Yes, but their returns would be so low compared to everyone else (by necessity, since they misallocate resources) that they couldn’t raise funds and couldn’t innovate. nero
there is a time preference involved. Many aggressive profit motivated actors are not going to sit around waiting for a mismanaged resource to fail.
As everybody else has who access to capital gets more efficient due to technological progress, they would have to use larger and larger shares of their ‘gold mine’ rents to maintain their infrastructure, while commodity prices go down because of progress. Eventually they’ll go broke and have to sell the resource. Nero
Not all owners of valued resources are in it to make money. many are motivated by some aesthetic goal – environmentalism, nationalism, egalitarianism, pacifism, culturalism, luddism et al.
Now you’re talking about owners of resources who just plain don’t feel like exploiting them. There would be plenty of examples of that, in fact most people wouldn’t use their land to the fullest economic benefit. So there would be underutilized resources. So what? I see no reason this translates into low defenses. If someone is rich enough to forgo profits, he probably has the spare money for defenses.-- Nero
this is where your house of cards collapses. If they were rich, they havent acted inefficiently. Your making the assumption that an actor can be both economically negligent and economically rich at the same time. Nonetheless, a formerly ‘rich’ actor would have to continue to act in an efficient manner or he would likely see his resources under greater risk of predation.
in sum, you need to effectively manage your resources or you will not have the means to defend them. of course, if you come to the table with wealth from past successes that temporarily negates risk. however, it is obvious that this business model of draining capital from past successes to defend under utilized resources in the present is not sustainable.
But all this talk about underutilized resources and defenses is kind of besides the point anyways. Because there wouldn’t need to be defenses at all. So let’s just assume that no resource would be defended at all. You can ignore this post until here. Now you still have the task of showing that in a stateless society there would be a war for resources, i.e. that it’s profitable to steal resources.-- Nero
then you are stating that security would not be necessary in ancap society !?!
would man suddenly become pious and pure ?
But nobody would go through the expense of maintaining a large military force to steal resources. It’s just not a profitable business model. I think I made a pretty solid argument that there wouldn’t be any sort of PDA with a significant military force, here and here.–Nero
how would you defend your resources against statists ?
moreover, how can you in all seriousness claim that coercion as a means to obtain economic gain cease from the human condition ?
dont you think this is utopian, naive, and empirically and logically unsound thinking ?
As I mentioned in the other thread, having resources isn’t really that profitable any more. And it will become less profitable in the future. Pretty much all commodity prices in the free market go down, the real money is in manufacturing, knowledge, service, ideas, not natural resources. In the future owning resources will not be the kind of ‘gold mine’ you expect it to be-- Nero
are you saying we dont need water, food, lithium, gold, land, steel, oil, wind, geothermal, labor, earth orbit, intellectual property, et al.
how about cruise missile, battle tanks, aircraft carriers, stealth bombers? how would your utopian society of ‘no resources’ deal with statists wieldng these weapons?
But the theory that there would be wars about resources; not so much. I would rather try to make the argument that anarchism possesses enough checks and balances to keep the power-hungry under control, that would be a much more realistic argument than the one about wars for oil fields.But the theory that there would be wars about resources; not so much. I would rather try to make the argument that anarchism possesses enough checks and balances to keep the power-hungry under control, that would be a much more realistic argument than the one about wars for oil fields.– Nero
the means to wage war (and POWER) are from mineral resources, energy reserves, labor, and manufacturing facilities – all capital intensive.
the bottom line is that statists are creatures who cannot compete effectively on the free market – hence they gain desired outcomes by alternate means, including coercion. ANcap society would need constant security to defend against this threat. However, there is no means within ancap society to forestall the emergence of a hegemon defense cartel within a region.
also, not everyone is motivated by economic goals, many are motivated by pacifism, egalitarianism, environmentalism, religion, nationalism, culturalism, et al. I dont see how these adherents are going to surrender power without a fight – hence you will always need security.
ancap society would quickly devolve into a series of territorial monopoly PDAs similar to today’s geopolitik.
unless as you say – resources dont matter in ancap society and statists will automatically become pure and just.
I just dont buy into that belief. Indeed, you could have isolated enclaves that are utterly peaceful, however they would quickly be overrun by more aggressive and violent profit driven enclaves and firms if their resources and land was of any value.