Haven’t heard of any progressives, conservatives, classical liberals, or even minarchists who want to take defense and law enforcement out of the hands of government. Why is it if you’re talking about the supermarket the majority of folks agree that it’s best left up to the free market, but not the police? How do folks who don’t believe that security should be privatized and left to market forces justify putting the issue of security into a separate little box; basically saying that " Everything else is better when left to market forces, but not security." How do minarchists justify their position, and how do supposedly pro-free market small government conservatives defend their position?
Because they think that government guarantees certain social behavior by its edicts. We are not murdering people, not because it is immoral or unpragmatic, but because the government tells us not to and will punish us if we try. Also they think that the market won’t provide order which is strange because you would think food and water which they want privatized in some manner would be more important then police.
I don’t understand how statists can point to the corrupt nature of man and then think that putting a monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory to a group of men will ameliorate the situation. That’s probably the most common argument I hear, other than ‘what about the children’, from folks; that an ancap society would only work if men were angels.
Cause there will be no market forces. Just forces.
Monopolising it helps… how?
What do you mean by the statement that there will only be forces and not market forces?
Because that would make them anarchists.
I’m sure they have heard of privatizing security (or roads and many other government owned areas), but they probably have never actually read into it. They believe that it’s too extreme, and it would be easier to just put it in the hands of the State and let them sort it out.
Yep - I love to reference people to this article by Lew Rockwell when this subject comes up. It’s a failure to really grasp the limits of government power. It’s based on the myth that “organization” or some other mystical social force arising from minds thinking alike can accomplish things that are impossible, such as, transcending scarcity. The government can at best keep us as safe as a private law and security market could because there is no problem that government solves which the private market cannot.
Clayton -
There will be no extended market, because there will be no widespread protection for property. Just limited market exchanges.
It’s not that I think the market couldn’t provide defense per se, I just don’t see it as necessary. I’m pretty happy with the military and the police and the courts being done the way they’re done. I don’t understand why I should want to change things.
In other words, I don’t see it as impossible like some statists.
“I don’t understand how statists can point to the corrupt nature of man and then think that putting a monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory to a group of men will ameliorate the situation.”
I believe in the corrupt nature of man, but not just of men participating in markets, but also men working for government. I don’t really see any way to ameliorate the flaws in human nature, I just see different ways to structure a system and I think all of them will have problems because they will have men participating in them. So I don’t think anarcho-capitalism would necessarily be a worse or better system, just a different one with different outcomes and different problems.
I think it depends largely on whether the person’s opposition to government is moral or utilitarian. If one is morally opposed to coercion on principle, I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile this with the minarchist political view. If the military, police, and courts are being supported through taxation, and coercively excluding competitors in these areas, then they are being held by a violent monopoly, and are therefore morally unjust because they violate the non-aggression principle. Objectivists attempt to side-step this problem by applying the conditions a) that the government is supported voluntarily (by corporate and individual ‘donations’ and the like), and b) that the so-called 'objectification of law in accordance with objectivist principles is a moral necessity. They accuse market anarchists of wrongfully conflating the defense of a free-market with the market itself, rather than as an external framework within which markets function. I think this view is flawed, however, because contradictions follow from it. If all men are equal, having naturally and equal right to defense, why is it that in the objectivist conception only a few select men have the right to the types of defense provided by the government? By this reasoning, it is morally incorrect for one man or group of men to engage in just defense, while for another (the government) it is completely moral and necessary.
If one has a utilitarian view, on the other hand, no moral justifications are necessary. Anything one thinks the government will do better, the government “should” do regardless of the morality of the means.
Why wouldn’t widespread protection of property arise? I mean, why wouldn’t actors in the market see the demand for widespread protection of property and respond to it?
Re: human nature. I agree, human beings are corrupt creatures. And no one is expecting an ancap society to be utopia; watch Hoppe’s A Private Law Society lecture. He addresses the shortcomings of any system that involves humans. It just seems that a system not based on monopoly and coercion makes more sense. Both from a moral and practical standpoint. Even if one ignores the lack of moral consistency present in the arguments of everyone from minarchists to totalitarians the practical argument remains. If you believe in a limited state please tell me why you think that the shortcomings of monopolies, rising prices and decreasing quality, don’t apply to the state and any other reasons why the state would do a better job than a private firm.
Except that they uphold everything that you are against.
I’m still waiting for widespread protection of property.
I guess his argument is that protection would be limited to hamlets or something like that. Correct me if I’m wrong OP
Whether that would be true or not is not at all important. What is important is that a monopoly will be (is) worse than the alternative… any alternative, really.
True but that’s the price imo.
“If you believe in a limited state please tell me why you think that the shortcomings of monopolies, rising prices and decreasing quality, don’t apply to the state and any other reasons why the state would do a better job than a private firm.”
I don’t really think about it this way. I think all those shortcomings apply to the state but that they’re costs that I’m willing to pay for to have one adjudicator, one source of military power.
If so, just go live in an area where one PDA protects a given territory (or better yet, outright owns it?) No need to hoist a state on everyone else and at least in this scenario if the PDA did prove burdensome you could leave.