DD5,
You seem to be clinging to those Rothbardian norms. You have this notion of how the society would be, but you don’t seem to explain why those conditions would be present.
So, you say that I cannot do an economic analysis of provision of health services because ‘health’ is much more than the sum of {insert list of all property and labour that are conducive to providing health services .}
I see what you are doing.
I don’t think any society could totally prevent any of that stuff.
No. I’m saying that you cannot use economic (voluntary exchange) analysis for power/force ‘services’, period. The fact that providers of those ‘services’ may (or may not) use items acquired through voluntary exchange does not place those ‘services’ into the realm of voluntary exchange. I can buy a gun (voluntary exchange) and shoot you with it to steal your wallet (non-voluntary exchange).
I can buy a gun (voluntary exchange) and shoot you with it to steal your wallet (non-voluntary exchange).
This is a completely irrelevant and incorrect statement of the issue.
You might say,
I can buy a bacterium (voluntary exchange) , and put it in your food(non-voluntary exchange).
So, what does this have to say about anything?
The issue at stake is whether voluntary exchange is better or worse at mitigating adverse effects(such as would be non-voluntary exchangers) than when voluntary exchange that would otherwise occur towards addressing such concerns is prohibited
Well put. From what I know of human actors and what I use to build my model (premise), territorial power monopolies are both an inevitability and the best way of minimizing non-voluntary exchange. (I assume that zero non-voluntary exchange world is impossible.) The only question remaining is the process by which those monopolies may be established. I prefer to use whatever social means are available to increase the probability that such a structure matches the subjective preferences and beliefs of the human actors comprising it, while you prefer to let whichever entity wields power/force most effectively establish it. I contend that the former would yield a more robust and more productive structure than the latter.
Z.
I prefer to use whatever social means are available to increase the probability that such a structure matches the subjective preferences and beliefs
So this is your problem, if you want consumer sovereignty to be expressed you need to allow consumer sovereignty, if you want to curtail free voluntary capitalist acts, then you have become that which overrides the subjective preferences of those voluntary agents that you earlier professed to serve.
We’ve come full circle. Your problem is that you first assume (a premise) that free voluntary capitalist acts would be left unaffected by power/force and thus be a true manifestation of consumer sovereignty. I repeat, you beg the question by first assuming that power/force is amenable to voluntary exchange rules (thus subject to them!) so that you can prove that it is!
Yes, minarchy entails becoming the problem it tries to solve. Just like vaccines do. All who pushed them away as “disease” under the premise of a disease-free world are dead. Just like all anarchies.
Z.
Your problem is that you first assume (a premise) that free voluntary capitalist acts would be left unaffected by power/force and thus be a true >>manifestation of consumer sovereignty.
No, we need first assume a market, since this is the question, “what would happen given a market…”
in this we assume problems for the market to try and solve, like “there are some ‘bad’ people that 'fight ’ the market or would do in circumstances where others would not (libertarians)”
Then we are analysing whether those particular individuals and subgroups in the first category can use voluntary means in an effective defence against particular individuals and subgroups who are in the category of the 2nd category .
and we compare and contrast this to a scenario where those in the first category happen to be totally captured by some number of people in the the 2nd category (i.e. they are in a state) who claim that they are providing a public service in providing defence against other members of those in the 2nd category (than those ones that are in the state apparatus),
and we must ask whether those in the 1st category therefore have a superior or inferior defence against those individuals who fall into 2nd category
and the same with warlordism. It can be reduced though. I doubt that warlordism won’t exist in anarchy. Just like it exists under the state, it will probably exist in anarchy too, just, I may assume, on smaller scale. Why? Because it would be harder to get protection without state monopolies over many insitutions.
So the only prevention can be the people who live in a society.
So to sum up, warlordism is not an argument against anarchism anymore, than rape or theft is. It’s a well know emotional response, like 'exploitation" asserted by marxists (even though they are in a sense right)
I don’t see the distinction between warlordism and lowly criminals, besides that it demands a bigger retaliatory response. It’s harder to defend against, but it’s also harder to happen in the free market, because the taller they are the harder they fall - greater punishment and/or restitution would be required from the warlords than lowly criminals.
