semantics (gangs, warlords, states, kingdoms, etc.) aside, all power/force ‘markets’ inevitably converge to territorial monopolies, just like all apples get pulled down by gravity.
Also, ‘wishing away’ power/force overlooks billions of years of evolution which have produced the human actors whose models we’re using to build our world views. We can never completely disassociate ourselves from the forces that have created us.
What reason or arguments am I wishing away exactly? My position is (and has been) that power/force is not a commodity amenable to free (voluntary) market forces. It resides in a realm of its own and ABOVE free (voluntary) markets. My reasoning and arguments are perfectly consistent with this premise, as your reasoning is consistent with yours. Where we differ is our premises, not the logic we’re building on top of them. Accusing me of being illogical is really getting old.
My position is (and has been) that power/force is not a commodity amenable to free (voluntary) market forces. It resides in a realm of its own and >>ABOVE free (voluntary) markets
My premise is orders of magnitude less mystical (more realistic) than yours. I at least use history and experience to build it. What do you use to build yours?
Question begging. First a premise is required to shove power/force into the realm of economics (voluntary exchange) so that you can apply your standard economic analysis. Hence, you cannot use standard economic analysis to do the shoving (i.e. build your premise).
Not all theories are economics. Besides, as pointed out above, you cannot use economics to build your premise that power/force resides withing the realm of economics (voluntary exchange).
I thought that was praxeology – economics being only a subset of it. Regardless, let’s avoid semantics and for the purpose of this debate stick with “voluntary exchange”. Power/force cannot belong to the realm of voluntary exchange, almost by definition.
I simply did not understand how your position of reduced slavery was relevant.
My question was,
“What would prevent warlordism” (in a stateless society)? This isn’t a trap. Most of the statists I talk to bring this argument up as a measure of last resort. I don’t really have a good answer, and I wanted to find someone who could.
So, you think that a stateless society would be more like tribalism than “pan-an-cap”?
Those are merely tools (ingredients) an entity may (or may not) use. Effective power/force is much more than a mere sum of its parts. Just like a car is much more than a sum of its atoms.