Once there’s a stable market law system in place, there’s just nothing the market can’t do better as compared to the state. It will be more responsive, more proportionate, more versatile, and producing less externalities. Bounties would be placed on those guys heads’, no doubt. Wild wild west style baby.
Even if warlords could cause a ruckus, they’d necessarily either have to kill everyone, or be toppled someday just like the state that existed before was; and that is just by assuming that the anti-state sentiment still lingers, which I believe will become such a sentiment as to equal murder, rape, theft, etc.
z, the issue with the state from your arguments, is that consumers are not choosing it persistently. And yet the state persists. It’s not a result of choices made in the marketplace by individuals. In many cases, states are the results of the choice of a small group of individuals in the distant past, who managed to establish an enterprise that carried on because the costs of removing it exceed (at that time) the costs of suffering it.
It’s like if someone dumped toxic waste in a lake, and people chose to bear the pollution rather than pay the costs of cleaning it up. That’s not the same as people choosing toxic waste to be stored in a lake.
What part of my posts were “Rothbardian norms”? whatever those are.
Unless to apply economic theory consistently qualifies as Rothbardian. Then I am guilty as charge.
Nir,
You forgot to assume a model for the human actor comprising your market. You can already see what happens given a market with real human actors in it. The results are all around you. A “market” comprised of actors that would destroy any actor 50% weaker then them and take their assets would converge to a very different stable state from a “market” comprised of actors that would not attack under any circumstance.
You cannot “assume a market” if the power/force outside its realm doesn’t allow it to exist. The market doesn’t decide if power/force/aggression exists. It’s the other way around. Lions have been killing gazelles for millions of years. Power/force is prior to voluntary exchange.
Z.
LS,
It’s exactly a result of choices made by actual human actors (Who else?). The fact that not all choices are made in the marketplace (of voluntary exchanges) tells us something about other realms (power/force) within which actual human actors attempt to achieve their ends. Closing our eyes will not make them go away.
Z.
Interesting. First comes the looter, and only then the producer. Does that make logical sense to you?
You cannot assume a government without first assuming a market. You cannot tax a market that does not first exist.
DD5,
Which came first? Hitting a monkey with a rock and taking his banana, or scratching his back in exchange for his banana? Or do you think evolution (where we come from) has nothing to do with how we deliver and react to power/force/coercion?
Z.
That’s actually a good question. The Savage Ape hypothesis is not really universally supported in the anthropological community. There is scant evidence of it anyway. One of the big questions dealing with this is what happened to the neanderthal (and the giant game), and other homo species. It is very strange that we are the only remaining hominid, and yet the evidence of warfare is very weak, and the big game can easily be explained by environmental reasons.
So you would have to ask, are we like chimps, bonobos, something in between, or something completely different? We know we have been a pack animal as far as we have gone back, and our closest cousins refect this. So, it is is safe to assume that our closest common ancestor was as well.
I’m going to go ahead and say it is neither that came first.
I thought we were talking about human society. Not a barrel of monkeys. And also not primitive man before he realized the benefits of forming societies.
The basis for any human society is social cooperation based on voluntary exchange. If man could not realize the benefits of voluntary social cooperation, he would be in a constant state of war and no society could ever form.
So again, in the context of human society, before you talk about any criminal gang or group of thugs, you must first define as a given a market.
You can’t study a parasite without first providing the host.
I thought we were talking about human society. Not a barrel of monkeys. And also not primitive man before he realized the benefits of forming societies.
I’m curious to know where you draw this line, and based on what?
The basis for any human society is social cooperation based on voluntary exchange
Sumer, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, China, India, Japan, Africa, Europe, the America’s would prove you wrong there.
If man could not realize the benefits of voluntary social cooperation, he would be in a constant state of war and no society could ever form.
That is correct tho.
So again, in the context of human society, before you talk about any criminal gang or group of thugs, you must first define as a given a market.
I would agree with this tho. But even given a market says nothing about the amount of violence within that market. We do, and probably always have both voluntary exchanged, and coerced.